tea drinker!
p. 99 · Read in the full issue
From savage to tea drinker!
“This story then is the story of the Worora, of the years that turned this people from a murderous, feared tribe into the . . . afternoon-tea women of today”. That sentence just about sums up The Road To Mowanjum, by Maisie Mac- Kenzie, the story of the civilising of an Aboriginal tribe of Aus tralia.
Questions posed by this book are, would this Aboriginal group have almost died out altogether if the missionaries had not come to this part of Western Australia; or would they have been able to continue at peace without the message of a different God and civilisation.
In Australia the answer must be that it is better to bring the Aboriginals into “society” in an almost painless way . , . with out the policeman and the farmer. The missionaries who landed in Hanover Bay in 1912 to begin the job, were at least sympathetic to their outlook, if not ready to allow all their traditions to remain.
(The Road To Mowanjum,
Angus and Robertson Ltd., $5.75).