German Missionaries in Australia

 

 

 

related entries:

Trappists (forthcoming)

 

 

The need for a northern mission

 

The Catholic reach into the Western Australian pearling belt was instigated by a sudden revival of pearling and a pastoral boom in the Kimberley, and was propelled on the initiative of Fr. Duncan McNab and the newly consecrated Bishop of Perth Matthew Gibney. The latter was anointed in the same year that McNab’s two-year mission at Goodenough Bay (see Disaster Bay) was abandoned (1886). McNab's lobbying in Rome had already resulted in missions in Darwin and the Daly River (see Daly River Missions) and in 1888 Cardinal Patrick Moran reinforced McNab’s appeal in Rome for a greater missionary effort in the far north. Regarding support from the colonial governments, Bishop Dom Rosendo Salvado OSB from New Norcia had warned fellow Catholic administrators in 1881 that 'all they really wanted was that the Aborigines should be kept quiet.'¹

 

From 1882 to 1888 the Kimberley was subject to a massive pastoral land grab. See maps.    Moreover, during the 1885/86 season rich new pearl-shell beds had been discovered in Western Australia and fleets of vessels serviced by 'floating stations' (large supply ships) from Thursday Island and Darwin converged on the western Australian coast for the next few years. They were staffed with Filipino, Malay and Japanese workers and sought shelter during 'lay-up' season in the coastal creeks, where their associations with Aboriginal people caused great concern among administrators.

 

An 1886 Aborigines Protection Act extended the reach of Aboriginal protection legislation over mixed descendants. Western Australia’s Constitution Act 1889 required that 1% of the state’s income, or a minimum of £5,000, be spent on Aboriginal people. With so much public concern and the legal requirement to address it, it was reasonable to expect some solid funding for missions. Premier John Forrest had promised the Bishop 'Government grants in fee simple, and the apportioning of a great reserve for the Kimberley aborigines.'²

 

The Propaganda Fide invited the French Cistercians based in Sept Fons to commence a northern mission. Sept Fons missionaries were already active in the Pacific, and were suffering from a temporary expulsion of religious orders from France and its territories in the 1880s. Abbot Ambrose Janny returned to France from New Caledonia with a failed Trappist community in 1889. ³ With two siblings at Sept Fons and prior experience in mission leadership in Oceania this 49-year old was an obvious choice. He and Fr. Alphonse Tachon became the Trappist spearhead party arriving in Perth in May 1890 with a promise of ten more missionaries to come to make up the twelve required by Bishop Matthew Gibney who instigated the mission with great personal effort.

 

Selecting a mission site

 

Two large reserves had indeed been set aside at Beagle Bay and Disaster Bay, which, according to the Derby pearling masters, was the ‘last land left’ in the Kimberley.⁴ To select the location of the mission and apply for a lease, Bishop Gibney set out with the two Trappists for what became a four-month long trek of hardship, sickness and endurance. On the boat journey to Derby they stopped at Cossack, Broome and Beagle Bay, and the Bishop observed the pearling industry, which he hoped the missionaries would enter into, the multi-ethnic pearling ports and brothels, and the numerous gang-chained Aboriginal prisoners sentenced to hard labour for stealing sheep. The whole journey is described in Bishop Gibney's diaries. ⁵

At Derby the government resident and police rendered assistance and assigned constable John Daly and a police tracker to lead them to the two reserves, departing on 4 June 1890. Daly was a local protector of Aborigines and became a cathecist for the new venture, and was subsequently referred to as Brother Xavier. While they were exploring the Dampier Peninsula, Fr. Alphonse Tachon was not well and stayed in Derby to learn Nyul-Nyul while the others undertook a full months’ labourious trekking across the peninsula with some 30-mile rides, always dictated by the need for water. Fr. Ambrose came down with fever and fell off his horse – this was his first horseriding experience - and Bishop Gibney was getting attacks of pain around his lungs and had to sleep as close to the fire as he dared to go – a sorry little group driven by sheer determination.

 

The Aboriginal tracker also came down with malaria and took the group only as far as McNab’s abandoned mission site. There he retired to his family at Wilgeemun (about 15 miles from Lake Louisa aka Murgullagin, on the inland route between Beagle Bay and Disaster Bay aka Caromel), dropped his uniform and slipped back into traditional life. Meeting him some weeks later Bishop Gibney ‘did not recognize him’. This tracker’s name is not recorded (later on a ‘Sergeant’ Manga appears in Gibney’s diary), but this man's father Jerry Bilarno with his youngest son, aged about 13, came to meet the mission party at Gabarunny well, and at Nullulgulla, about 1 ½ hours ride from Lake Flora, during a twelve-day trek from Derby to Goodenough Bay. These two were the only Aboriginal persons encountered on this whole leg of the journey, though the party often observed fresh tracks, including around their camp in the morning.

 

On this trek (Derby to Disaster Bay) the exploration party came to the boundary of the reserve land on the Fraser River and were not impressed:

 

‘We took a circuitous route to note what kind of country is reserved for the natives in this section. I found that we hardly met one acre of good grassland, the only appearance of vegetation on it is spinifex. In all my course from Derby I did not meet any patch of country so bad. As we got out of the Reserve the land improved’.⁶

 

At Goodenough Bay people finally showed themselves and Fr. McNab, who had left four years ago, was much remembered and discussed. A large part of the stores was left at Goodenough Bay, and a man called Tommy aka Leidibur from Maddar, south of Fr. McNab’s former mission, became the new guide for the exploration party. Seven young men brought a young woman to the group. The clerics either pretended or really did not understand what it meant. They were heading for Hadley and Hunter’s station 30 miles away to restock on provisions. (This is before Hadley commenced his mission on Sunday Island, and may refer to the pastoral property ‘Lombardina’ which Hunter acquired in 1884 and sold to Gibney in 1892.) At Hunter’s they got fresh salted meat, observed the 60 or so Aborigines working at the station, and the Bishop received a vigorous gum oil rub down for his aching back and shoulder from one of the Aboriginal men: 'I thought he would rub the skin off, but I feel better.'⁷

 

After an hour’s ride out of Hunter’s they came to an inlet and had to wait for the tide to recede, which meant an overnight stay outside of an iron shed. Here ten of Hunter’s workers joined them. They brought them fish and offered women for tobacco. In the morning these workers helped the party across the waist-deep creek and ‘a young blackfellow led the way’ six miles to another lagoon and permanent water well where they found three more Aborigines, one of whom took them to the next and only water source, sixteen miles away.

The next day at noon (21 June 1890) they reached Beagle Bay aka Kirmel and four locals visited them in the evening. Two days later they went to Baldwin Creek where they met a group of women and children at the lagoon and another group of twelve women and five children at the creek. They camped five miles above the creek and the men came in the evening for a yarn, saying that most men were turtle-fishing at Lacepede Island on the Governor Weld. One of the young men guided them on a local exploration the next day, and in the evening some men came wanting to trade women for tobacco. Brother Xavier chased them away with such foul language that the Bishop sent them an apology and tobacco the next morning. Two of these men helped the clerics across the creek the next day to reach Brockman’s well in Beagle Bay, where Fr. Ambrose narrowly escaped being bitten by a snake. At the next camp by Wemy pool in Wilgin country the Bishop got sick and was retching in the morning. A local native took them to Warrer pool in Beagle Bay. ‘We found here the largest number of aborigines met with yet, 18 men and 3 boys at one camp.’ They also noted a profusion of wells and springs in the Beagle Bay area, where they spent five days before turning back towards Goodenough Bay (a three-day journey).

 

On the return journey they camped at ‘Bungua Duck’ (Bungadok about five miles inland from the mission site) and the Bishop obtained information about the strength of the local population:

(28 June 1890) There are 29 men, 39 women and 20 children in this tribe. Berrink [they] called Beagle Bay. (The Bully Bulma called "wheebandur" by whites, a name that stuck among the blacks, has eight wives). The next neighboring tribe, named Mulgin tribe, has 23 men, 15 women, and five children, above Beagle Bay to northward. Winnowel tribe at a creek south of B.B., 15 men, 16 women, seven children (Murrulea), about five miles south. Baldwin Creek, Werragilla native name, 31 men. Our informant could not count the women and children here. Like sheep, he said, and at Carnal Bay [Carnot Bay] they could not be numbered.⁸

George Goodowel became their guide on the three-day return trip from Beagle Bay to Goodenough Bay:

 

(28 June 1890) George Goodowel is a most interesting fellow. We made his acquaintance at Kirmel. He looks about 26, and stands 5ft 8in. There was no one to be seen when we camped, but they had already heard of us. When they saw the smoke of our fires they came up in a body. As Tommy, whom we took from Goodenough Bay, did not know the country, George volunteered to come with us. When he arrived "in full dress" he had a shirt and trousers and one stocking, his face shining red, with white stripes from each corner of his mouth in broad lines, then over the top of his nose and from the corners of his eyes, and lastly across his forehead. Each of those ran the full length of his face. He wore a red band round his head at the root of his hair. The hair was all drawn back to form a knob, tightly bound and sticking up from the back of his head; in this was a tuft of feathers. At the root of this knob a flat stick pointed at both ends was stuck in midway. This was George in full dress as he appeared in day and night for three days.

 

At Wilgeemun they met up with their native police tracker, whom they did not recognize, and presumably he now took over again from Tommy as guide. Two days later, heading for the Fraser River, but missing their target, they reached a clay pan where Fr. Ambrose, wracked by fever again, ‘just lay where he fell’. Next day on the other side of the river, having long run out of Hunters' salt mutton, ‘our native’ shot 10 ducks back in boab tree (garada) country after exactly one month of travelling. They met a Mr. Herbert from Queensland heading for the Ashburton diggings and reached Yeeda Station where Mr. Rose sold them six bullocks at a good price, supplemented by two bullocks donated by Daly, to make up a team.

 

Next day (4 July 1890) they brought the bullock team into Derby, where they applied for 100,000 acres of land at Beagle Bay (5 July 1890) and held mass ‘at both ends of Derby’ (6 July 1890). One might think that they took a well-earned rest after their month-long trek, but the indefatigable Bishop Gibney was just getting started.

 

Reconnecting with Disaster Bay

 

On Monday they loaded up the police cutter (7 July 1890) and on Tuesday poor Fr. Ambrose and Daly set off for Yeeda station with two horses and a foal (and presumably with the bullock team which could not be loaded onto the police cutter). Meanwhile the police cutter loaded up with stores, with ‘a coloured man and a native on board’, took the Bishop and Fr. Alphonse Tachon to Disaster Bay (Caromel), a place rich in crabs, where they held a large feast for the locals dedicated to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (16 July 1890). Local men kept coming to join the missionary camp at night while the women stayed away, and the old men kept a close watch on pilfering and sent away one boy who stole some biscuits from a tent. Fr. Alphonse Tachon and Bishop Gibney visited the 40-strong men’s camp one night (18 July 1890) just to show that they were not afraid to go unarmed and unaccompanied. The water at Caromel was almost black so the missionaries kept sending for supplies from Wilgoma spring five miles north. The men sailing to Wilgoma also brought pearl-shells with them to trade for tobacco. Some tension surfaced in this trade relationship:

 

(19 July 1890) We gave them a boilerful of rice and they had plenty of fish. At night they observed a sullen silence. Why I do not know. We have given them no cause, but they are often asking for tobacco and pipes, of which our supply is not large.

 

Bishop Gibney records the explanation given the next day:

 

(20 July 1890) Men accounted for their manner last night . When a long absent friend returns all the friends gather round and cry for joy. Some of them went through the ceremony to show us what they did on the return of an old man friend. It is a very affectionate expression of their feelings. We learned later that a relation of the visitor had died in his absence.

 

It seems that the men performing the odd jobs expected a better welcome and payment. Gibney’s diary does not explain who ‘the visitor’ is - perhaps some news had reached from Beagle Bay about a recent death. The bush telegraph was certainly working well: the crowd at Caromel swelled from 47 to 70 the day before the police cutter arrived with fresh stores and tobacco (23 July 1890). To prepare for a new mission, the members of the missionary party were digging wells and clearing roads, and Fr. Alphonse continued to gather vocabulary. Finally Fr. Ambrose Janny arrived ‘fagged looking’, and Daly arrived at sundown. These two had spent 24 days fighting their way through the bush from Derby to Caromel with the bullock team. ‘All now safe and well at Goodenough Bay.’⁹

 

Local politics and tensions

 

The mission party now had a substantial store of goods at Goodenough Bay. As they were preparing to head off for Beagle Bay in a large group with the bullock team, more tension built:

(4 August 1890) Natives much alarmed because they saw a blackfellow's track they did not know, and one of their women reported having seen a blackfellow fully armed.  

 

The missionaries and their helpers were now laboriously cutting a path for the bullock team and proceeding slowly. On their first day out of Goodneough Bay they had intended for Wedong (or Weedong, which was not yet a cattle station) but couldn’t get through, so went to Danyamung well instead, and finding it dried up, settled for Argomaud. Here they met Tommy (5 August 1890) who had been sent to Beagle Bay to organize two native guides, but he reported that the Beagle Bay people were ‘preparing for war’. ‘Sergeant’ (Manga) feared for his life and went home to Goodenough Bay.

Quite possibly this erratic progress was dictated by local politics. It was after all a question of where the missionaries with their endless supplies were going to settle - on the east or the west coast of the peninsula. It seems that their east coast guides were steering the party to Argomaud rather than Bungadok.

Bishop Gibney wanted to head for Bungadok and started ahead with two helpers (7 August 1890) to clear six or seven miles of a road to Mangul walla (native well), which they had to enlarge to get enough water for the bullocks and horses.

 

My guides then announced that we could not catch Bunguaduck tonight, but we could get another walla by travelling south. I let them have their way. We walked for two hours more, and when it was quite dark we came on low ground, but no water. We made a fire and camped for the night. I gave them bread and sugar. I had some myself. Thank God, who preserves us all in our ways. With my compass I marked carefully on the ground the way we travelled. They explain distances and direction by lines on the ground. They admitted having missed the way.

 

Perhaps the Aboriginal guides from the east coast had reason to avoid Bungadok that day, or really tried hard to impede the party’s westward progress. The road clearing party returned to Argomaud to join up with the bullock team to bring it to Mangul (11 August 1890). Fr. Alphonse stayed behind at Argomaud. The Bishop’s road clearing party again went ahead to clear ten more miles of road and camped seven miles short of Bungadok. On 13 August 1890 the bullock team finally came up the four hours from Mangul to Bungadok and the Bishop ‘decided to have the mission hereabouts’. The Goodenough Bay people warned the clerics that there may be a hostile reception because the Beagle Bay people had not come up to meet them. But in the evening a number of the local men came to the camp: no war, no hostile reception, and the missionaries with their supplies were lost to the east coast people who had got on so well with Fr. McNab. It was another seven years before one of the Trappist Fathers was allocated to Disaster Bay mission on the east coast of the peninsula.

 

Fixing a site at Beagle Bay

 

In the morning (14 August 1890) ‘Caley’ showed the Bishop and Fr. Ambrose Janny around for six hours to fix on a site, and they selected a place near Nullin, eight miles from Bungadok and seven miles from Kirmel (Beagle Bay), ‘3 miles east of 44^th’ (this cannot refer to latitude - it is more likely the identification of an explorer's camp, perhaps their own prior camp).

 

Both clerics got bogged in the swamp at different times, and Fr. Ambrose had another attack of fever and diarrhea (16, 17, 18 August). Had Fr. Ambrose been looking for signs he might have concluded that this was not meant as his place – the last time they were in the Beagle Bay area he had a close encounter with a snake and the Bishop was retching. But the Bishop read different signs and on 20 August, the Feast of St. Bernard, he dedicated the mission to St. Bernard, principal patron of the Trappists. ‘Thank God this mission is now a fact; no more place for doubt’ he wrote, somewhat precipitously.

 

After nine days at Nullin they headed back for the sweet water of Wilgoma. It had taken ten days to cross the peninsula with the bullock team, but the return trip to Goodenough Bay, now on tracks that had been cleared, only took two days, Daly with the bullock team hard on their heels. The stores at Goodenough Bay were perfectly safe. ‘The native Manga (Sergeant), whom we took with us, told us that an old man found a boy go into the tent, and he nearly killed him.’¹⁰

 

The Bishop was not yet finished. He undertook a third voyage to the other side of the peninsula, via Wilgoma and Argomaud with eight men, the women and children following at a distance. ‘Father Ambrose tells me he has got the names of 60 natives resident in Yemarang alone.’ At the end of August they were back at Nullin, their new mission site.

 

‘the procession was such a one as is seldom seen except in those parts. We are not very presentable ourselves, but our acquaintances and neighbours are not particular. One of our black men had a trousers on him. Another had a hat and shirt; another a hat; and several had helmets of feathers and plumes of feathers tied to their arms above the elbow, while some were not troubled with any of these extras. We reached the place early, and settled down for the night.’¹¹

 

Several more trips were made back and forth across Dampier peninsula to relocate the stores from Goodenough Bay to Nullin:

‘The poor fellow who was in charge [of the stores at Goodenough Bay] cleared out the same night after we came, as we conjecture lest we would have any cause to find fault with him. I was sorry for this, as I should like to have rewarded him for his fidelity.’

 

On the sea journey from Perth Bishop Gibney had noted the crops that were thriving on different stations and had sent an order to the Hanoverian botanist Maurice Holtze, government gardner at Port Darwin, for ‘seeds and plants of pineapples, bananas, chillies, potatoes, yams, pomegranates, rice, pawpaws, so that the Mission garden can be started, by him’.¹² They now cleared land for the mission gardens.

 

And then the bombshell:

 

(1 September 1890) 'Father Abbot took me by surprise when he told me to-day that he did not know whether they would remain on this mission. He had written fully to their Abbot at Sept Fons, and he says it will depend on his answer. I do not understand them.'

 

Bishop Gibney put the hard word on the two Trappists and required a firm commitment at once. Fr. Ambrose Janny, who had already seen a Trappist community fail in New Caledonia, conceded, according to Gibney:

 

(1 September 1890) ‘if I [Gibney] thought it was the will of God they would do so. My belief was fixed, so we early settled the matter. He [Ambrose] expressed his fears about the means of support until the ground began to produce. My answer was: God will provide, and I will not see you hungry.

 

(8 September 1890) 'Thank God we are settled; my work is done.’

 

On 10 September 1890 Daly conducted the Bishop on a three-day horseride, partly along the beach, back to Broome where the Bishop boarded the Meda to Perth.

 

Nôtre Dame du Sacré Coeur at Beagle Bay

 

Bishop Gibney had stipulated a minimum of twelve staff to fulfill the conditions of the lease for the Trappist mission at Beagle Bay called ‘Nôtre Dame du Sacré Coeur’ (Our Lady of the Sacred Heart). Sept Fons sent 18 staff altogether – two in 1890, six more in 1892 and another ten in 1895. The first fatality was in January 1896 with the drowning of Br. Francis.¹³

 

The only one of these eighteen remembered in Australia is the Spanish-speaking Fr. Nicholas Emo. He was designated to remain in Broome to minister to up to 300 Spanish-speaking Filipinos engaged in pearling and fishing, and he remained in the Kimberley after the Trappist retreat. Fr. Emo recorded his arrival journey in his 1895 diary. The party was led by Abbot Ambrose Janny and included his younger brother Jean-Marie Janny, both brothers of the prior of Sept Fons, Felix Janny. They took the Salazie to Singapore occupying two cabins of six berths each, and from there took the British Australind on 30 March 1895, and rendevouzed with the mission lugger Jessie at the Lacepede Islands on 8 April 1895. They arrived at the Beagle Bay beach at 11 pm and walked through the sand and mud for 14 km arriving at the mission at 4 am.¹⁴

 

These Trappists were mostly in their forties and fifties, and tried to maintain the daily and yearly rhythms of their home. They fasted at Lent when it was actually time for harvest, and the strict Trappist daily rhythm gave equal time to working and praying. They finished building their monastery in November 1893 and chanted through the Kimberley night from 2am to 6am and at various times during the day. 

 

2.00 am rise, Office and meditation

3.00 brothers go milking, Fathers continue chanting Office

4.00 Mass

4.30 Fathers chant Office, Brothers work

6.00 breakfast

6.30 work (4 hrs)

10.30 visit the Blessed Sacrament, reading in Chapter

12.00 Angelus

Dinner

siesta

2.00 pm chanting Office

2.30 work (3.5 hrs)

6.00 mediation

Quarter Hour

Supper

pious lecture in Chapel

Compline (Night Prayers)

Examen in Church

Salve

Angelus

8.00 pm to Rest

 

 

The Trappist emphasis on ritual and chanting must have been immediately resonant to Aboriginal people, but this was clearly not a sustainable schedule. A visiting journalist in late 1896 commented on the monastic lifestyle at the mission: 'the religious observances of the Order are carried out with as much completeness as if the monastery were situated in the centre of a Catholic country', but the religious observances had already been adjusted, and the evening prayers consisted of a rosary in the chapel. Aboriginal altar boys dressed in red served at the daily morning mass, and the missionaries conducted a daily school for children and instruction for adults. On Sundays Father Alphonse preached in Nyul-Nyul to an attentive congregation, women sitting on one side and men on the other as in the European Catholic churches, but if he was denouncing some indigenous custom an Elder might stand up and begin to argue vigorously. ¹⁵

 

The journalist had been invited to witness the first adult baptisms. Fr. Alphonse Tachon had corresponded with Fr. Duncan McNab (who was now living with Jesuits in Richmond, Victoria) on the question of polygamy as an impediment for baptism. With McNab's encouragement he gathered the first twelve converts for a mass baptism on the Feast of Assumption of Our Lady, 15 August 1896. Several of them were named after the Trappist Brothers and Fathers: ‘Joachim’ Friday (born 1870 – age 26), ‘Joseph’ Santamara (born 1874 - age 22), ‘Jacques’ Tiarbarbar (born 1875), Edmund Palelbo (1876), Patrick Wardiebor (1876), Louis Wanaregne (1879), Remi Balagai (1883 – age 13), ‘Sebastian’ Kalkokarbar (1885), ‘Narcisse’ Wanaregne, Pierre Telediel, Malgen and Leon Palsmorebon.¹⁶ The following year 23 people were baptized.¹⁷

 

The Trappists kept out of public gaze during their ten years in the Kimberley. Half of their funding came from the Propaganda Fide and the Trappist Order, about 20% from the state government, and only 10% from donations (see Trappist Budget).  They laid the foundation for language work in the Kimberley. Fr. Marie Bernard wrote that ‘One of our Fathers produced a grammar, vocabulary and a catechism in an Aboriginal language’¹⁸. Fr. Nicholas Emo in Broome compiled a Yawuru/Spanish dictionary and Fr. Alphonse Tachon at Beagle Bay was working on the Nyul-Nyul language. For this work they needed to work closely with Aboriginal people. McNab’s former assistant, a man referred to as ‘Knife’, lived at nearby Boolgin to an old age and may have helped to facilitate the success of the Trappists.¹⁹ Felix Gnodonbor taught Fr. Alphonse Nyul-Nyul and helped him to translate key concepts. He became instrumental in the acceptance of the Christian missionaries at Beagle Bay. His nephew Remi was among the first to be baptized in August 1896, and Felix himself was baptized the following year with Thomas Puertollano as Godfather. Felix, named like the brother of Fr. Ambrose and Fr. Jean-Marie, remained on the mission with his wife Madeleine until 1931.²⁰ In 1896 he said:

 

I have given my son [Remi] to you. You have baptized him. I am happy about it. He will be happy, mind him. Me too, I want to be happy. In two months I will turn away again all my wives and will keep only one of them, you will baptize me, for I say it to you, I want to be a Christian.²¹

 

Two of Felix Gnodonbor’s nieces, Leonie Widgie and Fidelis Elizabeth Victor became early converts, and one of Felix’s granddaughters, Magdalene Williams, later helped to found Balgo and LaGrange missions.²² Remy [sic] Balagai told Fr. Francis Hügel that when he was a senior boy his father brought him to the mission. The first time he stayed in the camp with ‘the entire mob’ and only attended school, which was conducted in French, the second time he was invited into the dormitory. When the old men decided that a boy was ready they would come into the mission, painted up in red and white, to fetch them for ‘Malulu’ (initiation). Fr. Alphonse Tachon tried to convince Remi’s father that this custom needed to be stopped, but the old men would not give up their law, and invited the priest to attend a ceremony to see for himself. ²³

 

New Norcia was then the only other religious mission in Western Australia. The Trappists estimated that in ten years their three stations ministered to about 900 people and that they baptized at least 200 people who had relinquished polygamy and given up contact with pearlers, and attended mass and Holy Communion. ²⁴ They acquired a 10,000-acre lease in addition to the 700,000-acre native reserve, and erected a monastery consisting of three long buildings, a kitchen, a sawmill, workshops and other iron-roofed outhouses. Over ten years funding amounted to £7,500 derived from the Aborigines Board (£2,185), the Catholic Church (Cardinal Moran £1,500, Propaganda Fide £1,600, Cistercians £3,250) and public donations £1,000.²⁵ The missionaries offered food for work and made vegetable and fruit gardens and extended their herds from 150 to about 600 or 700 cattle and and equal number of sheep.

 

An 1898 cyclone destroyed some of the buildings at Beagle Bay, and several of the padres were battling with sickness, but otherwise there was every promise of success. ²⁶ All the more surprising it seemed that in 1900 the Trappists decided to abandon the Kimberley mission. Their withdrawal seems like a disorganized debacle that the Trappists later sought to explain.

 

The Trappist withdrawal

 

The mission began to fall apart after Dom Ambrose Janny resigned as superior. He had long felt too ill to continue and when he was at Sept Fons in 1895 to recruit the second consignment of missionaries he actually wanted to stay behind. In 1897 he finally left the Kimberley, around age 57. Fr. Anselm Lenegre became his replacement but was found to be ‘too condescending’²⁷ and in June 1899 Fr. Alphonse Tachon was elected superior. Tachon did not want to assume his duties until he was confirmed by the Generalate in Rome, which took another few months. As soon as he was formally appointed Fr. Tachon went to Perth to see about securing the title to the mission land. Daisy Bates found him ‘terriby emaciated, nearly blind and trembling with the feebleness of old age’.²⁸

 

By this time dissent had set in to such a degree that Frs. Ermenfroi Nachin and Bernard de Louarn returned to Sept Fons in July 1899. Fr. Jean Baptiste Chautard had just been elected as new Abbott of Sept Fons and his first administrative act became the winding down of Beagle Bay mission at the advice of the two returned missionaries. Fr. Emo, too, reported from Broome that ‘Beagle Bay is very confused, Reverend Father, one cannot visit it without being very uncomfortable’. Emo mentioned that a letter from the Superior General had shamed Fr. Jean-Marie Janny and Br. Narcisse Janne at Disaster Bay for their ‘special relationship’ and Emo also commented on ‘too natural a mutual attachment between these two Fathers (and it is not only me who appears to notice it)’.²⁹

 

In December 1899 the Abbott sent orders to Emo to prepare for partial withdrawal from the Beagle Bay mission, but not to make this public so as not to disadvantage the sale of property (and perhaps there were unstated reasons for secrecy as well). Beagle Bay was to be conducted as a grange (without an Abbot) on reduced staff and supervised by Emo. This greatly embarrassed Fr. Alphonse and Bishop Gibney who were in Perth planning to extend the mission. These two were trying to raise more funds and secure the title over the mission land, and Bishop Gibney commissioned three boats for the mission and was planning to visit the mission with his assistant Dean Martelli. Neither of them had been told that the mission was getting wound down. Emo later recounted how he waited for four days at sea to reconnoiter with the passenger ship carrying the Bishop, but inexplicably – guided no doubt by an invisible hand³⁰ - failed to meet the ship so that Gibney’s visit did not come about. In fact the mission was in an extreme state of turmoil. Emo as Acting Superior of Beagle Bay dismissed the children, and stopped the women going into the rooms. He locked away the wine and other provisions, and started to sell cattle to finance the homeward passages of the staff.³¹ He was clearly in a high state of agitation and wrote streams of letters to Sept Fons explaining and defending himself.

 

The other Trappists at Beagle Bay resented giving up the mission: ‘all the spirits are not docile’.³² Fr. Jean-Marie Janny was so angry that he said he wanted to claim back the 150,000 Francs that he gave to his order on joining. Emo wrote that Janny would ‘rather die than return to Sept Fons’, and that he was gripped by a mood of defiance, being ‘accustomed to be free and independent in his nest [at Disaster Bay]’.³³ There were strong feelings at the mission as Emo continued to liquidate its assets. When Emo wanted to sell the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the Fathers showed his disagreement ‘in terms too strong for Religious’, ‘causing a scandal in the presence of the blacks and the brothers’. Emo had found a buyer for the statue, a ‘rich Japanese lady’ in Broome, but when he got there she had died:

 

‘Evidently there is a superior force that, come what may, prevents the liquidation [of Beagle Bay mission] and which, joined to the piety of our Blacks, has convinced me that God is watching over their lot.’³⁴

 

In March 1900 the residence of the absent Fr. Alphonse, which also served as the school, burned down. A cyclone had already blown down the refectory and outbuildings, now only the church, the dormitory and the kitchen were left standing. Emo supplied the explanation that it was due to the ‘imprudence of a woman who was smoking a pipe too close to the dry bark’. ³⁵ Harris suspects the Trappists burned down the buildings in anger.³⁶

 

Fr. Ermenfroi Nachin unexpectedly returned from Sept Fons to Beagle Bay with money for passages just as Fr. Emo was preparing to send some missionaries home, and in April 1900 eight staff were sent off to the Trappist monastery of El Athroun in Palestine. According to Fr. Marie Bernard (who had never been there), the Aboriginal residents were crying ‘fathers, stay, don’t leave us. Who will give us the sacraments when we die? Do you want us to die like kangaroos?³⁷

 

By June 1900 news of the wind-down had reached Perth and Emo decided to also send Brs. Joseph and Bonaventure away. Br. Bonaventure Holthurin, a young Dutch tailor later went to Maristella in Brazil. Br. Joseph a shepherd, had arrived from Rome in 1892 and disappears from the record.³⁸ Emo wrote that these two

 

'are in imminent danger of losing their vocation if they are not removed straight away from Australia fearing on the other hand some scandal may compromise the honour of our holy Order …. it would be indiscreet to put to paper the motives which have confirmed my conviction.'³⁹

 

'As for Br. Bonaventure, he was always surrounded by young girls and little girls who used to go into his room for tobacco (which is very dear here) because they brought him little lizards for his birds, and he was always going with them in a way that made me anxious. (Sometimes I would see him coming alone in the dark from the garden.) I was afraid in case he was assailed also by some great temptation.

He gave everything to the blacks – it was impossible to prevent him for he always had too much liberty; and before he left, without permission from anyone, he gave almost every piece of linen and material, trousers and shirts from the Dressing Room with all the cotton and needles, to the blackfellows, …. wooden containers full or rice were carried each day to the camp for the dogs’.⁴⁰

 

One of the Brothers was suffering from venereal disease and Emo was reluctant to have him treated in Broome for fear of gossip.

 

'I was obliged to tell him “Brother, I don’t want you going into the bush because it’s not good for you; please stay in the house until your departure” - he flew into such a tantrum that he flung himself into my room pale as a corpse, shouting so loudly and so upset that I was quite surprised. Unhappily we had a visitor (white) that day who at that moment was only 50 steps from the front door. … [He said that] he was not going to El Athroun, he wanted to stay in Broome with the policeman (his compatriot) and that he was going to let the Brothers know everything that had happened at the mission etc. etc. and the public would judge afterwards. … I knelt before him a long time to calm him down and clasped his feet.'⁴¹

 

Emo did not trust these two to return to Sept Fons, because they ‘are too attached to Australia’, so, in an 80-page letter defending his actions, he wrote that he ‘sacrificed’ the carpenter Br. Etienne Pidat to accompany them, keeping ‘only three indispensible brothers’. ⁴² In repatriating practically all the French Brothers Emo went further than intended by Sept Fons.

 

Bishop Gibney had by now placed an injunction on the sale of cattle from the mission and initiated negotiations with the German Pallottines.⁴³ He came on a visit of inspection on 17 August 1900 (see below by Daisy Bates) just after Emo had sent the remaining French missionaries away, and only Fr. Ermenfroi Nachin was still in the Kimberley. Nachin had told Fr. Joachim O'Dwyer that he had been sent back to the Kimberley to 'keep an eye' on Emo. Engineered no doubt by Emo, Nachin 'kept out of sight' and left for Palestine during Bishop Gibney’s visit to the Kimberley.

 

'Fr. Ermenfroi [Nachin] … had the bad habit of sometimes wanting to chase the blacks, grabbing a stick, chasing the children with a loaded gun charged only with powder, and even with flour; which spurts out immediately and led to much trouble and he had to hide it with the arrival of the Bishop who would have given him a good lesson, for if the papers caused such an uproar because on one station a protestant had hit a blackfellow with his stick, ... [this] ... would have been a disgrace for us.'⁴⁴

 

Emo claimed that Nachin had come back to Beagle Bay like a choleric, got drunk, swore, and called the Australian bishops ‘pirates’. Emo’s final comment on the ‘unpopular’ Fr. Ermenfroi was that ‘all the black women left soon after he arrived’ and that he had been on the point of being dragged to the courts’ for chasing away the children with poweder-charged gunshots. ‘He compromised the good name of the mission’. ‘We can say nobody liked him and all complained of him.’⁴⁵

 

General State of the Mission of Trappists since 1890 until November 1900 Source: Nailon 2005 (II):143.

Fr. Emo drew up a balance sheet showing that the Trappist mission had cost some £11,000 in ten years, of which just over £2,000 had come from the government and with a funding shortfall of nearly £1,500. The Trappists had performed 255 baptisms, 153 confirmations, and 48 marriages, and recorded 37 births and 23 deaths in Broome, Disaster Bay and Beagle Bay.

 

 

The handover to the Pallottines

 

The Trappist retreat from the Kimberley had been engineered 'from below' and surprised the Generalate at Sept Fons as much as the Australian bishops. In the change of guard from the Trappists to the Pallottines practically everyone felt sidelined. Fr. Marie Bernard, describing the mission to the Limburg Pallottine Generalate in preparation for a sale, explained that the French padres had been recalled because they were too few in number and distributed over three stations (Beagle Bay, Disaster Bay and Broome), and therefore ‘unable to engage in the community life that is so central to our order’, and the mission had never received a visitation in its ten years of existence because of its isolation.⁴⁶ All of this was true, but it hardly described the turmoil and difficulties at the mission. It was the explanation agreed on after Bishop Gibney saw for himself the state of affairs in the Kimberley. ⁴⁷

 

The Abbot of Sept Fons, Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard, followed up with a letter to Bishop Gibney apologizing for the hasty retreat and lack of consultation. The subsidies had not been enough to run the mission, and Abbot Chautard had meant to scale down the mission to six or eight staff, but events had overtaken his deliberations. He had been waiting, since mid-1900, for a visit from Bishop William Bernard Kelly (Bishop of Geraldton 1898-1921), who was expected to call in at Sept Fons, when the Abbot at Beagle Bay (presumably Alphonse Tachon) decided to return to France. Abbot Chautard recapitulated how Fr. Nicholas Emo was left in charge of the mission and more staff went home, leaving all but Fr. Nicholas and the two local Brothers, Br. Xavier and Br. John.⁴⁸

 

Bishop Kelly was visiting Rome when he received the news of the Trappist departure around October 1900, and at once invited the Pallottines to take over. When the Pallottines asked for information about the mission in November 1900, Abbot Chautard at Sept Fons was ‘surprised’ at this take-over:

 

'Two months ago, the Pallottine Fathers of Rome asked me for some information that I hastened to give them, and I was surprised to learn that three weeks before, Bishop Kelly had arranged with them, and they were going to leave for Broome without delay. All therefore is terminated for us.' ⁴⁹

 

The Cistercians describing the state of the mission omitted that since a Chief Protector of Aborigines had been appointed in 1897 the tide had turned against the mission. The Western Australian government overrode the constitutional requirements of the 1889 Constitution Act by forming its own Aboriginal Department under a Chief Protector of Aborigines, Harry Prinsep, assisted by a travelling inspector. Funding for Beagle Bay mission was stopped.

 

It is very likely that the Trappists’ close collaboration with the mixed Latino/Aboriginal communities in Broome, at Beagle Bay and at Disaster Bay earned them the cold shoulder of the Chief Protector. The 1898 Western Australian Land Act provided that land may be granted or leased to Aborigines, and the Trappists had hoped to parcel out land to the Filipino/Aboriginal resident families. However the government aborted this idea by delaying the lease appraisal that should have made the Trappists eligible for freehold land.⁵⁰ The government had now broken all its promises: no ‘land in fee simple’ and no financial support.

 

Fr. Marie Bernard of Sept Fons wrote a glowing report of the Beagle Bay mission and its potential based on hearsay from ‘one of the padres who had returned’. He described its excellent location, with connection from Broome to Singapore by English and Australian companies, and Broome connected with the Australian capitals. It had many permanent springs and a healthy climate (although afflictions of the eye might beset newcomers). The lease could support thousands of cattle and, if fenced, 5,000 sheep, and had the potential to earn a lot of money from cattle and agriculture. It was suitable for large-scale plantation of pineapple, tobacco, bananas, maybe grapevines, but certainly vegetables such as potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, cassava, some types of beans and taro. Sorghum and durum was in much demand and grew there as well as wheat does in France. Rice would also flourish. There was never any hail, only a two-or three months raining season when flooding and bogging occurs and ‘one cannot go about’. The mission could also profitably engage in pearling, a work that would please the Aborigines and Manilamen. Some language work had already been accomplished by the Trappist padres, which they had given to Bishop Kelly to take back to Australia. The Aborigines were ‘not nearly as wild’ as those further north, and they no longer engaged in bloody revenge although still held corroborees where they drank blood and held dances. There was no theft [!]or robbery. To civilize them would require schooling and work, something that the government would liberally fund, and the government would easily approve another 100,000 acres if requested. Since the mission was fully established with buildings, gardens and tools, and was self-supporting in food production, it would not require much money, and would be well supported by the government, as well as the cardinal and bishops – who would no doubt support the idea of erecting the Kimberley into a vicariate, just like New Norcia. Indeed, there was no resistance from any quarter to this mission, and it would also be supported by foreigners and by the natives, who already attended church and knew their prayers. It would be left to the Pallottines for a small price, apparently the Abbot even thought of leaving all the chattels free of charge. Two or three missionaries would suffice - indeed at the time of writing just one was doing all the work by himself. Read in German

 

In fact Fr. Emo had the help of Br. Xavier, Br. John, and Sebastian Damaso, so it hardly amounted to one missionary doing all the work by himself. According to Emo, the Filipinos were doing most of the work at Beagle Bay.⁵¹ Four Filipino families were established in substantial dwellings on the mission, and the miraculous transformation of blood-drinking corroboree dancers to prayerful workers as described, must have owed very much to these mixed Aboriginal families. Bishop Gibney observed that at Beagle Bay the birth rate exceeded deaths⁵² and most likely this unusual trend also reflects the presence of these mixed families.

 

There followed tense negotiations, the execution of which fell largely to Fr. Emo acting for the Trappists. Bishop Gibney had a contract of sale for the cattle drawn up and when Fr. Emo refused to sign on behalf of the Trappists, the Bishop shouted at him in the Magistrate’s court.⁵³ The Trappists had run up a debit balance of £1,471, and wanted to recover some funds for their establishment in Palestine. They estimated their improvements to be worth £10,000 (double what was required under the lease conditions).⁵⁴ However, this value to the mission had mostly been added by Aboriginal work and was not for the Trappists to sell. Commissioner Dr. Walter Roth recapitulated in 1905:

 

'When the Trappists first arrived in the State in 1895 [sic] they brought a little money out with them, and with this they purchased about 150 head of cattle. When the Order took its departure in 1901 and was replaced by the Pallottines, Father Nicholas [Emo], under power of attorney from his superior, only sold Bishop Gibney the cattle, which had by that time increased to 800. The price to be paid was £2,640. [This figure does not include the property in Broome.] Father Nicholas did not feel justified in selling the buildings, fences, improvements, etc, because he considered them to be part and parcel of the trust. They had been built with the labour and assistance of the blacks, and they had been erected for the use and benefit of the natives.'⁵⁵

 

Bishop Gibney continued to take a strong and hands-on interest in the continuation of this mission. The church had leased a 100,000-acre portion of land adjacent to the Aboriginal reserve at Beagle Bay, of which 10,000 acres were up for freehold on the condition that a minimum amount of improvements were effected.⁵⁶ The review of this lease had been denied the Trappists. While the handover of Beagle Bay was underway, 65-year old Bishop Gibney took it upon himself to inspect the mission stations with Dean Luigi Martelli and Daisy Bates. Daisy Bates, writing a series of reports of the Australasian and Journal of Agriculture made the most of her little adventure in northern Australia. Read more

 

 

Daisy Bates, Reminiscences of a visit to Beagle Bay, Disaster Bay and Broome, August/September 1900 (Summary)

 

The resolute Irish woman Daisy Bates had met Dean Luigi Martelli on his journey to Australia in 1881 and Bates used this connection to meet the Irish Bishop Matthew Gibney and persuaded him to allow her to accompany them to the north on a three-months tour of inspection to the Kimberley mission commencing on 17 August 1900. According to her account, Fr. Emo and skipper Filomeno Rodriguez met them in Broome and took them to Beagle Bay on the latter's Sree Pas Sair, a former luxury yacht now run down from years of pearling. Fr. Emo explained that church law forbade a woman at the monastery unless she was a queen or the wife or a head of state.⁵⁷ Bates spoke to him in French, paid attention and agreed with him on every point and charmed him in every way until he allowed her the use of his room in the Broome ‘monastery’, containing a bag bed with seaweed pillow and a tree stump for a table. At Beagle Bay they found the community hall burnt down and the place in decay and disrepair. Their task was to value every single item in order to estimate the improvements according to the conditions of the lease, so they repaired as much as they could. The priests (Gibney, Martelli, Emo) were in charge of the men repairing fences and straightening out buildings, while Bates and the women weeded the gardens and cleaned out the wells. The Bishop helped to dig wells and took off with a compass and ship’s chain to survey the boundaries. Daisy Bates and a small group accompanied him:

 

‘We were always hungry. Brother Xavier … would forget the salt or the bread or the meat, or the place where he had arranged to meet us, or that we existed at all. … On the night walkings, rosaries were chanted all the way home, the natives and brothers responding. I often stumbled and fell in the dark but that rosary never stopped.’⁵⁸

 

Bates offered her own vast cultural repertoire to enliven the spirits, mostly perhaps her own, by singing ring-a-ring-a-rosy while the women weeded, and entertained the Bishop with ‘Thro’ hedges and ditches I tore me auld britches, for you Maryanne, for you Maryanne’. She took every opportunity to tease the Bishop, who paid back in equal currency when Bates cooked a dinner and he suggested it should be put under a glass case as a lesson in what not to do. Bates was not the only joker in the party. Not long after the Bishop held a mass baptism at Beagle Bay garbed in full ceremonial purple and anointing each candidate with the papal blessing and the Pax Tecum with a little blow on the cheek, one of the corroborree dancers, Goodowel, was observed with a red-ochred billycan over his head, lining up his audience to give each one a little smack on the ear with the words ‘Bags tak’em’.⁵⁹

 

 

 

The Bishop's party left Perth on 17 August 1900 and spent three months at the three Kimberley stations to put the missions in order for the handover and government valuation. As the government had instructed its surveyor not to proceed with the survey, the Bishop forced the issue by organising his own survey party and went public over the State government's non-cooperation. Read more.  Gibney’s press release resulted in a telegram from the Chief Protector informing Fr. Emo that the mission was to receive £250 per annum.⁶⁰ An Irish priest from Cossack (presumably Fr. Joachim O'Dwyer) was stationed at Beagle Bay to await the arrival of the Pallottines, and if for some reason the handover should not eventuate, the German Pallottines would be posted instead to the Daly River Missions, which the Austrian Jesuits had just abandoned.⁶¹

 

Eventually the government surveyor agreed that the value of improvements on the Trappist lease was £6,000. This was understood to satisfy the lease requirements so the lease could be secured. According to Daisy Bates this happened while she and Bishop Gibney were still there, and ‘in jubilation’ they at once made some mud bricks, and she herself laid the foundation stone for a convent. ⁶² But freehold land was not granted. Dr. Walter Roth reported in 1905:

'On inquiry from Father Walter, the present official head of the mission, the improvements on which this sum of money [the value of improvements] has been expended are in the main on Dampier Location No. 6 - at any rate, certainly not on the total reservation, as required by the conditions. This location is one of the four (Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8) which the mission is anxious to obtain in fee simple, and practically the only four on the reserve where there would appear to be permanent water. …

Your Commissioner recommends that the Lands Department, when issuing the title to the lands in question, will protect the interests of the aborigines, and take care that the property held in trust for them is not handed over to the mission.'⁶³ Read more 

Dr. Walter Roth, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Queensland, and Royal Commissioner of Inquiry into the Condition of Natives in Western Australia, did not hold a high opinion of the first Western Australian Chief Protector. Roth found that Prinsep was unable to supply reliable information about government funding for missions. Bishop Gibney shared this opinion and accused ‘so-called Protector’ Prinsep of starving the mission of funds that were lawfully designated for Aboriginal people.

 

The first decade of Sacred Heart Mission

 

The Beagle Bay mission was officially committed to the Pious Society of Missions (Pallottines) on 12 January 1901. In April 1901 the first German Pallottines arrived - Fr. Georg Walter, with experience in Cameroon, as mission superior, one of his former students, Fr. Patrick White from London, and the Brothers August Sixt and Matthias Kasparek from Limburg.

 

The first Pallottine consignment at Beagle Bay Source: G. Walter Australien - Land, Leute, Mission, 1928:137.

 

The Pallottines purchased the cattle along with the property in Broome for £3,740 to be paid within five years.⁶⁴ Meanwhile Fr. Jean-Marie Janny had returned to Australia and ‘watched Fr. Walter like a hawk’.⁶⁵ Janny now placed a further injunction on the sale of cattle until the Trappists received their first instalment of £1,000⁶⁶, so Bishop Gibney took out a mortgage of £1,200 at 6% interest⁶⁷ and the Pallottine mission was steeped in impossible debt for many years. Fr. Janny also took over the Broome properties that Emo considered 'his', since the church and residence had been built with funding and volunteer labour from his Broome Filipino congregation, and had been included in the sale. Fr. Emo started afresh at 'The Point', a fringe settlement in Broome.

 

At Beagle Bay Fr. White recommenced the school and the two Pallottine Brothers and mission children set to work making 25,000 mud bricks, which were destroyed by torrential rains in 1901. In 1902, with everyone still accommodated in paper bark huts, the mission was hit by a storm. ⁶⁸ Beagle Bay needed more staff and more money.

 

Being so short-staffed Fr. Walter was happy to allow Fr. Emo to continue on in Broome, and initially counted both Emo and Jean-Marie Janny officially among his staff. As Walter was about to depart for Germany, Bishop Gibney sternly reminded him that the 10,000 acre lease in fee simple carried the condition that the mission would be staffed with a minimum of twelve:

 

Now, unless your Order is prepared to have a community of twelve men at least at Beagle Bay I shall be compelled to take the Mission from you and place it in the hands of others who will be only too glad to fulfil the conditions I entered into with the civil authorities.⁶⁹

 

A second consignment of three Brothers and a Father arrived in December 1902 - Fr. Heinrich Rensmann (age 27), Br. Bernhard Hoffmann (age 30), Br. Johann Graf (age 29) and Br. Rudolf Zach (age 32). Even counting in Fr. Emo and Fr. Jean-Marie Janny, they were still short of the apostolic number, and neither Janny nor White, nor indeed Walter or Emo, intended staying at Beagle Bay. Fr. Patrick White withdrew from Beagle Bay and focused instead on the Catholic populations in Broome, Derby and later in Perth, and on fundraising in the Australian capitals before returning to Britain. Fr. Walter also left for Europe to recruit more staff.

 

Fr. Walter returned from Germany around March 1903 with three more Brothers, Wollseifer, Labonte and Wesely, so the mission now had a carpenter, a shoemaker, a bricklayer, a blacksmith and three farmers. The cattle herd increased from about 800 head to 1,800 head of cattle and 150 pigs, and they employed about 25 indigenous people at 20s per month. The shortfall in funding and their mounting debts forced them to generate income.

 

The new priest at the mission, Fr. Rensmann, only took a few months before he was able to preach and give lessons in Nyul-Nyul and sang hymns in Nyul-Nyul with adults and children. ⁷⁰ He was in charge of the school, teaching Catechism on Sundays and delivering the sermon once a fortnight. After half a year, by May 1903, he was in the process of preparing several women and children for baptism. Fr. Rensmann was confident about the mission and wrote to Limburg that cattle and sawmilling earned several thousand Marks each annually and the gardens also produced well.⁷¹

 

In the first few years they were spending over £900 per annum. ⁷² In 1903 the chapel burned down and the mission boat Diamond was wrecked at Sandy Point⁷³ adding to their already significant debts. They now decided to enter into pearl-shelling with a mission-owned lugger, as both Bishop Gibney and the Trappists had suggested. A ten-year contract was drawn up for the advance of 10,000 Lire between Max Kugelmann, Provincial at Limburg acting for the Pallotines, and his brother Justizrat (QC) Dr. Kugelmann, Dr. Otto Wassermann QC, and Kommerzienrat (councilor of commerce) Franz Wasserman for a half share of the net profits payable each May, and 10% depreciation per annum.⁷⁴ They commissioned Hyman and Anderson in Broome⁷⁵ to build the Leo and the Pio, the latter named after Pope Pius X, elected in August 1903. Alas, the prices for shell went down that year and they ended up with a loss. By 1909 Fr. Bischofs referred to a mortage of £2,000 at 5% interest, so the debts of the mission were mounting.⁷⁶

 

The State govenment had started to remove children to the mission and from May 1903 the government subsidy was increased from £185 to £250 per annum based on a one-shilling-per-person formula. Lawrence Clark was one of five boys removed from Broome to Beagle Bay Mission (on the Pio on 10 August 1904) along with Vincent, John, and Paddy Djagween. He remembered that there were no Sisters and only a few girls on the mission, and Br. Sixt was the chief cook, always supervising six boys in the kitchen, rising at 5am. Victor Tieldiel was one them, doing French cooking with Br. Sixt and Br. Labonte.⁷⁷

 

Fr. Rensmann described the Pallottine daily mission routine⁷⁸ with less chanting, praying, and contemplation, and more time to sleep than the Trappists:

5.15 rise

5.30 contemplation

6.00 mass

6.30 breakfast

7.15 work

9.30 refreshment, then work

11.30 end of morning work

11.45 contemplation, lunch, rest or relaxation

14.30 visitation, then 4 hours work

17.30 end of afternoon work

18.00 rosary etc.

20.30 spiritual reading [Alonso Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian Perfection, 1609]

21.00 retire

 

They were still short of the required apostolic number, and there were still not enough Pallottine staff to run the mission. Fr. Janny was either at Disaster Bay or Lombadina, Fr. Emo was in Broome, Fr. White had moved to Broome, and Fr. Walter had also stationed himself in Broome. Fr. Rensmann was the only priest on the mission supervising eight Brothers and the day-to-day running of the mission. In January 1904 Fr. Rensmann died of a heart attack while swimming in the creek with Br. Wollseifer. Visiting Beagle Bay in February 1904 Constable Cunningham found Fr. White and a Fr. Russell at the mission.⁷⁹ Fr. Russell must have been a diocesan priest from Broome presumably sent by Bishop Kelly of Geraldton to temporarily replace Fr. Rensmann⁸⁰, but to run the school they now had to employ a secular teacher, Mr. Randle.

 

When Fr. Walter moved to Broome relations between him and Fr. Emo soured quickly. Emo continued to marry Filipino and Asian men with Aboriginal women and Walter wanted to replace Emo with a Pallottine presence in Broome (himself and Fr. White). Walter asked for more Pallottine priests for Beagle Bay, but only four more Brothers arrived in May 1904, Heinrich Krallmann, Franz Stütting, Alfons Herrmann and Anton Helmprecht. Enough Pallottines were now in the Kimberley to let Fr. Emo go, but there were still not enough priests.

 

In October 1904 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Natives in Western Australia headed by Dr. Walter Roth visited Beagle Bay. The timing was bad for Beagle Bay - at the mission were diocesan priest Fr. Russell, the secular teacher Mr. Randle, twelve Brothers and presumably a reluctant Fr. Walter. The missionaries looked upon the cattle herd as the surest way of growing their assets, rather than as a way of improving the lifestyle of the residents, and the mission residents took the opportunity of an official visit to air their views about the food rations, particularly the scarcity of meat. (Br. Wollseifer, too, felt in his dying months that he was left to starve and craved for some pork.⁸¹

 

Entering into the pearling industry had gained the Pallottines enemies in Broome, where many felt that it was the job of a mission to train and supply labourers, not to employ them in competition. Sergeant John Byrne from Broome told the Royal Commission that Beagle Bay was more of a ‘squatting business’ than a mission.⁸² It was certainly funded more like the ration depot of a squatting business than a mission. But the situation at the mission in 1905 could not inspire confidence.

 

The Roth report does not have a single word of praise for the German mission, one of only four missions in the State. New Norcia earned the attributes ‘flourishing’, ‘excellent’ and ‘worthy’, and Hadley and Hunter's private trepang station at Sunday Island, also receiving a subsidy for its school, was ‘a fine example’. All the report had to say about Beagle Bay was that its resident population had dropped by half, possibly because of the lack of food, that there were no Sisters, that mission residents should not qualify for the government payments for indigents, and that in future the ‘Lands Department should protect the interest of natives when issuing title to land’ to missions. It read like a slap in the face.

 

The government clearly disfavoured Beagle Bay mission in comparison to others. From 1896 to 1899 the Beagle Bay Trappist mission had received nothing while New Norcia had a fixed grant of £450 and the Anglican Swan home received £719. In 1899 it received £150 for 40 children whereas the Swan home was funded with £707 for 38 children. In 1900/1901 it received £250 for 37 children, whereas the Anglicans at Swan Home were paid £718 for 40 children, and New Norcia, with 64 children, still held its £450 subsidy.⁸³ Effectively in 1901 a child at the Swan Home was funded at £17, at New Norcia at £7, and at Beagle Bay at just over £6, and any of these removed children cost the State less than a prisoner in goal. In May 1904 the government reluctantly agreed to increase funding for children removed to missions to the same level paid at the Swan Home and for other destitute children, though pointing out – inexplicably - that it ought to be cheaper to maintain children at Beagle Bay.⁸⁴ On the same assumption the Roth report advised against funding sick and destitute persons on the mission at the normal rate of nine pence per day.⁸⁵

 

There was tension on the mission sadled with debt. The Superior Fr. Walter, from a wealthy background and used to certain comforts, did not have the support of the Brothers.⁸⁶ Trouble between him and gardener Sixt erupted into Sixt slapping the priest, and Walter retaliated by ‘excommunicating’ Sixt (presumably this meant barring him from holy communion). When the Trappists pressed for payment of their promised instalment that year, the Pallottine General Superior Kugelmann suggested that they could take the whole mission back.⁸⁷

 

In about March 1905 Fr. Joseph Bischofs

 

A foreign priest who stood in for us here for a while drank well over his thirst, for two weeks the fellow was walking around here, of course an annoyance like that does not settle for a while. The schoolmaster was worse, but I had him sent away directly. P. Russell is sitting around at Beagle Bay now and do you think that the mission can prosper under such circumstances? I don’t think so.⁸⁸

 

Little wonder that the Roth commission had been less than impressed. More Pallottine Fathers were urgently needed.

 

After that change happened quickly. Fr. Bischofs was appointed superior of Beagle Bay in March 1906⁸⁹ and he was naturalized in 1907.⁹⁰ Br. Wesely had left for America by March 1906, Brother Bernard Hoffmann was sent to Kribi in Africa, and Br. August Sixt was expelled in 1906. This left nine Brothers: Matthias Kasparek (1901-1930), Johann Graf (1902-1951), Rudolf Zach (1902-1914), Matthias Wollseifer (1903-1952), Albert Labonte (1903-1912), Heinrich Krallmann (1904-1951), Anton Helmprecht (1904-1939), Franz Stütting (1904-1909) and Alfons Herrmann (1904-1909). Fr. Walter was back in Broome, Fr. Emo had made himself mobile and left Broome to Fr. Walter, Fr. Janny had moved the whole Disaster Bay outstation to Lombadina and then left Australia, and Fr. White had moved to Perth. They still needed one more to make up the apostolic 12 required by Bishop Gibney, and the mission needed a resident assistant priest. Fr. Thomas Bachmair arrived in February 1907. He was four years older than Fr. Bischofs and had thought he would be placed in charge. But he had little English and felt sidelined and purposeless for years.

 

Now things looked more prosperous and Fr. Walter wrote it would be ‘a pity to give up the mission’. With a government subsidy, donations from the Cardinal in Sydney, and its own income stream from by now 2,500 cattle, the mission ‘will soon be able to pay off debts and will be ‘able to give financial support to Limburg in the future’.⁹¹ Walter had embarked on an Australian fundraising tour with Fr. White and collected about £1,000.⁹² However this was less than the debts Fr. White had run up for his building projects in Broome and Perth.⁹³

 

The arrival of the first nine St. John of God Sisters in May 1907 strengthened the mission. They were greeted with a big welcome, stepping through an archway covered with 'everlasting ' and 20 or 30 men decorated with cockatoo feathers dancing a corroborree. Most residents had never seen white women and the Sisters exuded an air of a different womanhood. Paddy Djagween and Lawrence Clarke recalled:

 

‘When the Sisters arrived, we all thought it was something different, of a womanhood which they thought it was hard to explain, but it was true, what they really thought was, it was a woman all closed in close, covered in, it was a very curiosity.’⁹⁴

 

The government granted a lump sum of £500 and began to send girls to the mission. By 1909 the number of children had doubled from 50 to 94.⁹⁵ In 1908 the Sisters received reinforcements and five of them established a convent in Broome, leaving six at Beagle Bay.⁹⁶ The Irish nuns were not nearly as compliant as the Fathers wished and Fr. Bachmair, who had now become mission rector, ‘watched his beard grow grey’ from constant battles with the Mother Superior:

 

'Difficulties everywhere, lack of funds, dissatisfaction, difficulties with the Sisters who don’t want to be reasonable, especially the Mother Superior who constantly strives to find something to accuse us of. She seems to be one of those who can’t let us live in peace.' ⁹⁷

 

The Provincial in Limburg watched these difficulties with growing concern. Despite the mission subsidy, relief for ‘indigents’ and subsidies for removed children, the mission was running up a shortfall of £500 every year and ran up a debt of £950 with the Broome stores. ⁹⁸ Meanwhile Fr. Walter returned to Europe.

 

Fr. Wilhelm Droste, Fr. Theodor Traub and Br. Matthias Bringmann arrived in February 1909, accompanied by the Limburg Provincial Fr. Vinzenz Kopf, who paid a surprise visitation to the Kimberley mission. Part of Kopf’s intention was to settle continued disputations with the Brothers, particularly with Sixt, who was being 'obstinate'. Sixt was 'ordered off the mission' (although he had already left) and Brothers Franz Stütting and Alfons Herrmann, who had both arrived in 1904, were also repatriated to Ehrenbreitstein and Limburg respectively. The three new arrivals restored the equilibrium of twelve, and were to be the last consignment for twenty years.

 

Fr. Kopf’s other intention may have been to assess the case for a separate vicariate.⁹⁹ Fr. Walter had gone to Europe in 1908 with this purpose in mind, to achieve a separate vicariate, like New Norcia. As it became clear that he was going to be neither a Vicar Apostolic nor a Bishop, he stayed in Germany in semi-retirement. The Benedictine Abbot Torres was appointed to this position in May 1910. Both Kopf and Walter in Germany were now pessimistic about the mission. Fr. Kopf felt that the Beagle Bay missionaries would probably never be able to clear their debts and told them they had to make money. The Brothers and Fr. Bachmair embarked on lobbying by writing personal letters to Fr. Max Kugelmann, their former Provincial Superior in Limburg (1894-1903) and former General Superior of the Pallottines in Rome (1903-1909). They begged Kugelmann for support to continue the mission.

 

A new era, 1910

 

Fr. Walter did not intend returning from Germany, and the Brothers sighed with relief.¹⁰⁰ In 1910 Fr. Bischofs became the superior in Broome replacing Walter, and Fr. Bachmair became rector at Beagle Bay. Having the Sisters and three Fathers made a noticable difference to the mission life, which no longer revolved primarily around digging the mission out of debt.

 

Old Rudolph Newman in front of the Bishop’s lodge at Beagle Bay, 1995.  Photo:Regina Ganter

One of the boys who arrived in that year, Rudolph Newman (aka Rudolph Roe), estimated to be age 10, became the oldest resident in the community, still there to celebrate its golden anniversary and beyond. Still extant sound recordings from 1910 include the school choir's rendition of ‘Der Fürst des Waldes’ in Nyul-Nyul and 'Wacht am Rhein' in English, three German songs and singing to accordion accompaniment. There are also recordings of speech from Felix Gnodenbor (or Gnodonbor), snippets of conversation, and traditional songs including a welcome back and songs by the Disaster Bay and Dampierland people.¹⁰¹

 

There was also a change of guard in the government. On 15 July 1910 Fr. Bischofs accompanied the Chief Protector of Aborigines Charles Frederick Gale, appointed in 1908, on his first visit to Beagle Bay, and the government attitude towards the mission changed dramatically. Gale misreported the history of the mission as having commenced with ‘14 Trappist monks supervised by Fr. Walter and White’, and claimed that it was now staffed with four Fathers (actually three on the mission), 12 Brothers (actually 8, but altogether 12 Pallottines), and 6 Sisters, but he gave a vivid impression of Beagle Bay mission in mid-1910:

 

'the usual bush wireless telegraphy had been working, for our arrival was not unexpected, and no sooner had we entered the mission gates than there out-bounded from the school-house two-score or more of the merriest and happiest looking native children from ten years of age downwards than it has been my lot to see. And what a warm and hearty welcome they gave the Rev. Father and myself! It was very pleasing to see such a bond of good-fellowship existing between the boys and the Superior of the mission, and indeed this same feeling between all the native inmates of both sexes and those who are looking after their welfare was very noticeable during my visit.¹⁰²

 

Gale found the mission children ‘apt pupils’ with ‘a wonderfully good ear for harmony’, reciting ‘national and other songs’. He noted the ‘earnestness and zeal’ of the staff and found they were doing ‘really good work’. The Sisters taught 94 children ‘divided into different classes and standards’ in the mornings.

 

'I made a short examination of the different classes and was agreeably surprised at the brightness and intelligence of some of the scholars, the method of teaching being the same at Beagle Bay as at our State schools.^'103

 

Gale also watched with interest how dexterously some of the older boys operated a circular saw driven by a 16 hp engine. They were being ‘taught different trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and tailoring etc. under the tuition of the Brothers, who are each masters of the trade which they teach.’ (This may be true, but their German trade qualifications were not recognized in Australia, and therefore the Brothers could not turn their apprentices into qualified tradesmen.) Meanwhile the Sisters taught household duties and sewing to the older girls, who produced ‘most of the clothing of the establishment’. ¹⁰⁴

 

The mission reminded the Chief Protector of an Italian village, with substantial buildings of cajeput tree (tea tree), including a church, school, convent, dining hall for priests and Brothers, and dining hall for residents, where girls and boys had separate tables and indigents gathered at one end for meals. The dormitories were large and ventilated with cement floors, one accommodating 40 girls and a Sister in charge, and the boys’ dormitory that also accommodated the Brothers. The other Sisters shared a room next to the room for indigents and sick. Some former mission boys had become native assistants, and were settled in stone cottages with their wives.

 

There were also butchers, bakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters shops, cart sheds, and chaff houses, and the Chief Protector estimated the total value of buildings at £16,000 (which was later annotated: ‘too much?’) and the value of land improvements, consisting of wells, windmills, bores, and fencing, valued at £2,000 (also later annotated with a large question mark). The gardens produced a ‘plentiful supply of vegetables’ supplemented by coconut, date and orange trees. The stock was estimated at 3,500 cattle, though the land, mostly pindan, was not considered good grazing land, and not even the Director of Tropical Agriculture had been able to think of a marketable crop that would grow on the swampy and springy land. ¹⁰⁵ Sisal hemp was tried shortly afterwards, as at Cape Bedford in Queensland. The Chief Protector noted that the whole establishment was heavily subsidized from Limburg. The only unresolved question, which occupied the missionaries and the Protector, was what would become of these well-trained children after they finished their schooling? ¹⁰⁶

 

That year the Pallottines were offered Lombadina. Lombadina was a Filipino/Aboriginal community with a group of Bardi people that had been for some years under the supervision of the Sunday Island pearlers Hadley and Hunter as a government feeding station. A cloud of suspicion gathered over Hunter and Hadley’s relationships with Aboriginal women, and after his visit to Beagle Bay the Chief Protector asked the Pallottines to take on Lombadina. The Pallottines now had three priests at Beagle Bay and one in Broome and were in good shape for expansion. Fr. Theodor Traub and two Brothers were sent to Lombadina on the mission lugger loaded up with provisions and were caught up in an unseasonally early cylone:

 

'The cyclone on 19 November 1910 is probably Broome's most destructive event when winds were estimated to reach 175 km/h. Forty people died, 20 houses were destroyed, another 70 badly damaged, and 34 pearling boats wrecked or lost.'¹⁰⁷

 

The Beagle Bay mission pier was demolished and the lugger damaged¹⁰⁸. Rector Bachmair sold the Leo and was glad to end the pearling experiment, which seemed more like a gamble than an income source, though soon after the pearl-shell prices at Broome soared to £230 per ton as a result of shortages. Bachmair was overwhelmed by all the help offered after the cyclone. The government transferred £500 as disaster relief, Cardinal Moran sent £100, a collection in Perth brought £49. This covered the damage and paid for a 29-ton ex-government schooner (£353 including delivery and repairs), the Namban. ¹⁰⁹ Fr. Emo helped out with his San Salvador until the new schooner arrived.

 

Fr. Traub was severely shaken by his cyclone experience.¹¹⁰ Fr. Bischofs wrote in January 1912 that Br. Albert Labonte and Fr. Traub had left the mission (one to Ikassa, the other to Duala in Cameroon), but the others were ‘ready to continue at Beagle Bay’.¹¹¹ Fr. Bischofs felt that the Lombadina outstation could be served by regular visits but it had a shaky start until Fr. Emo, who had made himself scarce since his clash with Fr. Walter in Broome, was invited to oversee Lombadina and formally took office on 1 January 1911. He brought several Cygnet Bay people with him and the Lombadina settlement grew quickly under his reputation.

 

While the Kimberley missionaries were in an expansionist mood, their General in Limburg was casting around for ways of withdrawing, still driven by the concern about money.

 

'One day Fr. Th. Bachmair came to us really depressed and reckoned the Limburgers want money, we were to make money one way or another, if I’m not mistaken they wanted £400 a year from us. The rector decidedly refused this since we were still over the ears in debts, and a few months later, February 1911, the decision to give up the mission arrived.'¹¹²

 

But no other Catholic order wanted to take over the Kimberley mission. Br. Kasparek narrated that the Steyler missionaries took over instead a mission from the Jesuits in Dutch East Indies at Kupang and the Sumba Islands, and the Sacred Heart Missionaries in Sydney politely declined.¹¹³ They had been given the Darwin diocese and were just beginning a mission at Bathurst Island.

 

In September 1911 Fr. Bachmair sent an optimistic (and possibly exaggerated) report. In addition to the help received after the cyclone, the sales from stock were higher than expected bringing about £1,500. The mission debts were whittled down to £400, from nearly £3,000 in 1908 including the remaining debts to the pearling company formed by Kugelmann’s brother in Munich. Beagle Bay now had more than 3,000 head of cattle, 40 horses, 60 pigs, and about 400 goats running wild. The mission housed 74 girls and 50 boys and according to Bachmair ‘the stick sometimes has to encourage their civilization’. About 40 to 50 Aboriginal persons made themselves available for work and the mission provided for about 40 or 50 ‘old and indigent natives’ with a government subsidy of 9d per day per person.¹¹⁴ (The subsidy was changed to £800 per annum shortly afterwards.)

 

Under threat of closure of the mission Fr. Bachmair became obsessed with the financial affairs of the mission. He was glad to be rid of the pearling venture and banked on the cattle herd. The first sales in early 1911 turned around the mission economy. In January 1912 he assured Fr. Kugelmann that his brother would soon be repaid, as he was anticipating selling another up to 250 head of cattle “@ £4, £4.10 more or less”, leaving a tidy sum after paying off the last remaining debts. He confided that he would be too ashamed to return to the Brethren in Limburg if this mission was disbanded on his watch.¹¹⁵ All through 1912 and 1913 Fr. Bachmair essentially ignored the instructions from Limburg to prepare for a handover to another order. The cattle herd was reduced from ‘about 3,000’ to 2,000, and in August 1912 Bachmair reported, for the first time, a positive bank balance of £600. ¹¹⁶ In early 1913 the new Archbishop of Sydney Michael Kelly sent £21, and Fr. Bachmair's profuse letter of thanks made it full-length into the Catholic press. ¹¹⁷

 

Despite the pressing financial concerns, they were supposed to be a community of spirituality, not a commercial enterprise. Br. Kasparek despaired at this pincer of expectations placed on them:

 

'We’re supposed to make money but we had to give up the pearling boat. We’re supposed to make money but we’re not allowed to trade: goods purchased in bulk can only be retailed at cost price. We’re supposed to make money but no Brother may absent himself from the station and miss the holy mass for more than two weeks. We’re supposed to make money but by all means don’t neglect the spiritual life. I hear that the Rector recently asked Fr. Bischofs in Broome to send £200 to Limburg.'¹¹⁸

 

The Chief Protector continued to authorise removals of children to the mission, particularly mixed descent children. In 1913 Fr. Bachmair reported to the Protector that the mission now had 147 children (‘28 full-blood and 56 half-caste girls, and 3 full-blood and 33 half-caste boys’) and eleven children slept with their mothers in the camp. The children were taken for weekly picinics to an artesian well or the bay, the pupils attended morning and evening classes and twenty girls were sewing. Many children had suffered from a cold. A sisal hemp plantation had been started and some new buildings had been put up, so that there were now altogether 28 buildings, and the recreation grounds had been improved. Of eight newborns that year two were stillborn and four died within the first year. The Department officer perusing the annual report crossed out Bachmair's reference to the stillborn babies and to the government removals of one boy from Pender Bay, one girl from Disaster Bay, and three girls from the surrounding area. ¹¹⁹

 

Dealings with police

 

The Kimberley coast was bristling with pearling luggers and the missionaries were called on for all kinds of assistance. The mission acted as a relay station for mail around the Dampier Peninsula, including the Cape Leveque lighthouse. The Fathers and Sisters were often called on to attend the sick and dying and to give evidence at court proceedings in Pender Bay convened by station owner Harry O’Grady as Justice of the Peace. The Police Constable records that on 13 March 1912

 

'two Japanese came to the mission and reported to [Rev. Fr. Droste] that a Japanese named Tassiro Moskep .... [possibly Tashiro Mosuke?] drowned .... Rev. Father visited the creek on the 14^th ins. and examined the body to see if there was any marks of violence but there being no marks on the body had him buried on shore.'¹²⁰

 

In January 1913 a boy was accidentally injured by a kylie (fighting stick) in a dispute in the camp, which caused a police investigation¹²¹ and later that year Fr. Droste was to give evidence against an Aboriginal man charged with ‘evil fame’ (procuring women for prostitution). Droste was presently the only Father on the mission and felt he could not be absent from more than a day and requested the hearing to be held closer to the mission, at the old Weedong station owned by David Bell JP. The accused man was sentenced to six months hard labour in Broome.¹²² Hard labour usually meant working in chain gangs on roadwork or similar projects.

 

There was also trouble on the mission schooner Namban, when skipper Francis Teo laid charges against his crew members Joseph Merry and Charlie for assaulting him while filling the water tank. JP David Bell at Pender Bay remanded the two offenders for five days.¹²³

 

In September 1914 the constable arrested four Aboriginal men for ‘evil fame’. Three of them from Norman’s pearling station near Bulliman Creek had three or four women each, and were sentenced to between five and (a repeat offender) nine months hard labour. The same charge was laid against a man who removed a girl from the mission:

 

(14 September 1914) 'Father Thomas [Bachmair] reported that some native had come and removed a little halfcaste girl from mission. He was unable to obtain the name of the offender. I made inquiries and was informed by other natives that they thought a native named Poundey removed the girl and he was Carnot Bay way.' ¹²⁴

 

This man was arrested at Carnot Bay and charged with living on prostitution. At the trial in Pender Bay he was ‘cautioned and ordered up King Sound’. Since he was not convicted it is possible that he tried to retrieve a family member who had been removed to the mission by police. An investigation was also underway about conditions at the station of the late Joe Marselino located between the mission and the bay, which according to Fr. Bachmair had become a ‘camp of ill fame’. ¹²⁵

 

Those under arrest, including those rounded up as witnesses, were normally in chains, and the practice of chaining by the neck became subject to widespread public criticism. In one instance the Pender Bay constable referred to the habitual chains, normally not mentioned:

 

(24 November 1914) 'Nativ. Assist. Charley arrived from Broome and reported having handed over native prisoner to police at Broome. He returned without native chains and on being asked where they were he said the natives had been put on the boat with the chains. So the natives must have been forwarded away with this station’s chains.'¹²⁶

 

The Pender Bay police journals also indicate that Constable Thomas Rea felt that anything left behind in hurriedly abandoned camps was his to take:

 

(12 August 1915) 'During the patrol I gathered up a large number of native weapons and put them in boxes and bundles and forwarded them on schooner Minis’ for Derby to be sent by state steamers for Museum Perth. Also sent private wire to museum informing them re above being forwarded.'¹²⁷

 

Fr. Droste as mission superior kept a diary which, despite its terse language, gives a vivid impression of the comings and goings on the mission, and the frequent visits from police and neighbours. It commences in September 1913 with a four-day visit from Chief Protector Gale accompanied by Fr. Bischofs from Broome.¹²⁸ 

 

On 29 March 1914 Fr. Emo brought news from the German Captain Frank of the Bedout that the Benedictine mission at Drysdale River had been destroyed, and the missionaries murdered (see Fr. Nicholas Emo). Constable Rea and native police assistant Louis went to investigate, but the Pender Bay police journals for just this period are missing from the collection in the State Library of Western Australia. On 10 April 1914 Fr. Emo took Constable White on the San Salvador to Drysdale, and they called in at Beagle Bay on their return on 3 May 1914, reporting that the alarm had been false.¹²⁹ Sub-inspector Houlahan from Broome also called in at the mission. Fr. Droste made light of such visits by reporting that the children always enjoyed them, especially if they involved a picinic.¹³⁰

 

The alarm about an attack on Drysdale River mission may have been what caused the missionaries to consider installing a wireless communication between Beagle Bay, Lombadina and Drysdale. Soon afterwards World War I commenced in mid-1914 and Constable Thomas Rea reported this as a matter of great suspicion. Rea had replaced Constable Johnston at Pender Bay in October 1913 and was still struggling with the various names like ‘Lumbindina’ mission, ‘Farther Nicholiss’ [Nicholas Emo], ‘Brother Antoine’ [Anton Helmprecht, as distinct from Frenchy d'Antoine at Lombadina] and tracker ‘Cosmer’ [Cosima].¹³¹ Rea was distrustful of the Germans and informed his superior in Broome ‘I know for certain they are making a large profit out of Beagle Bay’ because they ‘cleared a debt of £5,000 in three years’. Inspector Drewry in Broome concurred ‘they get £500 p.a. from the government and get the work of the natives for nothing.’¹³² These two suspected that the mission must be transferring money to Germany and so support the enemy.

 

Shadow of War

 

Official visits became more frequent as the shadow of war fell over the mission. Neither Fr. Droste’s reports nor his diary enter into any discussion of war. In fact, he was very cautious to silence any discussion of war, which stood him in good stead. Intelligence services kept a close watch on the German missionaries:

 

'Soon after the outbreak of war, attention was focused on the Beagle Bay Mission alike on account of its wholly German personnel, its geographical situation, and other suspicious circumstances. Father Droste, who was head of the banch mission at Chilly Creek [Lombadina], 23 miles from Pender Bay Police Camp and 50 miles by land from Beagle Bay, came early under suspicion.'¹³³

 

The Pioneer warship paid a visit on 8 October 1914, with ten marine and two officers in full military regalia searching the mission for a presumed wireless set from 5.30am to about 11am.¹³⁴ Presumably this led to some conversations around the peninsula. Jack Harris (of Harris Chappel and Baldock Company at Spring Creek, Carnot Bay) mentioned to Constable Rea that when he ‘asked Fr. Droste how they communicate with Germany, he said, we don't get any mail but could communicate with them if we wanted via Italy to Berlin’.¹³⁵ There was no reason for the Pallottines to communicate with Berlin, and Harris may have been unaware that his yarns could have dire consequences. A few months after this police report, Harris arrived at the mission very ill. He remained there for ten days, during which he wrote his last will, and then proceeded to Broome where he died shortly after.¹³⁶

 

Security was stepped up. Droste recorded

 

(4 November 1914) 'Constable Rea came from Pender Bay. Everyone had to sign a document re. war'

 

Constable Rea reported

 

(4 November 1914) 'left for BB mission to attend to military papers. see special report'¹³⁷

 

Rea required the German nationals at Beagle Bay to sign the ‘yellow form’ (rather than Provisional Orders) so they would not all have to travel regularly 30 miles to Weedong to report to JP Bell, and offered to visit them every month. He suggested that his police camp could be moved to the mission for better surveillance, because ‘I feel sure their sympathy are [sic] with Germany’. He felt that Br. Wollseifer in particular as a German army reservist would have ‘no hesitation’ to assist the enemy, supported by ‘his faithful Aboriginal friends’. ¹³⁸

 

Droste reported business as usual for the first year of war. The Chief Protector visited again in September 1914, and around Christmas 1914 a ministerial visit conveyed a Pathé home movie projector donated by the Chief Protector and movies became a popular entertainment. Some of the residents perhaps disapproved of the scantily dressed divas flashing across the screen - ‘that must be proper poor lady, she only got money to buy little bit dress’. ¹³⁹ One picture show sent up from Broome was so popular that it was screened four times.¹⁴⁰ That year also offered the spectacle of the first recorded hailstorm at the mission to the amazement of the children who had never seen hail before. Droste kept up the Beagle Bay races on New Years’ Day and mentioned that two girls had to be sent to the Lock Hospital to receive treatment for venereal disease, which he hastened to add, they had contracted before coming to the mission, and the government sent nine children from Thursday Island, Fitzroy River, Liveringa Station and the pearling areas of Cossack, Carnot Bay and La Grange. Five babies were born and one died during 1913.¹⁴¹ He didn’t mention that the government subsidy was dropped to £300 while the price of flour was up by £10 per ton, or that many young men from the mission joined the army.

 

Fr. Emo died in March 1915, and Fr. Droste began to spend much of his time in Lombadina. That same month Chief Protector Gale was replaced by Auber Octavius Neville, and the good times for the mission were over. Neville began to send children to Moore River native settlement instead of the missions and for the next decade very few children were sent to Beagle Bay.¹⁴²

 

In 1915 Italy entered the war against Germany and many German Pallottines fled to Switzerland while those in Germany were drafted into the armed forces. The Cameroon missions were closed and their staff deported and imprisoned in Spain or France. No further support from Limburg could be expected. Fr. Bischofs went to discuss the situation with Archbishop Patrick Clune in Perth.¹⁴³ It transpired that the censor had been intercepting the mission correspondence, and Fr. Bischofs was interrogated about a questionnaire that he had filled in, ostensibly for German migrant assistance, which earned him the label of a spy for the enemy (see Bischofs).

 

In early 1916 investigations into the Beagle Bay missionaries were augmented. Major George Steward founded Australia’s first secret service, the Counter Espionage Bureau specialising on ‘fifth column’ activities and Major Edmund Piesse was appointed as Director of Military Intelligence. Constable Rea reported from Pender Bay that ‘since the government has cut off their subsidy they appear to have become more bitter’ and Inspector Drewry in Broome added ‘a peculiarity I notice is that although this is alleged to be an international fraternity all the staff here are Germans’.¹⁴⁴ Archbishop Clune received a message from Captain Corbett of the Intelligence Section on 26 February 1916 that

 

‘it was anomalous that a mission of this sort, composed entirely of aliens, should have a quasi-independent organization, subject only in Australia to a Superior who was an enemy subject’.¹⁴⁵

 

Enemy alien Bischofs, a naturalized British subject, was still optimistic in March 1916:

 

‘After conferring with the military authorities, I was given assurance that there was no reason for anxiety for the mission and the staff. This was certainly good news, especially when the chief censor told me that there was no complaint against us. From our part we certainly will do our best not to create any difficulties with the Government.’¹⁴⁶

 

In March 1916 the Commissioner of Police in Perth informed Major Steward at the 'Australian Espionage Bureau' (Counter Espionage Bureau) in Melbourne that

 

‘certain subjects residing at Beagle Bay mission correspond with Germany. They are well worth watching and I am arranging for the temporary transfer of the Police Camp from Pender Bay to a point nearer the mission.’¹⁴⁷

 

Shortly afterwards Beagle Bay mission received a visit from a Mr. Bonnar, boat owner from Broome and ‘another gentleman’ who stayed overnight.¹⁴⁸ Major Steward felt it was not enough to transfer the police camp. ‘As a matter of fact I hold very strong views about this mission and am prepared to go a long way in the direction of testing the matter.’¹⁴⁹ He wanted another investigation. The new Director of Military Intelligence Piesse was at a loss – his local intelligence officer ‘has just submitted a report on 31^st March and can’t be sent to Beagle Bay again for a further special inquiry.’¹⁵⁰

 

On 5 April 1916 a telegram from Rome reached Fr. Karl Gissler, the Pallottine General Superior currently at Einsiedeln (Switzerland) warning that ‘the Australian government threatens to intern our German priests’ and that a British national, such as Fr. White ought to be placed in charge. The Australian government feared that, with Germans stationed in Java, the Germans at Beagle Bay would have the motive and the means to supply enemy warships. The Archbishop alerted Fr. Bischofs on 13 April 1916 that the position was

 

‘very serious. Adverse reports had come from Broome mentioning one of the priests and one of the brothers by name, as having given expression to disloyal sentiments and having boasted about German victories.’¹⁵¹

 

Fr. Bischofs however trusted the discussion he had had with the censor. He expected another visit from the Minister and the Chief Protector to Lombadina and Beagle Bay later that month, April 1916.¹⁵²

 

By early May 1916 the police had stationed ‘a shrewd man’ at Beagle Bay mission. Constable F. H. Watson tried to engage the mission residents in conversation to find out what the Brothers were saying about the war. But the only thing the Constable found out was that Fr. Bachmair had forbidden all talk about the war, and that he ‘hoped that it will soon be over’.¹⁵³ Another navy search for a wireless station on 19^th April was also fruitless. Captain Frank had died in Broome, so the only 'Germans' remaining on the Broome list of suspects were Fr. Bischofs, Fr. Bachmair and Dr. Basedow¹⁵⁴ - two of whom were British subjects. In late May another navy patrol ‘listened extensive all along the coast’ [sic] and concluded that any wireless transmitter station on the Kimberley coast could only be very low powered with a range of less than 200 miles. Fr. Droste recorded great excitement at Beagle Bay when another warship turned up at 9 am on 30 June 1916, and from 7 June to 10 July 1916 a ‘Mr Stuart and Mr Brown’ undertook an 'excursion' from Beagle Bay as far as Drysdale River accompanied by three Aboriginal guides from Beagle Bay.¹⁵⁵ Presumably 'Mr Stuart' was Major George Steward from the intelligence bureau, and the warship was the Encounter under Captain Brown, and the two were again searching for the presumed wireless radio set.¹⁵⁶

 

Still, it was not enough surveillance. To settle the British nerves, Archbishop Clune appointed a British superior to administer the church in the Kimberley, and he chose Fr. John Creagh CSsR, since recently rector of the Redemptorist monastery in Perth. Captain Corbett asked Fr. Creagh to see to it that the missionaries stayed at their posts, and to ‘particulary discourage’ the Parochus Fr. Bischofs, mission superior Fr. Droste and Brother Wollseifer from coming to Broome (although neither Wollseifer nor Droste were on the intelligence list of suspects). Fr. Creagh moved to Broome in June 1916 and visited Beagle Bay with another navy commander. Of all this Fr. Bischofs reported merely that ‘the children at the missions had taken Fr. Creagh’s heart by storm’.¹⁵⁷ He did however transfer all leases to Fr. Creagh, who in turn made out his will in favour of the Pious Society of Missions. Intelligence did not trust Fr. Creagh, either: ‘Fr. Creigh [sic], who took place of Bischoff [sic] is regarded as a disloyalist by our representatives at Broome.’¹⁵⁸

 

Beagle Bay mission was gripped by drought that had already claimed fifty cattle, and the blacksmith shop burned down in late September 1916.¹⁵⁹ Droste, who spent most of that month in Lombadina, only recorded who borrowed what food from whom on the peninsula evidently gripped by shortages, and that there was ‘news of an election’.¹⁶⁰ (Prime Minister Hughes was touring Australia in the lead-up to the 28 October 1916 referendum on conscription and was subsequently expelled from the Labor Party in mid-September.)

 

Fr. Droste mentioned nothing at all about the Beagle Bay police station, except that ‘The new law man Mr. Watson was here on route from lighthouse’ on 2 December 1916. On 29 December 1916 he recorded Sebastian Damaso, the long-time supporter of the mission, as saying that ‘Sisters talk and tonight mend their mouth’. One wonders what the Sisters might have said that could give them cause for regret. The Irish uprising in Dublin had been brutally suppressed by the British, so the Irish were even less inclined than before to support the war effort. There was so much going on in the world and it was dangerous to express opinions. The Irish/German collaboration cannot have been easy at this time, and later it was said that only Droste saved the situation.

 

The bombshell arrived on New Years Eve of 1916 when Fr. Bischofs announced to the congregation at Beagle Bay that the military authorities had ordered him to leave.¹⁶¹ Bischofs was suspected of espionage. Since he was an Australian citizen the Intelligence Services needed to make a serious allegation of this nature to deal with him at all.

 

On 30 January 1917 restrictions on movements were sharpened, the Germans were no longer allowed to travel on boats. Fr. Creagh, now supervising 3 German priests, 9 German Brothers and 16, mostly Irish, Sisters, purchased the San Gerardo motor vessel for £3,500 to get around. He established a base in Wyndham and tried to gain approval for Asian/Aboriginal marriages so that the men who had children with Aboriginal women would not be forcibly repatriated at the termination of their contract. Like Fr. Emo before him, he rallied to the support of the mixed community of Broome against government policy, and the community rallied to his support with music and singing and attending his sermons. He also went into bat for the missions when Lombadina came under threat of closure and the Colonial Secretary H. P. Colebatch in Perth (later Premier of Western Australia) indicated on 26 March 1917 that the mission subsidy for Beagle Bay might be withdrawn altogether, since it was ‘a semi-philanthropic, semi-commercial’ enterprise.¹⁶²

 

Police constable Dewar was stationed at Beagle Bay and a Fr. Collins was stationed at Lombadina and appears without explanation in Droste’s diary throughout 1918. He stayed for eight years and left just before new staff arrived in 1925 as the postwar immigration sanctions had been lifted.¹⁶³

 

Beagle Bay mission was now staffed with very experienced missionaries: Fr. Thomas Bachmair (54) had arrived in 1907, Fr. Wilhelm Droste (47) in 1909, Brothers Matthias Kasparek (46) in 1901, Johann Graf (45) in 1903, Matthias Wollseifer (36) in 1903, Anton Helmprecht (44) in 1904, and Heinrich Krallmann (43) in 1904. They were all confined to the mission – and they created something extraordinary.

 

The Beagle Bay church

 

Quite astoundingly Fr. Droste’s diary makes no mention whatsoever of the frantic activities during the war years to produce a lasting symbol of the presence and intention of the Pallotines. Building the Sacred Heart church at Beagle Bay church from local materials became their focus of activity. The old people made some 60,000 bricks in a home-made kiln under instruction from Br. Wollseifer. Everyone else collected shells at the beach, including trochus and giant clams, the girls cooked the shells to make lime for whitewash, the ‘Children of Mary’ made work clothes out of flour bags to save the good dresses, the Sisters gave night lessons, and Broome pearlers like Clarke and Company donated pearl-shells. Brothers Helmprecht and Krallmann looked after the cattle and provided an income, Br. Kasparek lugged transport, Br. Graf provided all the carpentry and joinery from local timber, and Br. Wollseifer was considered the ‘chief architect’ of the church just large enough to seat 200.

 

Fr. Droste and two boys, the ‘crippled’ Joseph Neebery and Joseph Gregory, laid out the altar in shells and pearl-shell. Sr. Brigida Nailon explains its iconography: At the centre is the innocent Lamb of God, flanked on the right with a Greek cross and on the left with a Roman cross. Cowrie shells frame the altar and tabernacle and pearl-shells form the inlay. The chalice carved by Fr. Droste reads ‘Dominus Deus et Deus Meus’ (‘my Lord and my God’) in reference to Doubting Thomas who eventually confirmed the miracle of transsubstantiation. The original floor tiles were laid out in squares divided by illustrations of bush fruits and animals and weapons. The original ceiling was made from wood and plaster ‘set with shells to resemble the sky’. Fr. Doste carved an ebony wood cross decorated with shell to top the arch of the Sanctuary, which is flanked by two angels holding scrolls ‘Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Triumphat’ (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, - and usually it is ‘Christus Imperat’ – Christ commands). ¹⁶⁴ Further additions to the church were made later, with a redgum communion rail by Br. Frank Hanke, coloured glass windows donated by Bishop Raible, and the doors and furniture of bush timber made by Br. Joseph Tautz. In the 1920s one of the Salesian priests suggested to used flattened kerosene tins to reinformce the roof against white ants. Br. Stracke recalled the church as it was in the 1930s with the recycled tin ceiling and without the ornamental floor:

 

'The shell church, they made it of mud bricks, collected shells to get lime for mortar and the whitewash. Even the floor tiles were made in Beagle Bay out of mud. Now it’s a cement floor. ... The Germans had to be quiet during the WWI so they built this church to show they are here for a mission. The Beagle Bay church had a ceiling made of four gallon tins, [they] flattened the kerosene and petrol tins, and painted a design on it.'¹⁶⁵

 

Somehow this little church made its point a well as any cathedral, and still stands as a beacon of a community holding together against the odds. Fr. Creagh and Fr. Bachmair dedicated the new church on the Feast of Assumption, 15 August 1918. Two weeks later Fr. Bachmair was the first to be laid out in it.

 

The inter-war period

 

With the death of Fr. Bachmair and the removal of Fr. Bischofs, Fr. Droste was the only Pallottine priest left in the Kimberley. He began to send small amounts of money to Limburg, which due to rampant inflation, converted into huge sums. Nailon states that £1 translated to between 60 and 80 billion Mark.¹⁶⁶

 

The Sisters suffered a heavy loss with the death of their foundress Mother Antonio O’Brien on 10 February 1923, followed by Mother Bernard Greene a week later. They had barely enough money for food, let alone coffins, so the Broome congregation came to their aid. Pat Percy paid for Mother Antonia’s funeral and John Byrne for Mother Bernard’s.¹⁶⁷

 

Model T Ford on the road to Beagle Bay. Courtesy Liz Davie, Broome

Fr. Creagh felt that his task was accomplished in 1920, but it took until September 1923 before he was allowed to return to Perth.¹⁶⁸ Meanwhile Archbishop Bartholomeus Cattaneowas sent as apostolic delegate from Rome to Australia to help sort out the issues that had arisen from the world war. He arrived at Beagle Bay mission on 26 May 1920 for a six-day visit and was entertained by ‘theatre and concert, horse and mule races, spear and boomerang throwing and a grand corroboree which he found especially interesting.’¹⁶⁹ He also ceremoniously opened a new road to Beagle Bay, and the mission’s first motorcar in 1923 was a second-hand car revamped as a truck. Br. Wollseifer claimed it was financed by his market garden.¹⁷⁰

 

Archbishop Cattaneo suggested they could now reclaim the vicariate, and subsequently the Salesian order was invited to take on the Kimberley vicariate. Cattaneohad the diplomatic idea to divide the vicariate into two or three mission fields, and Fr. Droste commented laconically: ‘you can divide it into six parts, but only two are populated’.¹⁷¹ Droste did not think there was room for two Catholic denominations in the Kimberley, and the Kimberley Pallottines were rather resentful of seeing another Order take over their efforts:

 

It is simpler to settle in a well-made nest than to found a new station, which is extremely difficult and costly. It is true that the members of the [Salesian] society were treated as changelings when one considered all the efforts from the suffering, sacrifice and sweat, which our brothers have contributed and has turned their hair white. The thought of the material loss to the Society was devastating’.¹⁷²

 

But presumably it was just this diplomatic maneouvering of the Catholic Church that allowed the German missionaries to remain in the Kimberley when elsewhere in the world they had been interned, repatriated, replaced and barred from re-entry.

 

The Salesian Bishop Ernest Coppo arrived in Broome on 27 September 1923 ‘with a flourish’ assisted by a multinational team of four Fathers and three Brothers, of whom the Spanish and Italians spoke no English. He reorganised them several times. He stationed the Polish Fr. John Siara at Lombadina during 1924 and sent the Spanish Fr. Filemon Lopez and the bookbinder Br. Emmanuel Gomez to Carnarvon, which was now added to the vicariate. Coppo wanted to take over the government ‘feeding station’ at LaGrange, but the Chief Protector blocked the idea. The Bishop sold Fr. Creagh’s expensive motorboat and settled into Broome with American Fr. John Setaro, Italian Fr. Erminio Rossetti and the young Spanish Brother Celesto Acerni. The Palestinian Br. Caesar Asselli had to return to Perth for medical treatment. Bishop Coppo wanted the Pious Society of Missions to continue to operate Beagle Bay and Lombadina, with one member stationed in Broome. But he purchased and occupied their house in Broome so they felt ‘pushed into a corner’. ¹⁷³

 

The mission residents, on the other hand, ‘loved the fathers and brothers who gave us games, songs and made us happy’. Rosie Victor said

 

'The Salesians kept us happy and busy, and we still remember the songs they taught us. We missed them very much when they left here.'¹⁷⁴

 

The Cameroon missions were lost so the Limburg General was now more interested in extending the Pallottine Australian presence. The Pallottines resented missing out on the chance of their own vicariate but the war experience now militated against the growth of the German mission. Bishop Coppo’s application in March 1924 for four more staff from Germany, supported by the Broome business community, was declined in May 1924. During the war the French had interned Pious Society of Mission members in the colonies, and Australian Intelligence feared that these would seek entry to Australia. Moreover, Intelligence staff were still wary of Fr. Droste.

 

Bishop Coppo lodged a second application, for two Fathers, acting through a Member of Paliament. This time the bureaucracy went to somewhat greater length to gather information from elsewhere in the Commonwealth. The India Office had barred immigration of members of enemy Catholic societies to India for a period of five years after the war. It had generated a list of recognized societies for colonial mission work, which required that such societies were in the charge of a British subject and had a house in England. Australian Intelligence consulted the Archbishop of Westminster who merely pointed out that the Pious Society of Missions was not a recognized society on the list (for India). Bishop Coppo's application had the support of a Member of Parliament and of Broome business leaders. The Provincial at Limburg and Bishop Coppo ‘personally vouched’ for the two Fathers. Fr. Albert Scherzinger, at Gossen in Switzerland was described as ‘intelligent with broad ideas and appears not concerned politics any time’. Fr. Benedikt Püsken (age 52) was a ‘tranquil character, very cultivated, appears never interested in politics’. After much deliberation, these two were granted a 12-months visa ‘in the first instance’ in 1924 and arrived per Gascoyne in Fremantle on 19 August 1925.¹⁷⁵

 

By this time the Salesians had left the Kimberley. Most of them had moved to Melbourne in May 1924, by September only Fr. Siara was in the Kimberley and he also wanted to leave. Everyone agreed that there was not enough work for two congregations in the Kimberley. The Salesians focused on the Italian communities in Melbourne and Brisbane and Bishop Coppo formally resigned form the Kimberley vicariate in November 1927.¹⁷⁶ Rising to the occasion, Fr. Droste wrote a long letter of appreciation to Bishop Coppo.¹⁷⁷ The Pallottines, who had celebrated their Silver Anniversary at Beagle Bay in December 1925, could now reclaim the vicariate.

 

The pastoral economy on the peninsula was in trouble. Drought followed by excessive rains triggered a tick infestation among the cattle that caused a ban on bringing the cattle to market. Two cattle stations near Beagle Bay went bankrupt. Joseph Dugal remembered this period. He was working off the mission, at first for Harry Hunter at Boolgin, and later gathering trochus shell for Harry O’Grady. He said ‘Harry O’Grady broke down, turned mental’.¹⁷⁸ O’Grady, JP, pastoralist, pearler, and longstanding supporter of the mission, was declared ‘of unsound mind’ for attempted suicide:

 

(October 4 1928) Report by PC Dewar, Beagle Bay

'At 11am a native arrived from Lombadina with a message from Brother CM. Kasparek stating that Mr H. J. O’Grady JP had met with a serious accident and asking me to go to Lombadina. Left Cape Leveque at 11.20 am on borrowed mule, arrived Lombadina at 12.45 pm. Saw O’Grady and asked him what had happened, he said he had tried to shoot himself by placing the nuzzle of his revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger, the bullet lodged in the roof of his mouth. Fortunately the cartridges were very old and the powder had deteriorated and would not expel the bullet with any force. I obtained statements from Brother C. M. Kasparek, sister M. Benedict and M. Sibosado. Apprehended Henry James O’Grady 58 years R.C. Pastoralist alleged unsound mind, see special reports. ... O’Grady was lodged in Lockup, was removed to Lock hospital ... O’Grady charged with unsound mind.' ¹⁷⁹

 

It seems that O’Grady’s Madana station had gone into receivership and its assets were liquidated. Nailon refers to a letter from J. Bateman, managing director of Madana on 29 April 1927, accepting Fr. Droste’s offer of £15 for each of three windmills and £1.10 each for branded cattle, and ‘for unbranded cattle, nothing’. Droste also negotiated with Streeter and Male pearling company of Broome about the purchase of a part of their lease at Carnot Bay of 100,000 acres including homestead for £175 or in exchange for cattle.¹⁸⁰

 

 

Staff arrivals and growth

 

Two years after Fathers Püsken and Scherzinger, Fr. August Spangenberg and Br. Stephan Contemprée gained admittance, this time without a paper war, and arrived in Adelaide on 13 October 1927.¹⁸¹ The expansionist mood gripped the Fathers again. Fr. Droste had the idea of a farm in the south to produce food staples, much like New Norcia supplied Drysdale River mission. He became naturalized in 1927 in order to be able to purchase land, but in 1929 he returned to Germany and died soon after. Meanwhile Fr. Otto Raible arrived in 1928 as vicar apostolic and a new era commenced for the Pallottines who had finally gained ecclesiastical authority over the Kimberley.

 

Fr. Püsken was appointed as a Protector of Aborigines in July 1927 - the first Pallottine to receive a government emolument – and was issued with a copy of the Act and Regulations.¹⁸² Protector Neville pointed out that marriges of Aboriginal women (as defined by the Act) with non-Aboriginal men required his (Neville's) permission, and that all marriages performed on the missions needed to be reported to the Department. The missionaries were instructed to meticulously report on births, deaths and marriages, as well as on Aboriginal employment and property, a requirement that they clearly found onerous.¹⁸³ On the other hand Droste’s offer that the Sisters could help in the management of leprosy was ignored.¹⁸⁴

 

In November 1929 Fr. Raible was relieved to hear that the Beagle Bay police station was to be closed – the wartime suspicions and the surveillance of the German missionaries seemed to be over:

 

'Mr Dewar is getting posted to Perth. Deo gratias. It took long enough.' ¹⁸⁵

 

At the same time Raible also mentioned the departure of a Fr. Healy (not a Pallottine priest):

 

Fr Healy and Br Kaspareck will take the Minderoo to the south today. We are very sorry that Healy was not able to last here, but it would be an iniquity to keep him here even one day longer. ¹⁸⁶

 

In letters to Droste several residents expressed regret at the departure of Father Healy after only a short while on the mission. It is possible that Fr. Collins and Fr. Healy were army chaplains stationed to keep an eye on the missions during wartime.

 

The period of surveillance was over, but Chief Protector Neville became increasingly obstructionist. He wanted to charge the mission £50 to use the house formerly occupied by the police constable at Beagle Bay. Fr. Raible offered £25. It became a makeshift leper hospital for people awaiting transport to Channel Island near Darwin, until it was wrecked in the 1935 cyclone.¹⁸⁷ It should have been made available for the Pallottines free of charge. The missionaries were casting around for sources of income. Fr Raible wanted to enter into sandalwooding on the Aboriginal reserve, but Chief Protector Neville refused permission. An experimental rice farm at Beagle Bay had failed in 1926 and in the next few years several different types of seed rice were trialled. Beagle Bay supported 188 people and received government subsidies for 45 (at three pence per day per head – a penny per meal), while Lombadina received nothing. The Sydney diocese collected £19 and when £50 came from Perth, Fr. Raible thanked the Archbishop saying ‘when you receive this letter there will be nothing left of the £50’. ¹⁸⁸

 

Fr. Raible greatly expanded the spheres of activity of the Australian Pallottines. The science of anthropology was slowly becoming established in Australia and the missionaries now extended their area of interest into ethnography. A consignment of artefacts was sent to the Mission Museum in Limburg where the Cameroon linguist Fr. Nekes was becoming interested in the Australian languages and lectured on ‘the pagan cultures of Beagle Bay’.¹⁸⁹

 

Raible undertook extensive horseback journeys through the Kimberley, was alarmed at the high incidence of leprosy and pursued Fr. Droste's idea of geographical expansion. The Beagle Bay site was clearly not favourable for income-earning activities that would sustain the mission. Fr. Droste had sent a photo of Moola Bulla to Kugelmann in 1926 showing

 

'The government station that I’d like to have as a mission. It has 15,000 head of cattle and eventually the government would like to relinquish it.'¹⁹⁰

 

Fr. Raible considered acquiring at least one the government stations - either Moola Bulla (established 1910) or Munja (at Walcott Inlet, established 1918) or the Forrest River Anglican mission (established in 1913 and near the site of a massacre in 1926), which he thought was being taken over by the government.¹⁹¹ The government stations had a very poor reputation, noted by the Moseley Royal Commission in 1934. The Chief Protector, on the other hand, wanted missions turned into government stations, not vice versa, and very soon the two were locked in battle. In 1934 Raible became naturalized and acquired the lease for Rockhole cattle station adjacent to the Moola Bulla government station, testing the powers of the Chief Protector who felt that he needed to be consulted.¹⁹²

 

More staff were recruited, but not primarily for Beagle Bay. Fr. Raible acquired a farm property at Tardun in the southern wheatbelt. In November 1930 Fr. Franz Hügel and Fr. Ernst Worms arrived together with Brothers Boettcher,Tautz and Schüngel. Brothers Franz Nissl, Paul Müller and Bernhard Stracke arrived in May 1931 to staff a new farm at Tardun. Br. Wollseifer was now sent for a holiday to Germany, from which he returned in 1932 with Br. Ochsenknecht, who was also posted to Tardun. Tardun eventually subsidized Beagle Bay with about 500 bags of wheat and an estimated £400-£500 per year.¹⁹³ The staff was again strengthened with the arrival of Fr. John Herold, Fr. Anton Wellems and Br. Franz Hanke on the Orsova in Fremantle on 26 June 1934.

 

Fr. Raible left for Europe in early 1935 and on 10 December 1935 the newly consecrated Bishop Raible arrived back at Fremantle on the Orama via Naples, with Prof. Nekes, Br. Anton Omasmeier, Br. Richard Besenfelder, and three seminarians for a new missionary training college in Melbourne. He also brought two experts in tropical medicine, Dr. Johann Betz and Ludwina Betz-Korte to address the emerging problem of leprosy in the Kimberley. The press had already announced his vision for the vicariate. (The West Australian, 24 September 1935)

 

The Moseley Royal Commission in 1934

 

There was much trouble in the Kimberleys and humanitarian protests kept the treatment of Aboriginal people in public view. Leprosy was spreading, while police brutality and reports of massacres, such as at Forrest River in 1926, added fuel to the fire of public concern. The chaining of prisoners became a matter of public concern. The Department’s only executive arm were the police, and Chief Protector Neville stated that despite his attempts to train those who had been appointed as local protectors of Aborigines under the 1905 Act, most remained ignorant of their duties. Activist Mary Montgomery Bennett, teacher at Mt. Margaret Mission and bitterly opposing Neville, wanted missionaries and government officers appointed as protectors instead of police constables. She declared Neville’s policy bankrupt by citing his annual report that some 30 girls who had been sent out from the Moore River Native Settlement into domestic service returned pregnant within a year. Neville wanted to be able to control more Aboriginal people, including the mixed descendants, while Bennett wanted more Aboriginal people to gain citizenship.¹⁹⁴ The other major adversary in this battle was Bishop Raible, who hoped that Neville would be sacked as a result of the inquiry.

 

In the course of his investigation, H. D. Moseley covered 14,000 miles and was shocked at the barbarous and inhumane conditions he found at the desolate Moore River government settlement, funded at £5,000 per annum.¹⁹⁵ He also visited Beagle Bay mission in 1934 and his press release praised the mission and observed that native law had not been suppressed, and corroborees were still held, albeit a little distance from the mission. ¹⁹⁶ (The West Australian, 3 July 1934). Despite all this, Moseley basically followed Neville’s plans to extend the reach of the department over mixed descendants, with recommendations that formed the basis of new legislation in 1936. He also recommended the establishment of 'native hospitals' in the north, and subsequently such hospitals were opened in Broome and Wyndham and a leprosarium in Derby, and a medical inspector appointed in 1935. ¹⁹⁷

 

Progressing Beagle Bay

 

Cyclone damage at Beagle Bay, July 1935. Photo by Br. Hanke. Source: Australien - Missionsstationen Kasten 18 ZAPP

In early 1935 Beagle Bay was destroyed by the worst cyclone in its history, which claimed 141 lives in the Broome district. ‘Not one building was unharmed’ wrote Fr. Bleischwitz in his unpublished 'History of the Australian Mission'. Br. Tautz interrupted his work at Tardun and went to Beagle Bay to oversee the reconstruction, and Br. Müller spent three months repairing and improving the road to Broome. That year the mission received its first pedal wireless invented by Alfred Traeger in 1926 to facilitate John Flynn’s Australian Inland Mission flying doctor service.¹⁹⁸

   

Neville was replaced with Commissioner for Native Affairs F. I. Bray in 1940 and by the time of the Golden Jubilee of the Pallottines at Beagle Bay on 20 June 1940 everything was in order again. The Most Reverend Giovanni Panic visited as apostolic delegate from Rome for the celebration and Archbishop Redmond Prendiville of Perth recounted the founding of the mission by his predecessor Bishop Gibney. Amidst much hope for the future a convent for native sisters was opened, Regina Apostolorum. A ‘pious union of native sisters’ had been formed, called Sisters of Mary Queen of Apostles, commencing with four young novices and Sr. Augustine as mother-general, and eventually admitting about 38.¹⁹⁹ But the young women did not have their convent for long.

 

Arrested

 

Four months after the Golden Jubilee, one October morning in 1940, ‘a police sergeant and two constables arrived from Broome in two vehicles and gave the missionaries just 24 hours to pack their belongings and accompany them back to Broome’. They had no arrest warrants. The German missionaries were under suspicion of being likely to enter into subversive activities such as gun-running or propaganda.²⁰⁰ Fr. Francis Byrne (1989) describes the scene. The church bells were sounded and Fr. Hügel assembled the entire mission population at the church. Some elders gathered on the grass in front of the missionaries’ quarters and wept. More women joined in and the wail became louder, like a wailing for the dead accompanied by the church bells:

 

‘As the missionaries, with their few personal belonigings, were being loaded onto the truck and police vehicles, a mournful lament began in the Aboriginal camp. It was an eerie wail which seemed to permeate every building, every tree, every plant, every soul.’ ²⁰¹

 

Brs. Wollseifer and Krallmann, both naturalised, and the Sisters, were left behind. The other five priests and seven Brothers were told that they would be taken to the Pallottine quarters in Broome. They agreed to accompany the policemen and were transported in two police vehicles and the mission truck. But in Broome two more arrests had been made and all were taken straight to the Broome jail, already overcrowded from alien internments (at this stage Germans and Italians), three in each cell without bunks. The Sisters in Broome came every day to bring them food.²⁰² After eleven days of intensive lobbying they were released. Those who had recently arrived were ordered not to return to the north, the others were instructed to remain at their missions at Balgo, Tardun and Beagle Bay (see Pallottines). Since 1938 the northern coasts were becoming a strategically sensitive area with a build-up of military presence.

 

Surveillance and disruption during World War II

 

Completely undaunted by the arrests and suspicions, Bishop Raible achieved the payment of child endowment from the federal government in September 1941. Lombadina was not subsidized at all while Beagle Bay received a capitation subsidy for its children amounting to £429 that year.²⁰³ Subsequently the Deputy War Damage Commissioner W. S. Brown visited the mission for two days in 1943 to see ‘whether the federal money was well spent’. He arrived on a military vehicle in military company. The Bishop welcomed him to Beagle Bay and showed him around. The mission had 79 buildings, including thirty married couples accommodated in separate buildings a little away, and now had two convents, one for the Sisters of St. John of God and one for the native Sisters, who were engaged in school teaching and dressmaking and ‘other useful activities’. Brown was clearly impressed. The children

 

‘seemed very bright and intelligent and quite happy in their surroundings ….. the two points which struck me most were the brightness and attitude generally of the aborigine and half-caste children and the way in which the station was more or less self-supporting’.²⁰⁴

 

Butter and milk was produced from some 800 goats, the wheat came from Tardun and was mixed with better grade flour to supply the mission bakery, poultry and pigs and vegetable gardens supplemented the diet.

 

Actually the mission was stretched to its limits at the time. At the end of February 1942 Aboriginal people of Broome were evacuated to Beagle Bay mission, doubling the number of residents there while its staff was halved. The Broome orphanage was taken over by Australian air force, and in turn was shifted into the Regina Apostolorum convent at Beagle Bay. Amidst the overcrowding a hookworm infestation began to spread, and five children were diagnosed with leprosy during the war years.²⁰⁵ A new hospital wing and a school was built to cope with the added demand, staffed with the Sisters of St. John of God and the ‘native sisters’.

 

Australian army intelligence insisted on an Australian presence at Beagle Bay, so army chaplains were posted to Beagle Bay, Lombadina and Broome.²⁰⁶ Fr. John Flynn MSC remained at Beagle Bay from 1942 to 1944 and Fr. Greg Abbott MSC also spent two years there. When they arrived there was already a resident army officer on the mission. Fr. Cyril Stinson, an air force chaplain, replaced them in 1944. Fr. Richard (Bob) Hyland was stationed at Broome, and had to supply monthly reports on the Pallottine activities and movements. ²⁰⁷ Soldiers were also posted to Lombadina.²⁰⁸

 

The defence bases at Broome presented a military target, and on 3 March 1942 Japanese fighter planes attacked the flying boats killing 70 persons, mostly refugees from the Dutch East Indies. The following day Broome and Wyndham were attacked, and on 23 March 1942 twelve Japanese planes were flying over Beagle Bay mission. On 22 September 1943 Kalumburu mission, which was used as a refueling station for aerial attacks on Kupang, was bombed by 22 Japanese planes, killing everyone who had sought shelter in a trench, including the mission superior Fr. Thomas Gill and several children.²⁰⁹

 

In the midst of all this turmoil in the north, the government teachers at Moola Bulla resigned in 1943 in protest against the deplorable conditions on the government reserve. Eventually the 25 children who attended school there were sent to Beagle Bay, arriving in 1946.

 

After World War II

 

After the war an Australian administrator of the vicariate was appointed, Fr. Joseph Kearney, who was able to ‘imbue new life into the mission’. ²¹⁰ Br. Tautz started the building of a new monastery at Beagle Bay. The Sisters had already relaxed their confining habits during the Salesian period, and now the habits were eased again into more practical work clothes. Archbishop Prendiville and Fr. Kearney facilitated the arrival of more staff from Germany including Br. Joseph Kroen, who had been a prisoner of war in Russia, and Fr. John Jobst, who was to become Raible’s successor as Bishop in 1959. But and the north was increasingly staffed with Australian-trained Pallottines, made possible by the training facilities Bishop Raible had set up in Melbourne, and by volunteer lay helpers (see Pallottines). At the mission, some of the trusted Aboriginal men were being referred to as 'Brother'.²¹¹

 

The northern climate raged against the mission as usual. A 1957 cyclone unroofed 20 homes on the mission and twisted five windmills. The residents sheltered from the 120 mph winds in the church, which had already survived the 1935 cyclone. In the aftermath they found the mission was flooded, the road to Broome impassable, mango and banana trees uprooted, and stock drowned. ²¹²

 

 

On Tuesday 12 February it began to rain, the first strong rain since last July. P. Hornung drove his 6-ton truck ‘Inter’ to Broome to load urgently required flour stores and pick up the driver and mechanic Br. Schreiber, who had returned from holidays in the south.

It still rained all Wednesday, during the night a strong wind came up, Thursday morning I went to church to hold mass but the candles kept blowing out.

By the time I got to Consecration the altar was getting covered in dirt and dust from a hole between the ceiling and walls.

I distributed holy communion and rushed outside where sheets of corrugated iron were flying through the air. Some brothers waved to me to get away. The bell tower was wobbling. Two young men came and told me that the family area all houses were destroyed or strongly damaged. The women and children were sheltering in the community hall. A water tank was rolling past us.

I could barely make it to the Fathers' house, let alone to the dormitories.

The boys were ducking from one house to the next. The bigger boys were carrying the younger ones to the church. As we tried to save the food supplies from the store, the beams crashed over us. As Br. Nissl left the church he found two sisters lying trapped beneath a corrugated iron sheet and freed them.

By nine o’clock it was all over. The boys ran over to me and outdid each other in reporting what was damaged. One said ‘three windmills have blown away’, and another cut in: ‘no, five’. Blessed youth! The fire of thrill and adventure flickered in them as it does in boys all over the world. I told one little urchin (Bürschlein), that I should have to sell him to get some money. Anyone who knew him would surely pay me a million Pounds for him. He started to cry. I’m happy to think that he cried because the price was too low.

All the family homes were gone including the ten new ones we built last year. Later we heard the heroic stories of young men who had been running back and forth during the storm to pull young and old out of the rubble.

All five windmills on the mission were destroyed and ten more in the bush. The banana plantation was gone. Everywhere on the mission trees were uprooted and those that still stood had no leaves and twigs. The radio antenna was gone, so we could not contact the outside world. All electrical wires were torn by flying sheets of corrugated iron.

Br. Moses had just built a new house and was proud of it and felt safe. He went outside to get two old men. Next moment the whole house flew off while the three men were still sitting on the bed. Moses went for miles to look for his suitcase but couldn’t find it. Br. Michael combined the breakfast with the lunch. Afterwards some of the young men came up to me and asked ‘where do we start, Father?’ and I said, ‘start what?’ ‘Start rebuilding’. That is the spirit of this mission.²¹³

 

Meanwhile a new Commissioner for Native Affairs, S. G. Middleton, who replaced F. I. Bray in 1947, swept in the policy of assimilation and the mission period was drawing to an end. The last big structure erected by the Pallottines at Beagle Bay was the new monastery built in 1965 by Br. Joseph Schüngel with a team of four, who also built several modern residences.²¹⁴ The Pallottines withdrew after a showdown with the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs (see Pallottines) and the last Pallottine priest left the Beagle Bay community in 2000.

 

Staff associated with Beagle Bay mission

 

Abbot Ambrose Janny OSCO²¹⁵ 1890- 1897 (arrived at age 49)

Fr. Alphonse Tachon OSCO 1890-1900

Constable John Daly (postulant Brother Xavier) 1890-, local protector of Aborigines

 

Fr. Jean-Marie Janny OSCO (age 49, brother of Ambrose Janny) 1892- 1906

Fr. Anselm Lenegre OSCO (age 45) 1892-1900

Br. Etienne Pidat OSCO (age 57) 1892- June 1900 (later to Maristella, Brazil)

Br. Bonaventure Holthurin OSCO (Dutch) (age 29) 1892- June 1900 (later to Maristella)

Br. Felicien Chuzeville OSCO 1892-1900 cook

Br. Francis of Assissi Jorcin OSCO (age 44) 1892- 28 January 1893 (died while swimming)

 

Fr. Ermenfroi Nachin OSCO 1895- 1899

Fr. Bernard le Louarn OSCO 1895-1899

Fr. Marie Joseph Delamasure OSCO 1895-1896

Fr. Nicholas Emo 1895-(Broome, BBM, Cygnet Bay, Lombadina) 1915

Br. Narcisse Janne OSCO 1895-1900 (later Fr. Narcissus Jen)

Br. Antoine Boetens OSCO 1895-1900

Br. Bernard Joosten OSCO 1895-1900

Br. Francisque (or Francis) Bootsveld OSCO 1895-1900

Br. Placide Leobal OSCO 1895-1900

Br. Jean Chaleron OSCO 1895-?

 

Fr. Joachim O’Dwyer from Coolgardie (Australian postulant), 1900

Br. Jacques (James Montague) (Australian postulant)

Sebastian Damaso, Filipino assistant (mostly in Broome)

Thomas Puertollano, Filipino assistant

Felix Gnodonbor, Nyul-Nyul instructor

 

Fr. Georg Walter PSM²¹⁶ 1901-1906 (listed as rector 1904-1910)

Fr. Patrick White PSM 1901 – ca. 1902, 1904

Br. August Sixt PSM 1901-1906

Br. Matthias Kasparek PSM 1901-1930

Fr. Heinrich Rensmann PSM December 1902 – January 1904

Br. Bernhard Hoffmann PSM December 1902 - 1906

Br. Johann Graf PSM December 1902 -1951 (arrested 1940)

Br. Rudolf Zac PSM December 1902-1914

Br. Rudolf Wollseifer, PSM 1903 - 1952

Br. Albert Labonte PSM 1903-1912<

Br. Raimund Wesely PSM 1903-1906

 

Fr. Russell, diocesan priest 1904

Mr. Randle, school teacher 1904

 

Br. Heinrich Krallmann

Br. Franz

Br. Alfons Herrmann PSM May 1904-1909

Br. Anton Helmprecht

Fr. Joseph Bischofs PSM ca. March 1905-1916

Fr. Thomas Bachmair PSM February 1907 (listed as rector 1910-1923)

 

 

St. John of God Sisters May 1907

Sister Antonio (Bridget O’Brien, aka Sister Antonia) 1907-1908

Sister Bernard (Emily Greene, aka Sister Bernardine) 1907-1908

Sister Benedict (Teresa Courtney) 1907-1908

Sister Patrick (Bridget O’Neill) 1907-

Sister Margaret (Annabella Carmody) 1907-

Sister Michael (May Power) 1907-

Sister John (Elllie Walker) 1907-

Sr. Bridget (Katie Kavanagh) 1907-

Sr. Joseph (Blanche McCaffery) 1907-

In April 1915 Droste’s diary refers to five sisters at Beagle Bay. Between 1914 and 1916 it also refers to Sister 7^th Dolor, Sister 6^th Dolor, Sr. Carrying of the Cross, Sr. Flight, Sr. Laetare (meaning Joy), Sr. Sacred Heart, Sr. Nativity, Sr. Agatha, and Sr. Xavier (perhaps M. Francis Xavier Sullivan) but it is not clear which of these were normally at Broome, Beagle Bay or Lombadina, or visiting.

 

 

Fr. Wilhelm Droste February 1909-1929 (listed as rector 1923-1933)

Fr. Theodor Traub PSM February 1909-1912

Br. Matthias Bringmann PSM February 1909

 

Joe Marselino, skipper

Francis Teo, skipper 1914

Joseph Merry and Charlie, crew members, 1914

Fr. John Creagh (CSSR) Broome 1916-1923

 

Fr. Collins and Fr. Healy, presumably army chaplains

 

Ep. Ernest Coppo SDB Broome, 1923-1924

Fr. John Siara SDB (Lombadina) 1924

Br. Caesar Asselli SDB (Broome) 1923-1924

Fr. John Setaro SDB (Broome) 1923-1924

Fr. Erminio Rossetti SDB (Broome) 1923-1924

Brother Celesto Acerni SDB (Broome) 1923-1924

 

Fr. Benedikt Püsken PSM August 1925 (arrested 1940) rector 1933-1938

Fr. Spangenberg PSM October 1927-1937

Ep. Otto RaiblePSM 1928-1953 (Broome)

Br. Paul Ratajski PSM 1929, 1932 – 1941 (arrested 1940)

Fr. Franz Hügel PSM November 1930 (arrested 1940) rector 1938-1951

Fr. Ernst WormsPSM November 1930-1937 (Broome and visiting)

Br. Anton Boettcher PSM November 1930 (left the Society after WWII, died Bunbury 1993)

Br. Josef Tautz PSM November 1930 intermittent (arrested 1940) - 1985

Br. Josef Schüngel November 1930 (arrested 1940)

Br. Paul Müller PSM May 1931 intermittent -1940 (arrested 1940)

Br. Bernhard Stracke PSM May 1931-1934, 1941- ca. 1946 (left the Society)

Br. Franz Hanke PSM June 1934 (arrested 1940)

Br. Richard Besenfelder PSM December 1935-1940 (arrested 1940)

Dr. Johann Betz and Ludwina Betz-Korte December 1935 - 1937

Fr. Leo Hornung PSM 1939- 1940 (arrested), rector 1957-1960

 

 

Fr. John Flynn MSC army chaplain 1942- 1944

Fr. Greg Abbott MSC army chaplain (perhaps 1940-1942)

Fr. Cyril Stinson, air force chaplain 1944-(1946?), later Director of the Catholic Episcopal Migration and Welfare Associaton of Western Australia

Fr. Richard Hyland, army chaplain

 

Fr. Roger McGinley SAC listed as rector 1951-1954

Fr. Brian Murray listed as rector 1960

Fr. Kevin McKelson SAC listed as rector 1960-1966, 1970-1973

Fr. Joseph Kearney SAC listed as rector 1966-1970

Fr. Joe Butscher SAC listed as rector 1973-1976

Joe Butscher rector listed as 1970-1973

Fr. John Mcguire SAC listed as rector 1976-1979

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Rosendo to Strele, 21 May 1881 in Anthony Strele SJ 'History of the Mission to the Aborigines in the part of Australia which is called Northern Territory' translated from Latin by F. J. Dennett SJ, Archives of the Society of Jesus, Hawthorn.

2 Sunday Times (Perth) 27 November 1927: 33. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302213

3 John Harris One Blood – 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: a Story of Hope Sutherland 1990:440.

4 Abschrift, in Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l.(3) ZAPP.

5 Gibney Diary available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302213.

6 Gibney Diary, 9 June 1890,Sunday Times (Perth) 27 November 1927: 33. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302213.

7 Gibney Diary, 19 June 1890,Sunday Times (Perth) 27 November 1927: 33. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302213.

8 It has not been possible to verify the local names rendered by Gibney. Gibney Diary, 26 June 1890, ‘Mission Work In W.A.’, Sunday Times, 4 December 1927: 24. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302350.

9 Gibney Diary, 31 July 1890, ‘Mission Work In W.A.’, Sunday Times, 4 December 1927: 24. Retrieved January 21, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60302350

10 Gibney Diary, 23 August 1890.

11 Gibney Diary, 29 August 1890.

12 Daisy Bates, Gibney Diary, 9 June 1890,Sunday Times (Perth) 27 November 1927: 33.

13 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond, Spectrum 2001:21. Exactly who arrived when is not easy to decipher. Wilson claims that seven more, mostly French, Trappist missionaries arrived in 1892, this count must include Fr. Janny who was accompanying the six new recruits. Martin Wilson Ministry among Aboriginal People, Blackburn, Collins, 1988:10. A Cistercian publication in 1895 declares that the 1895 consignment consisted of five priests and five brothers: Fr. Ermenfroi, Fr. Bernard, Fr. Marie Joseph, Fr. Narcisse, and Fr. Nicholas Emo and Brothers Antoine, Joseph, Francisque, Placide, and Jean. Marie-Joseph ‘Nôtre Dame du Sacre Coeur à Beagle Bay’, 15 May 1895, L’Union Cistercienne, 2, 16 October 1895:315-355. However, instead of Br. Joseph we find a Br. Bernard Joosten in the list given by Nailon (2005:27), who does not indicate sources.

14 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):29.

15 ‘The Trappist Mission At Beagle Bay’ The West Australian, 3 November 1896, p. 2. Retrieved December 16, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3101762

16 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):33-34. On p. 273 Nailon writes that an Emmanuel was among the first twelve to be baptized.

17 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Vol I. Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:273.

18 Fr. Marie Bernard to Limburg, 10 December 1900, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l.(3) ZAPP.

19 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):66.

20 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:153.

21 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 154.

22Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Vol I. Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, (n.d.) 2005 :273.

23Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 154.

24 Fr. Marie Bernard, Sept Fons to Limburg, 10 December 1900, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l. (3) ZAPP.

25 "Trappist Mission At Beagle Bay." Western Mail (Perth) 15 Dec 1900: 71. Gibney Press Report

26 John Harris One Blood – 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: a Story of Hope Sutherland 1990:444.

27 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

28 Daisy Bates, Australasian 10 August 1929 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:55.

29 Emo to General, 4 July 1899 ‘un attachement trop naturel de ces deux pères mutuellement (et ce n’est pas mon seul qui croit le remarquer)’ (Nailon 2005:55). Nailon gives the name of Br. Narcisee as Janne, and later Narcissus Jen (apparently a Latin rendition of the name), unlike the three brothers Ambrose Janny, Jean-Marie Janny and the Abbott of Sept Fons Felix Janny. Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005. However it is nevertheless possible that they were related and therefore felt a brotherly attachment that was considered inappropriate in a monastic setting. On the other hand, different interpretations also offer themselves.

30 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

31Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:91.

32 12 February 1900 Emo to Sept Fons in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:72.

33 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:91.

34 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

35 Emo to Sept Fons 2 March 1900 (received 19 April) in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005: 86.

36 John Harris One Blood – 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: a Story of Hope Sutherland 1990:444.

37 Fr. Marie Bernard, Sept Fons to Limburg, 10 December 1900, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l.(3) ZAPP.

38 If Br. Joseph was expelled from the Order he may have disappeared from the records. It may also be that this is Br. Jean Chaleron.

39 Emo to Sept Fons 13 June 1900, in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:86ff.

40 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:212.

41 Emo to Sept Fons, 6 January 1901, in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I).

42 It is not clear who the ‘three indispensable brothers’ were. They might be the three local novices, Br. Xavier (former policemean John Daly), Br. Jacques (James Montague) and Sebastian Damaso, but the latter had not received his habit. Fr. Joachim O'Dwyer was an Australian postulant, and may also have been counted as a Brother at this time. Details are from Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:22.

43 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

44Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):212ff.

45 Emo to Sept Fons, September 1900 and 2 March 1900, in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005:142,91.

46 Abschrift, in Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l. (3) ZAPP.

47 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

48 It is not clear who is meant by Br. John. Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard, Abbot of Sept Fons, to Bishop Gibney, 26 January 1901, in draft MS for an unpublished history by Sr. Brigida Nailon, Pallottine Archives, Rossmoyne.

49 Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard, Abbot of Sept Fons, to Bishop Gibney, 26 January 1901, in draft MS for an unpublished history by Sr. Brigida Nailon, Pallottine Archives, Rossmoyne.

50 "Trappist Mission At Beagle Bay." Western Mail (Perth) 15 Dec 1900: 71. Gibney Press Report

51 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

52 "Trappist Mission At Beagle Bay." Western Mail (Perth) 15 Dec 1900: 71. Gibney Press Report

53 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

54 Gibney news release "Trappist Mission At Beagle Bay." Western Mail (Perth) 15 Dec 1900: 71.

55 Roth Report, Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives – Report, Watson Government Printer, Perth 1905.

56 The figures differ from source to source. According to Fr. Marie Bernard they leased 10,000 ‘Morgen’, whereas according to Roth the land was 100,000 acres, with 10,000 eligible for freehold. Fr. Marie Bernard states that the reserve land was 700,000 acres, according to Roth it was 600,000 acres. Roth states that the minimum improvement on land required by the lease was £5,000, Bishop Gibney gives the figure as £6,000.

57 Elizabeth Salter Daisy Bates, Sydney, Angus and Robertson 1971:81.

58 Elizabeth Salter Daisy Bates, Sydney, Angus and Robertson 1971:84.

59 Elizabeth Salter Daisy Bates, Sydney, Angus and Robertson 1971:84.

60 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

61 Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181. In March 1900 Emo planned to fetch Fr. Joachim O’Dwyer from Coolgardie, who wanted to join the Trappists. In Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):91.

62 Elizabeth Salter Daisy Bates, Sydney, Angus and Robertson 1971:84.

63 Roth Report, Walter Roth, Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives – Report, Watson Government Printer, Perth 1905.

64 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:52.

65 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):270.

66 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 29.

67 Nailon 2005 (I):270.

68 Bischofs report for Beagle Bay to Premier Moore, 6 May 1909 or 1910 microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

69 Bishop Gibney, The Palace, Perth to Walter, 25 May 1902, Australien 1900-1907 B7d, l (3) ZAPP. According to Emo the government required a minimum of ten. Emo to Sept Fons 25 Nov 1900 36pp continued in January 1901 in Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):148-181.

70 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:31.

71 Rensmann to Kugelmann, May 1903, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d. l.(3) ZAPP.

72 Bischofs, PA to NJ Moore CMB, Primier, Beagle Bay Mission 6 May 1909

Australien: Nachlass Kugelmannn B7d,l (1) ZAPP.

73Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:52.

74 Australien 1900-1907 B7d,l (3) ZAPP.

75 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (II):70.

76 Bischofs, PA to NJ Moore CMB, Premier, Beagle Bay Mission 6 May 1909

Australien: Nachlass Kugelmannn B7d,l (1) ZAPP.

77Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):278, 34.

78 Rensmann to Kugelmann, May 1903, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d. l. (3) ZAPP.

79 Derby - Journal of Constable Cunningham (739) 14.2.1904 to 29.2.1904. Item 1904/1366 Condition of Natives around Beagle Bay, Trappers Inlet and Pender Bay SROWA.

80 Roberta Cowan, Pallottine Archives Rossmoyne, pers. comm.

81 Wollseifer at Beagle Bay to Provinzial Schulte in Limburg, 6 February 1952 in Wollseifer, P1-25, ZAPP. See letter

82 Evidence by Byrne in Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives – Report, Watson Government Printer, Perth 1905 (Roth Report).

83 1907 list of state endowment to native and half-caste institutions, Microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

84 Premier to Bishop Gibney 21 May 1904 microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

85 Undersecretary to Bishop Gibney 19 July 1904 and Harry Prinsep to Walter 5 September 1905 (file copy) microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

86 6 November 1905 Bischofs to Kugelmann in Australien 1900-1907 B7d,l (3) ZAPP. Also comments by Wollseifer, 20 February 1903 and 15 June 1910.

87 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:52.

88 6 November 1905 Bischofs to Kugelmann in Australien 1900-1907 B7d,l (3) ZAPP.

89 Walter to Provincial from Broome, 11 Marc 1906 (typed), Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l.(3) ZAPP.

90 Naturalisation Certificate, Joseph Bischofs, Beagle Bay, 1907/6692 A1 NAA, barcode 8332, (http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ListingReports/ItemsListing.aspx)

91 Walter to Provincial from Broome, 11 March 1906 (typed) Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l.(3) ZAPP.

92 Bischofs at Beagle Bay to Provinzial (typed) 2pp, 4 February 1907, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l. (3) ZAPP.

93 Bischofs to Kugelmann, 6 November 1905, Australien 1900-1907 B7 d.l. (3) ZAPP.

94 Brigida Nailon CSB Emo and San Salvador, Echuca, Brigidine Sisters, 2005 (I):70.

95 Bischofs, PA to NJ Moore CMB, Premier, Beagle Bay Mission 6 May 1909 Australien: Nachlass Kugelmannn B7d,l(1) ZAPP.

96 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

97 Bachmair to Kugelmann, 16 August 1910, Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

98 Bischofs, PA to NJ Moore CMB, Premier, Beagle Bay Mission 6 May 1909 Australien: Nachlass Kugelmannn B7d,l (1) ZAPP.

99 Berichte über Ereignisse im Missionshaus Limburg 1980-1912, p.7, in Australien 1900-1907 B7d, l (3) ZAPP.

100 Br Matthias Wollseifer to Fr Max Kugelmann PSM, 15 June 1910,

Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

101 North-West Australian phonograms recorded by Beagle Bay missionaries, 1910. Ellis was informed that the sound recordings held at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin may have been produced by Hermann Klaatsch. Catherine J. Ellis Report to AIATSIS on research in Germany during study leave 1990, AIATSIS MS.

102 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

103 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

104 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

105 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

106 Chief Protector C. F. Gale, 30 December 1910, Col Sec report ‘Aborigines and Fisheries’, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

107 Bureau of Meteorology, Tropical Cyclones affecting Broome, http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/broome.shtml accessed November 2013.

108 It is not clear which lugger was damaged in 1910. According to Nailon (2005:242) the Pio was wrecked in an April 1912 cyclone, and the Leo was the pearling lugger sold earlier.

109 Bachmair to Kugelmann, 19 September 1911, Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

110 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:59.

111 Bischofs to Provincial, 9 January 1912, Australien: Nachlass Kugelmannn B7d, l (1) ZAPP.

112 Kasparek to Kugelmann, Beagle Bay, Easter 1913, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

113 Kasparek to Kugelmann, Beagle Bay, Easter 1913, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

114 Bachmair to Kugelmann, 19 September 1911, Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

115 Bachmair to Kugelmann, Broome 31 January 1912, Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

116 Bachmair at Beagle Bay to Kugelmann in Masio, 20 August 1912, Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

117 'The Mission for Aborigines', The Catholic Press, 2 May 1912: 29. Web. 30 September 2013, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105179200.

118 Kasparek to Kugelmann, Easter 1913 Australien, Nachlass Kugelmann, B7d.l (1) ZAPP.

119 Bachmair Report for Beagle Bay 2 October 1913, 1913 Chief Protectors Report for Beagle Bay, microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

120 Pender Bay - Journal of Constable Johnston (902) 1.3.1912 to 31.3.1912 ITEM-1912/2621 SROWA.

121 Pender Bay - Journal of Constable J T Johnston (902) 1.1.1913 to 31.1.1913. ITEM-1913/1202 SROWA.

122 Pender Bay - Journal of Constable J T Johnston (902) 1.1.1913 to 31.1.1913 ITEM-1913/1202 SROWA.

123 Pender Bay - Journal of Constable Rea (877) 30.10.1913 to 19.11.1913. ITEM-1913/7458 SROWA.

124 Journal of Constable Rea 877, Pender Bay, 14 September 1914 to 5 October 1914. ITEM-1914/6740 SROWA.

125 Journal of Constable Rea 877, Pender Bay, 14 September 1914 to 5 October 1914. ITEM-1914/6740 SROWA.

126 Journal of Constable Rea 877, Pender Bay, 1 November 1914 to 24 November 1914. ITEM-1914/7860 SROWA.

127 Journal of Constable Rea (877), Pender Bay. ITEM-1915/5821 SROWA.

128 Droste diary 8-11 December 1913 in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

129 Droste diary, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

130 1 October 1914 Beagle Bay to Gale CPA microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

131 Pender Bay - Journal of Constable Rea (877) 12.10.1913 to 29.10.1913 ITEM-1913/7062 SROWA.

132 16 October 1914 Rea to Drewry, 23 October 1914 Inspector Drewry report in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

133 Attorney-General to Home and Territories 16 May 1924 barcode 43670 NAA,  (http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp)

134 Droste diary 8 October 1914, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

135 Const. Rea report to Drewry 16 October 1914 in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

136 Droste diary 17 January and 26 January, 19 February 1915, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

137 Journal of Constable Rea 877, Pender Bay, 1 November 1914 to 24 November 1914 ITEM-1914/7860 [special report could not be located at SROWA].

138 Const. Rea to Drewry 8 November 1914 in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

139 1 October 1914 Beagle Bay to Gale CPA microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

140 Droste diary 26 April 1916, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

141 1 October 1914 Beagle Bay to Gale CPA microfilm 778 1906 Cons 255 SROWA.

142 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:44, 77.

143 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:48.

144 13 January 1916 Thomas Rea, Pender Bay to Inspector Drewry in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

145 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:48.

146 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:49.

147 13 March 1916 Commissioner of Police, Perth, to Australian Espionage Bureau, Melbourne, in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

148 Droste diary 10 and 11 April 1916, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

149 13 April 1916 Melbourne to Robert Connell Comm Police Perth, in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

150 19 April 1916 Piesse to Major Steward, in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

151Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 50.

152 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:49.

153 Constable F. H. Watson at Beagle Bay to Intelligence Section Major Corbett 9 June 1917, PP14/1/0 – 4/4/22 (B795928) C, NAA.

154 Dr. Herbert Basedow was born in Adelaide and studied in Germany. He was Chief Medical Officer and Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory for a few weeks in mid-1911 before resigining in protest, and was undertaking a geological expedition in the west Kimberley during 1916 taking many photographs. B. Basedow, The Basedow Story: A German South Australian Heritage, Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide, 1990.

155 Droste diary, 7 June 1916, 10 July 1916, 30 June 1916, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

156 7 September 1916 Navy to Major George Steward CMG, in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

157 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:51.

158 24 June 1918 file note, in Father Bischoff – German Mission Station at Beagle Bay A367 1917/50 Barcode 61882 NAA.

159 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:52 and

Fr. Droste diary, 26 September 1916, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

160 Droste diary, 14 September 1916, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

161 Droste diary, 1 January 1917 in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP.

162 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:55-56.

163 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:75.

164 Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Triumphat. Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:63.

165Chris Jeffrey, ‘An Interview with Bernhard Stracke, (age 73), 6 August 1981, Battye Library Oral History Programme, transcript, WA State Library.

166 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:69.

167 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:68.

168 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:53.

169 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:14.

170 "Beagle Bay Mission." (First Section) Sunday Times (Perth) 16 May 1926: 3 Web. 30 Sep 2013 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58241791>.

171 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:71.

172 Droste diary 4 Nov 1923, in Droste, Wilhelm P. P1-17 ZAPP, and Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:69.

173 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:68.

174 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:81 citing Rosie Victor and Bernard George.

175 Bishop of Kimberley, WA, Admission of German Missionaries, 1925/31-2 AI barcode 43670 NAA.

176 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:70-72.

177 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 80.

178 Joseph Dugal in Sr Brigida Nailon and Fr. Francis Huegel, This is your Place – Beagle Bay Mission, Pallottine Centre, Broome, 1990.

179 Beagle Bay (Pender Bay) Journals ITEM-1928/6501 v4 SROWA.

180 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:79.

181 Bishop of Kimberley, WA, Admission of German Missionaries, 1925/31-2 AI barcode 43670 NAA.

182 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 80.

183Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:111.

184 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001: 80.

185 Otto Raible in Broome to P Droste, 1 November 1929 in Droste, Wilhelm [P] P 1 Nr 17 ZAPP.

186 Otto Raible in Broome to P Droste, 1 November 1929 in Droste, Wilhelm [P] P 1 Nr 17 ZAPP.

187 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:87, 98.

188 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:87.

189 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:79.

190 Australien Nachlass Kugelmann B7d l 1 ZAPP.

191 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:103.

192 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:113.

193 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:97.

194 Anna Haebich, For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988:330-345.

195 Anna Haebich, For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988:330-345.

196 'Care Of Natives', The West Australian 3 Jul 1934: 17. Web. 12 May 2011.

197 Anna Haebich, For their own Good – Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940, UWA Press 1988:330-345.

198 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:101.

199 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:139, Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:115, 98.

200 Francis Byrne A Hard Road: Brother Frank Nissl 1888-1980, a life of service to the Aborigines of the Kimberleys. Nedlands, Tara House 1989:83.

201 Francis Byrne A Hard Road: Brother Frank Nissl 1888-1980, a life of service to the Aborigines of the Kimberleys. Nedlands, Tara House 1989:83.

202 Francis Byrne A Hard Road: Brother Frank Nissl 1888-1980, a life of service to the Aborigines of the Kimberleys. Nedlands, Tara House 1989:83.

203 Beagle Bay Mission, Broome, Western Australia, B77 PT1 A885, NAA.

204 Beagle Bay Mission, Broome, Western Australia, B77 PT1 A885, NAA.

205 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994: 111-112.

206 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:40.

207 Francis Byrne A Hard Road: Brother Frank Nissl 1888-1980, a life of service to the Aborigines of the Kimberleys. Nedlands, Tara House 1989:89.

Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:111.

208 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:153.

209 Margaret Zucker From Patrons to Partners, A history of the Catholic church in the Kimberley, Broome, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994:112-113.

210 Letter from Bishop in Broome to Raible, 30 July 1964 in Raible, Otto, ep (Nachlass) ZAPP.

211 ‘Mission Beagle Bay durch Wirbelstrum zerstört’ Pallottis Werk, Vol. 8 Nr. 2 June 1957:12-14.

212 Francis Byrne A Hard Road: Brother Frank Nissl 1888-1980, a life of service to the Aborigines of the Kimberleys. Nedlands, Tara House 1989:103.

213 ‘Mission Beagle Bay durch Wirbelstrum zerstört’ Pallottis Werk, Vol. 8 Nr. 2 June 1957:12-14.

214 Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:89.

215 Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO), colloquially referred to as Trappists.

216 SAC (Society of the Catholic Apostolate) and PSM (Pious Society of Missions) both identify the bearer as a member of the Pallottine order during different periods.