Pursuing Bishop Raible’s strategy for Pallottine extension across the whole Kimberley, in the 1930s Fr. Ernst Worms [1] explored the areas south of Halls Creek as far as Gregory Salt Lake (now Lake Gregory) in the Great Sandy Desert (now Tanami Desert). Aboriginal people who were not yet within the ambit of the pastoral stations were travelling along their traditional trails that had become the Canning stock route. In October 1938 Worms and Raible explored that area to identify a potential new mission field and resolved that the semi-desert south of Billiluna station would be a promising location for a new mission station. By this time it was clear that the Chief Protector of Aborigines Neville was going to ensure the failure of Rockhole (close to Moola Bulla), so everything would have to be relocated to a new site.

 

At Billiluna station on the Canning Stock route about 160km south of Halls Creek, Worms and Raible befriended manager Jack Barry and in early 1939, though the efforts of the local member A. Coverley MLA, a reservation of about 5 million acres was declared for a ‘native mission’ south of ‘Gregory Salt Lakes’.¹ In May 1939 the Bishop again visited Billiluna guided by Dick Smith, and settled on a site 60 km south of Lake Gregory, which he called Bishopdale. ²

 

Preparations were made to wind up Rockhole and drive the stock south to the new location. Fr. Alphonse Bleischwitz, who was to be in charge of the new station, described the ‘Abrahamic cattle drive’ through the desert from Rockhole to Balgo, led by Br. Contemprée via Ruby Plains (on Wolfe Creek), and from there in an almost complete circle, via ‘Comet’, an abandoned station east of Gregory Salt Lake, Doomendora (or Dooma Dora south of Balgo Hills Mission) and Tjaluwan (a well and rock pool on Djaluwon Creek flowing into Lake Gregory from the south). (These places do not appear on maps now.) Eventually the lack of water forced them to split into three camps thirty or forty kilometers apart: Doomendora, Comet and Tajluwan.³

 

Wandering in the desert

 

The caravan leaving Rockhole on 8 September 1939 consisted of Br. Frank Nissl and three men from Beagle Bay mission and their families: tracker and water-finder Paddy ‘Jingle-Jangle’ (Merandijan) herding some 1,000 sheep and twenty goats, Philip Cox as cook and teamster on a massive wagon built by Br. Krallmann pulled by twenty-five donkeys, and fourteen horses in charge of Dick Smith who was also the scout. Bertha Paddy and her two daughters were also in the party. Bertha Paddy also mentions Maggie and Joseph Kelly and Fabian and his brother. ⁴

 

First there were some discussions about whether or not leaving on a Wednesday meant bad luck. But the missionaries argued that it was the Feast of the Birthday of our Lady and that this meant they would be under the protection of Mother Mary, and demonstratively intoned the Salve Regina, so that settled it. The first 40-km trek, to Ruby Plains led along Kangaroo and Mary Creeks, turned by a good mid-year rainfall into ‘biblical running streams’.⁵ Walter D’Arcy at Ruby Plains provided outback hospitality and twenty more goats were added to the herd.

 

The fighting among the billy goats became a nightly nuisance so that a resentful complaint of ‘bloody goats’ often rose from the camp at night. Two goats kept locking horns and were nicknamed Hitler and Mussolini. Encountering a dozen wild donkeys as large as horses Br. Frank tried to catch one of them but after a determined wrestle he ended up in the dust. The week-long southward trek from Ruby Plains to the Canning stock route was through arid country with dried-up water-holes. It took three weeks to traverse 160 km to Billiluna Station, the southernmost station before the desert, where the party rested for two days.

 

Leaving the stock route in a south-easterly direction for a few days they reached the abandoned Old Billiluna station and were able to reinstate the windmill to water the stock. From there they trekked to the southern end of the Billiluna run to another abandoned station which they called Comet, after the brand of the windmill still standing. Br. Frank managed to repair it and they remained for six weeks.

 

Fr. Alphonse Bleischwitz and Br. Stephen Contemprée left Rockhole on 16 October and were catching up with the main party in ‘Betsy’, a noisy old three-ton diesel truck packed to the brim. At the Old Station some thirty kilometers out of Comet they got bogged and Br. Contemprée set out on foot to get help, leaving Fr. Bleischwitz (and possibly a driver?) with the loaded truck. Instead of backtracking to Billiluna (which was closer but may have involved crossing Sturt Creek) he walked about 30km to ‘Comet’. Although Byrne’s account refers only to Br. Contemprée walking and Fr. Alphonse waiting by the truck, it may be assumed that this party was not without Aboriginal help. The rescue party from ‘Comet’ arrived with the donkey wagon and camels to unload Betsy, and the truck returned to Rockhole to pick up the remaining goods for the removal and rejoined them a few days later.

 

By this time Dick Smith had tracked out a possible route - this time completely without tracks across sand and spinifex - to Tjaluwan, a 60-strong Aboriginal camp along a creek with a billabong and rock pools, about halfway between ‘Comet’ and ‘Bishopdale’. Bishopdale had water and pastures, but they found it unreachable, surrounded by hills (referred to as ‘Bishop Range’) and the valley had hardly any firewood let alone timber for building. Whether this was the reason why the site was ignored, or whether there were completely different discussions taking place among the traditional owners of the site, the party was now without a place to go to. Dick Smith, who had accompanied the Bishop on his previous journeys and knew the area, suggested a retreat to Tjaluwan as a temporary site.⁶

 

They had brought pipes, tools, a windlass and a windmill and constructed a 200-gallon tank to pump water from the billabong. Their herds would exhaust the billabong within a fortnight, so they scouted for water with pick and shovel and dynamite, using the windlass to dig shafts at the rate to three or four feet a day in sauna-like conditions. Fr. Bleischwitz, who had just arrived from Germany, recalled:

 

I remember well during a heat wave the temperature remained at between 43 and 43°C for three weeks straight. At 10 at night it might still be 40°C. We [Nissl and Bleischwitz] both fought for our lives because of the heat. It was a terrible strain on our physical and mental powers.⁷

 

Meanwhile they had to split up. Br. Stephen Contemprée and a small party remained at Tjaluwan to continue well digging. Fr. Alphonse Bleischwitz, Br. Frank Nissl and Paddy drove the flock back to ‘Comet’ and made some makeshift habitations. During a six-week wait they were lashed by sand storms, and they scrounged for firewood, tailed some mares that were apparently heading home for Rockhole, and with their helpers from Beagle Bay prayed rosaries to assist the water diggers at Tjaluwan. Fr. Alphonse visited them a couple of times to see how the digs progressed and on 8 December, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, they struck water and proceeded to dig a well. On 18 December an Aboriginal courier delivered a message to ‘Comet’ that there had been rain at Tjaluwan, enough to sustain the herd for a few months, so the party from ‘Comet’ moved to Tjaluwan, now in their fourth month of wandering in the desert. Just in time for Christmas they erected a large open shed with some corrugated iron covered in branches and spent the holy night ‘in even poorer conditions than those of the shepherds in Bethlehem’.⁸

 

In March 1940 they moved the stock to Doomendora, just south of Old Balgo. It had good pasture but brackish water which only lasted a few weeks before they had to retreat again to Tjaluwan and ‘Comet’. For over a year they were split into three camps with Fr. Alphonse riding between them, his thin figure, Byrne writes, appearing like a mirage over the desert horizon. A wild turkey was ‘savoured with all the passion of a rare cuisine’ and the missionaries transported themselves to a Munich beer-garden prompted by a ‘billycan running over with boiling tea and the aromatic scent of gum leaves’. ⁹

 

They outstayed their welcome at Tjaluwan within six months. Sheep were speared during the night and the missionaries reported this to a police patrol who took three Aborigines to Halls Creek. Also, Billiluna was now under new management, and Germany had entered into war in September 1939. The German missionaries were no longer welcome on the southern end of the Billiluna run.¹⁰

 

Old Balgo 1942-1965

Three years after their departure from Rockhole, in 1942, they settled at Balgo (now Old Balgo), a site for large corroborees and initiation ceremonies. Walmadjiri and Gugadja traversed the country in their hundreds. Tribal law was rigidly enforced and fights often erupted in the camp at night. Fire-stick farming was used to hunt for animals. Bertha Paddy from Beagle Bay said about the new beginnings:

 

All the people, we see them naked, every one of them, no clothes. Two of my children were there. All of the people understood when those kids talked language. The children understood the other children better than we did. They helped us in that way. ¹¹

Br. Frank Nissl gave some clothes to one:

The next day I saw him again without the shirt and trousers. All he did was smile and nod at me. Someone else was wearing them .... and they did the rounds for months until the clothing was in shreds!¹²

The missionary party set about making mud bricks out of the pinnacle anthills, dynamiting and boring for water. Br. Stephen sank more than 20 bores and earned himself the nickname ‘little desert ferret’. With assistance from Br. Franz Handke as carpenter and Italian Joe Pigillo they built a small chapel, a house, kitchen and outhouses. They had brought their radio from Rockhole but it wasn’t working.

 

According to Zucker the remoteness was a blessing when the police rounded up the German missionaries for internment.

‘the police set out for Balgo but the tracks were obliterated by sand and the road was too rough to reach the mission. The police returned to Halls Creek and the missionaries were free to carry on their work all through World War II’.¹³

This account is most likely from Bleischwitz¹⁴. Bynre, on the other hand, relates how (presumably in October 1940) a police vehicle, announced from a distance by a thin pillar of dust, arrived to confiscate the Flying Doctor radio set and all firearms belonging to missionaries and trackers. The missionaries were declared enemy aliens and instructed to remain at Balgo. Four Pallottine Brothers including Br. Contemprée objected to their classification as enemy aliens and unsuccessfully sought re-classification as a refugee. ¹⁵

 

As enemy aliens, if they wanted to leave the mission for any purpose they required prior approval from the Halls Creek police.¹⁶ Halls Creek, and the nearest store, was a three-week round trip by horse or camel, and the Beagle Bay truck only came two or three times a year. Without a shotgun they found it difficult to feed themselves. Bleischwitz wrote ‘Here I learned to pray sincerely: ‘Lord, help me I am perishing’. During the war we were very much alone in the desert at Balgo.’ They were not welcome in the Kukudja (or Gogodja) country, either.

 

‘The Aborigines considered us as intruders in their country and considered our sheep their property. I had to learn a great deal and it was difficult for me to understand and work with Aborigines. … The land was their property and they wanted us to give them food and supplies in return for using it.’¹⁷

 

In 1948 a group of Gogodja people walked in from the Great Sandy Desert, later followed by Walmadjeri and other groups.¹⁸ There was an urgent need for medical assistance and after the war five indigenous nurses from Broome started to visit regularly. In 1951 Sr. Alice Evans became the first white woman at Balgo (until 1956). She had been trained in nursing and midwifery and had already served 7 years at Beagle Bay (her brother John became a Pallottine priest). At Balgo she slept in a mud-brick dormitory with cement floor and galvanised iron roof with 28 girls, ‘freezing in winter and sweltering in summer’. She planted flowers and a vegetable garden and taught the children to count with rocks and to write by drawing in the sand. The mission now had a morning and evening radio link, and in 1952 the first plane landed, and the Flying Doctors began a monthly visit and brought the mail - unless the airstrip was flooded. Food supplies arrived from Beagle Bay two or three times a year. ¹⁹ (see Stracke [2])

 

Fr. Alphonse Bleischwitz went to visit Germany in 1954 and Fr. Kearney came to replace him. The missionaries continued their building program seeking funding from the Lotteries Commission and the state government. A surveyor arrived in July 1955 and determined to everyone’s surprise that the mission was just ten miles inside the boundary of the Billiluna run of more than million acres.²⁰ This was a severe blow and put an end to their hopes for building subsidies.

 

In 1959 they asked for help from the Native Welfare Department and government geologist to secure water for their 900 sheep and over 100 horses. The Lotteries Commission donated a boring plant, the department contributed £1,000 towards operating the plant, and finally, after 9 holes were bored the geologist located water at 326 feet.²¹

 

Br. Nissl went to Beagle Bay in 1955 and Br. Contemprée retired in 1964. According to Nailon the staff at Balgo in 1959 were Fr. Bleischwitz, ready for retirement, Fr. John McGuire, Br. Richard Besenfelder, Mother Damien as nursing sister, Sr. Madeleine running the school and kindergarten, and Sr. Andrew in charge of domestic staff. ²²

 

Balgo Hills

Unable to excise the mission site from the Billiluna run, a new ‘Balwina native reserve’ was established in 1965 consisting of 3,000 acres of freehold land. After more than 20 years at Old Balgo, and, the settlement was shifted about twenty miles east under the supervision of Fr. John McGuire in 1965. During the previous year a church, kindergarten, monastery, slaughterhouse, bakehouse, and a laundry and sewing room were built. They sunk three more bores but the water tasted salty. The nucleus of a cattle herd was bought from Vesteys and several breeding horses imported to establish Ngulupi Station with John Kersh as head stockman. The Aboriginal population of Balgo Hills contained Gugadja, Mandijildjara, Walmadjeri, Wonggadjunggu, Ngavi and Bgadi people according to an unpublished report by Ronald and Catherine Berndt. ²³

 

By 1969 there were about 400 residents. That year Fr. McGuire took ill and was replaced in January 1970 by Fr. Ray Hevern. ²⁴ When Mary Durack visited this ‘oasis in the desert’ in the 1970s she met Fr. Ray Hevern and Fr. Anthony Peile, who was researching his book Body and Soul: an Aboriginal View (published posthumously). But the times were turning against missions.

 

With the Social Services Act 1959 Aboriginal people gained access to unemployment benefits as well as maternity allowance, widows’ pensions, old-age pensions, invalid pensions and sickness benefits. An Aboriginal Enterprises Assistance Act 1968 made funds available to indigenous-owned and operated businesses. The Commonwealth Development Bank approved a large loan for Balgo in September 1969 on condition that it became an incorporated Aboriginal entity.²⁵ The federal government gained decision-making power over Aboriginal people from the states in 1967, and the Whitlam government established the first federal department for Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) in 1972. All states except Queensland surrendered their responsibilities for Aboriginal affairs to the federal government in 1973. In the interests of the federal policy of ‘self-determination’ the DAA tried to wrest powers from missions and from the DAIA in Queensland. Self-management became a condition of federal financial assistance to Aboriginal communities in the early 1980s. ²⁶

 

One innovative enterprise that emerged from Balgo was Kingfisher Aviation. This commenced in the late 1970s with a single-engine Cessna purchased with funds from Limburg and registered as VH-STL, after the patroness of Balgo mission, St. Therese of Lisieux. The aircraft was hired out to a charter company and used for a Balgo run once a week. The move had been prompted by a pilot’s strike and subsequent collapse of the regular air service. The service quickly became popular and a second Cessna was added, and a charter licence was acquired for Kingfisher Aviation with an Aboriginal board of directors, named after the Luurrnpa, sacred kingfisher, which had great cultural significance for Balgo. The two aircraft were based at Balgo with pilot accommodation, an office, refueling facilities, and a lighting for night landing. Three pilots were hired, an agency at Halls Creek established, and interest by Mobil Oil in explorations in the region prompted the acquisition of two larger aircraft. The company now extended to Alice Springs and Kununurra. After Fr. Hevern and the Pallottines withdrew from the mission, the Alice Springs base was closed and the headquarters transferred from Balgo to Kununurra. Kingfisher Aviation went bankrupt in 1999. ‘Everyone had been taking free rides. It didn’t help when one of the planes went missing - while parked on an airfield.’²⁷

 

In a last attempt of the Broome diocese to resolve its issues with the federal DAA, a joint study of the financial and administrative circumstances of the Kimberley missions was commissioned in 1980, but the DAA representative pulled out of the project. The study recommended the employment of accounting firms and annual audits to render the financial situation transparent, and called on the DAA to review its attitude to the church in the Kimberley, recognize the management structures of the church, and desist from building Aboriginal villages within the mission settlements. It also called for the delivery of municipal services and funding to be allocated to local government authorities comparable to other local authorities. The study found that the ‘Standard of living quarters for missionaries in all of the missions is far below that of Aboriginal and public service housing.’²⁸

 

At this time Balgo Hills consisted of 30 single-room stone houses with a small roofed patio and a few humpies made of scrap material. The mission staff were living in demountables and caravans and a few flats. The DAA had started its own building program on the mission with fifteen conventional homes, all in need of maintenance. There were up to 400 people at Balgo, Billiluna and Lake Gregory, and nearly 30 Europeans. A community store, cattle station, petrol station, savings bank agency, vegetable garden and Kingfisher Aviation were community enterprises. About 18% of the income was from community enterprises, about an equal amount from church funds, and 63% from federal government pensions and benefits. ²⁹

 

In 1983 Balgo mission handed over its land and administration to the Aboriginal people incorporated as an independent body.³⁰ Fr. Hevern organized a pilgrimage to Tjaluwan to commemorate the first Eucharist held in the desert by Fr. Alphonse 44 years earlier. Several hundred indigenous people participated, coming from Billiluna, Lake Gregory and Balgo mission area. All that was left of the Tjaluwan site was a small heap of cooking stones and a mud-brick floor where the chapel had been, and axe marks on an old tree.³¹ Fr. Hevern was forced to withdraw fom Balgo in 1986.

 

All these communities are now self-managed:

 

Billiluna is located in the Kutjungka region. Kutjungka means ‘together-as-one’. This area is constituted and bounded by the communities of Balgo (Wirrimanu), Billiluna, Mulan, (the former community of) Yakka Yakka (Yagga Yagga) and Ringers Soak (Kundat Djaru).  These communities also make up what is known as the Tjurabalan Communities.  The main language groups are Walmatjarri, Kukatja and Jara.³²

 

 

21^ Sr Brigida Nailon CSB Nothing is wasted in the household of God – Vincent Pallotti’s Vision in Australia 1901-2001, Richmond: Spectrum 2001:257.

32^ Billiluna – Home of the Kururrunkgu community - http://www.billiluna.org.au/history.html, accessed November 2013