WARNING: the songs in this post contain racist components.
In his 'Big Book of Australian Folk Song', Ron Edwards published a trio of songs that were popular in the Northern Territory: 'The Buffalo Shooter's Song', 'Fanny Bay' and 'The Combo's Anthem'. All three songs reference Fannie Bay in Darwin and reflect widespread contemporary attitudes towards Aboriginal women.
In his splendid presentation at the 2000 National Folk Festival in Canberra - 'White on Black: in the spirit of reconciliation' - Keith McKenry gave context to these songs. Keith has kindly given me permission to reproduce his introductory remarks:
No matter where you prick a map of Australia, when the Europeans first arrived there the predominant, and often the only, source of females for male sexual gratification was Aboriginal. It didn’t take long therefore for the term ‘Black Velvet’ to enter the colonial vernacular.
The craving in colonial society for women as sexual playthings became –as it has across the world – a factor in the economic interaction between communities, and a catalyst for violent confrontation, with rape commonplace, and murder and retribution not far behind. Syphilis and gonorrhoea, smallpox and measles, and other diseases previously unknown to Indigenous Australia followed as well, with catastrophic results.
Despite the fear in the popular imagination of sexual violation of white women by blacks – the unspoken sub-text of The Romance of Runnibede, for example— there is scant evidence of it happening. Even in the Governor murders there was never any suggestion the women were sexually assaulted. But violation of black women by white men was so commonplace as to be hardly worth remarking upon.
The supposed loose morals of black women, and their supposed desire, too, for white males, provided a fertile basis for rationalisation. As the next group of songs, from the Northern Territory states, it was just ‘a little bit of nonsense’.
Keith explained earlier in his presentation that 'The Romance of Runnibede' was a 1928 silent film:
Time now to return to the silver screen, and to the making in 1928 of a silent feature film based on a story by Steele Rudd, creator of the beloved characters Dad and Dave. It stars an American, Eva Novak in the role of the virginal white maid Dorothy Winchester, and Dunstan Webb, daubed with black paint, as the evil Witch-doctor Goondai ...
In the same year this film is made, 1928, Fred Brooks, a dingo shooter is killed in the Northern Territory. The murderers are thought to be Aborigines. In retaliation whites, led by Constable William George Murray go on a rampage shooting dead an admitted 31 Aborigines and possibly as many as a hundred or more. Most, if not all, the Aborigines shot have no connection whatever with the killing of Brooks. A court of inquiry finds the shootings ‘justified’.
In the towns and cities few people would have the faintest knowledge of the killings in the Territory. But many would go to the cinema to see the lovely Dorothy rescued from the murderous black savages in Runnibede.
The 'Governor murders' relates to the July 1900 brutal killings of Mrs Mawbey, her 2 daughters, her 2 sons and a governess by 3 Aboriginals:
If you ever go up north among the buffalo, Then maybe at the closing of the day, You will sit and listen to those flamin’ mossies And watch the sun go down on Fanny Bay.
For again to hear the crying of the curlew, And the lubras in their nagas salting hides, And to sit around the campfire by an evening And listen to those shooters telling lies.
For the gins come down from Oenpelli Mission All wrapped up in Jesus when they come, But they soon forget about those Ten Commandments When you hit ’em with a snort of O.P. rum.
And the strangers came and tried to take our lubras— So we waited while they had their fun, For they might have tried to catch the old red dingo Or rape a flamin’ emu on the run.
And if ever there should be a piccaninny, You can bet your boots it won’t be all real black, For those shooters like their little bit of nonsense Along the Alligator River Track.
Note by Ron Edwards:
'The Buffalo Shooter's Song' was composed by a group of shooters at Nourlangie in the Northern Territory in 1948. It is in the tradition of 'Fanny Bay' and 'The Combo's Anthem' and other Territorian ditties. It goes to the tune of 'Galway Bay' and comes from 'The Green Eyes are Buffaloes' by Allan Stewart.
'Galway Bay' was composed by Dr Arthur Colahan. Allan Stewart was a well-known Territory character. He was a bit of a tosser. I recall that he once stood for the Territory parliament and had his surname changed by deed poll to Allan-Stewart so that he would have first place on the ballot paper. He still lost comprehensively.
FANNY BAY (w.Anon/m.A.Colahan)
With a couple of little drinks to make us happy, And a couple of little beers to make us gay, And a couple of little gins to keep our strength in, You’ll find yourself at last in Fanny Bay.*
Some are white and some are black and some are yellow, And some are old and some are young and gay, But what costs you thirty bob in Castlereagh Street, You can get for two and six in Fanny Bay.
Note by Ron Edwards:
'Fanny Bay' was one of the slightly bawdy songs that the late Bill Harney used to enjoy singing, partly perhaps to shock the city types that he met when he came south for a holiday from the Northern Territory ... Bill did not know who had composed the song, but he said that it was very popular around the Territory.
Keith McKenry also drew a distinction between these bawdy pieces and the 'thoroughly repugnant ballads of race hatred'.
Fannie Bay is the registered spelling for the suburb and bay. This excerpt from NT Place Names Register is interesting:
When the stock panel slants to the last narli beast, And the smoke signals rise we will ride to the feast, Where the pandanus fairies are singing their song, And the black ducks are mating, by quiet billabong.
’Neath black velvet banners we’ll carve our way through, As we march to the strains of a didgeridoo, We love and we laugh as pale introverts sigh, We sneer at Protectors, whose laws we defy.
We know each girl’s name by her track on the sand, The girls of the desert, the girls of inland, The maids of the mountains, and Lord I forgot- The sirens of seashores, the best of the lot.
They are comely and dark, and the glint of their eyes, Are as dew drops that gleam on a wintry sun’s rise, And the firm rounded breasts that seductively tease, Are like seed pods that sway on squat baobab trees.
So hail Borroloola! The old V.R.D. The ‘Nash’ and the hill for a cracker old spree, We are riding with cheques and we sing as we come, For a gut full of wooing, a gut full of rum.
Let gin-shepherds watch when the rain clouds appear, And the ring of horse-bells tells his girls we are near, He may lock up his studs, but we’ll steal them away, To our smouldering fires till the breaking of day.
So green is the grass when the early rains fall, And pull off pack bags as we answer the call, We will ride down bush tracks, and old friendships renew, To the beat of a tab-stick and didgeridoo.
Ron Edwards supplied a tune at page 92 of his big book. He noted:
'The Combo's Anthem' was collected from the late Bill Harney in 1957. A combo is Territorian slang for one who lives with an Aboriginal woman. Although he described it as a 'real old nostalgic one', it is probably no older than the middle of the late thirties.
It was not only white men who referred disparagingly of Aboriginal women, I once worked with a part-Aboriginal bloke, an ex-stockman, who called Aboriginal women in the bush 'spinifex fairies'.