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Have you ever wondered about watching the sunrise/ set or just stared to be in awe of nature. There's something magical about the light of day, draw the sky or a scene that resonated so far that reflects Gods beauty in your life.

Read 'Pied Beauty' by  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

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Bishop Salvado's visit to the penal settlement on Rottnest Island and his effort to have two aborigials freed (p. 23)

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Bishop Salvado's visit to the penal settlement on Rottnest Island and his effort to have two aborigials freed (p. 23)

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Description of a hurricane passing through New Norcia,

the extension of the buildings in New Norcia, Bishop

Salvado's visit to the penal settlement on Rottnest

Island and his effort to have two aborigials freed, the

construction of the telegraphic station at New Norcia

and it's eventual staffing by an aboriginal person, the

visit by Gov. Weld to New Norcia on his way to

Champion Bay and the event of a State Council at New

Norcia on 10-10-1877. Also description of the harvest of

1874 and the 30th anniversary of the founding of the

New Norcia mission on 01-03-1875. p. 101-117.

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Monday 11 December 2023

Today is Monday the 11th of December, in the second week of Advent.

Molly Parden, with Bifrost Arts sings a setting of Psalm 126.

Our mouths they were filled, filled with laughter
Our tongues they were loosed, loosed with joy
Restore us, O Lord
Restore us, O Lord
Although we are weeping
Lord, help us keep sowing
The seeds of Your Kingdom
For the day You will reap them
Your sheaves we will carry
Lord, please do not tarry
All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy
The nations will say, "He has done great things!"
The nations will sing songs of joy
Restore us, O Lord
Restore us, O Lord

Today's reading is from the Prophet Isaiah and comes in three parts, with a short reflection after each section.

Isaiah 35: 1-10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
'Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.'

In our reading today, the prophet Isaiah foretells what the return of the redeemed will be like.

He writes...The desert shall rejoice and blossom... can you picture this dry desert as it slowly begins to blossom? Imagine the flora... fauna... colours... and scents as the blossoming happens.

What is it like?

As you stand in this wonderful place and watch this happening before you, recall the words of Isaiah,

"Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
'Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God.'

Take a moment to become aware of any fear that dwells in your heart today... be reassured by these words, "Here is your God."

Listen to the next part of our reading...

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

Notice which of these promises of the Lord speaks most to you.

As you hear the final part of this scripture, imagine that you are walking along the highway described, imagine that you take in the full 360-degree view of how it looks, and listen out for the singing!

A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God's people;*
no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

In this last part of our reading, there is promise of wellbeing, and we might recall the words of Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well."

Spend the final part of today's reflection by praying about a situation where you would love to see sorrow and sighing flee away, imagining in its place everlasting joy.

O Wisdom
Lord and Ruler
Root of Jesse
Key of David
Rising Sun
King of the Nations
Emmanuel.
Come, Lord Jesus.

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Pray as you go - Monday 11 December 2023

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Daily prayer whenever you need it. Ignatian inspiration, Jesuit Prayer on the go

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Session 2: No Room At The Inn

We will begin with a stillness exercise, to help you become aware of entering into God's presence.

Become aware of your surroundings today....

What do you notice?

What are you grateful for? Perhaps there's someone else with you...or an object that is precious to you; a colour or picture...

Where might you be able to find God wherever you find yourself today?

Become still and attentive to the gaze of God now...

As we continue our Advent journey, let's imagine Mary and Joseph as they arrive in Bethlehem: The town bustles with people from their own family... yet there is no room for them at the inn... they wonder if they will sleep at all that night... the best they can find is a stable, carpeted with straw for their tiny babe, yet to be born...

Take a moment to step into the scene...

Imagine how Mary and Joesph must have felt... what would they have been going through as they arrive?

Engage your five senses, one at a time...

As you ponder the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, take a moment to look at your own own heart... are the doors held open wide in welcome...? Or are the bars bolted firmly in place...? Is there room for the outcast, the stranger and the unloved...? Or are there people you have turned away at the threshold...?

Now listen now to Paul's words from the First Letter to Timothy:

1 Timothy 1:15-17

The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

As you let these words sink in, marvel at how Jesus wants to be born in hearts like ours... with all our faults and failings...with all our broken dreams... he waits with loving patience for us to throw open the doors...to welcome him with love... What would it take for you to open the doors of your heart so that you might hear his infant cry in your heart this Christmas...? Speak to Jesus right now, and listen for his response...

O Wisdom, Lord and Ruler, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Rising Sun, King of the Nations, Emmanuel. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Daily prayer whenever you need it. Ignatian inspiration, Jesuit Prayer on the go

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Reflect each day through Advent with our Advent Calendar for primary schools and families.

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Notice which of these promises of the Lord speaks most to you.

As you hear the final part of this scripture, imagine that you are walking along the highway described, imagine that you take in the full 360-degree view of how it looks, and listen out for the singing!

A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God’s people;*
no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray. 
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there. 
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 

In this last part of our reading, there is promise of wellbeing, and we might recall the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.”

Spend the final part of today’s reflection by praying about a situation where you would love to see sorrow and sighing flee away, imagining in its place everlasting joy.

O Wisdom
Lord and Ruler
Root of Jesse
Key of David

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Rosendo Salvado (1814-1900), Benedictine monk, missionary and author, was born on 1 March 1814 at Tuy, Spain, the son of Peter Salvado and his wife Francisca Rotea. The Salvado was a long-lived and musical family. Wealth at home favoured Salvado's musical bent, but he pledged his vigour and talent to a higher cause. At 15 he entered the Benedictine abbey of St Martin at Compostela, was clothed in the habit on 24 July 1829, and took his three religious vows a year later.

In the new monk, music found more than a dilettante. The distinction won after a two-year course in organ-playing secured for him the post of first organist at St Martin's in 1832. He was also an accomplished pianist and a composer. None of his music was printed but there are extant some of his sacred compositions written for his Western Australian Aboriginals and for convicts in Fremantle gaol, and a major work Fantasia, with variations and finale.

At 18 he added the study of liberal arts and philosophy to his duties as organist. The repose of the cloister was disturbed by the Spanish revolutionaries, who in 1835 decreed the closing of convents and the secularization of monks. Three years of patient waiting saw no end to the conflict, so in September 1838 he set out for Naples to be incorporated with the abbey of La Cava. There he was ordained priest in February 1839, and was instrumental in giving the abbey an organ which for mechanism, range and tone could rival the best in Europe.

This was the prelude to Salvado's great epic. His philanthropy prompted him to flee his organ and its glory and to choose instead the retreat of a distant mission field. The Sydney mission under Bishop John Bede Polding was first proposed, but Dr John Brady's consecration in Rome for the new see of Perth led to a change of mind. Salvado and his Benedictine confrère, Joseph Benedict Serra, were assigned to the bishop's missionary party. They sailed from London in the Elizabeth and landed at Fremantle in January 1846.

Salvado was dedicated to what he believed the highest ideal in life, the reclaiming of souls. Monk first and apostle second, he wanted to use his talents on behalf of a raw colony where things had to be created. As an apostle he set up a system of Aboriginal education that surprised learned men, and as a monk he poured out his heart in prayer and applied the Benedictine Rule that made labour a duty of existence.

With Serra, whose main associate he was, he wound his way along a hundred miles (161 km) of bush track to a spot in the Victoria Plains, where on 1 March 1846 he established a mission for the training of Aboriginals; it was first named Central as the centre of proposed outlying Aboriginal missions, and later New Norcia, after Norcia, Italy, the birthplace of St Benedict. Hunger soon drove him back to Perth to give a one-man piano concert for which he was paid £1 from each of his audience of seventy music lovers. That saved his mission, but all through the formative years of New Norcia, 1846-67, he lived by 'the sweat of his brow'. Dressed in dungarees, he looked nothing like the Catholic prelate of Protestant imagination. He drove his bullock cart, felled trees, ploughed, sowed and planted to turn the desert into a land rich in corn, wine and honey. Through his Rule he became a mystic, but a sociable one, fervent in seeking the Aboriginals, roaming with them and sharing their bush life. With a physique 'enduring as marble' he set hard standards that only Serra, out of a party of five, could share. But Serra too had to quit when he was appointed to the see of Port Victoria in 1848 and next year coadjutor in the diocese of Perth, and Salvado was left to shape anew the mission.

The change from nomadic to settled life started with the building of an abbey, round which the village came to be built. Here he gathered his Murara-Murara, Victoria Plains Aboriginals, and set about teaching them to work and to be Christians. By the method of inference he built ideas on ideas, his Western culture upon Aboriginal culture. Through their spears and boomerangs he taught the value and meaning of property and ownership. Soon his pupils were adept in husbandry, handicrafts and stockwork, many of them becoming first-class ploughmen, teamsters and farm workers. However, their poor physical strength and indolence hindered them from developing into responsible farmers.

According to Florence Nightingale, it was in Salvado's school that 'the grafting of civilizing habits on unreclaimed races was gradually accomplished'. The stone-age man had held his own against his surroundings; when the nimbleness, skill, endurance and rhythmical motion of the race were guided from the corroboree to the bat and ball, to brass and string music, the Murara-Murara became the heroes of the cricket field and of the music room. Salvado's Aboriginal colony supplied Mivart with the strongest argument to refute his opponent Charles Darwin on 'the essential bestiality of man'. It also gave to the world the first two black post-mistresses and telegraph operators, the one half-caste, the other full blood.

From the beginning Salvado believed that progress at New Norcia was checked by dependence on the bishop of Perth. Sent to Europe in 1849 to raise funds he also pressed the case for New Norcia's home rule. In August he was consecrated bishop of Port Victoria in the Northern Territory. The closing of the garrison settlement deprived him of subjects before he left Italy and, while he waited in Naples for new orders from Rome, he wrote his Memorie Storiche dell'Australia Particolarmente della Missione Benedettina di Nuova Norcia (Rome, 1851); the first part was historical but the second and third dealt con amore with New Norcia and the Murara-Murara. This large work was published in Spanish in 1853, French in 1854, but never in English. Contemporary reviews judged it 'a liberal book appealing to the mind and to the heart'.

In 1853 Salvado was sent back to Western Australia. He administered the see of Perth while Bishop Serra was absent in Europe. Four years later he returned to New Norcia with renewed zeal to pursue his purposes for the mission of which he was named temporary administrator in 1859. But his prayer for home rule was not answered until 12 March 1867 when a papal decree gave Bishop Salvado of Port Victoria the additional title of Lord Abbot of New Norcia for life.

With greater freedom the mission entered a second period, 1867-1900, in which Salvado gave wider expression to the part of agriculture in monastic labour and took a leading part in shaping legislation on behalf of the Aboriginals. He and his monks had grown their daily bread by labour; now his journeys across a far-flung wild country looking for pastures and water and opening new tracks were to be as important for colonial expansion as for the mission. His efforts in seeking legal equality for whites and blacks in matters where the two races were equally concerned influenced the amendment in 1875 of the 1871 Bastardy Act and the addition of clause 5 to the 1874 Industrial Schools Act; the one could be invoked to enjoin an Aboriginal child's maintenance on its putative white father, and the other ensured the education of an Aboriginal minor by enabling mission managers to become the child's lawful guardians. His election as protector of Aboriginal natives in June 1887 was a deserved distinction and it made legal what had long been accepted in practice.

Never content with his empty title of bishop of Port Victoria, Salvado was relieved when it was changed to the titular bishop of Adriana in March 1889. In the work of reclaiming some seven hundred of his uncircumcised Murara-Murara and providing them with a means of living, he finally broke through tribal boundaries and won over to him 101 of the circumcised across the border. He loved them all to the end. After securing the future of his mission, he died in Rome on 29 December 1900, calling his distant piccanninies one by one. His remains were brought to Western Australia in June 1903 and re-buried in the tomb of Carrara marble behind the high altar in the church of his beloved New Norcia.

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Rosendo Salvado (1814-1900), Benedictine monk, missionary and author, was born on 1 March 1814 at Tuy, Spain, the son of Peter Salvado and his wife Francisca Rotea. The Salvado was a long-lived and musical family. Wealth at home favoured Salvado's musical bent, but he pledged his vigour and talent to a higher cause.

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Historic accounts of settlement and the early colonial period provide invaluabe insight into the lives of First Nations people, as well as the conditions and prejudice that they were forced to endure at the hands of the colonists. Even the altruistic approach of Bishop Salvado reflects the ingrained attitude of the Europeans in their need to 'civilise' the local population.
On 1 March 1846, a Benedictine mission to the local native Aboriginals was started about 8 km (5 mi) to the north, led by the two Spanish Benedictine monks, Rosendo Salvado and Joseph Serra. Within a year the mission was moved to where the town is today and on 1 March 1847 the foundation stone of the monastery was laid. The place was named New Norcia after Norcia in Italy, the birthplace of St Benedict.
"The establishment of the Aboriginal mission at New Norcia had a profound effect on the lives of the local Aboriginal people, the Yued people of the Noongar nation [...]. We consider that Bishop Salvado was a friend of the Yued people [...] [who] had a deep interest and respect for Aboriginal people in which he recorded the local Noongar language, culture and customs. Those records have provided important historical information about Noongar people, including being used to support the Noongar native title claim."

Reference: Edited by Ramon Maiz and Tiffany Shellam. (2016). Rosendo Salvado and the Australian Aboriginal World. Consello, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Page 17.

"It seems impossible to some people to believe a native of Australia capable of working or doing any real material good for himself; and if they hear that a native has ploughed his field, has reaped his wheat, has sold it, has with those means bought bullocks and even mares, of which he is the rightful owner, they still will say, " Impossible!" but against a fact no argument can stand. Surely, if the aborigines are left to themselves, they cannot but follow their forefathers' traditions and customs, but if properly and timely trained, I, for one, do not see the impossibility of their being truly civilized," Bishop Rosendo Salvado, 1864.
Reference: Habits and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants, Compiled from Various Sources. (1871). Presented to the Legislative Council by His Excellency's Command. Perth: By Authority: Richard Pether, Government Printer. Page 7. His Lordship Rosendo Salvado, Bishop of Port Victoria, to The Hon. The Colonial Secretary, New Norcia, 19th February, 1864.

Indeed, it is very discouraging to hear that the Aborigines of Australia, as a race, are dying off and disappearing; but, why so? Because of the consumption, the bronchitis, the syphilis, the liver complaints, and several other diseases? If that is the true reason of it, then we may conclude, also, that all human races must die and disappear, for there is no country, that I am aware of, where there are not the same, nay, in several countries, even worse sickness and diseases than those that are said to be the cause of the Aborigines of Australia dying off and disappearing. I cannot help thinking that the true reason must be another. I do not wonder at the Aborigines dying, as the Europeans must die of one or other disease; but what seems rather strange is to see so few sick aborigines restored to health, whereas, in each similar case, so few Europeans would die (Page 1).

A native, I will suppose, is taken ill and brought to a hospital or private house; there the Doctor attends him daily and with care: nothing is wanting, nevertheless the native grows worse every day, and after a short time his life is despaired of. A European, in the same case, would have recovered his health by that time, but the unfortunate native is dying, there is no remedy for him. His disease has baffled the Doctor's skill and care, and, as the last resource, the native is consigned to his relatives or friends, by whom he is brought to the woods and there by them taken care of in their own way. If an European, in the case of that native, had been sent to the open air in the bush, surely he would have died a few days, nay, a few hours, after; yet, that dying native a few weeks afterwards, and when everyone that knew him in his dying state believes him to be already dead and buried, there he is as healthy and as strong as ever, having perhaps travelled already fifty or more miles on foot. He had taken no medicine whatever since he had left the hospital or private house, yet he has perfectly recovered his health and his strength. To someone this case may seem a fancy or simply a supposition, but I assure him of its being a fact (Page 1).

What, then, ought we to conclude from such a fact, nay facts? If I was not considered too presumptuous in advancing an opinion, I should be tempted to say either the disease had not been well understood or the medicines administered Were not in harmony with the constitution of that native. The medicines administered to him would in time, and in all probability, have killed him; therefore, it seems clear enough those medicines were by no means healing remedies for him (Page 2).

Another case: a strong and healthy young native, who never in his life knew what strong liquors or European vices were, is admitted in a private house, mission, or establishment; for some time, he goes on well, gay and full of life; but few months, or perhaps after a couple of years, a fatal melancholy takes possession of him. Being asked what the matter with him is, he answers, "Nothing!" "Do you feel sick?" " No, sir." "Do you suffer any pain?" " No, sir." " Why are you not so cheerful as before?" " I do not know." He takes his meals as regular as ever, he has no fever, yet he daily and almost at sight loses his flesh, strength, and health. What is the technical name of such a disease*? Perhaps consumption, perhaps liver complaint. Let it be so; but is there no remedy for such diseases? Are there no preventives of their causes? Yes, there are but, nevertheless, that native died shortly after (Page 2).

On various occasions I consulted several medical doctors on these and similar other points, but I regret to say all to no purpose. Nevertheless, one of them disclosed to me his utter ignorance of the diseases of the Aborigines, saying that he knew no more about them than a man in the moon. I asked him if he had ever made a post-mortem examination of their bodies, and he replied that he had done it repeatedly, but, after all, he knew no better or more than before! To this he added, that, as a rule, every time he had taken under his especial care any sick native, he succeeded only, he regretted to say, in killing him the sooner! (Page 2).

Almost everyone, in some degree conversant with the Aborigines of Australia, knows that a severe wound, which would oblige any European to keep his bed for a long time, would be considered by a native as nothing. A European perhaps would have died of it, but a native would be healed in an incredible short time. Medical men themselves are really astonished at how quick a native heals and recovers of his severe wounds, and on the other hand at in what a short time he dies of a disease. They wonder, and with reason, at both extreme cases, because the causes of both extreme cases are equally unknown to them (Page 2).

Miss Florence Nightingale's question " Can we civilize the Aborigines without killing them?" is not a simple question but a difficult problem, which heaven knows when will be solved. The natives of Australia seem to be yet a mystery to the medical world. Miss Nightingale, at page 14 of her pamphlet entitled " Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals," says that "The Hospital Returns " throw little light on the causes of the disappearance of native races, unless these are to be found in the " great prevalence of tubercular and chest diseases." And again, at page 15, " the discovery of the causes " of this must be referred back to the Colonies." It is also said in that pamphlet that " anything which exhausts the constitution will engender these diseases," viz., tubercular and chest diseases. But to this purpose I will relate another case (Page 2).

A young native has been ploughing here his own field for about three weeks, at the end of which time I ordered him to suspend his ploughing, for I had observed he was unwell. He stayed but unwillingly, seeing the other natives going ahead of him with their ploughing. After a few days continuing still to spit blood, he told me he would be all right in a few days if I would allow him to go hunting horses. I did not want any horses at that time, and much less him to do that hard work, which I considered very injurious to his case, nevertheless I consented to it as a trial. That native, after having been hunting for three or four days, ceased to spit blood, and immediately went again to his ploughing. I may not be right, but I always considered hunting horses as something that exhausts the constitution of any sound person, and the case will be the more aggravating if that person is spitting blood. But if I am right, how was it that that native was healed by doing it? (Page 2).

When I, in my difficulties, requested a medical man to direct me in the curing the diseases of the Aborigines, his direction has been " Do your best in your own way, for if you follow my advice, and do as I should direct you to do, I am afraid the whole of your sick natives would die the sooner. The aborigines," he added, " cannot stand our recipes." When a sick person is abandoned by the Doctor to the resources of his unlearned relatives or friends, we consider it as a desperate case: such seems to not to be the case of the aborigines (Page 2).

Information Respecting the Habits and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of WA, Compiled from Various Sources. (1871). Presented to the Legislative Council by His Excellency's Command. Perth: By Authority: Richard Pether, Government Printer. Pages 2 - 4.

From the late 1860s to the 1880s successive epidemics of measles, influenza and whooping cough and a 'fatal melancholy' attributed by Salvado to Aborigines' deep despair and grieving for family and homelands now lost to them cut a swath through the New Norcia mission population. New Norcia seemed doomed to follow the fate of missions elsewhere that began with high hopes 'sustained during the first couple of years, followed by a period of gradual decline and ultimate collapse.' We can only imagine the grief and trauma experienced by the families losing so many loved ones and the tragic legacy for the survivors (Page 127).

However, the real calamity now facing the mission was the threat to its economic survival as a viable pastoral and agricultural enterprise as the Victoria Plains district was opened up to establish a wheat export industry in the colony during the 1890s. This brought a dramatic shift in patterns of land tenure and usage in the region and mounting pressure for New Norcia's extensive land holdings to be resumed by the government or sold off to be carved up into small farming blocks. By 1909 the mission held only 100,000 of its original holdings of 967,000 acres. Aboriginal farmers who had been encouraged to take up farming plots outside the mission also faced cancellation of the reserved land (Page 130).

Salvado was well into his eighties when he set out on his final trip to Europe in 1900. While there he appointed a successor who would negotiate new directions and strategies for the Benedictine mission endeavour in Western Australia. Salvado died while he was in Europe and in 1903 his remains were returned to the mission that he devoted his life's work to establish. Under the new direction of Bishop Torres Salvado's vision of a self-supporting community of monks and Christian Aboriginal families was progressively abandoned. The effort to convert Aboriginal souls shifted to establishing Kalumburu mission in the north Kimberley and at New Norcia boarding schools were built to cater for the superior education of white children with labour provided by children from the Aboriginal orphanages (Page 130).

Torres also directed the religious community to take up a more refined and secluded way of life. With less need for their labour, Aboriginal adults left to find work with local farmers and by 1911 only 10 men were regularly employed there. Despite Salvado's assurances that the farms they had worked were theirs by right, they also found they had no recognised claims over the land they had tilled. With encouragement from the monks, some families left their children behind for schooling but access to the children was increasingly curtailed. Growing tensions finally erupted into conflict in 1908 and three of the mission's former upstanding residents were sentenced to three months' imprisonment. One of the men subsequently wrote that New Norcia was now 'no home for the native at all. They keep a few hands here to carry bricks because they are cheap but I can assure you that if you are sick they have no time for such a native' (Page 131).

Families now living in the surrounding Midlands district found they could only get menial farm work despite their schooling and skills in farming, trades and domestic duties. Accustomed to living a settled life in the mission cottages, they now had to live in tents in temporary camps, often in desperate conditions. Once protected by the mission community, they now experienced the virulent racism of settler farmers moving into the district and the full force of strict legislative controls enshrined in the 1905 Aborigines Act, which now directed the lives of Aborigines in the state and left them vulnerable to forced removal of their children, who could be sent to live in the New Norcia orphanages, which continued to operate until the 1970s (Page 131).
Reference: Edited by Ramon Maiz and Tiffany Shellam. (2016). Rosendo Salvado and the Australian Aboriginal World. Consello, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Page 127 - 131.

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Bishop Rosendo Salvado & The Impacts of Colonisation

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Historic accounts of settlement and the early colonial period provide invaluabe insight into the lives of First Nations people, as well as the conditions and prejudice that they were forced to endure at the hands of the colonists. Even the altruistic approach of Bishop Salvado reflects the ingrained attitude of the Europeans in their need to 'civilise' the local population.

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1838 - Perth Gazette refers to a plan to convert Wadjemup into 'a place of security for the confinement of such of the native inhabitants as may be guilty of any offences'. Legislative Act passes establishing a legal prison at Wadjemup.

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The Basin at Rottnest Island taken from 'The Beach' by Brian Simmonds

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The Basin at Rottnest Island taken from 'The Beach' by Brian Simmonds