The name is absent

Similar positive (but isolated) views of Aborigines were given
to the Select Committee of the Legislative Council, 1860.

A squatter, J.B. Hack told the Select Committee:

They are always eager to obtain work; indeed black
labour is the only sort of labour which I employ
(Select Committee of the Legislative Council, 1860:

Question 2440).
d-^a
F «

Aborigines were described to the Select Committee by different

respondents as intelligent, faithful, quick to learn, splendid sheep
shearers and cooks, constant in work.

The way of life which gave rise to these positive views was soon

destroyed following upon white contact. The people were destroyed
physically by disease, morally by their relegation to a powerless
rejected group, culturally by the destruction of the Law.

The decline of the Aborigine and his culture is not contested

Despite the favourable, even glowing reports of a procession

of administrators, protectors, school teachers, inspectors, craftsmen
and others at Point McLeay carefully documented by Jenkin, the latter
notes that the perceptions of the positive attributes of the people
by those Europeans first in contact with the Aborigines were discarded
for the ’mendacities’ which became stereotypes after the people had
been degraded by white interaction, mendacities that Jenkin notes
were still being perpetrated in schools a century later.

(ii) Contemporary Research

Cawte (1972) cites stereotypes of Aborigines held by white people
as spontaneous and care free_j irritable and quarrelsome^ 'lacking in
foresight and stamina.                                                 ■

Lippmann (1973b:181) found derogatory stereotyping was common:

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