Alan Powell’s Far Country: Making History in the Top End

Some historians set out self-consciously to confer identity on their home country—which might be a nation, a locality, a region, or in this case, a territory of Australia. Commonly such a historian, having rooted in an academic institution in the country, embarks on a defining work that is a labor of both love and duty. Thus in 1982 Alan Powell, of Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin Univesity), published Far Country. There were revised editions in 1988 and 1996, and an impressive centenary edition in 2000.

1	The Land and Those Who Belonged to It	The introductory chapter reveals the difficulty of forging a historical unity from the Northern Territory, because geography does not favor it. “The area . . . is huge,” Powell writes, “but arbitrary lines on the map took no account of geographic harmony.” The treatment of aborigines in tandem with geography, thus classing them with other features of nature, is understandable given the period of writing. Notably, Powell arrives at an intriguing conclusion situating aborigines at commencement of his story, appraising their situation, and invoking it as a sort of metaphor for the regional condition.
2	The Forces of Change	Unlike general histories of Australia, this territorial history gives substantial treatment to Asian contacts (prominently the Macassan trepang trade) prior to European exploration and development. Powell regards this as an interlude, however, without great consequence.
3	The British Come and Go	Attempts by the British to plant settlements in the north during the first half of the 19^th century had little more consequence than their Asian predecessors. In these early chapters we see the situation of the north as both a hinterland and an inscrutable problem.
4	Australian Expansionism	The explorations of John Stuart figure as centerpiece and symbol of South Australian designs on the north in the 19^th century. South Australia achieved dominion over the north, but devised no scheme for development other than pastoralism, and even that was frustrated.
5	Dream’s End	The Overland Telegraph connected the north to South Australia, and stock routes followed the telegraph line, so that although pastoralism also penetrated from Queensland to the east, the main connection was to the south, with a pastoral boom and bust developing in the 1880s. Nor did gold mining, although it attracted seekers, become established as a consistent agent of regional development.
6	Civilizers, Celestials and Savages	White colonizers of the north partook of the general European belief in the fatal contact—the inevitable disappearance of native peoples of color, supplanted by white civilization. The responses of aborigines ranged from accommodation to wily and stubborn resistance, resulting in white reprisals. Another (at least potential) clash of cultures precipitated around the Chinese who entered the territory not only as laborers but also as entrepreneurs.
7	The Coming of the Commonwealth	The new Commonwealth of Australia assumed jurisdiction over the Northern Territory, but it declined to offer the resources or exercise the patience required to invigorate the territory. Agriculture, pastoralism, and mining all languished early in the 20^th century. Interests in the territory were frustrated with their lack of political rights as Australians. Strident labor unionism tapped the discontent, as well as racist anti-Chinese sentiment. The general policy seemed to be one of drift. “The aborigines alone,” Powell observes, “found the Commonwealth a very different master from South Australia.” It imposed measures of “protection for a dying race.” Anthropologists and missionaries played roles in this, although not without self-interest.
8	Hope Deferred and Hope Renewed	The 1920s were a time of demographic and economic boom in Australia, but, Powell concludes, “The Northern Territory shared in none of this.” The commonwealth did reduce the perceived Chinese threat through repatriation. It gave pastoralists a free hand in management, and constables led reprisals against any aborigines who resisted. Meanwhile the races mingled in the cattle station environment. In general a commonwealth attitude of neglect continued—there were stirrings of aviation, aborted tries at industrial development, and the arrival of rudimentary naval patrols, but little else.
9	War in the North	The Second World War was the quickening and defining event in the Northern Territory. “Darwin was not ready,” Powell writes, but the war arrived anyway. Worse, the commonwealth seemed willing to write off the Northern Territory in the attempt to defend more populous and strategic regions. Despite Japanese attacks and fears of invasion, or perhaps because of them, military mobilization, especially after entry of the U.S. into the war, stirred events in the territory. Aborigines not only served but also played key roles in reconnaissance. Pastoralists found ready markets. Military command, once headquartered in Alice Springs, restored order and hope. Supplying the war effort brought contact and salience as never before to the territory. The sense left by this chapter is that everything else was prelude. The war brought quickening life to the territory by dint of necessity.
10	Moving	Powell treats the postwar period essentially as the present, seeing signs of hope of long-awaited development in the wake of the war, “based partly on the Territory’s share in the development of Australia’s vast northern mining resources, even more on increased Commonwealth spending. If the Territory is ever to achieve economic stability, present levels of federal funding must be maintained and increased over a long term.” Pastoralism entered a time of relative prosperity, partly on the basis of the burgeoning burger trade in the U.S. Mining of uranium and aluminum added new and substantial economic elements, while a modest defense establishment remained as a watermark into the Cold War. Commonwealth imperatives for assimilation of aborigines ran into resistance in the 1970s, with victories for wage rights of aboriginal workers and land possession for aboriginal tribes. Not even the terrible Darwin cyclone of 1974 could staunch a growing sense of territorial assertiveness. The rest of Australia, as it became more conscious of the territory, mistakenly labeled it as a “frontier” in order, as one scholar said—and this begins to ring with a newfound territorial insolence—“to compensate for the dull conformity of their suburban lives.” In 1986 the territory created its own university. “The Northern Territory is moving,” Powell closes.

First Edition

Powell, Alan. Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1982.

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