The Legend of the Good Fella Missus

Abstract

The dominant historical myth about the relation between white women and Aborigines portrays the former as kind mistresses and the latter as objects of their maternal care. This paper attempts to retrieve and evaluate what white women could see, speak, and know of Aborigines - and especially the images through which white women represented their contact with Aborigines and Aboriginal Australia - in the century before World War Two. Although the 'good fella missus' has a number of faces, individual struggles and differences are less important to this analysis than the power and persistence of the myth. The good fella missus is a pioneer outfacing Aboriginal hostility, and bringing succour to their destitution. She is the missionary seeking salvation for her black brethren. She tends the sick, clothes the naked, and soothes the dying. She is also the literary woman enshrining herself in a position of benevolence and authority in race relations. She has sisters in the other colonies of the British Empire such as the memsahibs of India. She enters the annals of Australian history at about the time that Victoria came to the throne - a monarch who herself evolved into the imperial mother - cultivating an interest in the solicitude for her far-flung native subjects. In the democratic sphere a similar role was assumed by that symbol of service, Florence Nightingale.