The 'allurements of the European presence': Examining explanations of Wongatha behaviour in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia

Abstract

In the early summer of 1930, Peter Elkin, a prominent figure in early Australian anthropology, travelled to the Mount Margaret Mission, near Laverton in the northern Goldfields region of Western Australia. He did so to follow up research begun on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain, with Aboriginal groups who comprised what was later dubbed the Western Desert Cultural Bloc, a common cultural region covering the vast arid zone of central Australia. Elkin conducted fieldwork at Mount Margaret for three weeks, met only some of the Aboriginal people there and never returned, but in an article published subsequently he made a significant extrapolation. The Aboriginal people at Mount Margaret did not belong there. They had come in from the Warburton Range and the border country and replaced the local groups which had, as Elkin phrased it, 'almost ceased to exist'.