By John McKechnie AO, KC
For much of the 20th century there were few middle class homes that did not have a print of ghost gums or blue grey hills hanging on the wall.
The artist was Albert Namatjira, a Western Arrernte man from Hermannsberg. Greatly admired in his day, he was patronizingly accorded what might be described as honorary white status.
In 1957 he was awarded British subject hood and Australian citizenship which carried with them freedom from restrictions on purchasing or possessing alcohol. It would be another 10 years before a referendum changed the Constitution to enable aborigines to exercise such rights as they had including citizenship.
Alas, too late for Mr Namatjura – as was the postage stamp issued in his honour in 1968.
So Mr Namatjura was allowed to buy alcohol. However his adult children and many of his friends were still wards of the State. Selling or giving alcohol to a ward was forbidden under the Northern Territory Licensing Ordinance.
In 1957, Mr Namatjura, his wife and considerable family were living just out of Hermannsberg, then a Lutheran Mission west of Alice Springs. He was supporting up to 600 people through the proceeds of his art.
On the 26th of August 1958, Mr Namatjira was travelling home in a taxi, accompanied by another artist, Mr Henoch Raberaba, a ward of the State.
Mr Namatjira had with him a bottle of rum. Mr Raberaba asked for a drink. Mr Namatjira responded that he could not do so. It was against the law.
However he could give Mr Raberaba a pannikan. Now for those of you who are city types, a pannikan is an enamel coated metal drinking mug without which no bushman would be properly equipped. How else can you drink Billy tea?
Having lent Mr Raberaba his pannikan, Mr Namatjira called on the driver to stop, whereupon Mr Namatjira got out of the taxi for a while. This happened several times on the journey.
Mr Namatjira did not see what happened but it is easy to guess. Each time Mr Namatjira got out, Mr Raberaba helped himself to a generous slug of rum, courtesy of the pannikan.
This mild ruse was quickly discovered and Mr Namatjira was arrested and charged with supplying liquor to a ward.
On the 7th of October 1958 he was convicted after trial in the Alice Springs Magistrates Court and sentenced to 6 months hard labour.
He immediately appealed against both his conviction and sentence before Justice Kriewaldt.
Martin Chemnitz Kriewaldt was, like Mr Namatjira, a Lutheran. He was the sole judge in the Northern Territory for almost the whole of the 1950’s. Respected as a benchmark of fairness and justice, he promoted a policy of assimilation. He generally tried to be fair and merciful although displaying the same sort of condescension characterized by many of his generation.
An example appears in the course of the judgment:
“Even before I came to the Territory I was an admirer of the art of the Appellant. Two pictures by one of his sons have graced the walls of my living room for some years. All my life the duty of Christians towards heathens and the duty of the more fortunate towards the less fortunate have been impressed on me.”
Mr Namatjira was represented on appeal by the highly respected Maurice Ashkenasy QC who ingeniously argued a number of constitutional and interpretation grounds which the judge easily dispatched. Perhaps Mr Ashkanasy recognized that on the facts, it was a pretty open and shut case against Mr Namatjira, and so that proved to be.
He had slightly more success on the sentence. The judge took into account as mitigation that all his life Mr Namatjira habitually shared his belongings with his friends making it more difficult, though not impossible, to resist Mr Raberaba than it would be for a person not similarly accustomed to share. (Remember the 600 people he was supporting).
The sentence was reduced to 3 months. An application for special leave to the High Court was unsuccessful.
Within 2 years both Albert Namatjira, 58 and Martin Kriewaldt, 60 passed away.
The episode is best summed up by the author, journalist, and activist Len Fox:
Here is a man, who with his glowing art,
Gave us the beauty of our country’s heart;
Here is a man whose skin was coloured brown
And so we spurned his gifts and trod him down.
Here is a man whom we said with love
We make you equal under heaven above;
And now as final proof we love him well
The key turns slowly in his prison cell.
Adapted from Namatjira v Raabe (1958) NTJ 608).
