Bing Crosby, Shirley Temple, Hitler and Stalin lived in the Australian outback. Their names hark back to a dark chapter in Australia’s past.
WARNING: This story includes names and images of Aboriginal people who have died. It also includes historical language that is offensive.
Bing Crosby remembers the moment he discovered there was another, more famous man bearing his name.
“I didn’t know there was another Bing Crosby,” he says.
“I was listening to the wireless, and I got a shock.”
The Walmajarri man was living on a cattle station on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in northern Western Australia.
His name had never been an issue.
Bing was entering middle-age by the time he realised he had a famous namesake.
“He seems alright… I like Bing Crosby’s music, but I like Slim Dusty more,” he chuckles.
And he wasn’t the only one making a startling discovery.
Bing was part of a generation of Aboriginal people who grew up on the vast cattle stations of northern Australia.
Many — like Bing — were named by the white pastoralists who ran these stations.
Bing’s mother was named Shirley Temple. She was a beautiful woman, locals say, who had soft, shiny, curly hair.
But some men were given the names of the worst mass-murderers in human history — names like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.
Other First Nations people were named after objects or animals, such as Flourbag, Mosquito, Billycan, Helicopter and Frypan.
The names have been carried through life by people in remote pockets of northern and central Australia — relics of a time not that long ago when Aboriginal people were denied basic rights, including the right to name their own child.
‘A cruel joke’
Walmajarri woman Annette Kogolo has taken Background Briefing on an unexpected journey to her hometown, to find out the history of how and why these names were given.
Annette is a professional interpreter of Aboriginal languages who’s spent decades shifting smoothly between two worlds.
She’s also Bing Crosby’s niece.
She’s brought me to the tiny community of Yakanarra where many of her family live.
It’s a cluster of houses on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, on the sweeping dry plains of Cherrabun cattle station in the southern Kimberley.
The 64-year-old sits in the late afternoon sun by a dry creek bed, pondering the past.
“The pastoralists just gave out these names, like Potato or Shovel or whatever popped into their head,” Annette reflects.
“It was very disrespectful – like a joke.”
A collision of cultures
The first half of the 20th Century was a tumultuous time for Aboriginal people in northern Australia.
Cattle stations were spreading across the landscape like spiderwebs, creating a collision of cultures that at times caused bloodshed.
Hundreds of Aboriginal people were cleared from their land by pastoralists and police, and herded onto cattle stations.
Other families moved in to escape desert droughts, lured by rations and the promise of contact with loved ones.
They ended up living in rough station camps, working as servants and ‘stockboys’, and paid largely in rations of tea, bread and tobacco.
Once they arrived, they often weren’t allowed to leave. And it was their cheap or unpaid labour that would help build the northern cattle industry.
Bing’s story
Every month, Annette drives several hundred kilometres to visit her Uncle Bing, bringing food and medicine and helping tidy the house.
And she hears his stories of the old days.
Bing is believed to have been born in 1949 — it’s hard to be sure, because like many Aboriginal people of his generation, his birth wasn’t recorded.
In many cases, the authorities guessed people’s ages, and assigned them the generic birthday of July 1.
When Bing was born his parents gave him a Walmajarri name.
They were living in a camp at old Cherrabun Station; his mother a domestic servant, his father a stockman.
“My blackfella name was Purru,” he says.
“But the manager gave me the new name.”
It was common practice for decades. When an Aboriginal baby was born, or a new person walked in from the desert, the pastoralists, police or missionaries would assign them a name.
Annette Kogolo says the name would be recorded in government files without the parents’ knowledge.
“When the women had their babies… the mothers weren’t aware of what names were given,” she says.
“They didn’t understand English, and they didn’t have powers to speak to gudia [white] people back in those days.
“The managers couldn’t pronounce the Aboriginal names so they just ignored them, but they were important.
“When you strip away someone’s name, it’s not right — your name gives you your identity and your kinship.”
Old Man Stalin
Just a few doors up from Bing Crosby lives the family of a man named Stalin.
He was a respected Walmajarri elder, who went through life carrying the name of a mass-murdering Soviet dictator.
Stalin’s family’s home is decorated with framed photos and the well-worn cowboy boots.
“He was a good man,” says son Brian Passenger.
“He taught me about going out walkabout, fishing, which snakes are poisonous.
“I don’t think he ever realised who he’d been named after.”
Stalin came in from the desert as a young boy. It’s believed he arrived at Old Cherrabun station in the 1930s.
His name was Watikarra.
But not for long.
“When he came up here to the station, the manager gave him the name Stalin,” Brian says.
“I don’t think he understood. He’d never been to school and it was hard for people to understand what the white men were saying back then.”
Later in life, Stalin was able to add ‘Watikarra’ as his surname — a compromise of sorts.
But among the family there was a gradual realisation of the name’s origin — their father had been named after a murderous dictator from the other side of the world.
Brian Passenger says it was unpleasant news.
“I think someone in the family told him ‘that’s the name of that cruel bloke from Russia — that’s who they named you after’,” he says.
“I’m not sure why they gave him that name. Maybe they thought it was funny, because he didn’t understand?”
It’s thought some pastoralists picked the names based on what they were hearing on the radio.
In the 1940s the ‘wireless’ was the main contact with the outside world for people on the isolated stations.
And the airwaves were full of Hollywood starlets, the ballads of Bing Crosby, and updates on the violent machinations of World War II dictators like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.
Stalin Watikarra died in 2009. His faded funeral brochure shows a frail-looking man with a whiskery white beard.
But when Stalin died, the name didn’t die with him.
Years before the family realised its origin, the name had been passed down the generations as a way of honouring their patriarch.
A grandson in Yakanarra carries the name Stalin, as does a great-grandson of school age.
The family have made the name their own; a tribute to the Walmajarri warrior who was born under the stars and died in an unrecognisable world.
‘Disgusted by the spectacle’
The naming practices are unsurprising in the context of the time.
In Western Australia, Aboriginal people had been stripped of basic rights and freedoms.
Draconian laws were in place making every Aboriginal child a ward of the state; police were enforcing segregation in cities and towns; and people working on cattle stations could be arrested for leaving the property they were assigned to.
Further fueling tensions was a policy of paying police a cash bonus for every Aboriginal person in their custody, which incentivised the arresting of people who defied the new regime.
Some pastoralists were clearly uncomfortable.
East Kimberley pastoral pioneer Patrick Durack wrote in his diary at the time,
“Am disgusted at the spectacle of a party of ni***rs on the road with police, the chains in many instances much too short from neck to neck, chafing and pulling as they move along and all appearing half starved”
‘The category of domestic animals’
As early as 1953 the authorities were urging people to stop giving people derogatory names.
An article from The Sunday Times newspaper is headlined “Bad Aboriginal Names Attacked”.
“Field and welfare officers, mission superintendents and institutions have been urged to set an example in the sensible naming of Aboriginal babies,” it reads.
“The Native Affairs Commissioner, a Mr Middleton, said some Aboriginal babies and young children were still being given undignified, nonsensical names which stuck with them through life.
“Recent examples noted were Cockatoo Stockman and Joe Stalin among children, and Stiff Earhole Jack, Tommie Post Office and Jackie Fishhook among the adults.
“While it may not be intended, the bestowal of such names had the effect of putting the Aborigines in the category of domestic animals.”
‘I’m still horrified’
Retired Kimberley politician MP Carol Martin was shocked when she came across the myriad strange names recorded in government files.
“Some of these mob had terrible names,” she says.
“To this day I still think about this one man who was called ‘Golliwog Golliwog’.
“Who would do that? All of these stupid names, they were insulting.”
She says the names reflect a deeper power imbalance, driven by an economic imperative for Aboriginal labour to sustain the burgeoning pastoral industry.
“Let’s face it, they didn’t have any rights,” Carol says.
“They were the property of the pastoral lease at the time, and why was that? Because the state government set it up that way.
“The state government paid the pastoralists a certain amount of money every year to look after the so-called natives… but they weren’t caring for them, they were using them as unpaid labour.
“I’m still horrified by what was going on.”
While many people came to embrace their ‘whitefella’ names, the practice raises questions about the use of slavery in Australia.
As Annette Kogolo puts it: you don’t name something unless you feel like you own it.
“I think it’s similar to the slave plantation time in America,” she reflects.
“It’s similar, how people were treated. Not many stories were captured, but they were told, and passed on, and kept.”
The uncomfortable question of slavery
Slavery is usually defined as the condition of being enslaved, held or owned as property; characterised by dehumanising treatment, forced work, and the deprivation of rights almost in totality.
In Australia the term is most commonly applied to the practice of blackbirding, in which people from the Pacific Islands, Torres Strait and First Nations were abducted and forced to work on sugarcane crops and pearling boats.
But many researchers argue there’s evidence the treatment of people on some cattle stations constituted a type of slavery.
Steve Kinnane is a Marda Marda man from Mirriwoong country in the Kimberley.
He’s been researching and writing about Aboriginal cultural identity for more than two decades.
“The slavery question is really important,” he says.
“We know that some pastoralists would trade workers for other workers, or they would trade women.
“So that to me is as if you are living under an occupation, as if you are living as a slave.”
Academics like Associate Professor Kinnane prefer to use the phrase ‘indentured labour’ rather than slave, to reflect the particular economic arrangement of the time.
Aboriginal people were being paid, but usually in basic food rations. In WA, the government was in charge of deciding how many Aboriginal workers were assigned to each station.
“It may not have been slavery in a legal sense — people were not being captured, put on the blocks and auctioned like in other parts of the world,” explains Associate Professor Kinnane.
“But the reality is, they were a population controlled throughout their lives, and that’s why many Aboriginal people call it slavery.”
Associate Professor Kinnane says there’s value in Australians understanding the country’s past.
“It’s really important not because it’s to make anyone feel ashamed and neither is it to make anyone take blame,” he says.
“If you don’t know your history, how can you truly move forward into your future?”
Despite the hardship, the station days remain a happy memory for many Aboriginal elders.
Many excelled at stock work, and developed close and trusting relationships with pastoralist families.
Crucially, they were living on — or close to — their country, and were able to continue practising lore and cultural ceremonies during the Wet Season months after mustering was done for the year.
Later, in the 1960s and 70s, many people were moved into town as a result of an equal wages ruling. There were few jobs, inadequate housing and little ability to visit their homelands.
And pastoralists point out the practices were in keeping with common attitudes of the time.
One veteran pastoralist spoke to Background Briefing on the condition of anonymity, due to concerns about the potential fall-out from discussing the sensitive subject of race relations.
The woman is a well-respected figure in the northern cattle industry.
“Sometimes they just gave people the name of the station, or a name that sounded like their Aboriginal name,” she says.
“The younger ones think that it’s derogatory, but it wasn’t seen as that in the day,” she says.
She says overall, people were treated well.
“Aboriginal people were well-cared for,” she says.
“They may not have been given wages, or very low wages, but they had their whole family there with them.”
She acknowledges there were isolated incidents of mistreatment.
“Some station people didn’t treat them as well as they should have perhaps, and some were really downright horrible,” she says.
“You hear them now saying that they were slaves, just black slaves, and maybe they were in some cases… but I didn’t think there was such a thing as slavery.
“The majority enjoyed those times, and many of the old people these days want to go back to that,” she says.
Two different worlds
It may have been 74 years since Bing Crosby was given his name, but the legacy of the frontier pastoral era looms large.
Massacre sites lie unmarked near waterholes, while elders live out their days with strange names in the most remote corners of Australia.
When I stop by to say goodbye, Bing is pottering around his yard tinkering with car engines.
He has a limp from when a horse threw him during mustering. He uses his walking stick to prop open the car bonnets.
“Life is good here,” he reflects.
“It’s better than town… too much noise, too much drinking in town.
“I think I’m the oldest person in Yakanarra now.”
The desert sands shift with the winds, but it’s the changes in attitude and policy that are disorientating for his generation.
For decades Aboriginal people were stripped of their autonomy, Annette Kogolo observes. But then suddenly expected to be independent and self-sufficient.
“It’s still impacting how people are now,” she reflects.
“Like with money — that’s a problem, because people lived off rations, they didn’t know how to budget.
“People are still living in two different worlds — the gudia world, and their Aboriginal world,” she says.
Credits
Reporter: Erin Parke
Designer: Sharon Gordon
Digital Producer: Brigid Andersen
