July 10, 2013 • 19 mins
A member of the South Australian Mounted Police, George "Poddy" Aiston was a friend to and advocate for Aboriginal peoples, a fairly accomplished photographer, and the owner of a fully-stocked store in the middle of nowhere.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we
are going to visit Australia again today at the time
of the late eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundred. It's been
(00:22):
a common theme in the podcast lately. Yeah, it's a
busy time in history because of the Industrial Revolution and
a lot of things happening on the worldwide political stage.
But today we're gonna kind of hang out in a
quiet little spot in the middle of nowhere. Uh, and
we're gonna talk about George Aston and the Malca Store.
And for a little bit of background on who Aston was. Uh.
(00:43):
He was born on October eleventh, eighteen seventy nine, in Burnside,
South Australia, and his parents were a blacksmith named James
Albert Aston and James's wife, Rebecca. Rebecca passed away when
George was still an infant. Uh and his father remarried,
but George and his stepmother were never very close. When
he was eleven, George left school, but he really liked
(01:03):
to learn and he continued to read and study outside
of the formal school environment. When he was eighteen, George
joined the South Australian Military Forces, so that was in
eight seven and he started as an orderly in the
Chief Secretary's Office and then in eighteen nine he joined
the first South Australian Contingent, which was a mounted rifle
(01:24):
squad consisting of five officers and a hundred and twenty
one men, and he served in the South African War,
which was fought between the British Empire and the Boer
South African Republic as well as its Orange Free State
ally and while he was in South Africa, George collected
weapons and curios. He, like we mentioned, was always a
lifelong learner and he would send these back to his father,
(01:45):
who then had them displayed at the Adelaide Pantheon Theater.
George had what was described as an imposing physical presence
and after the war he served as a constable in
the South Australian Mounted Police from nineteen o one to
nineteen o three. He was posted at various points around
South Australia's Spencer Gulf and Gulf St. Vincent and some
(02:07):
of the outlying areas including Yorktown, Port, Germaine, and Karna.
While in Port Germaine, George had his first contact with
Aboriginal people, and in later life he said he was
curious about the similarities they might have shared with some
of the African people he had encountered during the war.
In nineteen o four, Easton began a five year assignment
(02:28):
and he was during that time patrolling the Gawler Ranges
and Nulabore Plaine, and his station points were at Tarkula
and Tumby Bay, and those two points are about five
hundred and sixty kilometers apart from each other north to south,
and the area he was patrolling is roughly eight hundred
and fifty kilometers wide, so it's a big space. And
(02:48):
he had a lot of time while he was out
on horseback and camel patrolling, and during those long periods
he slowly worked on developing an amicable relationship with the
area's original population, and he would write regular reports to
his superiors in which he urged them to let at
the Aboriginal people's work out their issues and solve their
(03:08):
own problems using their own laws and ways, rather than
encouraging the government to step in. Uh And he's also
said to have never carried a gun during his patrols,
so he kind of made himself a very friendly, easy
to approach and easy to work with figure for the
Australian government in working with the Aboriginal peoples of the area.
(03:29):
During this period, George also got married. On April twelfth
of nineteen o five, he married a governess named Mabel
Agnes maud Mary White. In nineteen twelve, he started a
nine year appointment at the Birdsville Track outpost. The Birdsville
Track is a five seventeen kilometer dirt road that runs
from Mauri in South Australia north to Birdsville in Queensland.
(03:52):
Roughly in the middle is munger Annie, which is the
side of the outpost. Incidentally, this is allegedly an Aboriginal
word meaning big ugly face, and we would love to
hear from anyone who can confirm that from Australia because
CNN says that's what it means, but you know that's CNN.
We always like corroboration. Yes, primary sources are awesome. The
(04:15):
track passes over sandhills, dried up riverbed called Cooper Creek
which sometimes floods, and the start don't stony desert during
the near decade that Aston was stationed on the Birdsville Track,
handling day to day business as a policeman, which included
patrolling the area on camelback. He acted as a coroner.
He had to make repairs to the police station is needed.
(04:39):
He was also studying the Aboriginal population and he served
as their sub protector and as subprotector he photographed and
documented the lives of the Aboriginal population, particularly the Wank
and Guru of eastern Lake Ire, and he reported annually
on their population to his superiors. He also distributed rations
to people who are in need, and his station at
(05:01):
munger Annie is said to have become a camping place
for displaced Aboriginal people. He also crusaded for the fair
treatment of the Aboriginal population and there was an incident
where a European had been killed and a policeman from
Central Australia was leading a pretty brutal charge against the
Aboriginal population and Aston wrote a letter to his Melbourne
(05:22):
correspondent about it, and in it he said, I would
like to be on one of these commissions into the
way the Blacks are being treated. There is no need
for it. It is just brutal cowardice on the part
of the people who do the shooting. I am prepared
to go anywhere in Australia unarmed among the blacks, and
I am sure I would be better treated by the
(05:42):
blacks than I would be by the whites. I never
had need to chastise a blackfellow even in my police days,
and the blacks out to the northwest of Tarkula were
deemed the worst in Australia. Twenty years ago. I went
out among them and all I can remember receiving at
their hands was courtesy and kindness and all the help
they could give me. So throughout the years Aston had
(06:04):
really become something of a scholar regarding Aboriginal culture. He
had been corresponding throughout his police work with academics and
experts throughout the world, and he even lectured on occasion
at the University of Melbourne on the topic of ethnography.
UH Starting during his nineteen o four appointment at Tarkula
and Tumby Bay, he had also begun to collect and
document stone tools, and as he continued his relationships with
(06:28):
various tribes throughout the years, he continued to collect samples
um spears, boomerangs, magical pointing bones which were used for
hexes and and spell work and art pieces, as well
as fossil records from the areas, and all the while
he was kind of assembling these as part of an
(06:50):
ethnographic evidence he was working on that stone tools of
the Aboriginal people's had developed indigenously. They had not been
imported in from anywhere and adopted. They were actually part
of their natural um development as a culture. Incidentally, there
are some accounts that suggest that he was actually instrumental
in the abandonment of using the practice of using pointing bones. Allegedly,
(07:13):
he let members of the tribes use the bones, which
were normally used for curses, to point at him and
see that nothing happened as a result. Yeah, it should
be kind of interesting. Look see, I'm fine. Uh. And
in the nine twenty, as his appointment on the Birdsville
track was coming to a close, Easton contacted an art
dealer in Melbourne and then he also talked to anthropologists
(07:36):
and archaeologists to share his findings and samples. He eventually
co wrote a book entitled Savage Life in Central Australia
with archaeologist Dr George Horne, and because Easton had also
been practicing and honing his photography skills throughout the years.
It's his images that make up the book's photoplates. He
also published numerous articles throughout the years about the Aboriginal
(07:59):
people and our tools and their culture. So he really
was kind of educating the world in many ways about
the people he was living with and getting to know,
and probably providing a much more balanced bit of information
than anybody else had done before. In nine three, he
resigned from the police force. Rather than take an assignment
that was going to move him away from the area
(08:20):
he had started to really love, he leased some land
and bought the then tiny Malcha Store. It was a
little store in the middle of nowhere, just twenty five
miles which is about forty kilometers south of munger Anny
on the Birdsville Track. The store was a hundred and
fifty miles or about two one kilometers from the nearest town,
(08:40):
and it had no natural water source. Around nineteen hundred
bore holes had been sunk into the Great Artesian Basin
UH five thousand feet down, and the Great Artesian Basin
is one of the largest underground water sources in the world,
and it actually underlies about of the Australian continent. When
he set up the store, he leased one of these
(09:03):
boars so that he could sell water for a penny
of drink. Initially, these boarholes were meant to draw water
for livestock. The Australian government was hoping to develop the
Birds Litill Track as a cattle driving route. Roughly forty
head of cattle passed through the multi boar area each
year before corrosion and the pipes damaged the water flow. Yes,
(09:23):
so he was initially able to charge a penny per
drink for the animals, I see the people, So it
really was pretty a pretty lucrative set up in that regard.
Uh And to stock his store in the middle of nowhere,
Aston depended on the mail service to bring goods from
all corners of the earth, and he stalked a really
odd assortment of things that it's hard to imagine someone
needing in the outback. He some of them were obvious,
(09:46):
like horseshoes and bridles, but he would also stock ribbons, medicine, flour,
sugar round cheeses, which I've heard too referred to kind
of as the fast food of the era because you
could take it and go and eat in your hand. Uh.
And he also had on display his collection of medieval
armor and dueling pistols. So if you could just imagine
this fully stocked sort of general store, but then with
(10:09):
medieval armor on the walls and dueling pistols on display,
just sort of this odd little curio shop, I'm imagining
some kind of weird cross between medieval times and cracker barrel.
I've seen one picture of it, and it looked much
more organized than that. You know, it didn't have that
(10:29):
sort of like It was very quaint, but it wasn't
like a homie like, come on in, We've put some
things around. Everything really seemed like it had a place.
Part of the reason he kept this wide range of
items in stock was because his was the only shop
for miles and miles, so he kind of wanted anything
that a customer might happen to need. Most of his
(10:50):
customers were escorting cattle or owned the various cattle stands
along the track, and Potty, as he came to be
called by friends, also did any blacksmith or taxman's work
is needed, So if their horses needed shoes, he was
on it. Uh, you know, he would take care of
the search of little necessary things that you need, and
(11:10):
there wasn't a blacksmith around either, so he kind of
took up that as his second job, and he had
kind of a third job in doing construction work on
the store to expand the store itself and the attached
living quarters. And then in having had several years of
success running the store because again, even though it's in
a little of nowhere, lots of cattle driving happening and
(11:32):
people stopping for water and food and their needs. But
then he also added a gas station because car traffic
was starting to surpass horses and camels on this dirt track.
But unfortunately a drought was on the way. From nine
to nineteen thirty four, our record drought took a huge
toll on the outback and everyone and everything that lived there.
(11:55):
The cattle stations along the birds Will tracks shut down,
and that pretty much took all of his livelihood with them.
During the drought, he traveled to two different exhibitions in
Melbourne to give talks about the Aboriginal art and culture
that he had come to know so much about, and
in both occasions he was accompanied by tribesmen who demonstrated
their skills and ceremonies. Despite all the hardship of the drought,
(12:20):
the Aston stuck it out at the Mulcha store. They
recognized that the lack of business was gonna pretty much
take away their retirement plan, uh, and they just continued working.
So for the next nine years. They were like, well,
we're just gonna keep going and we won't be able
to retire in style early, but we're gonna keep this
store happening. Sadly, he died in September of after a
(12:42):
battle with cancer, but even after Potty had passed away,
his store did not close. Even without her husband, Mabel
continued to run the store, and she actually did so
for eight more years, and during that time business started
to pick up. The drought had ended, and tourism actually
started to bring traffic back to the Birdsville track, So
even though the cattle were not passing through any more,
(13:04):
new kinds of travelers were. And she was actually pretty
reluctant to retire because she was so attached to the land,
but she did eventually do so in she was in
her seventies at the time. In nineteen fifty three, Mabel
donated potties aboriginal artifacts the medieval armor and the Gun Collection,
along with other pieces that had been housed in the
(13:25):
store to the South Australian Museum. A lot of his
photographs also eventually joined the collection, and the National Museum
of Australia at Canberra, the Mitchell Library at Sydney, and
the South Australian Museum all have various pieces of Aston's
correspondents and research papers in their collections. The story that
emerges when you look at his life is one of
(13:47):
a pretty remarkable man. He was smart, resourceful and independent
and able to bridge this cultural gap between the white
people who were settling in Australia and their Aboriginal people's
who already lived there. His photographs, particularly his landscapes, are
also quite striking. You can find some of them in
the book Images of the Interior seven Central Australian Photographers,
(14:10):
and if you actually google that title you will pull
up some images from various places and they are just beautiful. Uh.
And it's There's an interesting note also regarding a stance
collection of his Aboriginal implements. He never took any of them.
He always bought or bartered for them, and he would
only make deals for items which Aboriginal people's were offering.
(14:31):
He never tried to cajole any of the tribes that
he befriended into parting with anything that they weren't sort
of willing to freely offer him in a trade, which
is pretty cool. Uh. You know, he was in a position,
especially as a policeman, that he probably could have just
taken anything of theirs that he wanted, but he never did.
He always made it a fair trait. His book, Savage
(14:52):
Life in Central Australia is now regarded as one of
the few accounts of the ceremonies in life of the
Aboriginal tribes he could become so familiar and friendly with,
and as the Aboriginal culture in the area collapsed, there
wasn't really much else left behind in the cultural record. Yeah,
there weren't books prepared by the Aboriginal people, so we
(15:12):
didn't you know, they didn't really leave us a library
behind as as their culture kind of fell in on itself.
So thankfully we have this account of someone that at
least was a first hand witness, even if not an
actual participant. It's pretty neat. So, yeah, the Mulka Store,
it's so amazing to think about choosing to live this
life out in the middle of nowhere and having this
(15:35):
very unique relationship with the indigenous peoples and just you
have to have such an independent spirit. It's so like
what you would think of when you think of people
in the outback of Australia. But he was the real deal. Yeah.
I really like that that all of this, this collection
that he built was built of things that were really
given and that things that were taken, because that unfortunately
(15:59):
the other the other way is the way that is
how many museums have acquired their stuff, right, And that's
one of those things that kind of bothers me sometimes
when I'm in a museum seeing artifacts and kind of
wondering how they got there. Yeah, it's a little bit tricky.
It's a tricky bit of morality to work with something.
But not if you're looking at any of his collections
(16:20):
which are still on display. Do you have some listener
mail too? I just might. This particular piece of mail
comes from our listener, Josh, and he says, Hi, Tracy
and Holly, I was listening to your podcast on the
Phoenician ab Jet alphabet, and notice your reference to the
purple die that the Phoenicians traded that reminded me of
Biblical references to dies, and that Phoenician die known as
Tyrian purple is known in the Bible as Argamon, which
(16:43):
I hope I'm pronouncing correctly. It is cited in Exodus
as one of the dies used in the priestly vestiments,
and I did look it up, and it's often associated
with like more of a crimson shade of purple. Interesting uh.
Paul Friedlander found in nineteen o nine that this guy
was ex acted from the snail your ex Brendaris. Interestingly,
a decade later, in nineteen nineteen, Rabbi Itsak Kalevi Herzog,
(17:08):
which I'm also hoping I pronounced correct correctly, was also
an amateur chemist and would later serve as the Chief
Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine and the first Chief Rabbi
of the State of Israel. He earned his doctorate in
literature from the University of London for discovering the source
of a related die, tackle It from a related snail
Hexaplex trunculus, which I just love to say those two
(17:30):
words together is my interjection. Techol It, which is related
in appearance to indigo, has an interesting history of its
own being used not only in the same priestly vestiments
as Argamon, but also in the daily garments of the
people in the blue thread of the fringes or this
Die was so important that it continues to be referred
to twice a day by observant Jews in the recitation
(17:52):
of the Schma Vox. Tablet, the podcast to the Jewish
culture website. Tablet mag has a dedicated episode on the
history and rebirth of techl it manufacturer called the Search
for an Ancient Blue which I am now going to
seek out and listen to you because that sounds really
cool to me, So thank you Josh for letting us
know about that. It's I am so kind of into
textile and that the whole world that to me, this
(18:14):
sounds like the most exciting podcast I could ever listen to.
Do it. I love it Die and call her a fabrite. Hello,
I'm all over it in the big name. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can
connect with us on Twitter at missed in History at
Facebook dot com, slash History class Stuff, and uh missed
(18:35):
in History dot tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest.
If you want to have a fun little read about Australia,
you can go to our website and type in the
word boomerang and you will get a fun article called
how boomerangs work. You will know all about the physics
of their flight. It's some awesome physics. If you would
like to learn about almost anything else you can think
of or they you have an interest in, you can
(18:55):
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(19:17):
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choice when you sign up today.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we
are going to visit Australia again today at the time
of the late eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundred. It's been
(00:22):
a common theme in the podcast lately. Yeah, it's a
busy time in history because of the Industrial Revolution and
a lot of things happening on the worldwide political stage.
But today we're gonna kind of hang out in a
quiet little spot in the middle of nowhere. Uh, and
we're gonna talk about George Aston and the Malca Store.
And for a little bit of background on who Aston was. Uh.
(00:43):
He was born on October eleventh, eighteen seventy nine, in Burnside,
South Australia, and his parents were a blacksmith named James
Albert Aston and James's wife, Rebecca. Rebecca passed away when
George was still an infant. Uh and his father remarried,
but George and his stepmother were never very close. When
he was eleven, George left school, but he really liked
(01:03):
to learn and he continued to read and study outside
of the formal school environment. When he was eighteen, George
joined the South Australian Military Forces, so that was in
eight seven and he started as an orderly in the
Chief Secretary's Office and then in eighteen nine he joined
the first South Australian Contingent, which was a mounted rifle
(01:24):
squad consisting of five officers and a hundred and twenty
one men, and he served in the South African War,
which was fought between the British Empire and the Boer
South African Republic as well as its Orange Free State
ally and while he was in South Africa, George collected
weapons and curios. He, like we mentioned, was always a
lifelong learner and he would send these back to his father,
(01:45):
who then had them displayed at the Adelaide Pantheon Theater.
George had what was described as an imposing physical presence
and after the war he served as a constable in
the South Australian Mounted Police from nineteen o one to
nineteen o three. He was posted at various points around
South Australia's Spencer Gulf and Gulf St. Vincent and some
(02:07):
of the outlying areas including Yorktown, Port, Germaine, and Karna.
While in Port Germaine, George had his first contact with
Aboriginal people, and in later life he said he was
curious about the similarities they might have shared with some
of the African people he had encountered during the war.
In nineteen o four, Easton began a five year assignment
(02:28):
and he was during that time patrolling the Gawler Ranges
and Nulabore Plaine, and his station points were at Tarkula
and Tumby Bay, and those two points are about five
hundred and sixty kilometers apart from each other north to south,
and the area he was patrolling is roughly eight hundred
and fifty kilometers wide, so it's a big space. And
(02:48):
he had a lot of time while he was out
on horseback and camel patrolling, and during those long periods
he slowly worked on developing an amicable relationship with the
area's original population, and he would write regular reports to
his superiors in which he urged them to let at
the Aboriginal people's work out their issues and solve their
(03:08):
own problems using their own laws and ways, rather than
encouraging the government to step in. Uh And he's also
said to have never carried a gun during his patrols,
so he kind of made himself a very friendly, easy
to approach and easy to work with figure for the
Australian government in working with the Aboriginal peoples of the area.
(03:29):
During this period, George also got married. On April twelfth
of nineteen o five, he married a governess named Mabel
Agnes maud Mary White. In nineteen twelve, he started a
nine year appointment at the Birdsville Track outpost. The Birdsville
Track is a five seventeen kilometer dirt road that runs
from Mauri in South Australia north to Birdsville in Queensland.
(03:52):
Roughly in the middle is munger Annie, which is the
side of the outpost. Incidentally, this is allegedly an Aboriginal
word meaning big ugly face, and we would love to
hear from anyone who can confirm that from Australia because
CNN says that's what it means, but you know that's CNN.
We always like corroboration. Yes, primary sources are awesome. The
(04:15):
track passes over sandhills, dried up riverbed called Cooper Creek
which sometimes floods, and the start don't stony desert during
the near decade that Aston was stationed on the Birdsville Track,
handling day to day business as a policeman, which included
patrolling the area on camelback. He acted as a coroner.
He had to make repairs to the police station is needed.
(04:39):
He was also studying the Aboriginal population and he served
as their sub protector and as subprotector he photographed and
documented the lives of the Aboriginal population, particularly the Wank
and Guru of eastern Lake Ire, and he reported annually
on their population to his superiors. He also distributed rations
to people who are in need, and his station at
(05:01):
munger Annie is said to have become a camping place
for displaced Aboriginal people. He also crusaded for the fair
treatment of the Aboriginal population and there was an incident
where a European had been killed and a policeman from
Central Australia was leading a pretty brutal charge against the
Aboriginal population and Aston wrote a letter to his Melbourne
(05:22):
correspondent about it, and in it he said, I would
like to be on one of these commissions into the
way the Blacks are being treated. There is no need
for it. It is just brutal cowardice on the part
of the people who do the shooting. I am prepared
to go anywhere in Australia unarmed among the blacks, and
I am sure I would be better treated by the
(05:42):
blacks than I would be by the whites. I never
had need to chastise a blackfellow even in my police days,
and the blacks out to the northwest of Tarkula were
deemed the worst in Australia. Twenty years ago. I went
out among them and all I can remember receiving at
their hands was courtesy and kindness and all the help
they could give me. So throughout the years Aston had
(06:04):
really become something of a scholar regarding Aboriginal culture. He
had been corresponding throughout his police work with academics and
experts throughout the world, and he even lectured on occasion
at the University of Melbourne on the topic of ethnography.
UH Starting during his nineteen o four appointment at Tarkula
and Tumby Bay, he had also begun to collect and
document stone tools, and as he continued his relationships with
(06:28):
various tribes throughout the years, he continued to collect samples
um spears, boomerangs, magical pointing bones which were used for
hexes and and spell work and art pieces, as well
as fossil records from the areas, and all the while
he was kind of assembling these as part of an
(06:50):
ethnographic evidence he was working on that stone tools of
the Aboriginal people's had developed indigenously. They had not been
imported in from anywhere and adopted. They were actually part
of their natural um development as a culture. Incidentally, there
are some accounts that suggest that he was actually instrumental
in the abandonment of using the practice of using pointing bones. Allegedly,
(07:13):
he let members of the tribes use the bones, which
were normally used for curses, to point at him and
see that nothing happened as a result. Yeah, it should
be kind of interesting. Look see, I'm fine. Uh. And
in the nine twenty, as his appointment on the Birdsville
track was coming to a close, Easton contacted an art
dealer in Melbourne and then he also talked to anthropologists
(07:36):
and archaeologists to share his findings and samples. He eventually
co wrote a book entitled Savage Life in Central Australia
with archaeologist Dr George Horne, and because Easton had also
been practicing and honing his photography skills throughout the years.
It's his images that make up the book's photoplates. He
also published numerous articles throughout the years about the Aboriginal
(07:59):
people and our tools and their culture. So he really
was kind of educating the world in many ways about
the people he was living with and getting to know,
and probably providing a much more balanced bit of information
than anybody else had done before. In nine three, he
resigned from the police force. Rather than take an assignment
that was going to move him away from the area
(08:20):
he had started to really love, he leased some land
and bought the then tiny Malcha Store. It was a
little store in the middle of nowhere, just twenty five
miles which is about forty kilometers south of munger Anny
on the Birdsville Track. The store was a hundred and
fifty miles or about two one kilometers from the nearest town,
(08:40):
and it had no natural water source. Around nineteen hundred
bore holes had been sunk into the Great Artesian Basin
UH five thousand feet down, and the Great Artesian Basin
is one of the largest underground water sources in the world,
and it actually underlies about of the Australian continent. When
he set up the store, he leased one of these
(09:03):
boars so that he could sell water for a penny
of drink. Initially, these boarholes were meant to draw water
for livestock. The Australian government was hoping to develop the
Birds Litill Track as a cattle driving route. Roughly forty
head of cattle passed through the multi boar area each
year before corrosion and the pipes damaged the water flow. Yes,
(09:23):
so he was initially able to charge a penny per
drink for the animals, I see the people, So it
really was pretty a pretty lucrative set up in that regard.
Uh And to stock his store in the middle of nowhere,
Aston depended on the mail service to bring goods from
all corners of the earth, and he stalked a really
odd assortment of things that it's hard to imagine someone
needing in the outback. He some of them were obvious,
(09:46):
like horseshoes and bridles, but he would also stock ribbons, medicine, flour,
sugar round cheeses, which I've heard too referred to kind
of as the fast food of the era because you
could take it and go and eat in your hand. Uh.
And he also had on display his collection of medieval
armor and dueling pistols. So if you could just imagine
this fully stocked sort of general store, but then with
(10:09):
medieval armor on the walls and dueling pistols on display,
just sort of this odd little curio shop, I'm imagining
some kind of weird cross between medieval times and cracker barrel.
I've seen one picture of it, and it looked much
more organized than that. You know, it didn't have that
(10:29):
sort of like It was very quaint, but it wasn't
like a homie like, come on in, We've put some
things around. Everything really seemed like it had a place.
Part of the reason he kept this wide range of
items in stock was because his was the only shop
for miles and miles, so he kind of wanted anything
that a customer might happen to need. Most of his
(10:50):
customers were escorting cattle or owned the various cattle stands
along the track, and Potty, as he came to be
called by friends, also did any blacksmith or taxman's work
is needed, So if their horses needed shoes, he was
on it. Uh, you know, he would take care of
the search of little necessary things that you need, and
(11:10):
there wasn't a blacksmith around either, so he kind of
took up that as his second job, and he had
kind of a third job in doing construction work on
the store to expand the store itself and the attached
living quarters. And then in having had several years of
success running the store because again, even though it's in
a little of nowhere, lots of cattle driving happening and
(11:32):
people stopping for water and food and their needs. But
then he also added a gas station because car traffic
was starting to surpass horses and camels on this dirt track.
But unfortunately a drought was on the way. From nine
to nineteen thirty four, our record drought took a huge
toll on the outback and everyone and everything that lived there.
(11:55):
The cattle stations along the birds Will tracks shut down,
and that pretty much took all of his livelihood with them.
During the drought, he traveled to two different exhibitions in
Melbourne to give talks about the Aboriginal art and culture
that he had come to know so much about, and
in both occasions he was accompanied by tribesmen who demonstrated
their skills and ceremonies. Despite all the hardship of the drought,
(12:20):
the Aston stuck it out at the Mulcha store. They
recognized that the lack of business was gonna pretty much
take away their retirement plan, uh, and they just continued working.
So for the next nine years. They were like, well,
we're just gonna keep going and we won't be able
to retire in style early, but we're gonna keep this
store happening. Sadly, he died in September of after a
(12:42):
battle with cancer, but even after Potty had passed away,
his store did not close. Even without her husband, Mabel
continued to run the store, and she actually did so
for eight more years, and during that time business started
to pick up. The drought had ended, and tourism actually
started to bring traffic back to the Birdsville track, So
even though the cattle were not passing through any more,
(13:04):
new kinds of travelers were. And she was actually pretty
reluctant to retire because she was so attached to the land,
but she did eventually do so in she was in
her seventies at the time. In nineteen fifty three, Mabel
donated potties aboriginal artifacts the medieval armor and the Gun Collection,
along with other pieces that had been housed in the
(13:25):
store to the South Australian Museum. A lot of his
photographs also eventually joined the collection, and the National Museum
of Australia at Canberra, the Mitchell Library at Sydney, and
the South Australian Museum all have various pieces of Aston's
correspondents and research papers in their collections. The story that
emerges when you look at his life is one of
(13:47):
a pretty remarkable man. He was smart, resourceful and independent
and able to bridge this cultural gap between the white
people who were settling in Australia and their Aboriginal people's
who already lived there. His photographs, particularly his landscapes, are
also quite striking. You can find some of them in
the book Images of the Interior seven Central Australian Photographers,
(14:10):
and if you actually google that title you will pull
up some images from various places and they are just beautiful. Uh.
And it's There's an interesting note also regarding a stance
collection of his Aboriginal implements. He never took any of them.
He always bought or bartered for them, and he would
only make deals for items which Aboriginal people's were offering.
(14:31):
He never tried to cajole any of the tribes that
he befriended into parting with anything that they weren't sort
of willing to freely offer him in a trade, which
is pretty cool. Uh. You know, he was in a position,
especially as a policeman, that he probably could have just
taken anything of theirs that he wanted, but he never did.
He always made it a fair trait. His book, Savage
(14:52):
Life in Central Australia is now regarded as one of
the few accounts of the ceremonies in life of the
Aboriginal tribes he could become so familiar and friendly with,
and as the Aboriginal culture in the area collapsed, there
wasn't really much else left behind in the cultural record. Yeah,
there weren't books prepared by the Aboriginal people, so we
(15:12):
didn't you know, they didn't really leave us a library
behind as as their culture kind of fell in on itself.
So thankfully we have this account of someone that at
least was a first hand witness, even if not an
actual participant. It's pretty neat. So, yeah, the Mulka Store,
it's so amazing to think about choosing to live this
life out in the middle of nowhere and having this
(15:35):
very unique relationship with the indigenous peoples and just you
have to have such an independent spirit. It's so like
what you would think of when you think of people
in the outback of Australia. But he was the real deal. Yeah.
I really like that that all of this, this collection
that he built was built of things that were really
given and that things that were taken, because that unfortunately
(15:59):
the other the other way is the way that is
how many museums have acquired their stuff, right, And that's
one of those things that kind of bothers me sometimes
when I'm in a museum seeing artifacts and kind of
wondering how they got there. Yeah, it's a little bit tricky.
It's a tricky bit of morality to work with something.
But not if you're looking at any of his collections
(16:20):
which are still on display. Do you have some listener
mail too? I just might. This particular piece of mail
comes from our listener, Josh, and he says, Hi, Tracy
and Holly, I was listening to your podcast on the
Phoenician ab Jet alphabet, and notice your reference to the
purple die that the Phoenicians traded that reminded me of
Biblical references to dies, and that Phoenician die known as
Tyrian purple is known in the Bible as Argamon, which
(16:43):
I hope I'm pronouncing correctly. It is cited in Exodus
as one of the dies used in the priestly vestiments,
and I did look it up, and it's often associated
with like more of a crimson shade of purple. Interesting uh.
Paul Friedlander found in nineteen o nine that this guy
was ex acted from the snail your ex Brendaris. Interestingly,
a decade later, in nineteen nineteen, Rabbi Itsak Kalevi Herzog,
(17:08):
which I'm also hoping I pronounced correct correctly, was also
an amateur chemist and would later serve as the Chief
Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine and the first Chief Rabbi
of the State of Israel. He earned his doctorate in
literature from the University of London for discovering the source
of a related die, tackle It from a related snail
Hexaplex trunculus, which I just love to say those two
(17:30):
words together is my interjection. Techol It, which is related
in appearance to indigo, has an interesting history of its
own being used not only in the same priestly vestiments
as Argamon, but also in the daily garments of the
people in the blue thread of the fringes or this
Die was so important that it continues to be referred
to twice a day by observant Jews in the recitation
(17:52):
of the Schma Vox. Tablet, the podcast to the Jewish
culture website. Tablet mag has a dedicated episode on the
history and rebirth of techl it manufacturer called the Search
for an Ancient Blue which I am now going to
seek out and listen to you because that sounds really
cool to me, So thank you Josh for letting us
know about that. It's I am so kind of into
textile and that the whole world that to me, this
(18:14):
sounds like the most exciting podcast I could ever listen to.
Do it. I love it Die and call her a fabrite. Hello,
I'm all over it in the big name. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can
connect with us on Twitter at missed in History at
Facebook dot com, slash History class Stuff, and uh missed
(18:35):
in History dot tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest.
If you want to have a fun little read about Australia,
you can go to our website and type in the
word boomerang and you will get a fun article called
how boomerangs work. You will know all about the physics
of their flight. It's some awesome physics. If you would
like to learn about almost anything else you can think
of or they you have an interest in, you can
(18:55):
do so at our website, which is how stump works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff works dot com. Audible dot com
(19:17):
is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and
spoken word entertainment. Audible has more than one thousand titles
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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