Bill Harney – Bushman, Philosopher and Author

BUSHMAN-AUTHOR FINDS
IT’S MORE HUMAN “UP NORTH”

He Will Retire To Become Beachcomber

To Sydney recently came the tough, nuggety bushman, philosopher and novelist Bill Harney for a breather from the jungle pads of Arnhem Land. Up north there was probably no other white man who understood aboriginal law and legend as well as he did, few who had lived among them as long, eating their nardoo and witchety-grubs. Harney is a Territory “old-timer” who has hunted wild buffalo, worked as a drover, with camel teams, on cattle stations, and on luggers for more than 30 years. Harney went bush when he left his Charters Towers home, aged 9yrs, and has spent most of his life in it since.

William Edward ‘Bill’ Harney – Photo Australia Dictionary of Biography

He went to World War I and when he returned delivered mail by pack horse and worked as a boundary rider. In 1921 he won £650 in a Melbourne Cup sweep. With the money, he took up land with Johno Keighran and pioneered a cattle station at Seven Emus (named by ex-Exporer Leichhardt), 60 miles from Borroloola, in the Gulf country.  In 1923 Harney was convicted of cattle stealing and spent three months in Borroloola gaol. He passed the time reading classics of English literature from the local library. Freed on appeal, he gave up his share of Seven Emus station and bought a sailing vessel, the Iolanthe, and traded around Arnhem Land and the Torres Strait islands for tortoise shells, trepang, sandalwood and pearl shell.

On 5 April 1927 at the chapel of the Anglican mission, Groote Eylandt, Harney married 17-year-old Kathleen Linda Beattie, a part-Aboriginal girl. Their daughter Beatrice (Beattie) was born in 1928, and their son Billy two years later. When Linda fell ill with tuberculosis in 1930, Harney sold the Iolanthe and took his family inland where conditions were less humid. They roamed extensively in search of work and suffered hardships during the Depression. Linda died in 1932. Next year Beattie developed tuberculosis. Harney had to leave her in a hospital in Darwin while he went road-mending and fencing, west of Katherine. He also maintained an aerodrome on Bathurst Island for a time. Beattie died in 1934. Billy was to drown in 1945, trying to save a child.

William Edward Harney – 26th Infantry Battalion – Private – Photo vwma.org

In 1940 he joined the Native Affairs Department as a patrol officer and has covered millions of square miles since, investigating native problems. His last “beat” of 150,000 square miles, including Bathurst and Melville Islands, took him more than 6 months to cover. He recently returned from a foot patrol of parts of Arnhem Land never before visited by a white man. As a patrol officer, his job was to help settle tribal rows, investigate trouble with aborigines on cattle and mission stations, keep a close watch on their welfare, and encourage them to stay with their own tribal lands.

Murder Charges –  He also assisted in murder charges against Aborigines and helped the Court with explanations of tribal customs, the violation of which is behind most of the killings. Recently he helped defend a group of young natives found guilty of spearing to death a woman for walking across “forbidden ground.” Harney explained to the Court that the spearing had been ordered by tribe elders because the woman had

broken a law that had been sacred since “dream time.”

The Court accepted this, and gave each of the men only a 5-year gaol term, to be reviewed after 2 years of the sentence had been served.  Tribal elders routine job was to settle disputes about wives — often young men complained that tribal elders had too many wives, and demanded an “equitable distribution”. This was usually achieved by a barter arrangement satisfactory to the old men, who had accumulated their many wives only as a form of social insurance—to work and provide for them in their old age.

Last year he went on a patrol to Melville Island to follow the “line of drift,” or route was taken by Aborigines leaving the mission settlement there to go to Darwin and other Northern Territory towns. In a 17ft. canoe—a hollowed-out log— he followed the “drifting” natives for 30 miles around the Melville coast, then across the turbulent Clarence Strait, in one of the worst seas he had experienced in the north. Waves broke into the canoe, swamping it repeatedly. Each time, Harney had to jump into the water and bail out the canoe. When he caught up with them and asked them why they were leaving Melville Island, the men replied that they were on their way to Darwin to see the new cowboy picture being screened at the local show.

On his lonely patrols, Harney spends most of his after-tea leisure writing books about the North, Aboriginies and their legends. Two of his books have been published, they were  ‘Taboo’ in 1943 and ‘North of the 23’ last year, and both have been successful. Soon to be published is another, ‘Brimming Billabongs’, the saga of an Aboriginal tribe, described by the publishers as one of the most unusual stories of Aboriginal life ever written. He is now working with a Sydney University Anthropology professor, Elkin, on a book on Aboriginal Legends called ‘Songs of the Songmen’.

Harney returns to Darwin in a few week’s time where he will resign from his job as patrol officer and spend the rest of his days as a beachcomber at Two Feller Creek, about 10 miles north-west of Darwin. For leisure, he will write more books, go to Darwin—or possibly Sydney—when he feels a walkabout coming on.

Said he: “I can hardly wait for the day when I can get back to the Territory and become human again.” Im sure that Harney would relate to the quote of fellow author, Arthur Upfield:

” In me was born a passionate love for the Australian bush which will burn until the end, a love stronger than love of family, so strong that even now it threatens to claim me

Books by W E Bill Harney

Bill died on 31 Dec 1962 aged 67yrs from a heart attack and is buried in the Buderim Cemetery, Queensland.

Memorial to Bill Harney – Photo Find a Grave

William Edward Harney had two sons named Bill. The first one did indeed drown. After William Edward Harney’s wife died from TB as did his daughter, He began a relationship with Ludi Libuluyma, a Wardaman woman. They had a son Bill Yidumduma Harney, the well-known Wardman elder.