Strangways Sheep Station
But, that's not all there is to this book. Paterson sets the excavations into a broader look at British imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using data from other European colonies, Paterson points out the differences in the progress of colonialism, such as how the indigenous peoples were treated in the Americas, in South Africa, and in Australia, whether they were enslaved, encamped or decimated. Or all three.
Paterson also compares other sheep and cattle stations in north central and central Australia to Strangways Springs. Paterson reports oral history from Australian aborigines who remembered what life on a station was like, and from British colonials who kept journals and wrote letters of their life in the outback.
Intriguing Ideas about Colonialism and its Impacts
There are several intriguing ideas here that are worth pursuing in more depth. For example, Paterson compares the use of local flora and fauna by Aborigines and Colonials. It would be interesting to see what the environmental impact of that usage shift was and how such a shift played out in different colonial venues. There's a discussion of how red ochre was imported by the British colonials in an attempt to keep the Aboriginals from their traditional walkabout rounds. And there's some amount of information on the hidden violence that must have occurred on some of the stations. There simply isn't room to fully treat each of these ideas--and several others new to me, anyway--within the confines of this overview.
The Lost Legions is based on Alistair Paterson's PhD dissertation, and as such, it has a traditional dissertation table of contents: introduction, background research, site description, summary and synthesis, glossary, bibliography. But more than that, Paterson has begun to develop some interesting ideas that I, for one, will look for in other venues.
