Monday, June 8, 2009

Who was the real Bony? - 4 Comments

Arthur Upfield wrote a murder mystery novel, but he wasn't quite pleased with it. He was still wondering what to do about it, when his friend from before the war came by. His name was Leon, and he was an Aborigine with a white father and a black mother. He had been found as a baby by the body of his murdered mother, and was now a tracker with the Queensland police. After being raised on a Queensland mission, Leon had received a high school education, and was an intelligent, cultivated and widely read young man, who had returned to the outback due to his love of the bush.

Upfield decided to rewrite his novel with Leon as the detective hero, replacing the conventional white detective. The novel was called The Barakee Mystery and with only small changes Leon became Detective Inspector Napoleon Boneparte of the Queensland Police Force. It is important to note that Upfield was writing at a time where the only view of Aboriginals in Australia was as a study of anthropology, as the government saw them as stone-age people with an inferior lifestyle.

Before the first Bony book was published Upfield had written about the treatment of Aboriginals in a few articles. He had a great interest in their customs, legends and stories, their culture and knowledge of the land. The popular idea of race at the time in Australia was somewhat similar to that of Nazi Germany - the superiority of one race over another. By Upfield humanising ‘half-casts', he supported an ideal that went directly against the tide of the time.

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