I did not sleep again during the night. The heavenly sunset of last evening
had transformed into a hellfire night The mob violence escalated once again,
as the night went on. A father had been charging around wielding a machete at
anybody who got in his way. The problem had fired up from a feud with his son
in law. More serious still, The police had also found an Aboriginal youngster
unconscious and close to death this morning - he had been repeatedly cracked
over the head with a shovel according to bystanders' reports. But
unfortunately, the police find themselves unable to turn up until the next
day , usually long after the incident has abated. Wise policy, given that
there are only 12 of them stationed on this island to fend off a potential
maximum of 900 aggressors on any one occasion ! When the police used to turn
up it simply inflamed the situation - the officers just ended up being
subjected to a totally uninhibited full frontal assault ; involving a diverse
armoury of spears , machetes, gunfire and hatchets !
The miners had told me that if you intervene - much as I had felt compelled
to do the other night - you get attacked yourself; not only by the
aggressors but by those you are trying to protect.
The well travelled Missionary's son, Craig, and his wife Linda, courageously
live in a house in the middle of Angurugu . I find it unbelievable that they
can carry on living here, incarcerating themselves behind a dense
fortification of six tier barbed wire interwoven through chain link ; the
perimeter being manned by skulking dobermanns 24 hours a day . Craig told me
that Aboriginal communities are reputedly mildly aggressive, but that
Angurugu is exclusively excessively aggressive. It demonstrates by far the
most violent community in the whole of Australia; per violent incident per
head of population. And furthermore, the type of violence here could be
classed as a form of psychopathic insanity, particularly when it is
exacerbated by alcoholic consumption. "Its explosive" said Craig, only just
twenty but built like a tank. "Your country got into all that namby-pamby,
politically-correct judgemental criticism over the Duke of Edinburgh
associating spears with Aboriginees, etc, but he was bloody right. I get a
spear tossed at me once a week. You Pommies haven't got a clue. Its frontier
stuff out here, buddy "
I feel that the unique exposure of this village population to an environment
that probably carries the highest levels of manganese in the world (
500,000 ppm in the manganese bedrock top soils) has a major part to play in
the psychotic behaviour patterns of this community.
Post mortems of the brains of miners who have died of chronic manganese
induced neurodegenerative disorders have revealed widespread loss of
serotonin receptors. Lack of serotonin has been well connected to the cause
of bouts of impulsive,criminally insane, aggressive behaviour - an
archetypal symptom of the manganese madness syndrome seen in miners the world
over. Alcoholic consumption is also well known to trigger off unprovoked
aggression / rage in those who are genetically predisposed to low serotonin
turnover, thereby illustrating the devastating synergistic scenario once
chronic manganese and alcoholic exposure are simultaneously unleashed. Since
serotonin levels are under circadian regulation via the pineal gland , the
characteristic drop in serotonin levels during nightime in relation to day ,
probably explains the somewhat unique cycle of nightime violence and daytime
peace in this village.
These eco-toxicological problems are further inflamed by the sheer
multicomplexity of the subjective, political and vested interest pressures
operating in the heartbeat of this community. They are so sensitively
interwoven, that the overall position adopted - or lack of position -is
highly insensitve to the health and well being of its people. Any resolutions
to the problems have been stalemated by these conflicting interests, enabling
the psycho-neuro problems of Angurugu to escalate to virtual crisis
proportions. The village could suicide itself in the end. The stalwart
presence of the Anglicare mission is the only oasis of hope and light.
But a more objective third party needs to step in, to take the reins from the
subtle autocracy of the mining corporation that has insidiously taken over
from the vacuum of endemic Aboriginal anarchy that has long overuled this
island. Whilst many of the Corporation's efforts to integrate with the
Aboriginal community are highly admirable and unique as far as mining company
trackrecords go - such as their immediate reafforestation of mined land with
indigenous saplings - they are not equipped or indeed suitably skilled to
deal with the escalating problems. Furthermore, would the Corporation ever be
prepared to accept the responsibility for the health effects, which, at the
very least, may well have been exacerbated by their very own mining
activities - eg manganese
