It's a long, hard trail to bring back the proud Aboriginal stockman

BRISBANE - Lying on the fringes of the forbidding Tanami Desert, its 13,000sq km of baked rock, parched scrub and savannah grassland support 50,000 brahman cattle.

Wave Hill cattle station, 700km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, is built on a scale which befits the vastness of the Outback.

It was here, 40 years ago today, that the campaign for Aboriginal land rights was born.

On August 23, 1966, an Aboriginal cowboy named Vincent Lingiari downed tools and walked into the bush, taking around 200 Aboriginal stockmen and their families.

They were protesting against appalling living conditions, poor food and terrible pay. But the walk-off soon evolved into something much more significant - a demand by Lingiari and his Gurindji tribe for the return of their land, which had been appropriated by white settlers.

In 1968 Aboriginal stockmen secured equal pay, and in 1975 the Gurindji's fight culminated in a decision by the Government to give them back part of their ancestral lands, with Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically trickling red dirt into Lingiari's gnarled hands.

The strike, which was immortalised in a popular song, From Little Things Big Things Grow, was commemorated at the weekend with a festival in Kalkarindji, the small settlement established by the Gurindji when they walked off Wave Hill.

But the twin victories ironically proved to be a disaster for Aboriginal stockmen and their families.

They were laid off in droves by ranchers who either resented the new conditions or feared their properties would become the target of native title claims.

At the same time, the beef industry was becoming mechanised. Helicopters, light aircraft and motorbikes were increasingly used to muster cattle, and stockmen - black or white - were not needed in such numbers.

The estimated 2000 Aboriginal stockmen who were employed across northern Australia in 1966 have dwindled to just a few dozen.

Proud Aboriginal jackaroos resorted instead to accepting unemployment benefit - "sit-down money" as they call it.

But there is now a push to persuade Aboriginal people back into the pastoral industry and re-establish the tradition of the black stockman.

In the last year, Aboriginal communities have leased 10,000sq km - capable of supporting 25,000 cattle - to white-owned ranches.

Aborigines own almost half the land in the Northern Territory, a powerful bargaining tool as they seek to re-engage with the cattle industry.

A Government-funded scheme, the Indigenous Pastoral Programme, is training a dozen young Aboriginal men to become stockmen.

"We want to reinvent the Aboriginal stockman and bring them back on to the stations," said Kon Vatskalis, the Northern Territory's minister for primary industries.

"Sit-down money killed the stockman. Why ride around on a horse all day when you can sit under a tree and receive a handout every fortnight?

"We have to tackle the cycle of dependence - we don't want to lose another generation."

But there are huge challenges ahead. "The biggest problem is reliability," said Trish Hoad, who manages Wave Hill station with her husband Gavin. Of their 15 stockmen, only two are Aborigines.

"You go out to the cattle yard in the morning and find that three-quarters of your Aboriginal staff have walked off - they just decided overnight that they didn't want to work. It's a real shame because we're very keen to get them back into the industry."

Enormous changes within the cattle industry in the last 30 or 40 years will also make it hard for Aborigines to regain their former pre-eminence.

"These days it's very capital intensive. You need really sound management skills," said Jon Altman, director of Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University.

The prospect of a new generation of Aboriginal stockmen riding the ranges and improving their lives on the back of beef cattle could prove elusive.

"The fit between Aborigines and the cattle business isn't so good anymore," said Peter Forrest, a Darwin-based historian.

"History doesn't give us much cause for optimism."