The struggle quickly became the stuff of myth and legend, not only for the marrngu but for many sympathetic whites, as Western Australian Communist Party member Joan Williams later recalled. Shortly after travelling to the Pilbara to see the strike for herself, the writer Dorothy Hewett was so taken by what she saw that she wanted to write a book about the strike. Instead, she penned what became a famous poem.

Clancy and Dooley and Don McLeod Poem
Citation

Dorothy Hewett, Clancy and Dooley and Don McLeod (1946), Dorothy Hewett, Collected Poems, 1940-1995, edited by William Grono, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1995, pp. 40-42.

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Native Persecution is Denounced: Big Perth Protest

Submitted by scollini on Mon, 11/12/2018 - 11:08

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Once the strike began, a fierce propaganda battle began in which the opposing sides gave highly partial accounts of it in order to win public support: on the one hand, the government and the pastoralists told stories in which they sought to minimise the impact of the strike; on the other, the sympathisers of the strike gave the impression of a highly successful industrial action by the Aboriginal people.