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Trail:

To the Ends of the Earth

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Although slightly confused over Dennis’s true interests at first, It had become rapidly clear that Dennis was channelling the ‘Bouncer’ like macho energies which he projected into some extremely positive perspectives in life. He was more preoccupied with a genuine desire to preserve the natural environment than the great majority of supposed ardent environmentalists that you meet. He knew every bird in the rainforest, every fish in the bay, the location of every geological vein on the island. His deep rooted concern for the health of his co-workers was also highly admirable.

That evening I attended the miner’s party where anyone and everyone who had been connected to neurological disease and manganese exposure on Groote had been rustled up to meet me. I met face to face with Kandy, who had been one of the first people to Email me after my BBC film had been broadcast on Australia’s ABC Four Corners one year ago. She had alerted me to the health problems on Groote, specifically informing me of the case of a white girl, called Maxine, who had worked for several years in the lab at the mine where she was employed to analyse the metal profile of the fine samples of black manganese dioxide dust. She had died in her thirties due to a conveniently ‘undefined’ inherited neuro-degenerative wasting disease, which everyone - except the research scientists - had sworn was identical to the Aboriginal Groote syndrome.

That evening I also got to hear about the abortive attempt of an ABC film news crew to film a piece that was centred around manganese toxicity on Groote . The Miner’s Union had contacted ABC over an issue of ‘employers abuse of safety standards’ at work, only to find that the aircraft which was bringing the film crew over had been prevented from landing at the airport. The Mining Corporation, which owned virtually every facility and service on the island, had debarred them from landing at ‘their’ airport - the only airport on the island. The Union hit the roof.

I had failed to sleep again during the night. The heavenly silence of sunset last evening had transformed into a hellfire night. The mob violence had escalated, reaching its characteristic crescendo by dawn. A father had been charging around wielding a machete at anybody or anything that got in his way. The problem had all fired up from a petty feud with his son in law; resulting in the police discovering an unconscious Aboriginal youngster half dead in the dust that morning. The lad had been repeatedly cracked over the head with a shovel, according to bystanders’ reports.

As is the case with all of these riots, the police usually feel that it is unwise to turn up until the next day, often arriving long after the incident has abated. Wise policy, given that there are only twelve police officers stationed on this island to potentially fend off a maximum of 900 aggressors on any one occasion ! Back in the days when the police were showing up for every incident, the riot simply inflamed. The officers would end 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 that previous evening - you get attacked yourself; not only by the aggressors but by those victims you are trying to rescue.

A couple of well travelled Caucasian health workers called Stew and Linda, courageously live in a house in the middle of Angurugu . I found it unbelievable that they could carry on living there, forced to incarcerate the delicacies of their family life behind a dense fortification of six tier barbed wire interwoven through chain link ; the perimeter being manned by skulking Dobermans 24 hours a day . Stew told me that Aboriginal communities are reputedly aggressive, but that Angurugu is exclusively excessively aggressive. The village 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 Stew, only just twenty but built like a tank. "Your country got into all that namby-pamby, politically-correct judgemental criticism of the Duke of Edinburgh associating spears with Aborigines, 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 (150,000 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 neuro-degenerative disorders have revealed widespread loss of serotonin receptors. Lack of serotonin has been well connected to the cause of outbursts 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 daylight/darkness regulation of melatonin output in pineal gland , the characteristic drop in serotonin levels during night time in relation to day, could explain the somewhat unique cycle of night times violence and daytime peace in this village.

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Last updated 09-Feb-2007