Walter Batchelor MacDougall (6 April 1907 – 5 May 1976) was an Australian missionary and

patrol officer A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as law enforcement officers, military personnel, or security personnel, that are assigned to monitor or secure a specific geographic area. Etymology From French ''patrouiller'', from Old Fren ...

who worked with the

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

in the desert regions of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

and

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

Biography

MacDougall was born in Mornington, the fifth son of a Scottish

Presbyterian minister Presbyterian (or presbyteral) polity is a method of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session or ...

. After some years in Tasmania, his family returned to Melbourne where he matriculated from Scotch College in 1922. For eight years (1931–1939) he served as an assistant minister at the Presbyterian mission at Port George IV (Kunmunya) in the

Kimberley region The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy Desert, Great Sandy and Tanami Desert, Tanami deserts ...

of Western Australia. In 1940 he took up an appointment at the Ernabella mission in the north western corner of South Australia, and picked up a working knowledge of

Pitjantjatjara The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are va ...

. Despite a physical disability from a bullet wound to his hand, which resulted in his losing a thumb and finger, he managed to be enlisted in the

army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

and worked in a transport division in northern Australia until his discharge in 1944. In 1947 he was hired to work, on the basis of his extensive experience with aboriginal communities, as a patrol officer attached to the

Woomera Test Range The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a d ...

. As Britain began to undertake weapons testing and experiments on the atomic bomb at

Emu Field Emu Field is located in the desert of South Australia, at (ground zero Totem I test). Variously known as Emu Field, Emu Junction or Emu, it was the site of the Operation Totem pair of nuclear tests conducted by the British government in Octob ...

and

Maralinga Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s. In January 1985 native title was granted to the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Aborig ...

, MacDougall was delegated to shift people out of the affected area down to the

Yalata Yalata is an Aboriginal community located west of Ceduna and south of Ooldea on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia. It lies on the traditional lands of the Wirangu people, but the settlement began as Yalata Mission in the ...

. In 1956 he was promoted to the position of Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia and by that time was responsible for patrolling some 400,000 sq. miles of desert terrain, together with a new officer, Robert Macauley, with whom he had personal differences. MacDougall was of the opinion that the aboriginal population should be gradually assimilated into the mainstream. He went on record as stating that:

'We have taken away their beliefs and customs and trespassed on their lands, and we have a moral obligation to give them something in return'.

At the same time, he found himself at odds with officials overseeing areas where military installations were planned and armament experiments conducted. MacDougall surveyed specific localities containing ceremonial zones and sacred sites to inform the government authorities to avoid intruding there to avoid giving offense. He was strongly opposed to the establishment of the

Giles Weather Station Giles Weather Station (also referred to as Giles Meteorological Station or Giles) is located in Western Australia near the Northern Territory border, about west-south-west of Alice Springs and west of Uluru. It is the only staffed weather sta ...

in the Rawlinson Ranges since it lay on tribal land. The authorities feared him for his forthright criticism based on a deep knowledge of the indigenous societies. He threatened to go to the newspapers on one occasion and was warned not to meddle with political or policy issues. MacDougall retired after 25 years of service and died of a combination of pneumonia and pericarditis at

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

in 1976. His biographer W.H. Edwards cites as a suitable, complimentary epitaph for MacDougall a hostile put-down made by a scientist involved in the atomic arms testing. MacDougall had placed:

'the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations'.

Notes and references

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:MacDougall, Walter 1907 births 1976 deaths Australian Army personnel of World War II Australian Presbyterian missionaries History of Indigenous Australians Presbyterian missionaries in Australia