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Following is an extract of Chapter IX: "Aboriginal Art" by Walter John Enright in the First Australasian Catholic Congress, 1900, pp. 852-853. (Taken from a copy held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.) This extract from the First Australasian Catholic Congress held in 1900 shows the patronising and scientific attitudes towards Aborigines at this time. In this large collection of papers, there are no references to Aboriginal Catholics, nor to Aboriginal welfare or missions. This paper on "Aboriginal Art" treats the Aboriginal people and their culture as anthropological 'curiosities'. "The dawn of Art among our aboriginals has left its traces in many a smoke-blackened cavern on our (N.S.W.) eastern littoral, and on the more distant hillsides of our coastal range; and more enduring evidence of the birth of the artistic instinct amongst our native races has been carved on our fine-grained triassic rocks. Wherever Nature has bared a suitable floor, there the aboriginal has, with infinitely more toil than was required to produce the mural paintings which I here describe, laboured to produce representations of objects around him, or of some fanciful shape conjured up in his imagination, or perhaps to illustrate a legend current among his people. These drawings are not, however, found in New South Wales alone, but all over the continent. They have been seen in Western Australia in places far apart; they are found throughout South Australia, from the Southern portion to the Gulf of Carpentaria and Port Darwin. They are widely distributed over New South Wales; and in Queensland they are scattered from Cape Yorke to the Southern limits of the colony. In Victoria they are found on the Western side of the Victoria Range, County of Dundas, and on the North-eastern side of the Grampians, in the County of Borung, and probably, exist all over that colony. Although I have referred to these drawings as the work of the aborigines, yet, owing to the inability or unwillingness of the blacks of the present day to give any authentic information regarding them, a belief has arisen in the minds of many people that these drawings are the work of an older race; and I deem it part of my duty in writing this paper to try and remove that erroneous impression. These drawings, as I have stated, have been found in places widely apart, and, although differing in form and quality of workmanship, are evidently the work of one and the same race of people; but up to the time of writing I have only heard of one instance of an aboriginal being seen at work executing a carving, that being the case reported by Mr. R. H. Mathews. I have, however, been informed by reliable people that the aboriginals had been seen in the Wollombi (New South Wales) district during the last half-century executing paintings which are contemporaneous with the carvings. And at the present day in other portions of Australia, where the inroads of civilisation have not greatly affected the mode of life of the natives, the custom is still in vogue. If we accept as correct the statement that the carvings are the work of an older race, then we are confronted with the question, "How has this older race, once so universally distributed, become extinct without leaving traces of its existence?" Traces, too, which must inevitably have been left, for the carvings are always in a position where they are exposed to the influences of the weather; and, judging from their present state of preservation, the authors cannot have been long dead. In addition, the discovery of human remains made at Botany, New South Wales, some time ago by Professor David and Mr. Etheridge, proved conclusively that the aborigines possessed considerable antiquity on our Eastern coast, and would have coexisted with this alleged older race; but we are unable to find in their traditions any mention of the existence of such a race. Moreover, we find both classes of drawings side by side, thereby indicating that their authors lived together in the same district, which would be a most unlikely circumstance if they were of different races. Possibly those who put forward this false theory originally were misled by unreliable information furnished them by travellers, and I must say that very little reliable information on the subject was collected prior to the last decade. Of the comparatively few accounts which were published prior to that time, most of them were repetitions of highly-coloured stories told the writers by others. Popular contributions to daily newspapers or serial magazines by irresponsible or nameless correspondents have occasionally been incorporated in articles published in scientific journals, without stating the source from which they have been taken. The artistic instinct seems to be a creature born in the later Palaeolithic stage, for we find no trace of it amongst the Tasmanian aboriginals, who were on the lowest Palaeolithic stage; whilst on the Continent, where the aborigines were in a more advanced condition, and might possibly be considered as being in the condition verging upon the Neolithic, we find the paintings as previously mentioned. Moreover, on the Continent the drawings are found to increase in quality as one passes from North to South. This fact may possibly be accounted for by the greater admixture of races one finds in travelling Northward in Australia. The paintings shown in Plate II. at the end of the volume are the finest hitherto seen in Australia, and were discovered in North-Western Australia, and far different from the work of our own (New South Wales) East Coast natives. Between the two classes, crude though each may be, a wide difference is readily discernible. The first to draw attention to the existence of native drawings in New South Wales was Dr. White, who discovered them in 1788, shortly after the founding of the Colony; and in several subsequent publications they have been mentioned by travellers, who, however, took no pains to describe them, or to gain any information from the aborigines concerning them. i R. H. Mathews, "Proc. Assoc. Ad. Sc.,"
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