ABSTRACT
In 1928 the Queensland Protector of Aborigines, J. W. Bleakley, was asked by the Commonwealth Government to report on the status and conditions of Northern Territory Aborigines. The anxiety of the Alice Springs and Darwin Whites at these developments was indicated in the new Aboriginals Ordinance of 1933, which gave the Administrator powers of control even greater than those which he already possessed. He could now declare any place to be prohibited to an Aboriginal person, remove him or her to any place in or beyond the Northern Territory and nominate any mission station as a children's institution. The Northern Territory, alone of the big Aboriginal administrative areas, remained under Commonwealth control, and the administration was seldom far from critical analysis. Mining royalties were now available to Aboriginal traditional landowners, though it was clear that both the Federal Government and the semi-autonomous Northern Territory legislature (established by Fraser in 1978) would block the transfer of land held to be especially valuable.
