ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way that, while busily applying a civilised facade onto the outback and over Aboriginal social forms, whitefellas were secretly preoccupied with the sexuality of the racialised black body and other anxieties generated by fantasies of racial grotesquerie. In exploring how the removal of Aboriginal children from isolated communities took place, the author contesting the popular view that this was an example of an irrational racism which emerged at specific moments in the past, an aberration in the major trajectory of Australia's history. The 'environment' and 'the lingo' are the enemies of proper teaching, and echo Hasluck's reason for taking children from 'the camps'. Mrs Dodd's own daughter, Heather Dodd, was subject to a quite different form of tutelage than the black children though she lived in intimacy with them. She was both an intimate companion of the black children, and a jealous rival for her mother's affection.
