Abstract: They took them in there [to Borroloola], bunched them up, got them going and dumped them.(Steve Johnson1.) 1 1987 Tape 30A 26 min.This and all subsequent references to tapes refer to recordings I made which are now lodged with the Australian Institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies.In Baker (1989b) I discuss the methods used first to collect this material and secondly to transcribe it so that the location to the nearest minute on the tape is known.2 The largest number of Europeans ever to be in the region was probably in 1886, when many gold-diggers passed through on their way to the Kimberley gold fields.McMinn, the customs officer at Borroloola at the time, reported that, in three months of 1886, 1,500 people with 3,000 horses passed through Borroloola.South Australian Public Record Office, 566/41:6 of copy of letter sent by McMinn to Parsons, Description of social and economic conditions Borroloola: draft report to Government Resident.The Borroloola Magistrates book (Northern Territory Archives, F267) lists the case of 'Gilbry' on 14 April 1928.Harney (1946:128) also mentions this killing.2 0 Myers 1986:34. 2 1 As the Yanyuwa police aide, Billy Rijirmgu, put it, the punishment for breaking Aboriginal law was often capital 'he's gone...[but] with white man law at least you get a chance'. 2 2 McGrath (1987:20) uses this term to describe the attraction cattle stations had for Aboriginal people.I use the term in more general sense to refer to the attraction various types of European settlements had for Aboriginal people.23 1987 Tape 63A 30 min. 2 4 The term 'welfare' is used by the Yanyuwa to describe both individual Northern Territory Welfare Branch officers and collectively the Northern Territory Welfare Branch.I use the teim in this same dual sense.How did people 'come in'?