The spark within that energized Norman Baird must have come from both parents. His mother Dinah was an Aboriginal woman, his father a Scotsman. Although little is known about Dinah, from the delightful pictures and captions in A Spark Within it is fair to say that Norman’s mother was no different from other Aboriginal women who often worked as hard as men - but were also family oriented, and when necessary, self-sufficient.
At the time of Norman’s birth in 1888, his father — after proving his worth as a younger man raising cattle and later, discovering and mining tin — had settled a homestead he named Connemara. This entire north and eastern region of Australia, known as Far North Queensland, had been the home of the Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal peoples, or Bama, as the natives call themselves. But Bama land had been stolen from the natives by Europeans who cleared the land for farming, cattle-raising, logging, and a host of business enterprises.
The discovery of gold brought a rush of white wealth-seekers from Europe and from more densely populated areas of Australia. The thousands of unfortunates who did not find gold, uncovered tin, and when those claims became exhausted, these folks claimed and cleared the Aboriginal jungles for their own homesteads. No attempt was made to compensate the KuKu Yalanji Australian natives for loss of their traditional hunting grounds.
A Spark Within tells of the clashes that broke out between Bama and white land-grabbers. Sadly, the natives were no match for these invaders. Local police became “soldier, police, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner” towards any KuKu Yalanji who dared interfere with efforts to clear land. There are records of entire Bama clans being murdered to crush resistance. An Act of 1894 allowed Aboriginal people who appeared to be problematic “to be removed to” various isolated reserves. Often, those who remained worked under slave-like conditions, relying on rations for survival.
Moving articulately between two worlds — since he was half Aborigine — it was against all of these dehumanizing Bama conditions that Norman Baird struggled while trying not to have himself forceably “removed.” His articles about Bama history and life in the bush appeared in a column, "Around the Campfire," in The North Queensland Register. His influence over the years prevented many KuKu Yalanji adults and children from being removed against their will.
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