The first official exploration of Yolngu country was by David Lindsay, who, in 1883, travelled the western edge of Wagilak land, following the Goyder River into the Arafura Swamp, where he first encountered Yolngu people and in large numbers. Soon after, in 1885, the Florida cattle station was established when a herd of cattle driven from Queensland arrived (Berndt and Berndt 1954). This was a short-lived but violent frontier, with memories of conflict and atrocities persisting today. Soon after the closure of Florida, a Methodist Overseas Mission was founded, in 1923, on Milingimbi Island, off the northwestern coast of northeast Arnhem Land (Berndt and Berndt 1954). This mission settlement attracted Yolngu people from a wide area, many of whom settled on the mission. Others, like the families who set up the Donydji outstation, visited periodically for supplies such as tobacco and sugar-commodities that were also occasionally obtained from the Mainoru cattle station and Roper River Mission Station to the south. These journeys often took many months. During World War II, Milingimbi came under air attack by the Japanese, and the Reverend Harold Shepherdson moved to a new Methodist mission site on Elcho Island, a little to the east. Shepherdson later transported, in his own single-engine plane, some food supplies and clothes to the newly created Mirrngadja outstation, using an airstrip he had helped construct in 1959 (Shepherdson 1981). In 1969, the Reverend started Lake Evella (now known as Gapuwiyak) as an outpost of the Elcho Island Mission, so as to engage with This text is taken from Experiments in self-determination: Histories of the outstation movement in Australia, edited by
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