sentences:  Ion Idriess, Mary Durack and Ernestine Hill in their frequent writings for the magazine present complex and ambivalent attitudes to the indigenous.Despite their familiarity with Aborigines, they saw them as ‘vanishing’ due to unexplained causes and agencies of which even Aborigines themselves were ignorant, and an insufficient birth rate to sustain their population, explained as an instinctual ‘racial suicide’.Conversely, regular contributor Bill Harney, cattleman, former patrol officer and protector of Aborigines and father of Wardaman elder Bill Yidumduma Harney, penned sixteen articles over 1947–57 presenting an experienced and sympathetic view of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia's Northern Territory alongside whom he worked and lived.