Bellender Ker, Queensland Term Analysis

In the opening scene of Black Diggers, a Taxidermist saves Nigel from sure death after a group of whites, clearing the remote region of Bellender Ker for settlement, slaughter the Indigenous people who live there, including Nigel’s parents. Even more disturbingly, the Taxidermist is traveling with them, and he only saves Nigel because he is a “perfect specimen.” The audience is meant to feel ambiguous about this act—while Nigel has been brought “back from the dead,” it is not because the Taxidermist sees anything inherently wrong with massacring other human beings, but rather because he sees Nigel as a potential spectacle, a body that can be displayed and analyzed for whites’ benefits. His attitude toward Nigel is much like the settlers’ attitude toward Indigenous land: they are both considered empty, valueless vessels to be “conquered” (for science and for profit) by whites. Nigel ends up living through this kind of treatment over and over, which ultimately leaves him in a mental hospital at the end of the play.