2024/12/05 by Alexander Lee · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2024.2436680
openalex publication_date 2024/12/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
The sinking of the SS Douglas Mawson in a cyclone in Northern Australia in March 1923 became the unlikely catalyst for a gendered and racialised moral panic that gripped Australia between June and October 1924. The story, based only on hearsay and rumours, that two white women had survived the loss of the vessel and were captives of Aboriginal people in the remote Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory, caused an outburst of public indignation. The alleged plight of these women proved deeply unsettling to interwar Australia and became a cause célèbre for newspapers, politicians and civil society groups that routinely linked the imaged violation of these women to Australia’s honour. Officials, newspapers and individuals that questioned some of the key claims of the story were largely ignored. The extensive searches conducted by the Australian government, which found no evidence of any survivors, mostly ended the affair, but some resolutely believed that the women survived. This article explains why inter-war Australia was susceptible to racial panic and how the sinking of small ship became a national controversy.