station. It was stocked with 1000 cattle in 1884, and 10 years later, there were 15,000 cattle and 8,000 bullocks, which started to degrade the environment. The land management practices adhered to by the Gurindji for millennia could not be followed. The Gurindji and other Aboriginal peoples found their waterholes and soakages fenced off or fouled by cattle, which also ate or trampled fragile desert plant life, such as bush tomato. Dingo hunters ("doggers") regularly shot the people's hunting dogs as well as kangaroos as they competed with cattle for water and grazing land. Gurindji suffered lethal reprisals for any attempt to eat the cattle – anything from a skirmish to a massacre. There was little choice to stay alive but to move onto the cattle stations, receive rations, adopt a more sedentary life and, where possible, take work as stockmen and domestic help. If they couldn't continue their traditional way of life, then at least to be on their own land – the foundation for their spiritual beliefs – was crucial. The pastoralists wanted cheap labour, and workers were exploited and abused. Legislation passed in 1913 required employers to provide Aboriginal workers food, clothes, tea and tobacco in exchange for their work. Pastoralists were able to make use of the now landless Aboriginal people, who wanted to stay on their traditional lands, as extremely cheap manual labour. On stations across the north, Aboriginal people became the backbone of the cattle industry for the next 70 years. In 1914, Wave Hill Station was bought by Vestey Brothers, then an international meat-packing company founded and run by William and Edmund Vestey. The Vesteys refused to pay their workers in wages, leading to tensions and arguments from the beginning. Conditions on the station There had been complaints from Indigenous employees about conditions over many years. A Northern Territory government inquiry held in the 1930s said of Vesteys: It was obvious that they had been ... quite ruthless in denying their Aboriginal labour proper access to basic human rights. However, little was done over the decades leading up to the strike. While it was illegal up until 1968 to pay Aboriginal workers more than a specified amount in goods and money, a 1945 inquiry found Vesteys was not even paying Aboriginal workers the 5 shillings a day minimum wage set up for Aboriginal workers under the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918. Non-Indigenous males were receiving