Arrarbi

Arrarbi (c. 1870 – c. 1945), also known as Arrabi, Arabi Bey, Cowle Bob and Police Bob, was an Aboriginal tracker, police of the Matuntarre people of the region around Tempe Downs Station in the Northern Territory of Australia. He was a guide on the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, and police tracker and outlaw. He is notable for his many arrests.

Early life

Arrarbi was identified as a quick learner and useful worker soon after the establishment of Tempe Downs cattle station in 1884. He was nominated as the preferred guide to that region for the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia in 1894, due to his knowledge of the George Gill Range, an area which includes King’s Canyon, and due to his command of at least four local languages.

He was later part of a raid by Charles Winnecke that plundered a huge repository of sacred cultural objects, known as tjurunga stones and boards. While he helped to interpret the designs of these artefacts for his European employer, he was not judged by local elders to be guilty of the theft itself, and escaped the death penalty meted out to another Aboriginal man who had led the party to the objects.

Career

Due to his usefulness to local European authorities, a local police identity, Constable Charles Cowle arranged a police job for him at Barrow Creek, 300 kilometres north of Alice Springs. Cowle’s hope was that the job would be far enough away from Tempe Downs to keep Arrarbi from joining local Aboriginal people in resisting the intrusion of the station on their lands and hunting the station’s cattle. However Arrarbi returned to Tempe Downs a few months later and within a couple of years was deemed to be one of the most active of the local people in the killing of cattle.