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The Indigenous soldier whose story opens and closes Black Diggers, Nigel grows up in the wilderness of Bellender Ker, Queensland, but his parents are murdered by white settlers and he is only spared because a Taxidermist sees him as a “perfect specimen.” The Taxidermist later adopts Nigel as his own son and shows him around the Australian Museum; the Taxidermist is proud of his stuffed apes but unwilling to confront his role in the deaths of Nigel’s parents. During the war, Nigel ironically manages to survive a German attack because he is ordered to retrieve a lost telephone on the battlefield. He ends up in the Zössen POW Camp, where he listens to German soldiers’ lecture about the evils of British colonialism and talks with Indian soldiers who are both proud of their Britishness and hopeful about kicking the British out of India. As though rehashing the first scene, a German Professor uses Nigel as an “anthropological specimen” at the camp, and Nigel agrees to participate in exchange for better conditions for the Muslim prisoners. After the war, Nigel’s eloquent public letter about the Coniston massacre is duly ignored by newspaper editors more interested in his handwriting than his message, and the play reveals that his day job is selling tickets for the show “TARZAN THE APE MAN.” Unsurprisingly, after a life of being treated as a subhuman marvel, Nigel ends up alcoholic and insane, and he ends the play in the Callan Park psychiatric hospital.
Nigel Quotes in Black Diggers
The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by Nigel or refer to Nigel. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act One
Quotes
Full-blood, too. Unusual. Perfect specimen. And if I’d been only five minutes later … it’s all chance, and fate. [To the baby] Look at you. Back from the dead, if only you knew it.
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NIGEL: Father, what happened to my aborigine parents?
TAXIDERMIST: You know that, little man. They died.
NIGEL: How did they die?
TAXIDERMIST: I’ll tell you one day. Look, a chimpanzee. They are our closest relatives.
NIGEL: Why not now?
TAXIDERMIST: Because you’re not ready yet.
NIGEL: Ready for what?
TAXIDERMIST: The world—the bigger, grown-up world—is a complicated, difficult place. You should enjoy every moment of your childhood. Plenty of time for truth later.
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You must all see now, having been captured, that you have been used and abused. You are victims of your oppressive masters, who brutally seized your lands and took from you your birthrights. You are little more than slaves until you rise up and throw off the shackles of your British masters. The time for being lickspittles has ended, this war and the inevitable defeat of Great Britain has washed it all away. The question is, who will acknowledge they have been made fools, have been kept children, have accepted their own slavery? It is Time to fight, to fight against your oppressors, for a free India, for free Africa…
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Act Two
Quotes
REPORTER: Surely the letter’s point is about the massacre up in the Territory?
EDITOR: No-one’s interested in payback in the back of Bourke. An Aborigine who can write like this is a much better story. He must be doing all right for himself, mustn’t he?
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Tarzan. At the Empire. Tarzan, man of the apes. The ape man. Tarzan. Ape. Man. Lowland Gorilla. From Zanzibar. Ape. Man.
He stops, has a surreptitious swig from a bottle. Stands still, watching people rush past him.
Sorry Dad.
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Nigel Quotes in Black Diggers
The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by Nigel or refer to Nigel. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act One
Quotes
Full-blood, too. Unusual. Perfect specimen. And if I’d been only five minutes later … it’s all chance, and fate. [To the baby] Look at you. Back from the dead, if only you knew it.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
NIGEL: Father, what happened to my aborigine parents?
TAXIDERMIST: You know that, little man. They died.
NIGEL: How did they die?
TAXIDERMIST: I’ll tell you one day. Look, a chimpanzee. They are our closest relatives.
NIGEL: Why not now?
TAXIDERMIST: Because you’re not ready yet.
NIGEL: Ready for what?
TAXIDERMIST: The world—the bigger, grown-up world—is a complicated, difficult place. You should enjoy every moment of your childhood. Plenty of time for truth later.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
You must all see now, having been captured, that you have been used and abused. You are victims of your oppressive masters, who brutally seized your lands and took from you your birthrights. You are little more than slaves until you rise up and throw off the shackles of your British masters. The time for being lickspittles has ended, this war and the inevitable defeat of Great Britain has washed it all away. The question is, who will acknowledge they have been made fools, have been kept children, have accepted their own slavery? It is Time to fight, to fight against your oppressors, for a free India, for free Africa…
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Act Two
Quotes
REPORTER: Surely the letter’s point is about the massacre up in the Territory?
EDITOR: No-one’s interested in payback in the back of Bourke. An Aborigine who can write like this is a much better story. He must be doing all right for himself, mustn’t he?
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Tarzan. At the Empire. Tarzan, man of the apes. The ape man. Tarzan. Ape. Man. Lowland Gorilla. From Zanzibar. Ape. Man.
He stops, has a surreptitious swig from a bottle. Stands still, watching people rush past him.
Sorry Dad.
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