You should hear what they say about Tasmanians.
Seriously though...
Considering how slack family services get these days it's a wonder they were noticed at all.
Only just heard of this yesterday, they've covered it up well to keep the press off this long, it's an 18months old story now.
Aside from the genetic aspects, since reading through a few related articles the Telegraph has gone troppo with it. They haven't even posted real photos, reading below they are sourced as 'stock' generic photos of something that bears no resemblance to the real thing shown elsewhere.
In reality the 'depraved and disgusting' living quarters and surrounding yards are in a damned sight better condition than I've seen many suburban 'normal' people living in.
A block 30km from town on a dirt track with no electricity or running water. Well gasp, shock and horror. That alone doesn't make people 'neanderthal'. I know of many rural people today living exactly that way. They have tank water, septic toilets, generators, TVs fridges and flash 4WD vehicles. Big deal. These reporters need to get out more.
No contest that these people are ferals, but focusing on the 'squalid' conditions is aiming at totally the wrong point of the story surely?? a roo on a kid's bed? What if it had been a purebred poodle, or a ginger cat, would that have been okay?
OMG a couple of busted plastic toys laying about in the yard, bet I could find 5 yards with those in them within a short walk of here, in fact just across the road.
Pure hyperbole.
The hygeine, mental and behavioural problems are another matter entirely. The fact that they got this way over several generations would lead a better reporter to wonder why no one ever reported them, or if they were reported, why authorities didn't follow it up. It's no use hassling the townspeople now, it happened 18 months ago, they're just going to close ranks to protect themselves from Telegraph type headlines.
A quiet enquiry as to whether anyone informed authorities is what should be investigated. Surely someone did, somewhere??
They are descended from seriously mentally incapacitated forebears, but not seriously enough to know that they had to keep moving to stay ahead of authority. By the time it's gotten down to the newest generation not even that amount of cunning seems to remain. Is it much different to a weird cult? They just bred their own followers.
It's a good example of why a broad and deep gene pool is smart idea though isn't it?
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Speaking of which... incest was traditional among Hawaiian Royalty if things I've read are factual. They kept the line pure by mating brother and sister down the generations. So did the Pharoahs. How come they weren't all morons??
Makes me wonder now how much luck comes into small groups inbreeding. They don't all degenerate at the same rate so there must be faulty genes involved. If they're avoided maybe it goes better. This family apparently had more than their share of faulty ones that hastened the process through inbreeding.
Primitive man had no idea how babies happened and thought spirits put them there so how could they have had any concept of what incest even was?
There had to be a lot of inbreeding going on in small tribes.
Someone eventually must have twigged that it wasn't working well which explains why 'totems' were invented, even before religious rules about it. A totem was bestowed on a child according to it's mother's and it couldn't breed with another of that totem or certain others. That'd cover it wouldn't it? At least partially. Raiding other tribes for stray women helped too.
I knew someone who worked on sorting out Koori census forms and they don't, or at least didn't, use genetic relationships to denote relatives. They were totemic relatives and an Uncle or Grandfather or Sister might not be directly genetically related at all. Two full brothers could be 'uncle' and 'nephew'.
If you want complicated family set-ups delve into that one! It used to drive him to drink trying to sort out who belonged where and to who.
We've since 'civilized' them but considering their system worked perfectly well for 40,000 years, and among a lot less of them than there are now, they had to be getting something right.
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So, your news mediia hypes things up like ours here, apparently, only here, it's so much more so pertaining to politics. 
