Description:
This article collects and presents nineteenth-century ethnographic evidence from the Newer Volcanics Province of Australia and explores how volcanism was recorded and understood in Aboriginal oral traditions. It investigates whether Aboriginal Australian oral traditions can be understood as persistent eyewitness accounts of volcanic eruptions in the Newer Volcanics Province, how andwhat kind of geological and volcanological knowledge was embedded within Aboriginal Australian oral traditions, and considers what value the ethnographic evidence has for understanding both the socio-cultural and geological histories of the Newer Volcanics Province.
Description:
The intimate cross-cultural narratives that ocure when British and other European mariners maded early contacts with Australian Aboriginal people have been investigated in a number of influential historical works, including Reynolds's "The other side of the frontier", Shellam's SHaking hand on the fringe', and Clendinnen's Dancing with strangers, This chapter will draw onfrom the concepts established in these workks and explore three facets of early interculturla exchange on the maritime frontier of south-eastern Australia (1790s-1840s) through written narratives focusing on food, tools and story-telling. "From chapter".
Description:
This chapter examines Indigenous narratives of first contact in south eastern Australia with a particular focus on Victoria and draws on ethnohistory, ethnography and thick description to offer a nuanced understanding of these encounters. Early interactions were framed within an attempt to incorporate Europeans within existing cosmological and social orders. Fragments of Aboriginal accounts of their first interactions with Europeans survive in the written recordds of early settleers and public administratorsm and although they are not extensive they nevertheless provide us with glimpses of Aboriginal understanding of these initial encounters. Victorian Aboriginal perceptions of their first contact with European settlers have been studied by Clark, and Clark and Cahir.
Description:
Indigenous Australians have long understood sustainable hunting and harvesting, seasonal changes in flora and fauna, predator-prey relationships and imbalances, and seasonal fire management. Yet the extent of their knowledge and expertise has been largely unknown and under-appreciated by non-Aboriginal colonists, especially in the south-east of Australia where Aboriginal culture was severely fractured. Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-eastern Australia is the first book to examine historical records from early colonists who interacted with south-eastern Australian Aboriginal communities and documented their understanding of the environment, natural resources such as water and plant and animal foods, medicine and other aspects of their material world. This book provides a compelling case for the importance of understanding Indigenous knowledge, to inform discussions around climate change, biodiversity, resource management, health and education. It will be a valuable reference for natural resource management agencies, academics in Indigenous studies and anyone interested in Aboriginal culture and knowledge.
Description:
This book is the first detailed biography of William Le Souef and, amongst other things, explores his relationships with Aboriginal people and with his superiors - Robinson and La Trobe - when he was employed as assistant protector. It does this using the qualitative research methodologies of interpretive biography and thick description. It makes use of contemporary publications, protectorate records, personal diaries, familty records, and newspaper articles.
Description:
The principal aim of this study was to provide a close examination of nineteenth-century archival records that relate to Victorian Aboriginal people’s associations with koalas, in order to gain a greater understanding of the utilitarian and symbolic significance of koalas for Aboriginal communities, as recorded by colonists during the early period of colonization. The etymology of “koala” is discussed, before an examination is made of the animal’s spiritual importance, associated cultural traditions, and simultaneous utilitarian role. At the time of European colonization in 1788, koalas were probably found in coastal and lowland forests and woodlands across southern, central and north-eastern Victoria.
Description:
Bunjils Shelter in the Black Range near Stawell, Victoria, Australia, is generally regarded as one of the most significant rock art sites in Victoria. However, its provenance has been marked by nagging doubts about its authenticity, and for a short period of time it was delisted from the site register of the Victoria Archaeological Survey. A 1925 newspaper article by Rev. John Mathew based on information he obtained from a Wimmera Aboriginal woman at Lake Tyers Aboriginal station in 1924 has the potential to augment the interpretive significance of the site. We now know that the site is commemorative of a major clash between Bunjil and Bunyip and is interwoven with the principle of mother-in-law avoidance. This paper briefly revisits the history of the provenance of the site before discussing the 'new' interpretation.
Description:
This paper is concerned with onomastic palimpsests in Victoria, Australia, focusing in particular on the 1870s, when the deliberate erasure of colonial names and their replacement with Indigenous names was at the forefront of government policy. In contextualizing this reinstatement of Indigenous toponyms, the paper highlights the agency of parliamentarian and government minister Hon. Robert Ramsay. The primary sources of data are newspaper articles and official government reports. The methodology used is “thick description”. The findings reveal that the government’s efforts were grounded in the collection and collation of place names and vocabulary from Aboriginal people in the previous decade by district surveyors and other local officials. Consistent with recent campaigns in Victoria, the sustained efforts by governments in the 1870s were driven by a desire to remove duplication, erase inappropriate non-Aboriginal place names, and preserve Aboriginal place names. The campaign is unparalleled in the history of Victoria’s toponymic administration.
Description:
This is volume three of the History of the Djabwurrung Aboriginal people of Western Victoria, 1836-1901. It publishes the primary sources used in preparing this history. These include extracts from unpublished and published reminiscences; and diaries; and newspaper articles. It is hoped that this collation will serve as a primary source for the Djabwurrung community and other people interested in their history.
Description:
This is the second volume in the three-volume history of the Djabwurrung Aboriginal people of Western Victoria, 1836-1901. It presents profiles of select Djabwurrung Aboriginal people; biographies of the Sievwrights and the Wattons, who were associated with the Western District of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectoriate; profiles of pastoral stations, licenses and superintendents; biographies of nineteenth century collectors of Djabwurrung cultural heritage; and concludes with a selection of Djabwurrung Place names.
Description:
This paper examines four northern Wathawurrung legends and beliefs that were associated with five landmarks within their country - Lal Lal Falls, Black Hill (Kirrit Barreet, near Gordon), Lake Burrumbeet, and Mt Buninyong and Mt Elephant (Derrinallum). The first two sites are associated with Bundjil, the creator spirit. Lake Burrumbeet concerns a 'witch-like' creature, and the final two sites were involved in major conflict that explaines their unique topographical characteristics. The northern Wathawurrung country is bounded by the Werribee River in the east; the Fiery Creek in the west; and the Great Dividing Range in the north.
Description:
This paper is concerned with the renaming of the Watts River Scheme at its official opening in 1891 to Maroondah. It reveals that the driving force behind the name change was, in all likelihood, James Dawson, whose interest in Aboriginal place names and his association with the Upper Yarra since 1840 saw him undertake a field visit to the Coranderrk Aboriginal settlement to meet with Aboriginal elders and learn their traditional names for the locality. Before venturing in to the field, however, he discussed his plans with the relevant official in charge in the Water Department and received a promise from the official that he would do all he could to meet Dawson’s views on the desirability for a name change. Dawson’s wishes were realised at the official opening, however the assigned convict George Watts’s name still remains associated with the stream in which he drowned.
Description:
During the life of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate from 1839 until late 1849 some 35 children of the Protectors were associated with the Protectorate. These children have been largely neglected by scholars and rendered historically invisible. Six of them have however left 28 distinct records of their experiences. In this work we hear the voice of Protectorate children - the authors bring them out of the shadows of their fathers and allow them to appear as influential actors in their own right, with their own motivations, goals, ideas, and relationships with Aboriginal people. Detailed biographical entries, where possible, are included on every protectorate child and on their spouses. For the first time, the reminiscences of William Jackson Thomas and Albert Le Souef are published in their entirety, and all of the writings of the Protectorate's children are brought together so that their contribution to our understanding of the Protectorate may be acknowledged and interpreted.
Description:
In a preliminary assessment of a literary triptych of travel through colonial Victoria, Australia, in the nineteenth century, each representing different time periods, a common thread was found in that all three shared an interest in Aboriginal place names. One traveler in particular, Isabella Bird, was affronted by her encounters with transplanted British place names that for her seemed semiotically incongruous. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which these women's interest in place names in general and Kirkland's and Bird's preference for Indigenous toponymy was shared by other colonial travellers to Victoria.
Description:
There is an ethnographic and historical record that, despite its paucity, can offer specific insight into various contextual matters (purpose, motivations, acknowledgement) relating to how and why fire was being used by Victorian Aboriginal people in the nineteenth century. This insight is essential to developing cross-culturally appropriate land and fire management strategies in the present and into the future. This article demonstrates the need for further research into historical accounts of Aboriginal burning in Victoria.
Description:
This book is concerned with the history of tourism at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station at Healesville, northeast of Melbourne, which functioned as a government reserve from 1863 until its closure in 1924. At Coranderrk, Aboriginal mission interests and tourism intersected and the station became a ‘showplace’ of Aboriginal culture and the government policy of assimilation. The Aboriginal residents responded to tourist interest by staging cultural performances that involved boomerang throwing and traditional ways of lighting fires and by manufacturing and selling traditional artifacts. Whenever government policy impacted adversely on the Aboriginal community, the residents of Coranderrk took advantage of the opportunities offered to them by tourism to advance their political and cultural interests. This was particularly evident in the 1910s and 1920s when government policy moved to close the station.
Description:
This book is concerned with the history of tourism at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station at Healesville, northeast of Melbourne, which functioned as a government reserve from 1863 until its closure in 1924. At Coranderrk, Aboriginal mission interests and tourism intersected and the station became a ‘showplace’ of Aboriginal culture and the government policy of assimilation. The Aboriginal residents responded to tourist interest by staging cultural performances that involved boomerang throwing and traditional ways of lighting fires and by manufacturing and selling traditional artifacts. Whenever government policy impacted adversely on the Aboriginal community, the residents of Coranderrk took advantage of the opportunities offered to them by tourism to advance their political and cultural interests. This was particularly evident in the 1910s and 1920s when government policy moved to close the station.
Description:
While much has been written about Chinese miners, much less has been said about Aboriginal miners and even less about Aboriginal-Chinese relations on the gold fields and elsewhere. Historians and other writers, such as Stephenson, Dunstan, Gittins, Cronin, Ramsay and Edwards and Shen, have largely ignored Aboriginal associations with Chinese people in colonial Victoria. Eric Rolls's study is representative of this absence - when discussing Australia's colonial racial policies towards the Chinese on the Victorian gold fields, Rolls is reluctant to draw many parallels between the Chinese, one group of people largely hidden from the historical gaze, and Aborigines, another group almost expunged from memory. A similar pattern can be seen in the historiography of encounters in other nations between Indigenous and Chinese people, such as in New Zealand and British Columbia where the paucity of the records initially led Yu to note: 'Here was a world only glimpsed'.
Description:
This paper is concerned to publish a letter sent from a railway survey camp at Warrenheip in April 1857 by an assistant surveyor named John C Macdonald to his sister in Scotland. The letter was sent on an issue of the News Letter of Australasia. The letter provides insights into the living conditions of survey camps; the perils of travelling in the bush; nascent goldfields tourism, with its practice of taking visitors down into mines to see how they operated; and the difficulty of maintaining communication between families at home and their kin who had migrated to Australia. The letter was found in a suitcase of miscellaneous papers in an auction in Scotland in October 2012 and is published here for the first time.