Aboriginal use of fire as a weapon in Colonial Victoria : a preliminary analysis
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred) , Wilkie, Benjamin , Tout, Dan , Clark, Jidah
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 54, no. 1 (2023), p. 109-124
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- Description: The use of fire as an offensive and defensive weapon on the colonial frontier in Australia has received little scholarly attention. This article aims to build on insights from current historiography about the customary use of fire by Aboriginal peoples within the borders of Victoria, Australia. Specifically, our aim is to highlight the historically significant role Aboriginal peoples’ use of fire played in resisting the colonists in Victoria during the colonial period. By closely scrutinising documentary records it is possible to demonstrate that Aboriginal people used fire, both offensively and defensively, against the colonists. © Editorial Board, Australian Historical Studies 2023.
The Importance of the koala in Aboriginal society in nineteenth-century Queensland (Australia) : a reconsideration of the archival record
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Schlagloth, Rolf , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Anthrozoos Vol. 35, no. 1 (2022), p. 75-89
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- Description: The principal purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of the utilitarian and symbolic significance of koalas for Aboriginal communities in Queensland, Australia as recorded by colonists during the early period of colonization and the early twentieth century. It does this primarily through a close examination of the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century archival records and contemporary publications that relate to Queensland Aboriginal peoples’ associations with koalas. This paper is the third in a series investigating the historic and cultural importance of the koala according to the location in Australia. It likewise employs the historical method approach, which relies on identifying historical sources, evaluating their relative authority, and combining their testimony appropriately in order to construct an accurate and reliable picture of past events and environments. Through a critique of the published historical sources, the distribution of and the etymology of “koala” are briefly discussed before an examination is made of the animal’s spiritual importance, associated cultural traditions, and simultaneous utilitarian role. Mirroring previous studies published by the authors on Victoria and New South Wales, we confirm that the predominately non-Aboriginal historical records reveal that koalas were hunted for food and their skin in some Queensland regions. It shall be seen that the ethno-historical records are inconclusive about the koala’s distribution in Queensland, whether they were hunted across all of the state at the point of colonization and whether they were considered an integral food source in some regions. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the extent to which they were used varied across regions and between language groups and was subject to certain rules, and that their spiritual significance can be traced directly to epic creation stories. The implications of this paper are consistent with the earlier New South Wales and Victorian studies: regional variations exist in Queensland in relation to the (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial) historic relationship between Aboriginal communities and koalas and that close consultation with Aboriginal communities needs to be taken into consideration when planning conservation measures relating to koalas. © 2021 International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ).
The historic importance of the koala in Aboriginal Society in New South Wales, Australia : an exploration of the archival record
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Schlagloth, Rolf , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ab-original Vol. 3, no. 2 (2020), p. 172-191
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- Description: Abstract The principal aim of this study is to provide a detailed examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archival records that relate to New South Wales Aboriginal peoples' associations with koalas and 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. Anthropological discussions about the role and significance of koalas in Australian Aboriginal society have been limited, some sources are unreliable and interpretation is at times divisive. Many scholars have previously highlighted how using only historical sources as its reference point it is difficult to discern with great specificity that Aboriginal peoples in other regions of New South Wales commonly ate the koala and used its skin. Through a critique of historical sources, we demonstrate that the ethno-historical evidence is inconclusive as to whether they were an integral food source for much of the time period covered by this paper in the area now called the state of New South Wales. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the extent of their use varied across regions and between tribal groups and was likely to have been traditionally associated with lore specific to certain cultural groups, and may have involved dreaming stories, and gendered roles in hunting and resource use, and other aspects of spiritual belief systems.
Volcanism in Aboriginal Australian oral traditions : ethnographic evidence from the newer volcanics province
- Authors: Wilkie, Benjamin , Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research Vol. 403, no. (2020), p. 1-11
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- 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.
From amiability to acrimony: William le souëf and his relationships with george augustus robinson and charles joseph la trobe
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: La Trobeana: Journal of the C.J. La Trobe Society Inc Vol. 17, no. 2 (2018), p. 22-32
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- Description: William Le Souëf 1 was the fifth and final person to be appointed an assistant protector in the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate when he replaced James Dredge in the Goulburn River District in July 1840. Despite some procrastination by Chief Protector, George Augustus Robinson, but with the urging of Superintendent Charles Joseph La Trobe, Le Souëf filled the vacancy created by Dredge’s resignation. Yet by the end of the year, those in authority were in agreement that he was unfit for service. This paper is the first detailed exploration of William Le Souëf and his relationships with both Robinson and La Trobe.
The importance of the Koala in Aboriginal society in nineteenth-century Victoria (Australia) : A reconsideration of the archival record
- Authors: Schlagloth, Rolf , Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Anthrozoos Vol. 31, no. 4 (2018), p. 433-441
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- 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.
Bunyip, Bunjil and mother-in-law avoidance : New insights into the interpretation of Bunjils Shelter, Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Rock Art Research Vol. 34, no. 2 (2017), p. 189-192
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- 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.
Onomastic palimpsests and Indigenous renaming : Examples from Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Names: A Journal of Onomastics Vol. 65, no. 4 (2017), p. 215-222
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- 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.
‘Aboriginal people and frontier violence: The letters of richard hanmer bunbury to his father, 1841-1847’
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: La Trobeana: Journal of the C.J. La Trobe Society Inc Vol. 16, no. 1 (01/01 2017), p. 25-40
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- Description: In 1841, twenty‑eight year old Richard Hanmer Bunbury, a veteran of service in the Royal Navy, which left him with only one hand, arrived in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, gripped by an ‘epidemical rage for colonisation’. Through close relationships with officials such as Charles Joseph La Trobe, he lost no time in pursuing squatting interests in the Grampians (Gariwerd) district. This paper examines his relationships with the Djab Wurrung Aboriginal people1 of Mount William (Duwil), and publishes extracts from his correspondence with his father on Aboriginal matters. It reveals that although he made many perceptive observations of Aboriginal lifeways, he accepted the view, common on the frontier, that Europeans should be armed at all times, and that Aboriginal people could not be trusted around stations.
'The remarkable disappearance of messrs Gellibrand and Hesse'. What really happened in 1837?: A Re-examination of the historical evidence
- Authors: Donovan, Paul Michael , Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian historical journal (Melbourne, Vic. : 1987) Vol. 87, no. 2 (2016), p. 278-297
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- Description: In 1837, Joseph Tice Gellibrand and George Brooks Legrew Hesse disappeared near Birregurra. Popular history says that their bodies were never found and their deaths are a mystery. However, letters, records, contemporary newspaper articles and early histories outline the disappearance and discovery of the bodies. Isaac Hebb's history in the 1880s refuted primary sources, claiming that the whereabouts of the bodies were never found. This article re-examines early historical documents, many of which Hebb may not have had access to or opted not to include in his work. We critique Hebb's analysis and reinvestigate the story.
James Dawson’s intervention in the naming of the Maroondah Aqueduct in 1881-83
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: La Trobe Journal Vol. 97, no. March (2016), p. 91-104
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- 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.
Winda lingo parugoneit or Why set the bush on fire? Fire and Victorian Aboriginal people on the colonial frontier
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , McMaster, Sarah , Clark, Ian , Kerin, Rani , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 47, no. 2 (2016), p. 225-240
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- 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.
'John and Jackey': An exploration of Aboriginal and Chinese people's associations on the Victorian goldfields
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 13, no. No. (2015), p. 23-41
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- 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'.
A letter home to Scotland from Warrenheip in April 1857 : Insights into life in a railway survey camp
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Kicinski, Beth
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 86, no. 2 (2015), p. 363-380
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- 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.
The Mãori presence in Victoria, Australia, 1830-1900 : A preliminary analysis of Australian sources
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: New Zealand Journal of History Vol. 48, no. 1 (2014), p. 109-126
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- Description: This essay explores the presence of M
The Tara-Waragal and the Governors levee in Melbourne, 1863-A reinterpretation of Woiwurrung local group organisation
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Aboriginal Studies Vol. , no. 1 (December 2014 2014), p. 33-54
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- Description: This paper concerns the question of why there are so few named groups in the Woiwurrung language area compared with other language groups to its west and north-west. It does this by analysing the 1863 Governors levee in which representatives from three Aboriginal groups-the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Tara-Waragal-presented gifts to royalty. In seeking to understand who this third group-the Tara-Waragal-was, Stephens (2003) has suggested that they were a Woiwurrung patriline. Wesson (2001) has suggested that the name was a pejorative label applied to a Gippsland group by the Kulin. This study finds that both interpretations are wrong. First, it finds that the name applies to a Brataualung clan, the Yowung, whose country centred on the Tarra and Warrigal creeks-hence the name. Second, it finds that the attempt by Stephens to identify the Tara-Waragal with a possible Woiwurrung patriline identified in a series of sketches by William Thomas found in the RB Smyth Papers was also a failure. Nevertheless, the implication that the sketch maps may reveal up to 53 patrilines is a possibility worth exploring, as it may address the issue of the apparent under-representation of Woiwurrung named groups with which I began. Analysis reveals the possibility of an additional 27 Woiwurrung patrilines. Although the exact number of additional patrilines will never be known, at least we have addressed the issue that within the ethno-historical record it is possible to find additional named groups in Woiwurrung. Thus there was in all likelihood greater internal division in the Woiwurrung than has been reconstructed by Barwick (1984) and Clark (1990).
- Description: C1
Tourist visitation to Ebenezer Aboriginal mission station, Victoria, Australia, 1859-1904: A case study
- Authors: Clark, Ian , McRae-Williams, Eva
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Tourism, Culture and Communication Vol. 13, no. 2 (2014), p. 113-123
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- Description: This article investigates the phenomenon of tourist visitation to an Aboriginal Mission Station in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia, during its operation from 1859 to 1904. It provides an overview of the history of tourism to Aboriginal missions in Victoria and presents the first detailed study of tourism to the Ebenezer Mission site. It shows that in contrast with other mission stations in Victoria, where tourism was encouraged, the Moravian missionaries discouraged visitation and deliberately selected a remote location in northwest Victoria to ensure their isolation. Nevertheless, a limited number of visitors were welcomed on to the station and their accounts are presented in this case study. Copyright Cognizant Communication Corporation (CCC)
Death of a hutkeeper near Geelong in 1840: A new investigative approach
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Kicinski, Beth , Arthur, Teigan
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. , no. 84 (2013), p. 1
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- Description: In February 1840, Assistant Protector Charles Sievwright investigated the murder of a hutkeeper- a ticket of leave man (a parolee restricted to a particular geographical location) named Michael 'Micky' Wilson - at an outlying hut on the Derwent Company's Weatherboard Station near Geelong. Four years later, murder was included in an official return sent from Superindent La Trobe's office of the number of European settlers killed by the Aborigibes in the Port Phillip district since its occupation. The death received little attention in historical studies until it was listed in a 1974 publication of a table of suspected deaths of Europeans at the hands of Aborigines. This case study highlights the often discontinuous chain of evidence underpinning historical interpretations and demonstrates how earlier conflation of cultural collisions and frontier violence - in explorations of the nature of murder in Victoria's early colonial history - may be overcome.
The historic importance of the dingo in aboriginal society in Victoria (Australia) : A reconsideration of the archival record
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Anthrozoos Vol. 26, no. 2 (2013), p. 185-198
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- Description: Dingoes feature prominently in Australian Aboriginal Creation stories and are also widely regarded as having an intricate relationship with Aboriginal people. A large volume of anthropological work on the complex relationship between Australian Aboriginals and dingoes has determined a considerable uniformity in the human-dingo relationship across northern Australia. Whilst there are many parallels between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia, this reconsideration of the archival record explores the hitherto rarely considered evidence of the relationship between Aboriginal people, British colonizers in Victoria (south-eastern Australia), and dingoes. The data provide an insight into the unique relationship, which indicates some striking differences between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia; especially the utilitarian and symbolic significance of dingoes for Aboriginal communities in south-eastern Australia and how dingoes were used by both Aboriginal people and the colonial usurpers in a bid to spatially dislocate each other. © ISAZ 2013.
- Description: 2003011040
Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria- The status of 'Waveru' reconsidered
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues Vol. 14, no. 4 (2011), p.
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- Description: 2003009098