A forgotten brouhaha: lessons in authenticity and authority
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Language Land and Song: Studies in honour of Luise Hercus Chapter 21 p. 304-317
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- Description: 1. Introduction In July 1943, noted Victorian author and travel writer Eileen Finlay (1878- 1950) returned to the tourist resort town of Healesville to enjoy ‘a respite from her literary labours’ (Healesville Guardian 24/7/1943). Staying at Golf House, her respite did not prevent her from appearing at the Healesville Library to promote her publications and meet her fans. Eileen Finlay was born Mary Ellen Moroney in Maffra, Gippsland, in 1878, and lived for a time in Colac where her father was appointed shire engineer in 1882 (Barraclough 1995: 56). In 1889, two years after the death of her father, her family moved to Lilydale where her connection with Healesville commenced. In 1899 she married architect, Alexander Kennedy Smith Finlay, and settled in Melbourne. On 29th December 1921 her husband was one of three passengers who drowned when a launch capsized en route to Lake Tyers Aboriginal station. Many of the survivors, including Eileen Finlay and her son, owed their survival to two Aboriginal women from the Aboriginal settlement who rescued them in a rowing boat – once on shore, men and women from the settlement assisted them by lighting a fire to dry their clothes . "From introduction"
Understanding Ngamadjidi: Aboriginal perceptions of Europeans in nineteenth century Western Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol. 13, no. 1 (2011), p. 105-124
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- Description: This article considers how Aboriginal people in western Victoria understood the arrival of Europeans, particularly how Aboriginal groups in that region reportedly recognised Europeans as deceased clan members who had returned to life. According to R.H. Mathews, the belief in transmigration or reincarnation was widespread during the early years of European settlement, being 'observed in every part of Australia where investigations have been made'. In western Victoria these resuscitated people were known as ngamadjidj (generally translated by linguists as 'stranger' or 'white man'). Tony Swain argues that the classification of Whites as deceased Aboriginal people have been misunderstood as merely 'a quaint instance of an aboriginal failure to comprehend novel events' reflecting a general poverty of scholarship in the area. This article will consider numerous first-hand accounts by whites identified as ngamadjidj, as well some of the more recent anthropological and historical comments on the subject, in order to make observations on what this phenomenon tells us about Aboriginal and European interpretations of one another, and how it shaped racial relationships.
- Description: 2003008921
Why should they pay money to the Queen?: Aboriginal miners and land claims
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol. 10, no. 1 (2008), p. 115-128
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- Description: There is little evidence of Aboriginal involvement in the events of the Eureka Stockade, but there are numerous ways in which Aboriginal people are relevant to the Eureka story. The events took place on Aboriginal land (an obvious but rarely articulated truth) and Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat diggings, as they were, indeed, on and around most Australian goldfields. The records are full of references to their fundamental and diverse contribution to life and work on the diggings, and to the complex and varied relationships they formed with the invaders. For Indigenous communities already reeling from the invasion of pastoralists, the arrival of 300,000 immigrant miners, swarming onto the alluvial districts of Victoria, represented a second wave of dispossession. But as we have noted elsewhere, there is abundant evidence that gold, at least in Victoria, brought many new economic opportunities for Aborigines, many of whom took advantage of these changed circumstances.' David Goodman argues persuasively for historians to consider an 'edgier interpretation' of the goldfields story. This could include a better appreciation of the social dislocation and cultural adaptations experienced by Indigenous people on the goldfields .
- Description: C1
Sleeping with strangers : Hospitality in colonial Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of hospitality and tourism management Vol. 13, no. 1 (2006), p. 1-9
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- Description: The purpose of this article is to describe and document the nascent state of hospitality in colonial Victoria from the 1830s until the gold rushes of 1850s. The primary source of such an account is the personal journal of a public servant, George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate Department, perhaps the European with the most experience of travelling throughout the Port Phillip District. Accounts from other contemporary sources are used to complement Robinson's observations.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001793
Aboriginal people, gold, tourism : The benefits of inclusiveness for goldfields tourism in regional Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Tourism, Culture & Communication Vol. 4, no. 3 (2003), p. 123-136
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- Description: In the 1960s Australian historians were criticized for being the ``high priests'' of a cult of forgetfulness, for neglecting Aboriginal history, and for excluding a whole quadrant of the landscape from their research. In this article, the authors argue that the same criticisms may be leveled at the interpretation of goldfields history. Taking the Goldfields Tourism Region in western Victoria as their focus, the authors show the richness of the Aboriginal side of the goldfields story, and show that their exclusion from this story is not due to a lack of material. On the contrary, the barriers that exclude Aboriginal experiences from goldfields tourism are based on the perception and choice of tourism agencies and managers. The practice of history of the Sovereign Hill Museums Association in Ballarat serves as a case study for this article. The authors argue that the heritage industry has a responsibility to ensure that Aboriginal experiences are not excluded from their interpretation. Just as the writing of mainstream history had for many years dispossessed Aboriginal peoples and kept them out of sight, and out of mind, it is time for the historiography of gold to reappraise its ideology and find a balance that no longer excludes Aboriginal themes that have a legitimate place in goldfields history. There are several ways that Sovereign Hill may present indigenous perspectives as it interprets the history of gold mining in Ballarat and Victoria from 1850. More information can be made available, by such means as a series of publications ranging from books to Web pages and activity sheets for children. Interpretive displays focusing on the specificity of Aboriginal people and gold, centered around the themes reviewed in this article, could be constructed. Aboriginal guides could interpret this rich heritage for visitors to the museum. Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat goldfields, and elsewhere, in many capacities, as Native Police, as miners, guides, and gold finders, as wives and sexual partners, as farmers and entrepreneurs trading cultural items and food, and as local residents going about their everyday lives, staging corroborees and other forms of interaction with other inhabitants. Many of these interactions could be ``activated'' by Aboriginal people; for example, there is scope for activation of the corroborees staged in Ballarat in the 1850s, of the Aboriginal encounter of the traveling musical troupe as witnessed by Antoine Fauchery, of the trade between Aboriginal people and miners, and of the critical role played by the Aboriginal Native Police in maintaining law and order in Ballarat and other goldfields in the early 1850s.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000614