‘The Comfort of Strangers’:Hospitality on the Victorian Goldfields, 1850–1860
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management Vol. 15, no. 2 (2008), p. 2-7
- Full Text: false
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“He Took Pleasure in Doing His Duty”: Staff Sgt. Frank Cahir DSM MM
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Weuffen, Sara , Smith, Matt , Bakker, Peter , Caminiti, Jo
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian War graves workers and World War One; Devoted labour for the lost the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 4 p. 55-73
- Full Text: false
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"Their Last Resting Place": Foundations of graves work
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian war graves workers and World War One : devoted labour for the lost, the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 1 p.
- Full Text: false
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Australian war graves workers and World War One; Devoted labour for the lost the unknown but not forgotten dead
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Weuffen, Sara , Smith, Matt , Bakker, Peter , Caminiti, Jo
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This book relays the largely untold story of the approximately 1,100 Australian war graves workers whose job it was to locate, identify exhume and rebury the thousands of Australian soldiers who died in Europe during the First World War. It tells the story of the men of the Australian Graves Detachment and the Australian Graves Service who worked in the period 1919 to 1922 to ensure that grieving families in Australia had a physical grave which they could mourn the loss of their loved ones. By presenting biographical vignettes of eight men who undertook this work, the book examines the mechanics of the commemoration of the Great War and extends our understanding of the individual toll this onerous task took on the workers themselves.
'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
- Full Text: false
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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.
Koalas – agents for change : a case study from regional Victoria
- Authors: Schlagloth, Rolf , Golding, Barry , Kentish, Barry , McGinnis, Gabrielle , Clark, Ian , Cadman, Tim , Cahir, David (Fred) , Santamaria, Flavia
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Sustainability Education Vol. 26, no. (2022), p.
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- Description: We investigated the success of the Koala Conservation and Education Program conducted in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia from 2000-2009 by interviewing 28 individuals, from various stakeholder groups involved in the project. Transcripts were analysed using grounded theory to identify common themes, keywords and phrases. We conclude that the chosen ‘flagship’ species, the koala, was crucial for the success of the project which culminated in the adoption of the Koala Plan of Management and habitat overlays into the City of Ballarat’s planning scheme. Local people were concerned about the koala based on its conservation status nationally and globally rather than because of its local or Victorian status. We conclude that the concept of 'flagship' species in the case of the koala, is more a global than a local construct.
Uncovering Hidden Histories: Evaluating Preservice Teachers' (PST) Understanding of Local Indigenous Perspectives in History Via Digital Storytelling at Australia's Sovereign Hill
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred) , Barnes, Alice , Powell, Bryon
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Diaspora, indigenous and minority education Vol. 13, no. 3 (2019), p. 165-181
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- Description: Non-Indigenous-led organizations and education programs have long been criticized for sanitized teachings of Aboriginal perspectives in history, while scholarship touts the transformative benefits offered up via decolonial and immersive pedagogical approaches. In this case study, we explore the impact of a cross-cultural venture, titled Hidden Histories: The Wadawurrung People, between a living history museum, the local Aboriginal community, and a regional university on teacher preparedness to incorporate Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula. Through a cultural interface lens, we examine the ontological and epistemological developments of 112 preservice teachers postinteraction with an intercultural digital-kinaesthetic education tool. Our findings suggest that PSTs enjoy engaging with the tool, yet while on site, they prefer to immerse themselves in the museum environment. Our findings indicate also, however, that the tool is an accessible cross-cultural predatory tool that encourages a lifelong commitment to integrating Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula.
Understanding maritime explorers and others as ngamadjidj
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred) , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The First wave :Exploring early coastal contact history in Australia Chapter 3 p. 23-37
- Full Text: false
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- 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.
The aboriginal adjustment movement in colonial Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Kerin, Rani , Rippon, Kylie
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article , Conference paper
- Relation: Journal of Religious History Vol. 43, no. 4 (2019), p. 478-494
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- Description: Whilst much has been written about Aboriginal religious syncretism in Australia, particularly about what has become known as the “Adjustment Movement” that occurred in Arnhem Land in the 1950s (see McIntosh 2004), there were several remarkable examples of spiritual adjustment by Aboriginal people a century earlier on the Victorian goldfields that hitherto have not been explored by historians. Building on Magowan's (2003) discussion of the connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture in northern Australia, this article will examine how Christian influences in colonial Victoria competed with, and conversely moulded, southern Kulin ancestral understanding. Several Kulin ceremonies — including the Myndee ceremony and the “Veinie Sacred Sunday Dance” — will be examined. These ceremonies were described by colonial officials (Joseph Panton, a Gold Commissioner, and William Thomas, the Aboriginal Guardian of Aborigines in Victoria) in the midst of a second wave of invasion and rupture for Victorian Aboriginal people — the first being the sheep herders in the 1830s, and the second being the gold rush which commenced in 1851. Serving as exemplars of what might be called the Victorian Aboriginal Adjustment Movement, these ceremonies demonstrate the extent to which Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria engaged in a culturally congruent mode of Christianity. © 2019 Religious History Association
"All that appears possible now is to mitigate as much as possible the trials of their closing years"
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Tout, Dan
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Politics and History Vol. 64, no. 2 (2018), p. 177-193
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This article examines Alfred Deakin’s attitudes towards, and impacts upon, Aboriginal people during the period 1880-1910, drawing on newspaper articles and parliamentary debates as principal source materials. The discussion begins by charting the long, influential and often positive relationships Deakin had with several Aboriginal communities during a period as a Victorian MLA between 1881 and 1884. It then proceeds to document Deakin’s extraordinary descent into paternalism and racially-based fatalism which pervaded his later association with Aboriginal affairs whilst Victoria’s Chief Secretary (1886–1890), Victorian MLA for Essendon and delegate to Federal conventions (1890-1900), as the Federation debates took shape. And finally, the article outlines the attitudes Deakin expressed towards Aboriginal people in his various post-Federation political roles, including Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs. In doing so, the discussion draws out the connections between Deakin’s advocacy of a white Australia and his attitudes towards Aboriginal Australia, and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of a new nation both informed and responded to socio-racial ideologies that mandated the exclusion of non-white identities from the nation-to-come
Fire in Aboriginal south-eastern Australia
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , McMaster, Sarah
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Chapter 7 p. 115-132
- Full Text: false
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- Description: In south-eastern Australia, climatic, topographic and vegetative characteristics have combined to produce a landscape in which fires occur with some regularity (Cruz et al . 2012). The historic record suggests that the frequency of fire in this area was a common source of interest (and concern) for European explorers and colonists first encountering the area. In most instances, the Europeans attributed fires to Aboriginal people, and theorised the potential motivations and function of burning practices. This chapter will introduce archival material that illuminates these colonial perspectives on Aboriginal fire use in southeastern Australia, and will discuss the ethnographic observations that were made of ‘customary’ uses of fire. This will include the association that fire was seen to have with religious, mortuary, hunting and communication practices. This chapter will begin by discussing the impacts that explorers and colonists had on the customary fire practices of Aboriginal people, recognising that while the historical record contains invaluable material about Aboriginal burning practices, its descriptions of Aboriginal burning practices must be assessed carefully. As Indigenous and European cultures encountered one another on the colonial frontier, it is also interesting to consider how fire, a simultaneously essential and dangerous force, featured in the historical relationships between Aboriginal people and the newly arrived Europeans. To explore this question, this chapter will discuss the way that Aboriginal knowledge of fire was transferred cross-culturally, and question how this may have influenced the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. By drawing from the historical records, it will examine the effects that fire, including both its purposeful use and its accidental occurrence, had on frontier relationships.
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
- Full Text: false
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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.
Introduction: Aboriginal Bio-cultural Knowledge in Southeast Australia
- Authors: Clarke, Philip , Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Introduction p. xv-xxiv
- Full Text: false
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Reconsidering the origins of the Australian legend
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Tout, Dan , Horrocks, Lucinda
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Agora (Melbourne, Vic.) Vol. 52, no. 3 (2017), p. 4-12
- Full Text: false
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- Description: There is a large volume of evidence which suggests that Aboriginal cultural traditions and Aboriginal expertise had a formative influence on the skills, culture and outlook of the Australian nomadic bush worker - the template for Russel Ward's 'Australian Legend.'
Clothing
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Chapter 10 p. 173-188
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Anthropological and ethnographical studies of the use of clothing among Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia indicate that garments for thermal protection were often not worn in the warmer months of the year. The increased use of Aboriginal clothing in the colder months of the year point to it being a behavioural adaptation to exposure to cold (Gilligan 2008). Colonial writers often remarked on Aboriginal people’s nudity or being scantily clad, which was really a Eurocentric social construct rather than an actual state of nakedness as Aboriginal people were known to make significant behavioural adaptations to cold weather in order to keep warm, including feathers, ochres and animal fat (Stephens 2014; Massola 1971; Smyth 1878). Dawson (1881) described some of the methods that Aboriginal people used to protect themselves from the cold that did not require ‘clothing’. "From abstract"
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
- Full Text: false
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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.
"My Country all gone the white men have stolen it" : The invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800-1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- Description: "The Wadawurrung are the Aboriginal people whose Country includes the cities now known as Ballarat and Geelong. Fred Cahir examines the contact history in the period 1800-1870 of the Wadawurrung and the ngamadjidj (generally translated as white stranger belonging to the sea). Divided into chronological and thematic section, the book chronicles three waves of invasion: the early invasion period incorporating trespassers predominately from the sea, the sheepherders or squatters who followed in their wake and usurped the Wadawurrung of all their Country for sheep runs, and the third wave of invaders - the gold seekers. This historical study is transformative as it presents a compelling argument of how the Wadawurrung were active agents of change and sought cultural enrichment in the midst of the frontier war on their Country." --back cover.
"Dark in Complexion": The Indigenous war graves Workers
- Authors: Bakker, Peter , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian war graves workers and World War One : Devoted labour for the lost, the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 5 p. 76-93
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Indigenous peoples' participation in Australia's modern military conflict's has until the 1970's been largely sidelined by historians. Recent scholarship in this field has revealed far greater participation numbers than previously thought. The general consideration is now that Indigenous people in the Great War participated as an extension of their ongoing effort to shape and alter their social and political realities. "From abstract"
Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-eastern Australia : Perspectives of early colonists
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian , Clarke, Philip
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- 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.
Corroborees in Goldrush Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Pay dirt! : Ballarat and other gold towns Chapter 2 p.
- Full Text: false
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