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.
Aboriginal fire-management practices in colonial Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian , Tout, Dan , Wilkie, Benjamin , Clark, Jidah
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Aboriginal History Journal Vol. 45, no. (2021), p. 109-130
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- Description: Through a close reading of particular episodes and a focus on the minutiae of action and context, this article adds to the literature on the customary use of fire by Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia by highlighting the historically significant role Aboriginal people played in toiling alongside colonists and fighting fires during the colonial period. By scrutinising the written colonial records it is possible to reveal some of the measures that Aboriginal people used to help the colonists avoid cataclysmic fire. Lacking many direct Indigenous sources due to the devastation caused by rapid colonisation, we do this for the most part through a detailed examination of sheep and cattle graziers' journals, newspapers and government records. The article commences with an overview of colonists' observations of and attitudes regarding Aboriginal practices in relation to fire with specific reference to the region now referred to as Victoria and New South Wales. It concludes with an examination of the few recorded instances in which Aboriginal people tutored colonists in fighting fires, educating them how to use fire as a management tool, and the significant value they placed in Aboriginal knowledge relating to fire. © 2022 Astra Salvensis. All rights reserved.
Kurrburra the Boonwurrung 'wirrirrap' and bard (1797-1849)-a man of high degree
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Schlagloth, Rolf , Cahir, David (Fred) , McGinnis, Gabrielle
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Biography and History Vol. , no. 4 (2020), p. 73-91
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- Description: Kurrburra (aka Mr Ruffy) (1797-1849), Aboriginal wirrirrap (doctor, healer, bard), sage counsellor of his people, consultant with koalas, and heroic slayer of a feared orangutan-like cryptid that lived in the ranges north of Western Port, is believed to have been born in 1797, and was a member of the Yawen djirra clan, the eastern-most group of the Boonwurrung People whose Country stretched from Wirribi-yaluk (Werribee River) to Wammun (Wilsons Promontory) in Victoria. His moiety was Bunjil and in the early 1840s he had 2 wives: Kurundum (1819-?) and Bowyeup (1823-?), and 2 children, whose names are not known. Kurrburra's traditional Aboriginal name is the Boonwurrung word for the iconic marsupial Phascolarctos cinereus, more commonly known as the koala.
Parish plans as a source of evidence of Aboriginal land use in the Mallee back country
- Authors: Burch, John , Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance (North Melbourne, Vic.) Vol. , no. 18 (2020), p. 9-21
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- Description: The nature of Aboriginal people's use, indeed occupation, of the Victorian Mallee 'back country' warrants detailed investigation. Probably arising out of the paucity of observations of Aboriginal people on the land before it was pastorally occupied, an historical analysis from the 1870s suggesting Aboriginal people were not occupiers but mere 'seasonal visitors' to the 'back country' was unquestionably accepted for the next century. Growing understanding of the fundamentally sophisticated ways in which Aboriginal people managed their land has led to some recent historical works with a revised understanding of land use in the 'back country', but there is no agreement to move away from the orthodox historical paradigm. Parish plans from the Mallee, part of PROV's 'Parish and township plans' collection, were investigated to determine whether they contain evidence of former Aboriginal land use that could inform this question. It was found that these plans can potentially reveal the presence of pre-colonial Aboriginal water management, pathways, quarries, land management, cemeteries and placenames. Thus, parish plans were shown to be a potentially valuable resource that might have the capacity to support a reinvestigation of Aboriginal land use in the 'back country'. Approaches for a more detailed investigation of the value of these plans are suggested.
The tourism spectacle of fire making at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, Victoria, Australia–a case study
- Authors: Clark, Ian , McMaster, Sarah , Roberts, Phillip , Cahir, David (Fred) , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Heritage Tourism Vol. 15, no. 3 (2020), p. 249-266
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- Description: This paper explores the emergence of traditional Aboriginal fire making practices as a tourism spectacle at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station near Healesville, Victoria, Australia, in the late nineteenth century. Coranderrk was an important site where domestic and international tourism intersected with efforts of the state to Europeanise and Christianise its Aboriginal residents. It highlights the agency of Aboriginal people in this emergence. Through a survey of the myriad uses of fire in Aboriginal society, it contrasts Aboriginal methods of making fire with European methods as a way of contextualising the tourist interest in fire making demonstrations. Fire making was the perfect foil for tourism – it easily incorporated aspects of performance – such as the build, the show, the closer, and the hat. The skill of fire making was a demonstration of ‘Aboriginality’, and its appropriation by tourism was a means by which a traditional craft was maintained and sustained. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Charles Joseph La Trobe and his administration of the Wadawurrung, 1839‑1853
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of the C.J. La Trobe Society Vol. 17, no. 1 (2018), p. 5-16
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- Description: Maggie Black’s work as a writer has focused on disadvantaged people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Her view of the damaging impact of contemporary forms of development on Indigenous societies is articulated in her book, International Development: Illusions and Realities (New Internationalist, 2015). This proved a useful basis for studying her great‑grandfather’s pioneering life in Victoria. Niel Black’s archive found its way to State Library Victoria thanks to Margaret Kiddle, author of Men of Yesterday (Melbourne University Press, 1961), which also drew heavily on his remarkable voice. This article is a shortened version of a chapter in the author’s Up Came a Squatter: Niel Black of Glenormiston 1839‑1880 (NewSouth, 2016).
What's in a name?: Exploring the implications of eurocentric (re)naming practices of aboriginal and torres strait islander nomenclature in australian education practices
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred) , Zeegers, Margaret
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education Vol. 45, no. 2 (2016), p. 181-190
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- Description: The aim of this article is to provide teachers with knowledge of ways in which Eurocentric (re)naming practices inform contemporary pedagogical approaches, while providing understandings pertinent to the mandatory inclusion of the cross-curriculum priority area: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2015). While we have focused on Eurocentric naming practices, we have also been conscious of names used by Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to name themselves and others and as non-Indigenous Australians we acknowledge that it is not our place to explore these in detail, or offer alternatives. In this article, we have explored the history of nomenclature as it relates to original inhabitants, the connotations of contemporary (re)naming practices in Australian education and discussed the importance of drawing on cultural protocols and engaging local communities for teaching and learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It is anticipated that discussions arising from this article may open up spaces where teachers may think about ways in which they approach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.
Finding Indigenous history in the RHSV collections
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 85, no. 1 (2014), p. 12-30
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- Description: This paper is a fuller version of a lecture delivered at the RHSV for the Annual Melbourne Day Lecture in 2011, which focused on locating Aboriginal history in the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (RHSV) collections. This paper highlights some of my finds within the RHSV archives over the years - sometimes just a rakish sentence, and other times a major peeling back of the historical onion. In addition, the strengths and challenges of researching Aboriginal history, and specifically at the RHSV, are discussed, providing a greater indication of the enormous worth of the RHSV manuscript collection in adding to our knowledge of the impact of Aboriginal Victorians on the development of the colony.
Are you off to the Diggings?': Aboriginal guiding to and on the goldfields
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The La Trobe Journal Vol. 85, no. (2010), p. 22
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- Description: The Tracker is a Dream for filmmakers, explorers, myth makers, writers, politicans, academics alike. He can represent Aboriginal privilege, Aboriginal complicity, oppression, containment. He can represent settler powerlessness, powerfulness, arrogance, ignorance and illegitamacy.
The case of Peter Mungett : Born out of the allegiance of the Queen, belonging to a sovereign and independent tribe of Ballan
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance : The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. 8, no. (2009), p.15-34
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- Description: This paper is concerned with the jurisdiction of the British colonial criminal law over Indigenous Australians, particularly in the area of serious offences such as murder and rape. In particular, the paper examines the attempted use in the 1860 case of Regina v Peter of the legal demurrer that the accused Aboriginal man was not subject to the jurisdiction of the court because he was not born a British subject and had never entered into allegiance to the British Queen. The paper also discusses some of the difficulties which the legal authorities found in dealing with this issue, even as late as 1860. The issue of the amenability to British law was a significant one in the early colonial period; it then largely disappeared from serious public consideration but has resurfaced since the 1980s in the context of land rights, native title, and the status of Aboriginal customary law.
- Description: 2003007342
‘An edifying spectacle’ : A history of ‘tourist corroborees’ in Victoria, Australia, 1835–1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2009
- Type: Journal article
- Relation: Tourism Management Vol.31, no.3 (2010), p. 412-420
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- Description: Parsons [Parsons, M. (2002). “Ah that I could convey a proper idea of this interesting wild play of the natives” corroborees and the rise of indigenous Australian cultural tourism. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2(1), 14–27.] has persuasively argued that nineteenth century corroborees performed for non-indigenous audiences may be considered to be Australia's pre-eminent prototypical indigenous cultural tourism product. This paper extends Parsons' [Parsons, M. (1997). The tourist corroboree in South Australia. Aboriginal History, 21(1), 46–69; Parsons, M. (2002). “Ah that I could convey a proper idea of this interesting wild play of the natives” corroborees and the rise of indigenous Australian cultural tourism. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2(1), 14–27.] analyses of ‘tourist corroborees’ in nineteenth century South Australia to corroborees staged in Victoria during the pastoral period and the gold rushes of the 1850–1870s. It argues that an Aboriginal-grown ‘business acumen’ developed rapidly in the economic climate of the Victorian goldfields. It also provides a historical context to this commodification.
The attraction of gold mining in Victoria for aboriginal people
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 6, no. (2008), p. 46-69
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- Description: Aboriginal people were a very visible presence on the goldfields in nineteenth century Victoria. This paper examines why Aboriginal people were attracted to the gold fields of nineteenth century Victoria and explores the extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors such as new wealth, new sights, new sounds, new alliances which prompted Aboriginal people to participate in 'gold society'.
Finders not keepers : Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Eureka Reappraising an Australian Legend Chapter 12 p. 143-152
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- Description: The history of gold has traditionally excluded a whole quadrant from its landscape. This chapter aims to reconstruct the close association between Aboriginal people and Victoria's gold mining that undoubtedly existed during the nineteenth century. It is especially appropriate to do so in a book that reconsiders the Eureka story from unexpected angles in order to reflect generally upon the historical inheritance of the goldrushes upon Australian society.
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005225
Black gold : A history of the role of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria, 1850-70
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: Reconstructs the history of Aboriginal people and gold mining in Victoria from 1850-1870.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Dallong : Possum skin rugs
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance Vol. 4, no. 5 (2005), p. 1-14
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- Description: In June 1835 John Batman, popularly acknowledged as the founder of Melbourne, recorded one of the first times that possum skin cloaks were traded by the Aboriginal people of Victoria with the European arrivals. Before he held the formal treaty meeting with the Woiwurrung clan heads near present-day Melbourne to purchase a tract of their country, Batman had distributed gifts including blankets, beads and knives. After the meeting he wrote in his journal: 'the chiefs, to manifest their friendly feeling towards me, insisted upon my receiving from them two native cloaks and several baskets made by the women, and also some of the implements of defence'.2 For the remainder of the nineteenth century these indigenous cloaks or rugs were clearly sought after by the white settlers.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001216
Tales in a name : Discovering inter-cultural relations through place names
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 76, no. 2 (2005), p. 199-210
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001215
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
The Wathawurrung people's encounters with outside forces 1797 -1849 : a history of conciliation and conflict
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Thesis , Masters
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- Description: Master of Arts
- Description: One of the difficulties in writing a regional history such as this thesis was the sensitivity surrounding the appropriate choice of terminology and spelling conventions. Conflicts have arisen between conforming to the standardisations of the History Discipline and a desire to accommodate the wishes of the indigenous communities in the geographical area of this study. The absence of trained linguists in the white community during the initial colonisation period has resulted in a considerable divergence of opinion over the nomenclature and spelling derivatives surrounding the indigenous people living in what is no w known as the Geelong-Ballarat region. The first white chroniclers referred to the Wathawurrung by a myriad of different names (over 100 different names were recorded by Clark for the people in this study area) including: Watowrong, Wartowrong, Wot o wrong, Watourong, Wodowrow . Throughout the text ofthis work 1 have applied the term Wathawurrung' to all indigenous groups in primary documents that involve the known language area of the Wathawurrung. Where there is some doubt as to which tribe is being referred to 1 have included other language groups that the writer ma y have also been referring to. " From Preface"