‘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
- Reviewed:
The mystery of the Moranghurk sculptures
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore p. 143-150
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Since the earliest colonial days in Australia there have been a large number of reports of what have variously been described as stone carving, rock sculptures, earthen sculptures and rock engravings by Aboriginal people. The most prominent of these has been on the wooden sculptures emanating from northern Australia. Few anthropologists have minutely reported on what McCarthy described as examples of Aboriginal 'plastic art'. Aboriginal sculptures 'crudely fashioned' from beeswax, some of them 'made to represent human figures' but more generally 'modelled' to represent 'kangaroos, turtles, goannas, crocodiles and birds'. One of the most widely reported earthen carvings in what is now known as Victoria was described as the Challicum Bunyip. This was reputed to be an outline of a creature known as a bunyip, which was gouged into the ground. Other accounts of life-sized Aboriginal sculpture in Victoria are not numerous but certainly extant.
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
- Full Text:
- Description: Reconstructs the history of Aboriginal people and gold mining in Victoria from 1850-1870.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Tanderrum 'Freedom of the Bush' : The Djadjawurrung presence on the goldfields of Central Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: A1
- Description: 2003000767
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
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
- Full Text:
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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.