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Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Life on Spring Creek

Monthly Archives: July 2018

Aboriginal Beechworth — A summary of work on this blog so far.

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Today it was to my great honour (and surprise) that Senator Malarndirri McCarthy acknowledged the work in this blog in the 2018 Beechworth Kerferd Oration. In her speech, she drew upon some of the material presented here, in order to compare the experiences of Aboriginal peoples from the Beechworth area with the experiences of her own peoples (Garrwa and Yanyuwa) from Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the event that anyone decides to have a read of this blog for its content about Aboriginal Beechworth after hearing it mentioned in the Kerferd Oration, I want to use this occasion make a short summary of this work for anyone unfamiliar with Life on Spring Creek.

The first post in which I attempted to really make sense of what happened to Aboriginal peoples in this region was a post called Where were Aboriginal people during the gold rush? This dealt with some of the early, violent contact history between Aboriginal peoples and the first pastoralists (late 1830s and 1840s), through the gold rush of the 1850s, to the period in which Aboriginal people were subjected to the colonial Victorian government’s Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines in the 1860s, which involved the creation of a system of Reserves, upon which (it was imagined) Aboriginal people would live. I personally feel I have barely touched this history, and will continue (with others) to work on it.

This was followed by another post which dealt more specifically with the Aboriginal people who came to Beechworth in the 1850s, called Were Aboriginal people in Beechworth in the 1850s? (Following a new lead), and two pieces in which I connect Aboriginal people to certain parts of the landscape in Beechworth, in In Search of a Lost Landscape, and more particularly in A Corroborree Ground in Beechworth. These writings are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and there is still much to uncover about Aboriginal history in the Beechworth and surrounding area.

Indigenous ways are ingenious ways and it is important to remember that historically, European people learned a lot from Aboriginal peoples, so I have also tried to indicate that indigenous life-ways and sensibilities were a part of every day life for white people in the first few decades of Europeans occupying this part of the country. During the Beechworth gold rush, most gold seekers would have carried a possum skin cloak of indigenous manufacture, and for shelter, many built mia mias for themselves, which I discuss in A Gold Rush Swag. Many non-Aboriginal people also ate bush foods, which they learned of from and/or traded from Aboriginal people, which I discuss in What did the gold miners eat? (Part 1: Bush food in Beechworth).

Beechworth has an ancient Aboriginal history, and we still have rock art which is thousands of years old. I discuss one of the lesser known rock art sites in Mt Pilot 2 Aboriginal Rock Art Site. Our whole region has many Aboriginal sites which we use every day, but of which most of us are unaware. I feel certain that many of our roads are Aboriginal pathways, and many of our gathering places of today are Aboriginal gathering places: Mungabareena Reserve in Albury, and the Benalla Botanical Gardens and Recreation Reserve around the Lake two such places we know of, but many more exist.

 

A corroboree ground in Beechworth (up-dated)

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, King Billy

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Baarmutha Park, Beechworth Primary School, Corroboree, Mayday House, S. H. Rundle

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In previous posts (here and here), I’ve recounted two newspaper reports from 1858 and 1859, in which local Aboriginal people were reported as holding corroborees in Beechworth, when they ‘camped a distance from town, near the [race]course’, which they did annually. [1]

More recently I came across another reference to an Aboriginal corroboree in Beechworth:

Towards the end of 1856 a remnant of the Barwidgee blacks were in existence, King Billy, their leader, being a familiar character. He was adorned with a brass plate suspended from his neck with his name engraved on it, which he was very proud. They held a corroboree on the site where Mr. S. H. Rundle’s residence was situated. The moon was at its full. They were painted with white lines that gave them the resemblance to skeletons, and danced round a fire, while two old gins kept up a tatoo with sticks and made a droning kind of noise. There was no melody in it, but the time was perfect. [2]

The site of the corroboree is very specific: S. H. Rundle’s residence. ‘Which was where?’ I hear you ask. I assumed that it would be near the site of the former racecourse at Baarmutha Park, if the Aboriginal people held their corroborees in the same location every year (at least throughout the late 1850s). After plenty of assistance at the Burke Museum going through old directories, gazettes and rates books, I was not able to locate Mr Rundle or his house; only his draper’s store, London House, in Ford Street. At the Museum, Dan Goonan pulled out numerous old maps of Beechworth, but these only listed the very first owner of each surveyed allotment, and the date of its survey. (Even though we couldn’t find Rundle’s residence on them, the old maps eventually proved helpful.) So what to do?

As I soon discovered, there are many references to S. H. Rundle’s residence to be found in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser throughout the 1870s until the end of the century, uniformly describing it as being ‘on Sydney Road’. Even more helpfully, S. H. Rundle put his residence up for sale in 1878-9 (unsuccessfully it seems), so there is a listing for the property in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser describing it as:

MAYDAY HOUSE, Sydney Road, Beechworth
THE Residence of Mr S. H. Rundle.
The Property stands on Five Acres.
Land with choice Garden.
The party buying the above property will have the option of renting the ten-acre paddock adjoining.
For particulars apply to S. H. RUNDLE. [3]

An advertisement for the same property the year before makes it plain that Rundle owned both the five and ten acre allotments, which he had initially tried to sell as one parcel:

MAY-DAY HOUSE, with 15 ACRES LAND, Sydney-road; Beechworth, the residence of S. H. Rundle, with GARDEN of about 3 Acres, well laid out with the choicest shrubs and flowers; also, fine ORANGERY and ORCHARD, in full bearing, with the finest varieties of fruits, and Green House. Paddocks subdivided and laid down in English grasses, and Water laid on. Ten minutes walk from the Post-office. Title guaranteed. For particulars apply to S. H. Rundle. [4] 

The first survey of Beechworth in June 1853 treated ‘Sydney Road’ — rather than a continuation of Ford Street as it is today — as a continuation of High Street. (This accounts for the great width of Junction Road today, including the fact that there is more than enough space for parents to park their cars along the Primary School boundary.) The surveyor, George Smythe, laid out ten allotments along the eastern side of Sydney Road, stretching from High Street to Cemetery Road (just past the High School). The first allotment on the corner of High Street was 10 acres, and the remainders, 5 acres each. [5] We know that Rundle held 15 of these acres.

As a portion of Sydney Road was renamed Junction Road at least by the 1860s if not earlier [6], and Rundle’s residence continued to be described as being on Sydney Road, we can exclude that he owned either of the allotments from High Street to just before Victoria Road: those originally belonging to Henry Smyth and George Smythe (allotments 1 & 2).

Screen Shot 2018-07-18 at 8.16.36 pm

Survey of the township of Beechworth, May Day Hills, as surveyed by Geo D. Smythe, 8 June, 1853 (lithographed by the Surveyor General’s Office, Victoria, 1855 [State Library of Victoria]). This map illustrates that in the mid 1850s, there were only ten allotments along Sydney Road. The cemetery is also in the survey.

We can get another clue as to where on Sydney Road Rundle’s residence was located from the fact that in 1883, Councillor Ingram ‘presented a petition to Council from a number of residents of Sydney Road, Beechworth, requesting that a lamp be placed at the stone culvert in front of Mr Rundle’s private residence; also, another a short distance the other side of the Vine Hotel, as nearly opposite as possible where the roads leading to Yackandandah and El Dorado, &c., divide.’ [7] So: Rundle’s residence was near the Vine Hotel. The Vine Hotel is often described as being on Reid’s Creek Road or Chiltern Road, and so must have been near the intersection of what is Sydney Road and Old Chiltern Road today.

To add to this, in 1868, a ‘robbery which appears to have been the work of Chinese thieves, took place on Monday night or Tuesday at a hut between Mr Rundle’s house and the Vine Hotel, Beechworth, on a paddock of Mr J. S. Clark’s.’ [8] So: Rundle’s residence was near the Vine Hotel, with a paddock and hut in-between owned by Clarke. Later maps show that J. S. Clark owned allotment number 9.

Therefore Rundle could only have owned 3 consecutive allotments on Sydney Road out of those numbered 3-8. On the original survey, three consecutive allotments were originally owned by Edwin Vickery, and it is tempting to assume Rundle purchased these to make up his 15 acres. All of them would have originally backed onto the racecourse reserve (with un-surveyed land in between).

Sydney_Road_Beechworth

Original allotments along Sydney Road: Number 1 and 2 are opposite the Primary School, and Number 10 and 9 are the Secondary College. Rundle’s residence was at Numbers 6, 7 and 8.

The best I could discern with any degree of certainty is that Rundle’s residence, and therefore the corroboree ground of the late 1850s, was somewhere along Sydney Road between Victoria Road and roughly the Hospital grounds, taking in Beaumont Drive, Nankervis Court and Hillsborough Village. Then this happened:

UP-DATE The morning after I published this blog (on 20/7/18), Jenny Coates, who has a genealogy blog relating to Wangaratta, sent me a link to a newspaper description from 1912 of the next time Rundle’s property came up for sale. The property had expanded by this stage to 20 1/2 acres, and was owned presumably by Sydney Rundle’s son W. J. Rundle. It was described as comprising ‘Allot. 5 of Section A, Suburban Allots. 8 and 9, and part of Suburban Allot. 7’ and as the ‘Largest Township Property in Beechworth’. Given its size and significance, I told myself it had to be in the Beechworth rate books, so I went back to the Burke Museum, whereby I swiftly found Sydney Rundle’s property in the rate books (the book 1878-1880), as Allotments 6, 7, 8 Sydney Road. (Obviously Sydney Rundle initially owned these three allotments; Allotment 5 was added sometime later; and by 1912, some of the land had been divided in suburban lots.) If you refer to the above maps you can see that Allotments 6-8 takes in the land along Sydney Road now taken up by Best Western Motor Inn, the Hospital Grounds, and the houses either side of Beaumont Drive as far as the little park. [see additional references below].

This may have been a long-standing corroboree ground, unless the activities of the gold miners had displaced another earlier site.

Can we imagine some of what happened in this corroboree? Here is a description from an article in 1858, of a corroboree ‘near the course’, which I will quote at length:

The blacks, about twenty in number, ranged themselves in the form of a semi-circle, having several large fires kindled in front, their lubras being in the rear. Their faces were streaked with white paint in a savagely artistic style, and daubs of the same graced their shoulders — the left shoulder of one and the right of another alternately as they stood in line, so as to produce an agreeable uniformity. They had bushes attached to their legs, and carried boughs in their hands. On a given signal the lubras commenced singing, not exactly a la Julia Harland [i.e.: American operatic vocalist, then recently arrived in Australia], but in a very low key, and in strains sounding more like “Yankee Doodle” or the hurdy gurdy than anything else in modern music. The time kept, however, by the musicians, would not have disgraced Jullien [i.e.: a musician then famous for The Drum Polka], and was marked by beating their ‘possum skins, or blankets with a stick, and at the same time producing a deep, monotonous accompaniment.

Immediately on the striking up of the music, the savages, who had been standing with their legs a little apart, began to move to the time of the music, bringing their knees together, and then again bending them outwards without moving the position of their feet. They gradually appear to feel the inspiration of the songs, as the Scotchman is said to be inspired by the sublime music of the bagpipes, and their motions grow more animated. The time of the tune changes from somewhere about two fourths to six-eighths, the beating of the ‘possum skins is more rapid, the savages join in the concert, and commence throwing their arms about, and imitating at short intervals the hushing of the serenaders in their commencement of a railway overture. The time of the music again changes, and again, until it reaches furioso; and in tho same degree does the excitement of the sons of the bush increase, until having reached the climax, when the howling of the “entire strength of the company,” in concert, the furious whirling of the boughs in their hands, their fantastic and continually changing gestures and attitudes, coupled with the wildness of the adjacent scenery, the grotesque effect produced by the painting their faces and forms, and the immense fires apparently encircling the bodies of the actors create a spectacle…

… After this state of semi frenzy has continued some minutes, it gradually diminishes, and at last ceases entirely. The participators lie about in twos and threes, close to their fires, some occasionally singing snatches of their native music, and beating time with two pieces of stick, while others on hearing’ the strains, so great is the effect produced, jump up and commence “fighting their battles o’er again,” singly after the manner we have described, until totally exhausted with their exertions they drop down into their miamias one after the other, and seek strength and renewed vigor in repose. [9]

Maybe next time you are travelling along Sydney Road, take a moment to re-imagine the landscape  — alive with the dance, music, ritual and stories of Beechworth’s first nations’ people.

Thank you: Scott Hartvigsen for questioning my initial thoughts and nudging me to reassess the evidence.

References:

[1] ‘THE MURRAY NATIVES. (From the Constitution.)’, The Age, Tuesday 13 April 1858, p.4; ‘Fashionable Arrivals,’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Wednesday 23 February 1859, p.2.

[2] ‘Old Memories — From an imported article No. III’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 20 October, 1906, p.8.

[3] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 29 May 1879, p.1.

[4] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 23 February, 1878, p.2. It also appears that S. H. Rundle never did sell this house and that it stayed in the family. Family notices in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Monday 6 January 1902, p.1; list Sidney Rundle as having died at Mayday House, Sydney Road.

[5] Survey of the township of Beechworth, May Day Hills, as surveyed by Geo D. Smythe, 8 June, 1853 (lithographed by the Surveyor General’s Office, Victoria, 1855; State Library of Victoria.

[6] It is apparent that Junction Road, as separate from Sydney Road, makes an appearance in the 1860s. See: Ovens and Murray Advertiser 30 November, 1869, p.4.

[7] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 9 June 1883, p.1

[8] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 17 December 1868, p.2.

[9] The Age, 1858, op. cit.

Additional references:

‘Highly Important Sale. VALUABLE RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY, – Within Ten, Minutes of Beechworth Post Office. MAY DAY HOUSE,’ OVENS AND MURRAY ADVERTISER, 7 December, 1912, p.3.

Property 733, owned by Sydney Rundle, Beechworth Shire Rate Book 1878-1880, Robert O’Hara Burke Memorial Museum.

When did Chinese people come to Beechworth, and why?

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Californian gold rush, Chinese, Gold mining, Gold rush, Ovens diggings, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Buckland Riots, Chinese migration, First Opium War, Louis Ah Mouy, Taiping Rebellion

Chinese people formed a large proportion of the mining population in Beechworth during the 1850s. What’s less well known is that at the peak of the gold rush, there were almost no Chinese on the Ovens diggings. Why?

Loading_Tea_at_Canton

Loading Tea at Canton (Tinqua [active 1830s–1870s]), circa 1852. (Peabody Essex Museum)

A walk through the Chinese section of the Beechworth cemetery will demonstrate clearly enough that, historically, there were plenty of Chinese people in Beechworth. The Cemetery opened in 1857, and the fact that whoever designed its grounds felt compelled to create a Chinese section within its bounds, should be proof enough that by the mid-1850s, Beechworth had a substantial Chinese populace. That there were also anti-Chinese riots on the Buckland diggings (considered part of the Ovens district) in 1857, will also tell you there were many Chinese people here: enough for racist mobs to warrant persecuting.

China is a big country, but the people who came to the Victorian diggings weren’t from all over China; they were mainly from the Siyi (Sze Yup) or the ‘Four Counties’ in the Pearl River Delta of southern Guangdong province, south-eastern China. The capital of this area is Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton); and the majority language is Cantonese.

It isn’t so surprising that those coming from China to Australia in the 1850s were from Guangdong province, especially when one realises that from the mid-eighteenth century, Canton had been China’s port of international trade (in fact, its sole international port; famous for its tea, silk and porcelain); and that by the time of the Victorian gold rushes, it had been operating for around a decade as one of the ‘treaty ports’ established by the British in the wake of First Opium War under the Treaty of Nanking (1842). More than any other region in China, Guangdong province had the richest history of contact with Britain and her colonies.

However, throughout all of my research concerned with the initial gold rush at Spring and Reid’s Creek (which happened in the summer of 1852-1853), I’ve been surprised by the conspicuous absence of Chinese people. At its high point, there were roughly 8000 diggers on Spring and Reid’s Creeks, and yet it seems that there were not enough Chinese among them as to be remarked upon. The only exception I have found to date is this solitary account in The Argus of what could be the very first arrival of a Chinese person in the area:

The Ovens diggings (from our Special Commissioner), Royal Hotel, Albury, November 28th, 1852:

No little astonishment has been excited at the Ovens by the appearance on Spring Gully of a gentleman of decided Tartar physiognomy. A wide field for speculation has been opened by the proceedings of this individual, who speaks English fluently, and appears tolerably conversant with English habits and manners. In consequence of his having spent a whole week in the erection of his tent, it is surmised that he can hardly have arrived with the view of digging for gold, but that he is commissioned here by the merchants of Canton in some capacity or other. It will be singular if he should turn out to be sent by a private channel to this the youngest colony of the Empire, on a commercial or emigration errand, while the Celestial Government itself still disdains to enter into diplomatic intercourse with the Home Government. [1]

The man in question is described as looking like a Tartar, Tartary being the name used until the late nineteenth century to refer to a vast area from Russia to Mongolia, to Kazakhstan and countries immediately to the south. It is clear that he isn’t a gold seeker, but instead, a trader or merchant of some kind. He is accustomed to speaking in English, which supports the suggestion he may have recently come from Canton (Guangzhou). Alternatively, there is the possibility that he was already established in Australia as a trader, perhaps having arrived here as an indentured labourer (many of whom came from Fujian province and were brought to Australia to replace convict labour in the 1840s).

The article also spells out that his presence on the Ovens diggings is ‘singular’, i.e.: somehow unusual or extraordinary. This is probably because Chinese didn’t really start arriving on the Victorian diggings until 1853 (see Melbourne’s Chinatown ); and also because — as the author of the article suggests — the presence of this Chinese man, particularly as some kind of a merchant, runs contrary to the uneasy diplomatic and trade relations which existed at the time between the ‘Celestial’ Chinese Qing dynasty Government and the British ‘Home’ Government. The casual way in which the author refers to the lack of ‘diplomatic intercourse’ between the two governments assumes that readers of The Argus are more or less fully aware of the recent history between China and Britain, in which the Qing dynasty was compelled to sign unequal trade treaties with the British after the British won the First Opium War in 1842.

The exact reason why Chinese people didn’t start arriving on the Victorian diggings en masse until late 1853 remains something of a mystery to me. Recently, I came across the biography of Louis Ah Mouy (1826-1918), a Melbourne-based merchant and Chinese community leader, originally from the Toishan district of Kwangtung province, south of Canton. His arrival in Melbourne in 1851 coincided with the discovery of gold, and he claimed to have written the letter (home to his brother) that prompted the migration of many thousands of Cantonese to the Victorian goldfields. [2] At a guess, it seems that it took a while before news of gold in Australia spread sufficiently for Chinese agents in Canton to develop partnerships with the captains of the foreign ships who would deliver people to Australia. I also wonder how much this timing relates to the fact that by 1852, California had introduced a Foreign Miners Tax to deter Chinese miners; and by 1853, Chinese were actively being driven off the Californian diggings by racial violence.

However, the reason many Chinese left China in the early 1850s is more readily discernible: At the time of gold discovery in Victoria, China was rapidly falling into a state of total civil war between the ruling Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom — an oppositional state based in Tianjing (present-day Nanjing, inland from Shanghai). The fighting broke out in Guangxi province, directly west of Guangdong province, in January 1851. From here, the situation (commonly referred to as the ‘Taiping Rebellion’) devolved into one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Tens of millions of people were killed in the fighting and associated plagues and famine, with millions more displaced. Chinese people coming to Beechworth weren’t coming merely for the sake of personal wealth or adventure; they were escaping a country ravaged by war, as well as sending home remittances of gold and money to help struggling family members who couldn’t join them.

As always, comments and contributions welcome.

References

[1] ‘THE OVENS DIGGINGS. (FROM OUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.) ROYAL HOTEL, ALBURY,’  Nov. 28th, The Argus, 3 December, 1852, p.4.

[2] Ching Fatt Yong, ‘Ah Mouy, Louis (1826–1918),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, Melbourne University Press, 1969.

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