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.