• About
  • Books & Papers
  • Public Talks
  • Ovens Directory, 1857
  • Contact

Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Life on Spring Creek

Category Archives: Aboriginal massacres

Concerning the Dhudhuroa, and the supposed fate of the ‘Gillamatongs’

30 Tuesday Nov 2021

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Aboriginal massacres, Dhudhuroa, Squatters, Tangambalanga

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Corryong, Dyinning-mittang, Geelamatong, Gelematong, Gillamatong, Ginningmatong, J.F.H.Mitchell, Mitta Mitta, Neddy Wheeler, T. W. Mitchell, Tallangatta, Thomas Mitchell, Wolgal

There’s one story in the pioneer mythology of the Upper Murray that should not go unchallenged, and it concerns the Dhudhuroa-speaking people.

The view from Farran’s Lookout, Tintaldra, looking upstream on the Murray River towards the Main Range, on Dhudhuroa country.

In Thomas Walter Mitchell’s book Corryong and ‘The Man from Snowy River’ District (1981) there’s a story which seeks to explain the disappearance of an entire group of First Nations people from the Upper Murray area. The Mitchell family had a long connection with the First Nations people of north-east Victoria, particularly as early settlers of the Albury area from 1837 under the guidance of widowed matriarch Elizabeth Mitchell (nee Huon). In 1860, her oldest son Thomas Mitchell began serving as an Honorary Correspondent to the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines, overseeing the Tangambalanga Aboriginal Reserve adjoining his pastoral run from 1862-1873. Thomas Mitchell had a strong interest in the Aboriginal peoples who came to the Reserve from the Kiewa and Upper Murray Valleys, collecting precious vocabularies of the languages they spoke. In 1875, he left Tangambalanga for the Upper Murray, re-establishing his family at Bringenbrong pastoral station. While Thomas died in 1887, in the early 20th century, his much younger brother, John Francis Huon Mitchell, who resided at Hawksview (near Thurgoona), had styled himself a local authority on local First Nations peoples, publishing a dictionary of the ‘Woradgery’ language, including his reminiscences of their ‘customs and ceremonies’, in 1912. Thus when Thomas Mitchell’s grandson, Thomas Walter Mitchell, of Towong Hill station, published his Corryong and ‘The Man from Snowy River’ District in 1981, he was regarded as the beneficiary of a wealth of authentic stories concerning the First Nations people of the Upper Murray — stories handed down through the Mitchell family, in which the Mitchells had considered themselves ‘friends to the blacks’.

In his chapter ‘The Aborigines’ Thomas Walter Mitchell wrote,

‘There were five aboriginal Alpine tribes in all, but only three of these, the Jai-ita-mathang, the Woradgery, and the Wolgal, were connected to the Upper Murray… But there was a sixth tribe of sorts, an unique and a very different component of the Australian aboriginal structure. The Gillamatong tribe had no specific bimble [ie: area] of its own, but ranged at will all over the Upper Murray and the Alpine areas, making a thorough nuisance of itself to all concerned, black or white. The murder of whites at Wermatong between Tintaldra and Walwa in 1840 is attributed to the Gillamatongs, and the universal nuisance value of this tribe rose finally to such a pitch that the other Alpine tribes, plus one or two neighbouring tribes, did a most unusual thing — they combined as one big unit and liquidated the Gillamatongs completely.’ [1]

This story, which provides a convenient explanation for the absence of First Nations people from the Upper Murray area, has an antecedent in Dr Arthur Andrews’ The First Settlement of the Upper Murray, 1835 to 1845 (1920) in which Andrews wrote (though with considerably less certainty than Mitchell) of: ‘…the people we read of as the “Geelamatong,” or “swift,” who are said to have raided as far west as Wangaratta, and were supposed to have been ultimately wiped out by a general rising of the various river tribes.’ [2]


Let’s take a step back from this story and try to find some primary evidence that pre-dates Mitchell’s 1981 and Andrews’ 1920 publications, and first ask, was the ‘Gillamatong’ a real ‘tribe’?

The earliest recorded mention of these people actually appeared on a ‘king plate’ inscribed ‘Ginningmatong, Chief of Talangata’ Presented by Nelson Tooth, 1839′. [3] Nelson Tooth was an early squatter (leaseholder) on the Tallangatta pastoral run, and the plate was issued at a time when squatters would recognise a local leader (‘chief’) within the First Nations group whose land they had invaded, presenting them the gift of a brass ‘gorget’ in the hope of promoting cooperative behaviour. In this example, Nelson Tooth had mistaken the name of local group, ‘Ginningmatong’, for the name of the man himself.

In his travels of 1844, Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, was told that, ‘The blacks on the Mitte Mitte [Mitta Mitta] are called the Tin.ne.mitong.’ [4] Robinson struggled with the unfamiliar language, opting for a T instead of a soft G. However, his reportage alerts us to an important point — that from the 1840s onwards, Europeans often referred to this group colloquially as the ‘Mitta Mitta tribe’.

The next recorded mention came from squatter and Honorary Correspondent to the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines, David Reid (then of Barnawartha), who in reporting on the local population of First Nations people in 1860, said that only 60 people remained, comprising the ‘tribes’ of the ‘Weeroo [Waywurru], Gelematong, Kiewa, Unorring, &c.’ [5] Whereas Nelson Tooth had heard the name as ‘Ginningmatong’, Reid pronounced this Dhudhuroa name as ‘Gelematong’.

However, by the turn of the century, ethnographer R. H. Mathews had sourced and recorded a more accurate rendering of the name from his Dhudhuroa-speaking informant Neddy Wheeler. Wheeler (who took his surname from the Wheeler family of the Nariel Creek and Colac Colac area), explained to Mathews that the language spoken by his people, the Dyinning-mittang, was ‘Dhudhuroa’ [6] (Mathews rendered the language name at first Dhoo’-dhoo-ro’-wa [7], and then Dhū’tharo’-wa [8]). Mathews recorded that ‘Dhudhuroa was spoken by the Dyinning-middha tribe on the lower Mitta Mitta and Kiewa Rivers, and also the Murray Valley from Albury via Dora Dora, Jingellic, to about Walaregang.’ [9] While the suffix of the name could be pronounced either as —mittang or —middha, Mathews better captured the sounds of the first part of the name, Dyinning, which others had rendered as starting with either with a ‘T’ or a soft ‘G’.


Now that we know that the ‘Gillamatong’ to which Thomas Walter Mitchell referred actually exists, and that they are a Dhudhuroa-speaking group which Europeans often referred to as the ‘Mitta Mitta tribe’, and who (contrary to later claims that they had no defined area of their own) occupied Tallangatta, the lower Mitta Mitta River and country along the Murray River from Albury to about Welaregang, we can examine the evidence for the claim that they were considered a ‘universal nuisance’ by other tribes.

On 14 June 1844, George Augustus Robinson was shown a location on the Tambo River by his Omeo (Yaitmathang) guide Charley, which he described in his journal: ‘Two miles above the crossing place up the stream is the spot where a great slaughter of Gippsland blacks [Kurnai] by the Omeo and the Mokeallumbeets and Tinnermittum, their allies, took place…’ [10] In other words, Charley told Robinson that his people, the Yaitmathang, were allied with the Mogullumbidj people of Mount Buffalo (‘Mokeallumbeets’) and the Dyinningmittang (‘Tinnermittum’), against the Kurnai.

Thomas Wilkinson, the first European occupant of Yallowin station (on the west bank of the Tumut River), who had arrived there in 1838, and who had his son write down his reminiscences just prior to his death in 1904, said of the First Nations people from his early days at Yallowin:

‘The blacks used to come in from Yass, Wellaregang, Omeo, and Mitta Mitta, and held corrobories at Yallowin. I have seen 300 there at one time… The blacks increased in numbers after a while, and 600 of them used to come through from Tumbarumba way. Not more than a dozen of them could speak English… On a hill in front of Yallowin homestead there still remains the mark of a ring-formed by the blacks in going through their corrobories which were carried on as part of the ceremony attached to “making men” of the youths after they had attained a certain age.’ [11]

In 1866, the Sydney Mail reported on a gathering of 50 First Nations people at Tumut (where Gilmore Creek enters the Tumut River). While European observers noted their corroboree, and that the ‘object of this visit we learn is to procure a certain description of reed for making spears of, and which is only obtainable in these parts at Tumut Plain’, given the time of year, the gathering may also have pre-empted a trek into nearby mountains for collection of bogong moths. Significantly, the people gathered together were said to be ‘the remnants of this almost extinct race, and are from Muttama, Gundagai, Burrowa, and Tumut.’ In other words, this was a gathering on Wolgal country, and included Wiradjuri-speaking people from Muttama and Gundagai, as well as people from ‘Burrowa’, Burrowye in the Upper Murray, in Dhudhuroa-speaking country. [12] [*amendments, 7.2.2022, 12.2.2022 two LOSC readers have convincingly argued that Burrowa is in fact Boorowa in NSW rather than Burrowye in VIC, in which case my interpretation does not stick. However, I leave this paragraph here for interest’s sake, as the alternative underlines the connectedness of Wolgal and Wiradjuri peoples and although this is not longer directly related to this post topic, it is still a good point! *amendment 22/2/2022, Despite concerns that Burrowa in the quoted article is not Burrowye in the Upper Murray, there is evidence that Burrowye was also called ‘Burrowa’ in the earliest period of European settlement (ie: 1838) — see for instance, Michael Cannon (ed.), Historical Records of Victoria, 2A, p.330; and ‘HISTORICAL STATEMENTS.—DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER MURRAY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.‘ The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 16 May 1873, p.2; and also Dr Arthur Andrews, First settlement of the Upper Murray, 1835-1845: with a short account of over two hundred runs, 1835 to 1880, D. S. Ford, Sydney, 1920. ]

From these and numerous other examples, it can be concluded that the Dyinningmittang were not only allied with the Yaitmathang (Omeo) people, the Mogullumbidj (Mount Buffalo) people, but also gathered for ceremony and trade on a frequent basis with Wolgal and Wiradjuri people, on Wolgal lands around Tumut.


Now that we know the Dyinning-mittang were not a ‘universal nuisance’ to other surrounding tribes, who obviously never ‘combined as one big unit and liquidated the Gillamatongs completely’, then we must ask what happened to the Dyinning-mittang?

Reporting to a Victorian government inquiry in 1858, James Wilson, a squatter who resided on the Mitta Mitta from 1840 until 1854, said of what he referred to as the ‘Mitta Mitta tribe’, ‘There are very few aborigines in the Mitta Mitta district, probably not more than twelve (12). The Tallangatta creek was the hunting ground of the Ginning-matong tribe. There are only three of this tribe now alive.’ [13] While Wilson’s reportage regarding the number of survivors may have been imperfect, it is apparent that by 1858 a great mortality had occurred among the Dyinning-mittang. European diseases and vices may be counted among contributing factors, but to examine one significant source of mortality, we must look to the earliest days of the European invasion of the Upper Murray.

In a record of his itinerary, visiting the pastoral stations along the Upper Murray in 1839 (around two years after the permanent arrival of Europeans), Crown Lands Commissioner Henry Bingham wrote a note during his visit to Towong station: ‘The natives were hostile in this part of the District[,] for special report of an affray — [indecipherable] both parties see my letter to the Colonial Secretary 13 August’. [14] In the corresponding letter, Bingham wrote that he had ‘held an inquiry on the 7th instant about 80 miles up the River Hume [Murray] relative to a certain affray between some servants of the Messer [Richard and William] Guise, having a stock station there, and the natives; the result of which was that I considered it necessary to detain in custody a free man, by servitude, named George Wilson in the service of Richard Guise Senior, for feloniously firing and wounding a black native named Billy-ongong, when swimming across the River Hume.’ The detention of a free man for firing upon a First Nation person at this time was a rarity, but in any case, Bingham ‘regretted’ to inform the Colonial Secretary that his prisoner had escaped, so no more details of his inquiry were ever heard. [15]

With a family origin story in French nobility, the Guises had been among the first Europeans to invade the Upper Murray, taking up lands at Guy’s Forest (South Burrowye) in 1837, then Wermatong, Walwa, Towong, and Jingellic; as well as Khancoban and Bringenbrong. [16] As local historian Jean Carmody observed, ‘William [Guise] in particular has been described as “a most predatory man”, who tried to lay claim to all of the land between the Murray and the Murrumbidgee, extending east of a line which would join present-day Albury to Gundagai.’ [17] In other words, the Guises and their stockmen had occupied, in the space of two years or less, virtually the entire country of the Dyinning-mittang; and as Bingham had noted, the response to this from the Dyinning-mittang had been ‘hostile’.

During the initial period of invasion, the Upper Murray was entirely without government surveillance, and the Guises (and other early settlers like the Shelleys) had been left to use any means necessary to take possession of the land. And the murder of two shepherds on Wermatong station (adjoining Tintaldra) [18], and another two stockmen downstream at Thologolong [19], suggests that at least some Dhudhuroa-speaking people had been intent on violent resistance of this occupation. Bingham’s belated ‘inquiry’ into the resulting ‘hostility’ was probably the tip of the iceberg.

The notion that the Dhudhuroa-speaking Dyinning-mittang effectively had no country, and that their population had been obliterated by other local First Nations people, is a convenient white-wash of a story which has been peddled by apologists for the European invasion. Thomas Walter Mitchell’s Corryong and ‘The Man from Snowy River’ District may be a great romance of early European settlement in the Upper Murray, but in its telling of the fate of the ‘Gillamatongs’, it wantonly seeks to avoid an ugly but important truth: Europeans did not occupy the Upper Murray by peaceable means alone, and neither was their presence tolerated without retaliation.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2021. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

References

[1] T. W. Mitchell, Corryong and ‘The Man from Snowy River’ District, Wilkinson Printers for R. Boyes, Albury, 1981, p.12.

[2] Arthur Andrews, First settlement of the Upper Murray, 1835-1845: with a short account of over two hundred runs, 1835 to 1880, D. S. Ford, Sydney, 1920, p.35.

[3] Tania Cleary 1993, p.131, cited in Sue Wesson, The Aborigines of Eastern Victoria and far South Eastern New South Wales, 1832-1910: An Historical Geography, PhD thesis, Monash University, 2000, p.64. Tania Cleary, Poignant Regalia: 19th Century Aboriginal Images and Breastplates, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Glebe, 1993.)

[4] Ian Clark (ed.), The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, 1839-1852, published by Ian Clark, Melbourne, 2014, entry for: 22 June 1844.

[5] ‘Aboriginal Population in 1860’, The Argus, 5 October, 1860, p.5.

[6] R. H. Mathews, MS 8006, Series 3, Item 7, Notebook 7, National Library Australia.

[7] ibid.

[8] R. H. Mathews, MS 8006, Series 3, Item 4, Volume 2 [Marked 6], National Library Australia.

[9] R H Mathews, MS8006, Series 5, File 3, Box 6, manuscript materials, National Library of Australia.

[10] Ian Clark (ed), op cit., entry for 14 June 1844.

[11] Thomas Wilkinson, ‘A Record of Olden Days,’ The Tumut and Adelong Times, Friday 22 July 1904, p.2.

[12] ‘Aboriginal Gathering’, Sydney Mail, Saturday 27 January 1866, p.4.

[13] Report Select Committee of the Legislative Council — The Aborigines, John Ferres, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1858-9, p.26.

[14] NRS 906: Colonial Secretary: Commissioners of Crown Lands – Itineraries, Murrumbidgee, Henry Bingham, 10 Jul – Nov 1839, Aug 1843, Jul 1844, Mar – Nov 1845, Apr – Jun 1847 [X812], Reel 2748; Squatters and Graziers Index, State Archives and Records NSW.

[15] ‘Henry Bingham, C. C. L. to Col. Sec., 13 August 1839’, in Michael Cannon (ed), Historical Records of Victoria, Volume 2B, Aborigines and Protectors, 1838-1839, Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1983, p.709.

[16] Arthur Andrews, op cit., p.123-4, p.99; R. V.  Billis, and A. S. Kenyon, Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip, Macmillan & Company Ltd., Melbourne, 1932, p.76.

[17] Jean Carmody, Early Days Of the Upper Murray, Shoestring Press, Wangaratta, 1981, p.4.

[18] T. W. Mitchell, ‘Baal Udthu Yamble Yabba,’ in The Australian Ski Year Book, Ski Council of New South Wales, Sydney, 1953, p.68.

[19] Arthur Andrews, op cit., p.32.

Some thoughts on Dhudhuroa in the Upper Murray

26 Tuesday Oct 2021

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Aboriginal massacres, First Nations, Squatters, Tangambalanga, Wangaratta

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Corryong, Dhudhuroa, Dora Dora, George Augustus Robinson, Pallanganmiddang, Tintaldra, Towong, Waywurru

Last April (2021), friend and colleague Megan Carter and myself drove the length of the Upper Murray Valley, trying to get some internal sense of the northern-most extent of Dhudhuroa country. Megan had been researching breast-plates (also known as ‘gorgets’ or ‘king plates’) associated with the area, and we’d come across an old newspaper report illustrating the breast plate of ‘Charley, Prince of Benden Dara-Dera’, which was reputedly given to him by the first European squatter on Welaregang run, (Sir) John Hay. [1] We’d also become curious about the ‘Dora Dora Massacre’ reputedly committed by squatter John Jobbins (probably in late 1836 or early 1837). [2] Over two days, we visited places along the Upper Murray from Towong and Tintaldra to Welaregang and Walwa; and there was a big day following the dirt road from Jingellic to Dora Dora and Wymah on the New South Wales side of the River, trying to get a sense of place.

The view from the top of Towong Hill Road, looking towards the Main Range with the Murray River in the foreground.

On one of the days we had a great lunch at the Corryong Bakery; and we took in the view from Towong Hill — which was a near religious experience. Local historian John Murphy had told us that an old timer from an old Corryong family had told him that Welaregang was the ‘mustering ground’ for different ‘tribes’ before they went up to the Snowy Mountains to collect bogong moths. Later, Megan and I stood at Farran’s Lookout (on the opposite side of the River from Welaregang) and imagined people sending up puffs of smoke from the Dargals, signalling that the time to collect the moths had arrived. Then we had a terrific curry at Tintaldra pub.

Another day we had lunch at the Jingellic pub, and drove ‘the back way’ on the dirt road from Jingellic, passing through Maracket, Talmalmo and Dora Dora — all old pastoral stations bounded by the rocky outcrops of (what is now) Woomargama National Park on the northern side; missing the Wymah ferry (!); and having to drive all the way to Bowna and out to Albury. It was ethnographer R. H. Mathews’ Dhudhuroa language informant Neddy Wheeler who had told Mathews that Dhudhuroa language was spoken from ‘Welaregang to Albury’ — naming locations like these on the New South Wales side of the Murray River. [3] Today, Dhudhuroa is conventionally thought of as Victorian language group, and yet prior to the Murray River becoming a state border, it was simply another river valley — and as Megan and I learned, for a distance either side from Jingellic to Wymah, it is a geographically tight, self-contained valley. Over the course of our travels, it became easy for us to imagine that Dhudhuroa was spoken along either side of this narrow valley, where the Murray River could be forded at numerous points.

On this basis we came to thinking that the breast plate given at Welaregang station to ‘Charley, Prince of Benden Dara-Dera’, contained an anglicised version of the language name Dhudhuroa in the form of Dara-Dera. [4] We’ve yet to work out what ‘Benden‘ is all about, but I have to admit that that name Bendendera/Bendenderra is surely also worthy of investigation — this was a pastoral station located somewhere near modern-day Brungle, which in turn became the location of an Aboriginal Mission Station in the late 1880s. At present I know next to nothing about Bendenderra, and yet, historically, there’s evidence that ‘Dodorera’ [Dhudhuroa] people mixed with Wiradjuri people less than 20km away from Brungle in Wiradjuri lands at Gundagai in 1844; [5a] and that people from ‘Burrowa’ [Pine Mountain near Walwa], and Gundagai, were still having corroboree with people in Tumut [ie: Wolgalu people] as late as 1866 — for trade, but probably also before heading up into the mountains for moth hunting. [5b]

Reading up on Dora Dora, I learned that the name was recorded by the first Europeans (in the party of squatter Luke Reddall) who, upon trying to establish the local place name for a site at which they were forming a station, were reportedly told by the First Nations people there, ‘Durra, durra’ [6]. This station became known at first as ‘Daara Daara’, eventually rendered as ‘Dora Dora.’ It seems probable that in attempting to establish the name of the location, these Europeans were instead given an explanation as to whom the country belonged: Dhudhuroa.

Other interesting toponyms are found nearby, also as an artefact of early European squatters attempting to garner local place names from the Dhudhuroa people: downstream from Dora Dora, they recorded the name Wagrah (later altered to Wymah) [7], while the location on the opposite side of the Murray River was recorded as Bunjil. These are not toponyms. Instead, it seems the Dhudhuroa were informing the invading Europeans not only of whose country it was (ie: Dhudhuroa), but also of their two-part moiety division of Bunjil (Eaglehawk) and Waa (Crow) — they were indicating Bunjil, and his opposing number, Waa; perhaps even pointing out local groups on opposite sides of the River who each had these moieties. That these names exist even today could be read as a statement of ‘ownership’ of country based on grounds of language and lore.

What seem to be early European attempts at recording the language name Dhudhuroa, ie: dara-dera, durra-durra, daara-daara, dora-dora, and do-dorera got me thinking about the contemporary rendering of this name, Dhudhuroa.

When linguists Barry Blake and Julie Reid came to their analysis of Dhudhuroa language in 2002, they worked predominantly from the notes of ethnographer R. H. Mathews whose language informant was Dhudhuroa man Neddy Wheeler. Mathews, whom I’m assured was quite a good at recording First Nations languages, rendered the name as Dhudhuroa, which he spelled more phonetically as Dhoo-dhoo-ro-wa, to which Blake and Reid were able to offer this explanation:

‘Dhudhuroa appears to consist of the first syllable of the word for ‘no’ reduplicated. The word for ‘no’ is dhubalga. It is common in southeastern Australia to base language names on the word for ‘no’. The name almost certainly contains a reduced form of wurru, which means ‘mouth’ or ‘language’ in a number of Victorian languages. The final syllable is probably -wa, which is found on quite a few other words. Thus we probably have Dhu-dhu-(wu)rru-wa.’ [8]

Thanks to Barry Blake, Julie Reid and other linguists (Dixon, Hercus, Morey, Koch), it’s become a well-established point that are two main First Nations naming conventions in relation to language names for central Victoria and the Murray River area (which is not to say that every language name necessarily fits convention; only that the conventions exist). For the Murray River, the convention is the use of the word ‘No’ in that language replicated: names such as Yorta Yorta, Wemba Wemba, Barapa Barapa and so on. The other naming convention, seen prominently within central Kulin language areas, is to combine the language’s word for ‘No’ with the word for ‘mouth’. Thus, as Barry Blake [9] has pointed out, the name Taungurung in its fullest form is Thagu-wurrung, combining the word Thagu (also written as Dhaagu [10]) for ‘No’ with wurrung for ‘mouth’.

I was entirely satisfied with Blake and Reid’s explanation of the name, until this morning when I came across another regional word for mouth, recorded as deirah or diara, rendered by Blake and Reid as d(h)erra. It occurred to me that the word d(h)erra, rather than wurru might be a constituent part of the language name Dhudhuroa. Consequently, I think it equally possible that the name Dhudhuroa could comprise part of the word for ‘no’, Dhu—, and the word for ‘mouth’, or ‘tongue’ d(h)erra, ie: Dhu-d(h)erra. Dhu-d(h)erra also puts us within ‘ear-shot’ of dara-dera, and brings us closer to ethnographer Alfred Howitt’s rendering of the name The-d-dora. [11] (A soft ‘D’, and a soft ‘Th’ with the tongue on the back of your bottom teeth, are similar sounds.) However, I’m not a linguist. I’m an amateur with this stuff.

Hearing the word d(h)erra in Dhudhuroa also got me thinking about our understanding of local languages in North East Victoria — particularly Dhudhuroa and ‘Pallanganmiddang’ (Waywurru) — two small, isolated pockets of language surrounded by the vastly larger language areas of Yorta Yorta to the west, Wiradjuri to the north, Snowy Mountains Language [eg: Ngarigu] to the North and East, and Taungurung (and more generally Kulin languages) to the south. Were they gradually being crushed by outside influences?

Currently the word d(h)erra is not even attributed to the Dhudhuroa language, but instead to the neighbouring ‘Pallanganmiddang’ (now generally referred to as Waywurru) language. In a study of Pallanganmiddang [12], Blake and Reid sourced the word they render as d(h)erra from two separate vocabularies, named ‘Barwidgee’ and ‘Pallanganmiddang.’ Both vocabularies were compiled by the same man — squatter Thomas Mitchell — most likely while he was serving as Honorary Correspondent to the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines at the Tangambalanga Aboriginal Reserve. As the Reserve was used by both people from the Upper Murray, and the Ovens and lower Kiewa River Valleys, Mitchell’s vocabularies actually combined words from two different languages: Dhudhuroa, and Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru). In dividing the vocabularies out into two separate language groups, Blake and Reid were assisted by three other vocabularies — R. H. Mathews’ vocabulary given to him by self-identified Dhudhuroa man Neddy Wheeler [13]; George Augustus Robinson’s 1844 vocabulary given to him by self-identified Pallangan-middang (Waywurru) man ‘Joe’ Mul.ler.nin.ner [14]; and a third vocabulary supplied to Wangaratta resident William St. Fort Murdoch by someone who had collected this vocabulary in Wangaratta in the mid-1870s [15]. Despite these additional vocabularies, separating the words into two distinctive language groupings must have presented a few challenges, and I now wonder whether d(h)erra is a Dhudhuroa word for mouth too, or tongue (indeed it is a widespread word fro tongue), and the word Robinson recorded as the Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru) word for ‘neck’ — wo-ro — was in fact the Waywurru word for ‘mouth’ (one imagines the finger pointing to body parts may have been misinterpreted at some point), which would make it the same word as in the adjoining Ngurai-illum (vastly more Kulinic) language — wooroo. Not to mention the same word contained in the language name Way-wurru. There is also a word recorded for mouth in Blake and Reid’s Dhudhuroa language vocabulary — lendawa(h) — (so they have a relevant reason for allocating d(h)erra to Pallanganmiddang) but I wonder whether this may be a word for ‘lips’. [16] I also wonder whether I should speculate like this, given that I am not a linguist.

I am not suggesting that what I’m writing is concrete; I am discussing possibilities. If you would like to join the discussion, or have some thoughts, don’t be shy! Alternatively, visit the Upper Murray. The landscapes are epic and the beer is cold.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2021. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

Endnotes

1. ‘The “Prince’s” Badge of Honor,’ Border Morning Mail, Saturday 9 September 1939, p.13.

2. See: Charles Albert Smithwick (J. Henwood & M. Swann, Eds.), Early History of the Upper Murray, John Henwood, Camberwell, 2003, p.18. Also: Arthur Andrews, First settlement of the Upper Murray, 1835-1845: with a short account of over two hundred runs, 1835 to 1880, D. S. Ford, Sydney, 1920.

3. R. H. Mathews, MS8006 Series 5 File 3 Box 6, National Library of Australia.

4. ‘The “Prince’s” Badge of Honor,’ op cit.

5a. Ian Clark (ed.) The Papers of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, 1839-1852, Melbourne, 2014, p.315. 5b. Sydney Mail, Saturday 27 January, 1866, p.4.

6. Margaret Carnegie, Friday Mount: first settlement at Holbrook and the south-western slopes of New South Wales, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1973. p.151; Arthur Andrews, op cit., p.52.

7. Arthur Andrews, op cit., p.144.

8. Barry Blake and Julie Reid, ‘The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria: a description based on historical sources,’ Aboriginal History, 2002, VOL 26, pp: 177-210.

9. cited in: Ian Clark, Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900, Monash Publications in Geography Number 37, Monash University, Melbourne, 1990, p. 370.

10. Lee Healy (compiler), Taungurung Liwik-nganjin-al Ngula-dhan Yaawinbu Yananinon (Taungurung Dictionary), Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, Melbourne, 2011.

11. Alfred Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Macmillan, London, 1904.

12. Barry Blake and Julie Reid, ‘Pallanganmiddang: a language of the Upper Murray,’ Aboriginal History, 1999, Vol. 23, pp.15-30.

13. R. H. Mathews, ‘The Dhudhuroa Language of Victoria,’ reprinted from the American Anthropologist, Vol. 11, No. 2, April-June, 1909, pp:278-284.

14. Ian Clark (ed.) The Papers of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, 1839-1852, Melbourne, 2014, p.321.

15. Murdoch, W L, Science of Man and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia,Vol 3, No11, December 1900, pp.188-189. [Murdoch’s middle initial was mis-transcribed by the Journal editors; it should be S for ‘St. Fort’.]

16. Barry Blake and Julie Reid, ‘The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria: a description based on historical sources,’ op cit.

Massacre on the Broken River

20 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Aboriginal massacres, Benalla, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Alexander McLean Hunter, Barjarg, Broken River, Catherine Withers, George Augustus Robinson, Hunter and Watson, John 'Howqua' Hunter, Mansfield, P. W. Walker, Peter Stuckey Junior, William Arundel

In 1930, local historian P. W. Walker wrote an account of a massacre of Aboriginal people at Barjarg (on the Broken River between Benalla and Mansfield), which had reportedly taken place some 90 years earlier. The veracity of his report was hotly challenged in the pages of The Australasian newspaper; however, it now seems that Walker had every reason to listen to the woman who told him the story in the first place: Mrs Catherine Withers.


Barjarg_2020

The Broken River Valley at Barjarg (Jacqui Durrant, June 2020).

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes discussion of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In particular, I acknowledge the Aboriginal ancestors of the region in which I live, whose words may be quoted within this or other posts, with the greatest respect for their legacy.

In 1930, local historian P.W. Walker wrote in The Australasian newspaper of an incident that took place on pastoral run, somewhere in the Mansfield district:

‘The aborigines were numerous, and at times they were troublesome and treacherous. They would steal sheep, spear cattle and horses, and even murder white people. Consequently the men, women, and children who lived in their huts were exposed to great danger, the women and children at times being alone while the men attended, to the stock. Firearms had to be kept in the house and carried by the shepherds and stockmen, and the women went to the creek for water with a gun in one hand and a bucket in the other. In some of the huts holes were made in the walls to put the guns through and fire at the blackfellows. Sometimes the blacks formed themselves into large parties and attacked the dwellings. On one occasion there were seven white people and a black boy at one of the stations. The black boy heard the blacks arranging their plans to attack and murder these white folk, and he warned them. About 400 aborigines approached, but the white people had prepared a repast of damper and beef, which they gave to the blacks. The whites’ cooking did not appear to agree with the blacks. Nearly all of them were suddenly taken ill, and most of them died on the spot. They were buried near where they lay, and some of the mounds can be seen to this day.’[1a]

Reporting a historical massacre of Aboriginal people in a national newspaper was pretty heady stuff in 1930, and the author of said article – ‘An Early History of Mansfield’ — P. W. Walker, was questioned by one reader:

‘DETAILS REQUESTED. TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN.
Sir,—Mr. P. W. Walker mentions in his article on the history of Mansfield a threatened attack, made by about 400 natives, on a homestead, and also deals with their subsequent complete destruction caused by a judicious mixture of beef, damper, and some other deleterious matter. Would he kindly tell us which homestead was attacked and where the natives were buried, and by whom?
-Yours. &c.,
ANOTHER OLD-TIMER.
Melbourne, November 8.’ [1b]

Walker offered this reply:

‘TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN. Sir,—In reply to “Another Oldtimer,” it was on the Barjarg station where the threatened attack was made by the blacks and where they were buried. I think it was in the ‘forties. My informant was the late Mrs. Frank Withers, and it was her father who told her.
—Yours. &c.,
Mansfield, Nov. 16. P. W. WALKER.’ [2]

What followed was a round-robin of criticism of Walker’s story, commencing with a further reply from ‘Another Oldtimer’, whose main objection was that those whom Walker had implied were likely responsible for the massacre — the early pastoralists Alex Hunter and James Watson, and their cousin William Francis Hunter Arundel — were ‘not the class’ to commit such an act. Hunter and Watson had formed a pastoral company in 1839 (largely backed by the money of the Scottish landed gentry, including the Marquis of Ailsa) [3], and it was commonly believed that Barjarg Station had been cut from their pastoral holdings; and thus it was supposed that they had to be responsible for any poisoning of Aboriginal people that might have taken place.

At length, ‘Another Oldtimer’ explained, ‘Serious trouble with the natives in the Mansfield district was confined to the early years of the fourth decade of last century, when one of Watson and Hunter’s… shepherds was murdered, and also two shepherds in the employ of the unfortunate and over-sanguine Waugh at Delatite Station. Of course, retribution was meted out, but Messrs. Watson and Hunter, or their cousin, Mr. Hunter Arundel, who occupied Barjarg at that time, were not the class to permit diabolical outrage. So Mr. Walker’s statement, unintentionally doubtless, amounts to a calumny on an honourable and distinguished name.’ [4]

Notably, ‘Another Oldtimer’s’ objection to Walker’s story lay not in the assertion that Hunter, Watson and/or Arundel had killed Aboriginal people — indeed he wrote, not so cryptically, that ‘retribution was meted out’. Instead, his objection lay with the claim that a mass poisoning had taken place: a ‘diabolical’ act, surely with the power to blacken ‘distinguished names.’ [5] (The distinction that ‘Another Oldtimer’ made between ‘retribution meted out’ to individuals, and ‘diabolic acts’ in which Aboriginal people were murdered indiscriminately, was an important distinction to pastoralists of the squatting era, in theory if not in practice.)

Soon, the author of the latest book on the subject of early Victorian squatting, Pastures new: an account of the pastoral occupation of Port Phillip, (1930), A. S. Kenyon, weighed into the debate as a figure of academic authority, writing:

‘TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN. Sir,—The vague charge against the early pioneers of the Mansfield district of poisoning some 400 aborigines has now been given a somewhat more definite form. The place was Barjarg. Barjarg was part of the Watson and Hunter country taken up in 1839, and was cut out of it towards the end of 1841 by William Francis Hunter Arundell, a relative of the Hunter’s. Arundell was a gentleman of unimpeachable conduct. He transferred to Robert Jamieson, one of early Melbourne’s most reputable citizens, who was partner at first with Sir William Henry Fancourt Mitchell. Mitchell, for 18 months sole owner, transferred to James Moore in August, 1849. The Moores held it until 1863. Now against which of these gentlemen is the charge of murder to be laid? Throughout the whole of the forties Mr. G. A. Robinson, chief protector of the aborigines, and his district protectors (one of whom, Parker, was stationed on the Goulburn) investigated every report or rumour that was heard as to murder or even bad treatment of the blacks. This wholesale poisoning yarn, unwhispered at the time, originated in Van Dieman’s Land and has been revived and repeated in each colony. In every ascertainable case it can be attributed to disgruntled station hands, generally “expired” convicts or ticket-of-leave men. There never was any foundation for such a slander upon our early settlers, whose treatment of the aborigines was as kind and tolerant as the times permitted.—Yours, &c.,
A. S. KENYON
Heildelberg (V.), Nov. 24.’ [6]

Finally, in yet another response to Walker’s story, family member Mr Ivan J. Hunter, wrote to The Australasian. ‘In those years,’ he started, ‘I think, my family were almost the sole occupants of the district  [my italics], which was then known as the Devil’s River country, and one of them certainly did occupy Barjarg. My uncle, Alexander McLean Hunter, was the first of the family to arrive there in 1839, and was followed by my Uncle John and my father, James A. C. Hunter, also their cousins, John (sometimes called “Old John” or “Howqua” to distinguish him from the other John—usually Jack Campbell Hunter and William Arundel.) Barjarg was the name of an estate in Scotland owned by a branch of the family. Now it seems to me that if it is believed that the blacks were really poisoned, some of my ancestors must be guilty of a very serious crime. I am convinced that no old hand, or anyone who followed early history, would believe such a story…’ [7]

Ivan Hunter went on to explain how ‘the natives were always treated well and many constantly employed on the different station properties’ [8] And so it would seem that the assertion of local historian P. W. Walker was now thoroughly squashed under the weight of denials that Hunter, Watson or Arundell would ever have engaged in such a brutal and cruel act of mass murder.

Only now, 180 years later, and with a broader range of primary historical source materials, can we give local historian P. W. Walker a second hearing.

Hunter and Watson's

A Field Sketch of Watson and Hunter’s pastoral empire, drawn up in 1846 by surveyor Robert Russell, at a time when Hunter and Watson’s pastoral company had fallen into insolvency (State Library of Victoria).

To begin with, the confidence held by Walker’s detractors that nothing ‘diabolical’ would ever have happened at any of the stations in the vast pastoral holdings of Hunter and Watson is unrealistic. As historian Judy Macdonald, who has read the papers of the Hunter family, points out, ‘Figures given by Alexander Hunter in September 1841 show that Watson and Hunter employed 100 hands, had about 80 horses, 3000 cattle and 20,000 sheep, constantly changing. They had 12 stations at Devils River, [and were] ‘buying and selling Melbourne properties daily.’ [9] To assume that Hunter and Watson, as principals of these numerous stations, were fully conversant with all that was being done by every number of their one hundred staff (comprising mainly assigned convict servants and ticket-of-leave convicts), is implausible. Furthermore, it may even be argued that Hunter and Watson’s grip on their pastoral empire was tenuous; possibly even chaotic: by 1846 their company was thoroughly insolvent (although the economic depression of 1842 played a role; it also seems the young men of the Hunter clan were more interested in horse racing than running a pastoral empire); and the court cases surrounding the eventual dissolution of the company would drag on into the 1850s. [10]

We can also discount Kenyon’s argument that the poisoning of Aboriginal people in Victoria was merely a ‘yarn’ that originated in Tasmania. Instead, there is evidence to suggest that the poisoning of Aboriginal people did take place on the Ovens and Broken Rivers, and elsewhere. As I have written before, in June 1839, not even a year after the initial settlement of North East Victoria by Europeans, Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Goulburn district, James Dredge, recorded the prevalence of mass poisonings with ‘sweet damper’ (ie: arsenic-laced damper) [11], and Assistant-Protector of Aborigines for the Melbourne area, William Thomas, also recorded in March 1839 that Aboriginal people on the Broken and Ovens Rivers had been ‘put out in this way.’ [12] Kenyon’s assertion that Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson and his district protectors ‘investigated every report or rumour that was heard as to murder or even bad treatment of the blacks’ is pure fantasy: anyone familiar with the journals of Robinson or his Assistant Protectors like Thomas and Dredge, will know that they were profoundly under-resourced, and will see the extent to which their investigations were hampered by the squatters’ ‘code of silence’ and government indifference.

Barjarg_station_2020

The front gate of present-day Barjarg Station (Jacqui Durrant, June 2020).

Next, we should re-examine whether Hunter and Watson were the only pastoralists who could possibly have been responsible for the poisoning on Barjarg Station. Ivan Hunter was quite correct when he wrote that his family were almost the sole occupants of the district. Certainly, Barjarg was leased under license by Alex Watson’s cousin William Francis Hunter Arundell from 1841-1848. [13] This much was documented by Kenyon in his 1932 book (coauthored with R. V. Billis) The Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip. However, Billis and Kenyon’s book was only a simple ‘record of all [land]holdings under depasturing licenses.’ [14] It relied solely on government records, and as such, effectively missed periods of European occupation in which a pastoralist had failed to take out a formal license to ‘depasture’ stock.

As it turns out, before Barjarg was so named, it did have another early European occupant, whose association with the area would soon be forgotten: Peter Stuckey Junior. We can be certain of this, as on 10 May 1840, Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, was travelling south along the Broken River with Assistant Protector James Dredge, going from station to station; and having visited William McKellar’s station ‘Lima’ on the Broken River just north of present-day Swanpool (Lima Station still exists in the same location today), Robinson recorded that ‘At 15 miles from McKellar’s [we] came to Stucky’s station.’ If one maps the distance, one finds that Robinson had come to the head station of Barjarg (which like Lima Station, still exists in the same location today).

At the time of Robinson’s visit, Stuckey was only 18 years old; the eldest son of established pastoralist Peter Stuckey, who by this time was based at ‘Willie Ploma’ on Wiradjuri lands at Gundagai. Robinson found that Peter Stuckey Junior, along with his servants, had only just partially finished work on a hut which could sleep eight men. The hut had been built specifically because they feared Aboriginal attack. [15]

Robinson gave an account of their situation with regards the local Aboriginal people: ‘Was informed by Mr Stuckey that on about Saturday, 25 April [1840] last a party of blacks visited his station and on the day following made an attack upon it but without doing any injury except spearing in the back of the shoulder a domesticated native in Mr Stuckey’s employ and who belongs to the Murrumbidgee [ie: Wiradjuri] tribe. Mr Stuckey when attacked was living under loose slabs. He afterwards worked day and night to complete a part of his slab hut, which is very substantial with a slab ceiling and loopholes for firing out of. They could stand a seize [ie: siege] in this fortress, it is substantially built. … [Stuckey] is quite a youth. … He had 5 men at the station, four whites and one an assigned servant and a Murrumbidgee black.’

Robinson remained at Stuckey’s station that night, ‘to enquire into the particulars of their outrage [ie: attack]. It [the hut] was about 12 x 8, in which the four white men, the black, Stuckey, Dredge and myself, large [enough] to stow eight persons. Stucky’s people apprehended another attack from the natives and had their firearms prepared for the natives. Whilst they were preparing their fortress they kept a sentinel.’

Let us remind ourselves that the local historian, Walker, could not have read this account of Stuckey’s station in Robinson’s journals, as the journals left Australia with Robinson in 1852 and remained in Britain until well after Walker’s article was written. Robinson’s description of Stuckey’s situation, with his crew of European servants plus one ‘domesticated native,’ whom may have come to be remembered in history as a ‘black boy’ (adult ‘black’ men were once routinely referred to as ‘boy’), does resemble the group described by Walker: ‘there were seven white people and a black boy at one of the stations. The black boy heard the blacks arranging their plans to attack and murder these white folk, and he warned them.’ Indeed Robinson recorded that Stuckey and his men ‘apprehended another attack’ from local Aboriginal people. Clearly, the hut they built — strong enough to withstand a siege — was evidence of this fact.

Robinson left the following day, and unfortunately we can learn no more of Stuckey’s situation from him. Indeed, by April 1841, Stuckey had established himself on a new station at the junction of the Murray and Ovens River [16], and the lease of Barjarg had been taken out by Arundell. This means that Stuckey’s stay on that part of the Broken River lasted a year or less. No wonder his presence on the Broken River was forgotten, and was absent from the archives consulted by Billis and Kenyon.

One might ask how deep the fear of imminent attack ran among Stuckey and his stockmen, and what might have driven them to possibly take the drastic step of poisoning a large number of local Aboriginal people. By the time of Robinson’s visit, Stuckey and his men would have received reports that two days after the attack on their own station, a stockman at Chisholm’s Myrrhee Station in the King Valley had been murdered and ritually mutilated (having had the caul fat from around one kidney cut out) by a group of Aboriginal men, believed to be the same group responsible for the attack on not only their own station, but a number of others. [17]

A letter written to The Port Phillip Gazette on the 8th May, signed by someone calling themselves ‘A Friend to Justice’, condemned Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson’s passive role in the events which were happening during the course of his visit to North East Victoria, writing that ‘Mr. Robinson passed a party of stockmen all armed going in search of the natives; he ought to have put himself or his sub at the head of these men, not only to prevent the wanton effusion of aboriginal blood, but to bring to justice the murderers of Mr. Chisholm’s man.’ [18] Clearly, stockmen in the vicinity of the Ovens and King Rivers were looking for violent retribution, which ‘A Friend to Justice’ knew would be ‘wanton’ — which is to say ‘indiscriminate’.

A little over a week and a half after George Augustus Robinson had visited Stuckey’s station (Barjarg), Aboriginal people also attacked David Lindsay Waugh’s station on the Delatite River. Waugh’s station was considered to be in the immediate neighbourhood of Stuckey’s: two stockmen — John Kyly, immigrant, native of Cork; and convict ‘lifer’ Emanuel Haly — were murdered, and this time, their bodies were never recovered. [19] With good reason, we can speculate that increasingly ‘wanton’ forms of retribution, including poisoning, were pursued by pastoralists and their stockmen.

Hunter & Watson's detail

Detail from Russell’s Sketch Plan of Hunter and Watson’s pastoral holdings, showing its boundary with Arundell’s Barjarg Station, 1846 (State Library of Victoria).

So who was Walker’s informant regarding the massacre at Barjarg — ‘Mrs Frank Withers’? The Withers family were gold-rush-era settlers of the Mansfield district, and ‘Mrs Frank Withers’ was Catherine Withers (born Dublin, 1848, who died at Howe’s Creek, Mansfield in 1922). Her Irish emigrant parents James Doyle and Molly (Mary, nee Murtagh) had settled on the Broken River sometime in the 1850s. In 1928, upon the death of Catherine’s brother Frank, The North East Ensign would remind its readers that Catherine and Frank’s father James Doyle ‘was well known in the early days[,] and for years manager and book-keeper of Barjarg and Warrenbayne stations.’ [20]

According to a Withers family descendant Fon Cathcart, who wrote a history of the Withers family in 1965, Catherine Withers’ mother, Molly Doyle, had an amicable relationship with local Aboriginal people:

‘She had plenty of Irish spirit and, though used to living in a big city, she was quite unafraid of the blacks who roamed around the homestead. She was a bare 5 feet tall, but had a heart as big as a giant, and she opened it right up to these poor dispossessed aborigines, feeding them when they needed it from their own not to plentiful larder, and administering to their children when they were sick. They adored her.

‘Jimmie Doyle ordered them off his property at every opportunity, and gave them the benefit of his large Irish vocabulary of swear words.
“Are you feeding those so-and-so’s?” He would bellow at her.

“Divvil a bit,” she would reply with an innocent look, having just given them the last of her batch of bread!

‘The blacks had a great sense of humour apparently, which is quite interesting to note, for when they saw Jimmie Doyle coming in the distance they would often bundle the tiny Doyle children into their canoe and row up the Broken River, laughing mockingly as he raced to the bank and swore volubly at them. They called her “Missy Doyle” and him “Mr Buggarem”, with a rare insight into the ways of white people!

“Missy” wasn’t afraid of what they would do to her children – as soon as “Mr Buggarem” went off to the sheds they’d row back and deposit their precious burden back in a safe place. One of these precious burdens was Catherine, usually called Kate, who, like her sisters of whom we know of two, was pretty as a picture – she grew up to be the future wife of Frank Withers, eldest son of James and Mary…’ [21]

Given that the Doyles reportedly arrived in the Broken River district in the 1850s [22], they could have heard the story of the massacre at Barjarg no later than fifteen years after its actual occurrence. Jimmie Doyle would have been in the employ of James Moore, who had taken over the lease of Barjarg from Arundel in 1849, and who also later developed Warrenbayne station. [23] So, Catherine Doyle — a.k.a ‘Mrs Frank Withers’ — had spent time with surviving local Aboriginal people on the Broken River as a child, and her father had intimate knowledge of Barjarg Station at a time well within living memory of any  massacre that took place there. It seems that local historian P. W. Walker had every right to put Catherine Withers forward as a credible source of local oral history.

***

Unfortunately, as it stands, I cannot yet find any other independent account of a mass poisoning at Barjarg station. A letter written in 1926 by Iris E. Howell which chronicles the history of Barjarg — a copy of which is now in possession of the current fourth generation owner of Barjarg Station, Mr Fred Forrest — either directly quotes Walker; or alternatively, both she and Walker have both directly quoted an external unacknowledged source. Mr Forrest says that from what information has been passed down to him, the poisoning did not happen at the current site of Barjarg Station (now substantially descreased in size), but further downstream on the Broken River, at a place which was flooded by the construction of Lake Nillahcootie.

I don’t doubt that the late 1830s and early 1840s was a time of extreme unmitigated violence in North East Victoria, on a colonial frontier awash with convicts and squatters who in every sense were a law unto themselves. Whether we attribute the massacre at Barjarg to squatters William Arundell or Peter Stuckey, or any of their convict or free settler stockmen (with or without their masters’ knowledge), what matters now is the recognition of Catherine Withers as a credible witness to local oral history, and most significantly, that we make an acknowledgement that a highly illegal mass poisoning of Aboriginal people on Barjarg Station more than likely did occur.

In a forthcoming blog post, I will examine the evidence for which Aboriginal group in particular was likely the victim of this horrific event.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2019. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

References to ‘Massacre on the Broken River’

[1a] ‘Early History of Mansfield,’ By P. W. Walker. The Australasian, Saturday, 8 November 1930, p.4.
[1b] ‘DETAILS REQUESTED. TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN,’ The Australasian, Saturday 15 November 1930, p.4.
[2] ‘Details Supplied. To the Editor of the Australasian,’ The Australasian, Saturday, 22 November 1930, p 4.
[3] Judy Macdonald, ‘John ‘Howqua’ Hunter and the China connection,’ Latrobeana, Journal of the C J La Trobe Society, Vol 15, No 3, November 2016, p.24.
[4] MANSFIELD SETTLERS AND THE BLACKS. TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN. The Australasian, Saturday 29 November 1930 p4.
[5] ibid.
[6] ‘TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN.’ The Australasian, Saturday 29 November 1930, p.4.
[7] ‘MANSFIELD MEMORIES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE AUSTRALASIAN.’ The Australasian, Saturday 20 December 1930, p.4.
[8] ibid.
[9] Judy Macdonald, ‘James Watson and “Flemington”: a Gentleman’s Estate,’ Latrobeana, Journal of the C J La Trobe Society, Vol. 8, No. 3, November 2009, p.22.
[10] Judy Macdonald, ‘John ‘Howqua’ Hunter and the China connection,’ Latrobeana, Journal of the C J La Trobe Society, Vol 15, No 3, November 2016, p.24.
[11] James Dredge Diary, 1 June 1839, p.52. James Dredge, Three volumes and one transcript of the diary, a letter book and a note book are in the La Trobe Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library [MS 11625 and MS 5244 (transcript) Box 16].[12] Dr Marguerita Stephens (ed) The Journal of Assistant Protector William Thomas 1839-67, Volume 1: 1839-1943, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL), Melbourne, p.8. Entry for Sunday 24 March 1839.
[13] Billis, R. V. and Kenyon, A. S., Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip, Macmillan & Company Ltd., Melbourne, 1932, p.7.
[14] Billis, R. V. and Kenyon, A. S., ibid., Preface.
[15] Ian Clark (ed.), The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, 1839-1852, Melbourne, 2014, this entry dated 10 May, 1840.
[16] ‘Hume River, APRIL 8th, 1841.’ The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, Monday 26 April 1841, Page 2.
[17] ‘THE BLACKS —HUME RIVER, JUNE 2’ The Colonist, 24 June, 1840, p.2.
[18] ‘The Blacks. To the editor of the Port Philip Gazette,’ The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Tuesday 23 June 1840, p.4.
[19] British Parliamentary Papers, Despatches of Governors of Australian Colonies, illustrative of Condition of Aborigines, House of Commons Paper Series: House of Commons Papers, Paper Type: Accounts and Papers Parliament: 1844, Paper Number: 627, p.116.
[20] ‘OBITUARY. MR. FRANK DOYLE,’ The North East Ensign, 30 November 1928, p.2.
[21] Fon Cathcart, The Salt of the Earth, The Authentic Story of James and Mary Withers — Pioneers of the Mansfield District, Melbourne, 1965, p. 21.
[22] Fon Cathcart, ibid., p.21.
[23] Billis and Kenyon, op. cit. p.99.

Mysterious Mogullumbidj — First People of Mount Buffalo

15 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Aboriginal massacres, Mount Buffalo, Squatters, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Kullakullup, Minjambuta, Minyambuta, Mogullumbidj, Mogullumbitch, Mogullumbith, Mokalumbeets, William Barak

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 PARTICULAR, I ACKNOWLEDGE THE ABORIGINAL ANCESTORS WHOSE WORDS ARE QUOTED WITHIN THIS POST, WITH THE GREATEST RESPECT FOR THEIR LEGACY.

Please note: this blog post has been superseded by a refereed academic paper, which expands and refines this content. If you are using this material for academic or professional purposes, please refer to:

Jacqui Durrant, ‘Mogullumbidj: First People of Mount Buffalo’, Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 91, Number 1, June 2020.

Who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t they on any maps of Aboriginal Victoria?

Mount Buffalo

Looking towards Mount Buffalo, across the Ovens Valley from Reform Hill in Myrtleford (image: Jacqui Durrant, 2019)

I’ve titled this blog post ‘the Mysterious Mogullumbidj’. The reason why I describe the Mogullumbidj people as ‘mysterious’, is that as a historian looking through archival materials, I’ve found different groups of Aboriginal people, from the 1840s right through to the end of the 19th century — from locations from Mansfield to Melbourne and Omeo, referring to the people of Mount Buffalo as the ‘Mogullumbidj’ or ‘Mogullumbeek’ (or variations on these spellings), but today, this name is practically unknown outside of obscure academic and historical sources. You will not find Mogullumbidj on many maps of Aboriginal Victoria. Instead, you will sometimes find what to the untrained ear seems like a related term, but which is actually unrelated — ‘Minyambuta’. So the predominant questions I hope to answer in this post are — who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t they ‘on the map’?

Aboriginal society in the alpine valleys of North East Victoria

In order to explain who the Aboriginal people of the Mount Buffalo and surrounding areas were, first it’s necessary to explain the structuring principles which organised Aboriginal society in this part of the world. 

To begin with, when talking about their social organisation with Europeans, it seems that historically, Aboriginal people always identified first and foremost the name of their local area group, which some anthropologists have referred to as ‘clans’, or more recently and more correctly (in my opinion) as ‘areal-moieties’ (a social group attached to a geographical area, with a ‘moiety’ also attached to that group). [1] Local groups actually comprised a number of smaller ‘patri-clans’, which were land-owning families headed up by the male head of that family, but when Aboriginal people identified themselves to Europeans, they generally named their local group (areal-moiety) first and foremost. In this blog post, I will simply refer to these areal-moieties as ‘local groups’. At this time — the 1830s and 1840s — local groups appear to have been the principal unit of identity from an Aboriginal point of view — as least in terms of defining an inherited attachment to an area of land, or rather, the right to manage, utilise and belong to a certain area of country. It’s thought that such a local group would typically comprise a few hundred individuals, [2] and usually they had a core area of country which Europeans would readily associate with the presence of that particular group. 

Only after a massive decline in the Aboriginal population which frequently reduced these local groups from a few hundred to a mere handful of survivors did Aboriginal peoples in north east Victoria begin to drop their local group names, and eventually replace them with the broader language-based names that we see today.

The territorial boundaries of these local groups were likely indicated by landscape features, and people from a different area needed permission to enter that country and make use of its resources. [3]

Each local group was essentially independent, and governed by collective decisions. Insofar as we know, each had one or two heads; who would provide guidance and advice during group discussions, and represent that group at larger meetings in which a number of local groups assembled to make joint decisions. These head positions were neither automatically inherited nor elected. Often a head person, towards the end of his or her life (because women also had some power), would nominate their successor, but that nominee still had to prove their competence and win endorsement. [4]

As an aside, there was communication across different language groups, so most adults were multi-lingual, and etiquette seems to have required that visitors to another language area should make polite efforts to substitute some words of that country. [5]

Usually, the actual name of this local group would have a suffix on the end which denoted its status as a local area group. Closer to Melbourne, the suffix was ‘—[w]illum’ (or ‘—yellum’) meaning ‘dwelling place’ or ‘—balluk’ meaning number of people. However, in north east Victoria, this suffix was ‘—mittung’ (or variations), which also meant a group or number of people. So you get names in the north east like Pallangan-middang, Djinning-mittung, Yait-mathang and so on. [6] Now, I can hear some brains ticking over, and you’re thinking — what about the Mogullumbidj? It’s a local group name, but it has no ‘—mittung’ or ‘—illum’ suffix on the end, which is one part of the mystery we’ll come to, but we do know that in all likelihood, they were a local group, because of the context in which their name was used.

The next tier in the social structure, is that ‘local groups’ were usually a part of a broader group sharing the same language — whether directly or in the form of a dialect. For many of these broader groups, stretching from Melbourne right into North East Victoria, the suffix used to denote these broader groups was ‘-(w)urrung’, which means mouth or speech. In simple terms ‘—wurrung’ denoted a collection of local groups sharing a language. The —wurrung suffix can be heard in the name of the North East Victorian group, Taungurung (Daung-wurrung), and also in ‘Woi-wurrung’, and ‘Ngaurai-illum wurrung’. Further to the north and north-east of the Taungurung, ‘—wurrung’ was replaced by ‘—wurru’, so that one finds a broader group named Waveroo (Way-wurru). The suffix ‘—wurru’ can even be found in a vestigial form in the language name Dhudhuroa (Dhu-dhu-[wu]rru-wa). [7]

In some cases, these broad language groups also considered themselves part of an even larger group, which have been described by non-Aboriginal people as ‘nations’ or ‘confederacies’. One of these ‘nations’, which reached from the Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne, right through the upper Goulburn and Campaspe River Valleys and into North East Victoria, at least as far as the Broken and Delatite Rivers, and perhaps further — was the ‘Kulin’ nation — a block of five broad language groups. All of the Kulin nation’s constituent members shared similar languages, as well as cultural practices and close diplomatic relations. [8]

So — local area group, language group, sometimes ‘nation’. Worth pointing out is Europeans have generally hopelessly confused these different elements in NE Victoria, especially on maps.

The other important organising principal of Aboriginal society within south-eastern Australia, which was generally invisible to Europeans, was the ‘moiety’ system. From the Port Phillip Bay area into North East Victoria and beyond in some cases, each local group belonged to either one of two moieties, which were named for the ancestral creation figures of Bunjil — the eagle hawk, and Waa — the crow. This division between the two moieties effectively divided society into two parts. If you were born into one moiety, you had to marry someone of the opposite moiety — necessarily someone of a different local group. Bunjil always married waa and vice versa. Women went to live on their husband’s country — sometimes to quite distant localities. Moiety affiliations shaped patterns of intermarriage, and therefore also reciprocal rights to resources. As the late anthropologist Diane Barwick once wrote of the Kulin peoples, through the moiety system, ‘District loyalties were thereby extended, and travel and trade with more remote areas were encouraged by the resulting web of kinship ties.’ [9]

One thing we can say about the Mogullumbidj, from information collected by nineteenth century anthropologist Alfred Howitt, who interviewed Wurundjeri elder William Barak, is that the Mogullumbidj were Bunjil — eagle hawk moiety,  which meant that they could have, for example, intermarried with their immediate neighbours to the south, a Taungurung local group of the Mansfield area, Yowen-illum-balak, but not with their Pallangan-middang neighbours just over in Whorouly, Milawa and Beechworth area, who were also Bunjil. [10] In theory, they also could have intermarried with groups like Wurundjeri-illum, a waa local group, whose country reached along the south banks of the Yarra River from about Blackburn, right up to the Northern slopes of the Dandenong ranges. Certainly, Mogullumbidj and Dhudhuroa peoples were remembered by William Barak as having visited their ‘friends at the Dandenong mountain.’ This friendship probably came from kinship ties. [11]

Diplomatic, trade and kinship ties with other groups

The next thing I want to talk about is whether the Mogullumbidj were, like the Taungurung local groups, part of the ‘Kulin nation’.  Right now, it’s of great topical interest that the modern-day Taungurung Lands and Waters Council to the south, which represent the Taungurung peoples of the ‘Kulin nation’, have become the Registered Aboriginal Party (RAP) for an area including Mount Buffalo  — and this claim has been challenged by other local Aboriginal groups. Consequently, I thought I would pose the question as to whether or not the Mogullumbidj can be considered a Taungurung local group, or more broadly, a Kulin local group. I think this is a worthwhile question — not because there is an easy answer, but because in attempting to answer that question, we can actually get a real insight into the complexity of local Aboriginal society at the time of European settlement.

In late 1838, what would become North East Victoria was being ‘settled’ by European pastoralists, and the following year, the colonial government of NSW, appointed its first ‘Aboriginal Protectorate’ for the Port Philip district (which would become Victoria). Headed up by a Chief Protector, George Augustus Robinson, the Protectorate was a mere handful of men, ‘Assistant Protectors’, each stationed in a different area, supposedly to look out for the interests of Aboriginal peoples whose lands had been invaded. The Protectorate was hopelessly underfunded, under-staffed and generally powerless. Despite calls from the Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, [12] no Assistant Protector was ever appointed to oversee this north east region. The notes of George Augustus Robinson and his Assistant Protectors, have provided an invaluable historical record of early Aboriginal Victoria, but none them were ever stationed in North East Victoria, or visited certain parts of North East Victoria like Mount Buffalo. This is a major reason why we have nothing recorded about the Mogullumbidj that has come from the Mogullumbidj people themselves. Instead, we only have information about the Mogullumbidj that has come from what Aboriginal people from other areas told various officers of the Aboriginal Protectorate. However, from Aboriginal people who spoke to George Augustus Robinson, and one of his Assistant Protectors, James Dredge, in the 1840s, we know that the Mogullumbidj people of the Buffalo River had country that extended to the south at least as far as Dandongadale and the Wabonga Plateau, to the back of Mount Buller. [13] Beyond this, we know next to nothing about the extent of their country other than what we can establish by exclusion: the fact that they were bounded by country associated with a Gunai-Kurnai local group on the Dargo High Plains, [14] and by the Pallangan-middang local group, whose country included Whorouly, and the King River Valley as far as the confluence of the King and Ovens River at Wangaratta. [15] The Mogullumbidj also would have had various Dhudhuroa-speaking neighbours to their north east and east. [16]

The Kulin peoples to the south, [17] and other people of the Victorian alpine region, [18] referred to the people of the Buffalo River as ‘Mo-gullum-bidj’ or variations of this (like ‘Mokeallumbeet’). As I said before, this name has no typical north-east Victorian suffix of ‘—mittung’ on the end, and nor does it have a typical Kulin suffix of ‘—illum’ or ‘—baluk’ on the end. Almost all the Taungurung local groups had an ‘—illum or ‘—baluk’ suffix, donating Kulin connections, but not so with the Mogullumbidj. It is possible that ‘—bidj’ is an actual suffix, and that it denotes something in particular, but unfortunately we just don’t know. And there are other possible explanations — that ‘Mogullumbidj’ may have, for example, been a descriptive term, applied by other peoples who for some reason didn’t want to speak the ‘Mogullumbidj’s’ self-designated name aloud. Ian Clark has also come up with alternative theories for their unusual name. [19] In essence, their name alone cannot help us understand their cultural position, other than to suggest something separate or possibly special about them.

So if their actual name tells us very little about where they fit in culturally, then perhaps we can consider their diplomatic relations with other groups: Who were they on good terms with, for trade and cultural exchange; and who were they hostile towards? In 1844, George Augustus Robinson undertook a journey which took him through Gippsland, Omeo, and the Monaro, to Twofold Bay (Eden), then over to Albury and back down to Melbourne. [20] For the part of the journey which would take him to Omeo, he was guided by an Aboriginal man from Omeo, whose conferred name was ‘Charley’, and it was Charley who explained to Robinson that ‘The Yowenillum are mermate with Mokeallumbeet, then Dodora, then Kinimittum, then Omeo.’ [21] The term ‘mermate’ or ‘mey-met’ means that the Yowung-illum-balluk were on unfriendly terms with the Mogullumbidj, Dodora, Djinning-mittung and Yaitmathang, which were all adjoining groups of the alpine valleys. Whether Charley was overstating the fact about this Taungurung group being at odds with the others, or over-simplifying things for Robinson, we’ll never know. But what’s interesting about this grouping is that the local groups are actually listed in consecutive geographical order from west to east — suggesting that Charley had a very clear picture in his mind of this allied block of alpine peoples reaching from Mount Buffalo to Omeo.

The same local group names appeared again in Robinson’s journal, written while he was on the Tambo River. He recorded that ‘Two miles above the crossing place up the stream is the spot where a great slaughter of Gipps Land blacks by the Omeo and the Mokeallumbeets and Tinnermittum, their allies, took place; [I] was shown the spot by… Charley…’ [22] Once again, this can be seen as an expression of an alpine-based group alliance against a common enemy, in this case, the Kurnai peoples of Gippsland.

So there’s some evidence that the Mogullumbidj were on unfriendly terms with the Kurnai and perhaps some Taungurung local groups, and that they were allied in battle with other alpine groups. However, what I can now say, with the overview that a historical perspective provides, is that Robinson’s guide Charley was seemingly unaware of what was then a very recent event — and this was that, only the preceding summer to that journey with Robinson, the Mogullumbidj had actually travelled to Melbourne and undertaken a special new ceremony (called a ‘Gaiggip’) with the Yowung-illum-balluk and other Kulin groups in order to ‘make friends’. [23]

That summer of 1843-44, the Mogullumbidj people visited Yarra Bend (where Merri Creek meets the Yarra) in Melbourne, for a large ceremonial gathering with Kulin peoples, which involved 800 people of seven different groups. The ‘gaiggip’ ceremony, which they had brought with them, was recorded in a good amount of detail at the time by another Assistant Protector of Aborigines in Melbourne, William Thomas. He wrote that the ceremony, which ran for six days, consisted of seven different dances: the first six involved an individual weapon of war, but the 7th dance was with a leafy bough — the emblem of peace. Each group was represented by its own bark emblem ‘each of which has a division of seven patches of “wurup” (an emblem of joy & cheerfulness), and at the end of the ceremony, these were ‘collected together and put in the centre of the encampment in silence, proclaiming goodwill to all around.’ [24]

One can speculate that when the Mogullumbidj participated in the gaiggip ceremony in Melbourne to ‘make friends’ with the various Kulin groups, that they were in the process of realigning their diplomatic relations, and perhaps were even being newly incorporated into the Kulin polity. This should be considered in context: that the early 1840s was an unprecedented period of social turmoil and upheaval, in which Aboriginal people were dealing with a horrific destruction of their lands and people — and that this social upheaval may have encouraged previously disparate Aboriginal groups to unite in their common struggle for cultural, spiritual and everyday survival.

Indeed one newspaper report of the day, in which a European man asked some Kulin people what the gaiggip was about, he recorded that the ceremony was ‘an incantation — the intention of which is to remove the terrible epidemic under which so many of them are labouring.’ [25] I’m certain that this was an extraordinarily over-simplified explanation, but it still conveys a sense of urgent response to the circumstances of the day.

What language did the Mogullumbidj speak?

The other thing we might consider about the Mogullumbidj in trying to determine where they fit in culturally, is to ask what language they spoke. In Melbourne, assistant protector William Thomas did manage to record six words of Mogullumbidj language. Six words isn’t a lot to go on, but on the basis of what we have, leading La Trobe University linguist Stephen Morey has concluded that the Mogullumbidj clearly spoke Dhudhuroa language. [26]

And there’s other evidence to suggest they spoke at least a form of Dhudhuroa language. Just after the turn of the century, amateur ethnographer RH Mathews interviewed a Djinning-mittang man from the lower Mitta Mitta valley, Neddy Wheeler, who said that his people spoke Dhudhuroa, and that surrounding peoples south of the Murray River spoke — at least what Mathews recorded as a ‘dialect of Dhudhuroa’ — called ‘Minyambuta.’ According to Mathews, Minyambuta was spoken from Wangaratta to Bright, to Beechworth, Mount Buffalo, and even in Benalla. [27]  Supporting evidence includes that in 1844, a Pallanganmiddang man Mol.le.min.ner gave George Augustus Robinson a vocabulary of his own peoples’ language (which Robinson recorded as ‘Pallangan-middang’), but Mol.le.min.ner also added that when at Yackandandah, his people spoke ‘Min-u-buddong’. [28] Decades later, when Alfred Howitt asked the Wurunjeri elder William Barak if he could remember what language the Mogullumbidj spoke, he answered ‘Yambun’, which sounds like a foreshortened version of Min-yambun. [29] So we have three historical records of the term: ‘Minyambuta’ ‘Minubuddong’ and (possibly) Min-‘yambun’. There is just one complicating factor in all this — that Mathews’ description of the area in which Minyambuta was spoken, overlaps heavily with the area in which Pallangan-middang was spoken, so either Minyambuta and Pallanganmiddang are the same language (bearing in mind that Pallanganmiddang had a 25% commonality with Dhudhuroa), [30] or that one language gradually ‘bled’ into the other depending on your location and perhaps who you were talking with — meaning that Minyambuta was the term for this ‘language strategy,’ rather than an actual dialect.

(As an aside, it is important to note that ‘Minyambuta’ is language term, not a people, and also that it is certainly not a word meaning ‘hills and ranges’ — even though Norman Tindale mapped it in 1974 seemingly as a people who lived among hills and ranges! Also, if you see it spelled ‘Minjambuta,’ the use of the J in place of a Y simply reflects a fashion in linguistics from the 1970s. You will also see Yorta Yorta appear on maps in the 1970s as Jota Jota.)

The bottom line is that in Melbourne, William Thomas was so proficient in Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung languages that he could deliver parts of his religion sermons in those Kulin languages, [31] but when he heard Mogullumbidj people speaking, it was incomprehensible to him. [32] Therefore it is unlikely the Mogullumbidj spoke a Kulin language as their first language.

And there is one other point worth considering about language. The song performed at the gaiggip ceremony, which was brought to Melbourne by the Mogullumbidj and their Taungurung neighbours, and was written down, seems to have been sung in one of the Yuin languages [33] — which I  note includes Ngarigu, which was spoken in different forms from the Snowy Mountains to the Monaro and Omeo. The presence of this language at a ceremony in Melbourne demonstrates a great cultural connectivity between the Aboriginal groups of the alpine areas from the Snowy mountains right down to Mount Buffalo and Mount Buller.

The Mogullumbidj and cultural knowledge

Despite the fact that we know very little about the exact place of the Mogullumbidj in the wider Aboriginal society, we do know that they were a people who held significant, sacred cultural knowledge. When in 1843, William Thomas inquired with a Taungurung man about the history of the gaiggip ceremony that had been brought to Melbourne with the Mogullumbidj, he was told in no uncertain terms that there was, in the Alps, a group of Aboriginal people called the Bul-lun.ger.metum (Bullunger-mittung) who lived in stone houses of their own making, and who never went out to seek their own food, but instead ate herbs and relied on what others brought them, and they focused solely on creating new sacred songs and dances. [34] These people were something akin to a superior religious class, but which Thomas would later classify as Aboriginal druids. [35] These ‘great wise blacks’ were responsible for teaching song and dance to people from Omeo, to Mansfield, Benalla and Wangaratta, and as far as the Murrumbidgee River and even to Eden on the coast. And when one of these groups had a gaiggip ceremony with another, from that time they were friends. [36]

Moreover, different Aboriginal peoples sent their own ‘doctors’ to these druids in order to learn, but by the same token, the druids were able to make other people dream, or they could appear before them, to show them new dances (and by the term ‘dances’, we should infer a much deeper form of sacred and cultural knowledge than what non-Aboriginal peoples would generally imagine). Thomas also would later write that ‘I am informed that from these sages of the rocks or druids have sprung [this] new series of sacred dances with such curious effigies, altogether new from any thing that has as yet been heard or seen among the Aborigines of Victoria.’ [37]

Clearly, if the Mogullumbidj weren’t the actual druids in question, they were in close contact with them, and able to transmit the sacred cultural and spiritual information encoded in these new forms of ceremony, song and dance, to the wider world.

When the revered head man of the Mogullumbidj, Kullakullup, came to Melbourne in March 1845, [38] he was of advanced age, but hundreds of people from different Kulin groups assembled at what is now Yarra Bend park to receive his teachings. Thomas wrote that, ‘the sight was truly imposing’… Kullakullup was idolised to the point where at each daybreak people assembled in crescent rows, and sat in profound silence while, in Thomas’s words, the ‘Old Patriarch would be holding forth as though laying down some code of laws for their guidance or giving instructions… I often endeavour’d to catch his words and pencil them down as well as I could but in vain, the old Idol and Chief would immediately stop on my approach.’ [39]

Thomas eventually made inquiries with one of the men attending Kullakullup’s teachings — Billibellary, who was an influential Wurunjeri head-man and song-man in his own right. Billibellary told William Thomas that Kullerkullup had spoken of this class of druid-like people who lived in the Alps who created corroborees for everyone, and Kullerkullup also said that he received corroborees communicated to him in dreams. It is likely that Billibellary was not communicating to Thomas the full scope of what was being taught by Kullakullup, but Thomas was left with the impression that the much venerated headman had been ‘laying down some code of laws (for their guidance) or giving instructions’. [40] Unfortunately for us, this seems to be the only remaining record we have of this venerable headman of Mount Buffalo.

What happened to the Mogullumbidj people?

In North East Victoria, there was a huge decline in the local Aboriginal population from mid-1838 onwards. For years this was blamed in retrospect on the introduction of European diseases, and then the excess consumption of alcohol. And it is true that lethal new diseases like small pox and syphilis brought on a massive loss of life and also caused infertility.

However, the population decline among local Aboriginal people in the immediate decade from 1838 onwards was predominantly by illegal poisoning and shooting, carried out by European settlers. When asked about this population decline 20 years later, at an 1858 Select Committee of the NSW Legislative Council, most of those questioned — all European men of some social and economic standing from around Victoria — avoided the awful truth by referring only to events of the preceding decade. However, Mr Wills of Omeo replied, ‘The mortality has been… caused by intoxicating drinks and the worst form of venereal disease, and last though not least, by gunshot wounds inflicted by stockmen.’ [41]

Can we say that this happened to the Mogullumbidj people of Mount Buffalo?

When visiting the region in February 1841, a little over two years after the first permanent arrival of Europeans, George Augustus Robinson wrote of pastoralist George Faithfull at Oxley on the King River, that ‘Faithful has the credit for having shot a number of blacks in his time and for having encouraged his men who were convicts.’ [42] Faithful even later recorded in a letter to Govenor La Trobe his shooting of Aboriginal people on the King River; [43] and towards the end of his life, Faithfull’s stockman James Howard would reminiscence in The Argus newspaper about Faithfull’s men having shot more than 200 Aboriginal people in one day, leaving bodies along the river. [44] 

Significantly, it was George Faithful and his brutal convict servants who were the first to take up the Buffalo River area as a heifer station in the summer of 1839-40. [45] At the time it was a remote location beyond the reach of the Border Police, and there is no record of what happened. Sadly, this post cannot begin to touch on the level of brutality of the Europeans at this time, the factors which enabled the massacres to happen and go unpunished, and the impact that this had on Aboriginal people.

However, it is worth noting that some Aboriginal people in north east Victoria survived and did their utmost to stay on country; and that they retained their traditional seasonal patterns of movement well after European settlement, for as long as possible. Certainly, in Beechworth, the gold rush era of the 1850s overlapped with Aboriginal people still living a traditional lifestyle, as best they could manage. We even have a photograph of Aboriginal people in the Mount Buffalo area probably from the late 19th century, who are clearly living a partly Europeanised but still partly traditional existence, and we know that they continued to use a campsite at Nug Nug until the closing decades of the 19th century. [46] While some were pushed onto religious missions and government reserves off country, others integrated into European society as station-hands and household servants — their children and grandchildren progressively concealed their Aboriginality, and so they disappeared from the historical record, but interestingly, some are now being rediscovered as ancestors, by their descendants of today.

To return to my initial questions, of who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t the Mogullumbidj ‘on the map’? The answer to who they were is complicated: they were a local group who considered the Buffalo River valley a part of their country, and who — at least around the time of early Aboriginal-European contact — had alliances against common foes with a range of ‘—mittung’ local groups of the alpine valleys and ranges, not just on the western side of the Alps, but over to Omeo. The Mogullumbidj were, it seems, one possible conduit through which a special class of stone-house-dwelling Aboriginal ‘druids’ passed on new and sacred forms of song and dance; and they also had a widely revered headman in Kullakullup, who transmitted valuable cultural and spiritual information from the alps to as far away as as Melbourne. And within a few years of European settlement, it seems that the Mogullumbidj were either forging new, or strengthen existing, diplomatic relations with the Kulin peoples. Why aren’t they on most maps? The short answer is that local group names, or ‘clan’ names, particularly in north east Victoria, rapidly fell from use, and instead have been replaced with broader language-based group names. The debate about which broader group name should be associated with the people of Mount Buffalo is still continuing among Aboriginal groups today.

References

[1] Tony Jeffries, ‘The Eastern Kulin Confederacy: Did it exist? If so, what were its features?’ Forthcoming paper to be published in Artefact (journal of the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria).
[2] Gary Presland, First People: The Eastern Kulin of Melbourne, Port Phillip & Central Victoria, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 2010, p.18.
[3] Diane Barwick, ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904,’ Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984, pp100-131. This reference, p. 106; Gary Presland, op. cit. p.16.
[4] Diane Barwick, ibid., pp: 107-8.
[5] Diane Barwick, ibid., p.105.
[6] Diane Barwick, ibid, p.106, including footnote 9.
[7] Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22 [see this discussion of ‘Waywurru’ in this paper]; Barry J. Blake and Julie Reid, ‘The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria: a description based on historical sources,’ ABORIGINAL HISTORY, 2002, VOL 26, pp: 177-210, this reference, p.179
[8] Diane Barwick, op. cit., pp:104-6.; Gary Presland, op. cit.
[9] Diane Barwick, ibid, p.105.
[10] A large list of areal-moieties is contained in Alfred Howitt’s notebook XM690; and information specifically about the Mogullumbidj appears in Alfred Howitt’s notebook XM765, p.12 (both held in Museum of Victoria archives).
[11] Alfred Howitt notebook: hw0391 ‘Notes by Howitt on Kulin from Barak,’ p.96. This is held at the State Library of Victoria.
Barak explains to Howitt that it was Theddora-mittung (Dhudhuroa) who came to Melbourne as ‘friends of the Kulin of the Dandenong Mountain’, and this is discussed in relation to visits of the Mogullumbidj to Melbourne.
[12] British Parliamentary Papers, Despatches of Governors of Australian Colonies, illustrative of Conditions of Aborigines, House of Commons, Paper Series: House of Commons Papers, Paper Type: Accounts and Papers Parliament: 1844, Paper Number: 627; p.85-87-96; p,106, p.124, p.237-238, p.281. This reference, p.109. Robinson wrote: ‘I am induced under the current circumstances to recommend a subordinate agent be appointed to the Ovens district.’
[13] Assistant Protector of Aborigines James Dredge told George Augustus Robinson that the Mogullumbidj occupied country on ‘Hunter and Watson’s outermost station’. [James Dredge, cited by Robinson, 9 April 1840, in Ian Clark (ed.), The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, and this same information was repeated to Robinson by a group of Kulin speakers in Taungurung lands, to the effect that the Mogullumbidj lived on country at Hunter and Watson’s beyond Marine and Warinebut, to the SE.’ [Robinson, 1 June 1840] (That is beyond Marine and Warinebut, meaning Mount Buller and Timbertop).
[14] Alfred Howitt, notebook XM690, p.51; held at Museum of Victoria archives; accessible (with other materials referenced here) via the Howitt and Fison Archives.
[15] The evidence for this is contained in my essay ‘Who were the Aboriginal people of Beechworth? A historical perspective’ published on this blog.
[16] Clark, Ian, ‘Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang languages and social groups in north-east Victoria – a reconstruction,’ ABORIGINAL HISTORY, 2009 VOL 33, pp.201-229, offers the best explanation to date of the Dhudhuroa and Yaitmathang areal moiety groups. For all that Clark gets right, I do not agree completely with his assessment of the Yaitmathang, but this is a matter unrelated to this post.
[17] Alfred Howitt’s information from William Barak, is an example of a Kulin person referring to the ‘Mogullum-bitch’. (See: Alfred Howitt, hw0391 Notes by Howitt on Kulin from Barak, p.96 held at the State Library of Victoria.)
[18] An example of an Omeo (Yaitmathang) man referring to the ‘Mokeallumbeet’ is found in the The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, entry for 3 June 1844.
[19] Ian Clark, ‘Aboriginal language areas in Northeast Victoria: ‘Mogullumbidj’ reconsidered.’ Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 81 Issue 2 (Nov 2010), 181-192.
[20] George Mackaness (ed.), George Augustus Robinson’s journey into south-eastern Australia, 1844, with George Henry Haydon’s narrative of part of the same journey. Australian Historical Monographs, Volume XIX, Sydney, 1941.
[21] The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, entry for 3 June 1844.
[22] Robinson, entry for 15 June 1844.
[23] Excerpt from a ‘
Quarterly Report from 1 Dec 1843 to 1 March 1844′ by William Thomas, contained in: Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume One: 1839-1843, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 572-3, footnote 240. See also the same transcribed in: Christie, M F, 1979. Aborigines in Colonial Victoria 1835-1886. Sydney University Press, p.19. Note: Stephens had partly mis-transcribed the Report, and my information comes from a combination of Christie and Stephens.
[24] ibid.
[25] 
‘ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. ABORIGINAL CEREMONY.’ Letter from J. H. McCabe, published in the Port Philip Gazette, Saturday, 11 February, 1843, p.3.
[26] Stephen Morey, Indigenous Songs of Victoria, in section ‘3.4.9.1 The Tanderrum Ceremony,’ publication forthcoming, hopefully soon in 2020. (Personal comment: I believe this book will become extremely important in our understanding of Aboriginal Victoria.)
[27] R. H. Matthews, MS 8006, Series 3, Item 4, Volume 2 [Marked on notebook ‘6’], pp.38, 40; and R H Mathews, MS8006 Series 5 File 3 Box 6, ‘The Dhudhuroa Language,’ material held at National Library of Australia.
It is very important to note that Matthews’ writings, after having communicated with Dhudhuroa-speaker Neddy Wheeler, are the primary source of the term ‘Minyambuta’, and are also the sole source used by Tindale, who actually mapped it in 1974 as if the term referred to an identifiable people. When one reads Matthews’ manuscript materials, it is apparent that it is not a people.
[28] Journals of George Augustus Robinson (ed. Ian Clark), entry for 30 September, 1844.
[29] Diane Barwick, manuscript material MS 13521, at the State Library of Victoria, Series 4, 4006, folder 1248.
In a note at the bottom of a page on the ‘Mokalumbeets’, Barwick has written ‘Mo-gullum-bitch tribe of Buffalo Rivber – name of language was Yambun  (Shaw to Howitt 27.7.00) (says Barak), and in pencil ‘Barak info in 1900 letter Shaw to Howitt named language of Mogullumbitch is Yambun’. (Personal comment: I have not been able to locate the original letter yet. If you know of its whereabouts, please let me know.)
[30] Barry J. Blake and Julie Reid, ‘Pallanganmiddang: a language of the Upper Murray,’ Aboriginal History, 1999, Vol. 23, pp.15-30. This reference, p.17.
[31] Throughout William Thomas’s journal (Stephens, Volume One, op. cit.) one can see Thomas initially lamenting his lack of Aboriginal language skills, and his intentional building of those skills so that he can give lessons and sermons using local languages.
[32] William Thomas wrote in his journal on 22 March 1845 of the Mogullumbidj  ‘I cannot understand a word of their language.’ in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844-1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, p.94.
[33] Stephen Morey, op. cit., in the section ‘3.4.9.2 Text of the Gaiggip and notes on the analysis’. On the basis of linguistic analysis, Morey notes: ‘It seems possible that the language of this Gaiggip was either Gippsland or one of the Yuin languages. ‘ I would personally suggest that it was far more likely to have been a Yuin language, and most likely Ngarigu, based on the poor diplomatic relationship with the Gippsland peoples at this time, and the strong possibility of kin and other relations between the various alpine peoples.
[34] William Thomas in Stephens, Volume One, op. cit. For the actual name of the Aboriginal ‘druids,’ which Thomas records as having the name Bullunger-metum (in which the suffix —metum is a cognate of the common alpine suffix —mittung), see Morey, op cit.
[35] William Thomas, in Stephens, Volume One, ibid.
[36] ibid.
[37] William Thomas in ‘Paper No.11 ‘Superior Races’ sent to Duffy on 13 July 1858,’ in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844 to 1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 95, continuation of footnote 49.
[38] William Thomas, ‘Writing’ entitled “Native Encampment”, (The fourth of the papers prepared by William Thomas for Charles Gavan Duffy and sent in on 25/5/58. [Box 3 item 1/R3f59], Mitchell Library) in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844 to 1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 94, footnote 49.
[39] ibid.
[40] ibid.
[41] REPORT SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL — THE ABORIGINES; John Ferres, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1858-9, p.29.
[42] Journals of George Augustus Robinson (ed. Ian Clark), entry for: Monday, 15 February 1841.
[43] Letter from George Faithfull to Lieutenant-Governor LaTrobe, Letter number No. 27. in Thomas Francis McBride (ed.) Letters from Victorian Pioneers, A Series of Papers on the Early Occupation of the Colony, the Aborigines, etc, Addressed by Victorian Pioneers to His Excellency Charles Joseph LaTrobe, Esq, Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 1898.
Faithfull describes the site of the shooting as being on an ‘anabranch’ of the River, which when correlated with stockman James Howard’s account (footnote below), would appear to be Hurdle Creek on the King River.
[44] ‘SETTLEMENT IN THE KELLY COUNTRY (BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER),’ The Argus, 13 September, 1883, p.9.
[45] ‘COUNTRY NEWS. (From various Correspondents) THE OVENS,’ The Sydney Herald, 8 July 1840, p.1
[46] Kay Robertson, Myrtleford, Gateway to the Alps, Rigby, Adelaide, 1973, p.98.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2019. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Categories

  • Aboriginal
  • Aboriginal massacres
  • Beechworth
  • Benalla
  • Bush Food
  • Californian gold rush
  • Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park
  • Chinese
  • Convicts
  • Cross-writing letters
  • Dhudhuroa
  • Eldorado
  • Eureka Stockade
  • First Nations
  • Gold commissioners
  • Gold fields police
  • Gold mining
  • Gold rush
  • Gold rush clothes
  • Gold rush diseases
  • Gold rush firearms
  • Gold rush food
  • Gold rush health
  • Gold rush medicine
  • Gold rush sanitation
  • Gold rush swag
  • King Billy
  • Low tech
  • Miner's license
  • Mount Buffalo
  • Ovens diggings
  • Postal services
  • Pre-Raphaelites
  • Spring Creek diggings
  • Squatters
  • Tangambalanga
  • Uncategorized
  • Wangaratta
  • Wangaratta post office
  • Wax seals and wafers for letters
  • Wildlife
  • Woolshed Valley
  • Yackandandah

Recent Posts

  • Concerning the Dhudhuroa, and the supposed fate of the ‘Gillamatongs’
  • Some thoughts on Dhudhuroa in the Upper Murray
  • First Nations ‘Kings’ of Benalla
  • Massacre on the Broken River
  • Aboriginal place names around Wangaratta and beyond

Archives

  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • December 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • August 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
Follow Life on Spring Creek on WordPress.com

Blog Stats

  • 78,450 hits

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Life on Spring Creek
    • Join 186 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Life on Spring Creek
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...