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

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’, 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, 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.

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.

First Nations ‘Kings’ of Benalla

15 Tuesday Sep 2020

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Aboriginal burial practices, Baalwick, Broken River Tribe, Faithfull Massacre, King Brangy, King Branky, King Michie, Lake Benalla, Maragan, Marangan, Old Michie, Pallanganmiddang, Possum skin cloak, Taungurung, Tommy Banfield, Tommy Mickie, Tommy Micky, Waywurru

It’s time we make a start in getting to know some important figures in the First Nations history of Benalla.

1024px-Lake_Benalla_001

Lake Benalla. (Image by Mattinbgn, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Warning: this post discusses issues which may cause feelings of pain and sorrow to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, including the naming, discussion about, and an image of ancestors now deceased, and funeral rites. This post also includes the usage of culturally offensive labels for Aboriginal people which are directly quoted in historical context but do not reflect the language or opinion of the author.

Note: It is necessary to preface this discussion by recognising that the historical practice of conferring the status of ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ by Europeans upon senior Aboriginal men and women deserves to be interrogated as a complex act of colonial power on the part of the European invaders. Although use of these terms was generally designed to benefit Europeans rather than First Nations people, the historian cannot presume to know what these titles meant within First Nations communities, either in positive or negative senses. While this post is written in the knowledge of the complex cultural implications which attend the usage of terms ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ in relation to First Nations people it is concerned principally with the autobiographical details of First Nations individuals, rather than the modes of colonial European oppression.

In March 1860, an Aboriginal ‘King’ — King Branky — was buried by a waterhole in Benalla. Each Summer, the river at Benalla would stop flowing along its length, breaking into a chain of waterholes. At first, this caused Europeans to label it the ‘Winding Swamp,’ before they finally settled on the name ‘Broken River’. The largest of these waterholes at Benalla, at which point there was a crossing place, was known to Aboriginal people as ‘Mer-ry-an-gan-der’ [1] or by its shorter form, ‘Marangan.’ [2] For this reason, the Aboriginal people associated with the locality were often referred to by local Europeans as the ‘Maragan tribe’. [3] King Branky, a ‘Maragan tribe’ man, a ‘Broken River tribe’ man, was buried somewhere next to Marangan, or waterhole nearby. [4] More than three decades later, it was recalled by a local that:

‘The funeral obsequies consisted in his remains being wrapped (after having been doubled together like a pocket rule) in an opossum rug and put into an ale cask and buried on the bank of the Broken river, near the “dead-man’s hole.” The mourners were few indeed, consisting of blacks and their lubras.’ [5]

Little wonder that the number of mourners for King Branky would have been small: since the permanent arrival of Europeans in the district, the local Aboriginal community had been decimated, not least by the massacres and other violent reprisals undertaken by pastoralists and their convict servants in response to the Faithfull Massacre of April 1838; but also through European diseases, malnutrition, and a combination of alcoholism and interpersonal violence associated with a deeply traumatised community, dispossessed of their homelands.

However, despite the level of social disruption experienced by the Aboriginal people of Benalla, King Branky was still buried in a manner that was, at the very least, culturally recognisable to local Aboriginal peoples: He was buried with his possum skin cloak, and was bound with his knees drawn up to his chest. The fact that he was buried in a cask may have been a concession to Europeans who wished to see him buried in something approaching a coffin, but I think it more likely an adaptation of traditional burial practices, which tended to ensure that the deceased was protected from direct contact with the earth, buried in a kind of chamber.

An eye-witness report by a European observer of a Aboriginal burial which took place at Scrubby Creek, near the Mitta Mitta River in 1858, provides a little more insight into local Indigenous funeral practice:

‘…the wildness of the scenery was peculiarly in unison with the strange proceedings of these savages, in making their arrangements in silence for the burial, according to the custom of their nation. The lubra of the dead man sat near the corpse as motionless as a statue, her face covered by her hands, and seemingly unconscious of what was passing around her, while another female, apparently a relative of the deceased, gave loud vent to her lamentations. The body was now approached by the men who proceeded to bond the legs of the corpse on his breast, and then to wrap the body in a blanket, which they strongly stitched together. This being done, the corpse would not be recognised as that of a man, being only the length of the trunk, and from being doubled up in the manner described, had only the appearance of a clumsily made up bundle. The grave was then dug. It was about five feet deep, and with a tunnel or drive extending three feet inward from the bottom. A bed of leaves was then placed, on which to deposit the body. The body was conveyed to the grave on the shoulders of one man, the widow, leading the way, carrying a lighted torch of gum leaves, her face being daubed over with clay. The features of two others of the party were similarly begrimed. The corpse having been carefully deposited in the grave, the opossum rug of the deceased, his clothes, belt, &c., were placed on it. A framework of saplings was then formed over all, and on this several sheets of bark were laid, to keep the earth entirely from coming in contact with the dead body. After the pit had been filled up, two poles were stuck upright over it, and on these were placed the billy and quart-pot of the deceased. Not a word had been spoken during the course of the proceedings I have described, the whole party being apparently under the influence of that feeling of awe which the presence of death creates in more enlightened beings than these poor children of the bush. They afterwards moved off to their camp in single file, carrying with them the fire they had brought to the grave.’ [6]

***

King Branky was the son of ‘King Michie,’ and much like the latter day recollections of King Branky (which we will come to), recollections of King Michie recorded close to the turn of the century revelled in a common though tawdry literary trope of the era, which portrayed Aboriginal kings as sad figures who though having once been leaders of their people and chief among the ‘original proprietors of the soil,’ [7] had been subsequently reduced to the status of ‘king in name only,’ eking out their existence as if by the grace of Europeans.

Of King Michie is was recalled, his ‘kingly duties had dwindled to a span—the once powerful Broken river tribe had been considerably diminished in numbers through migration, principally caused by the occupation of the country by the settlers; and no doubt numbers died from unnatural causes… Hence the king’s chief occupation was to display a brass plate, suspended from his neck, announcing that he was king of the Broken river tribe. He would hang about the Black Swan hotel, and if grog was not to be procured through his kingly position he would get it by cutting wood for the cook; and frequently he would draw the queen’s dowry in advance (with her consent), she having become an expert charwoman and laundress, for which occupation, she was always paid the same as if the work were done by white people.’ [8]

However, this description of King Michie belied a fact of which local Aboriginal people who had survived the European invasion of 1838 surely must have been aware — that King Michie had been a formidable leader in the local resistance to European invasion. In 1841, Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Port Phillip District, George Augustus Robinson, had been told by his most reliable Aboriginal informant in the region, Pallangan-middang man, Mul.lo.nin.ner (a.k.a. ‘Joe’), that ‘Wool-gid-yer-dow-well alias Big Micky killed Faithfull’s men.’ [9]

(Please note that since this blog was first written, linguist and Gunditjmara man Corey Theatre has assisted the Waywurru Women’s Collective in regularising the spelling of King Michie’s indigenous name to ‘Wul-kidja-duwil.’ This should help with the correct pronunciation. Thank you Corey!)

This was no small statement. The ‘Faithfull Massacre’, in which an advance party of men and stock belonging to squatters George and William Faithfull had been attacked on the banks of Marangan on 11 April 1838, resulting in the death of eight of Faithfull’s servants, [10] had sent such shockwaves of terror through European pastoralists, their stockmen, hut-keepers and shepherds, that the pastoralists had petitioned Governor Gipps to, in Gipp’s words, either have his government undertake ‘Punitive war against the Blacks, or sanction the enrolment of a Militia for that purpose and allow them to be supplied with Arms and Munitions of War from Her Majesty’s stores.’ [11] Gipps had refused their call, instead setting up a ‘Border Police’ to police the road to Port Phillip — an act which did little to assuage the sheer terror instilled in the pastoralists by this single guerrilla attack.

And if we can safely acquaint the identity of ‘Big Micky’ with ‘Old Man Micky,’ it can be seen that only a little over a decade earlier, Michie was one of several men (also including Pallangan-middang warrior Merriman), whom in mid-1842 was deemed responsible for the murder of a station hand (an ‘American black’) employed at Gray’s ‘Pelican Lagoons’ just south of Wangaratta; and that this attack at Grey’s station was only the latest in a string of attacks that had occurred throughout the Ovens and Broken River Valleys in the years since the Faithfull Massacre on stations belonging to unfriendly pastoralists. ‘Old man Micky,’ concluded the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser, ‘has been the ringleader in all the depredations committed on the whites in that quarter for several years back.’ [12]

‘Nothing is known of how King Mickey attained his imperial position whether by right of birth or of conquest,’ wrote the author of ‘Recollections of Benalla’ in 1893. [13] However, the author might have more credibly written that no European wanted to know the gruesome details of how or why King Michie had attained, or perhaps retained from an earlier time, his position as a leader among Benalla’s remaining Aboriginal people.

Despite acts of Aboriginal resistance, Europeans won the bloody but officially unacknowledged frontier war in the north east region of what would become Victoria. They had settled a town around Marangan, which by late 1852 was overrun with gold rush traffic en route to the Ovens diggings. However, despite these incursions into his country, King Michie had continued to live next to Marangan, in what could be considered, in retrospect, to be one of the greatest acts of civil defiance of European rule imaginable.

King Michie’s dogged refusal to leave his country makes the senseless manner of his death at the hands of an ignorant (if not wilfully ignorant), European doctor all the more poignant:

‘In the early part of 1853 the first medical gentleman took up his residence in Benalla… This medico was appointed Government doctor to the police of the gold escort and those stationed here. The king was taken suddenly ill, internally, and the queen left her residence under the old bridge, and waited on the doctor. After describing the king’s complaint a bottle of lotion was given her to take to his majesty, with the instructions that it was to be used externally. But in the absence of an interpreter, and lack of knowledge of English prescriptions, she administered the lotion in the same manner as their own crogick or doctor gave them wattle gum dissolved in water. The dose had the effect of terminating the earthly career of this potentate, in the short space of three hours…’ [14]

King Michie was also buried in the traditional manner, ‘wrapped in his opposum-skin rug and put into a hole in the then burying ground, at the corner of Barrack and Mair streets’ — the location of Benalla’s first burial ground, at the end of what is now Church Street (formerly Barrack Street), where it meets Marangan (Lake Benalla). ‘There was no demonstration of joy or regret; no condolences forwarded onto the Queen [Polly [15]], or congratulations to the little princess; no tribal mournings or gathering of the clans, His death was a peaceful one, and his funeral unostentatious. Branky was appointed in his stead.’ [16]

benalla_old_cemetery_monument Plaque marking the site of the former Benalla Cemetery, on the right bank of Lake Benalla. (Image by Mattinbgn, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

***

Of King Michie’s wife Queen Polly, we can only find traces:

From a record of her testifying at the death inquest of Joseph Worthington in 1847, whom she had found deceased in the room adjoining hers at the Black Swan Inn in January 1847, we can see that both she and the man she called ‘my coolie Old man Mickey’ actually resided at the Black Swan Inn, at least at that time. [16b]

Polly was also encountered at the Black Swan Inn by Mrs Campbell and her daughter as they made their way to join husband and father, Police Magistrate Archibald Campbell at the Spring Creek diggings (Beechworth) in mid-1853:

‘Hearing the sitting-room door open I looked up; a black head was popped in and out again. So ugly was the object that I gave an involuntary scream and covered my face, a proceeding which evidently caused amusement, for the owner of the cranium now showed itself, making a low guttural hissing sound, meant for a laugh. Ashamed of myself, I ventured to look up again, and was introduced by my landlady to the queen of a tribe then at Bannalla, said to be handsome. Fancy a black woman, with hair long and stiff, hanging like porcupine’s quills over her shoulders, no forehead, eyes long and half closed, broad nose, mouth from ear to car, with the contrast of beautifully white and even teeth, and you will have the picture of a handsome Aborigine—quite a belle. She was pleased with [young daughter] G., who, wiser than her mother, saw nothing to be frightened at in her, and made friends accordingly.’ [17]

Unfortunately, we know not how she died, only recollections reveal that it was soon after King Michie:

‘Queen Polly, after the death of the king, pursued the even tenor of her ways, by making herself useful at the Black Swan, which place she found a comfortable asylum, and died in 1854. She was quiet, temperate, civil and industrious.’ [18]

***

Upon the death of King Michie, his son King Branky had taken the mantel. The same Benalla local who had written recollections of King Michie in 1893 speculated rather ungenerously that King Branky was only able to assume this position due to a lack of competition:

‘But how, or why, I could never understand. It could not have been because he was clever in diplomacy or in controlling or governing subordinates. He was by no means a finely developed man, and was devoid of everything brilliant or even crafty. He could certainly throw the spear with almost unerring accuracy, and give flight to the boomerang in many ways very surprising. He was an expert at swimming and dining, and became a good shot with the old muzzle loading gun. But these accomplishments were by no means in excess of the acquirements of most of the men of the same tribe. He was the hereditary successor but was a very a small contributor to the late monarch’s comforts. Therefore, how Branky became king is still unsolved. The Broken river tribe, having in a great measure dispersed and, attached themselves to other tribes, more distantly situated from the operations of the white people, appeared to lose caste, and dwindled into insignificance. Hence we must presume that Branky constituted himself king and that without opposition. If ever anything were truly nominal, Branky’s kingly position was, as tribal contentions had disappeared, and no warlike invasions were anticipated, nor were there friendly visits by other monarchs to prepare for. There were no internal disputes to decide, or petty chiefs to issue orders to. Thus, within a decade the once powerful Broken river tribe had became almost extinct, and its king, was king of nothing.

‘Branky’s occupation principally was that of shooting wild-fowl, fishing and making opossum rugs, all of which were purchasable by anyone for money or tobacco. During the rainy season his chief employment was that of chopping wood for the residents, and spending the income arising therefrom in grog. Throughout the whole of his various undertakings, even to the consumption of grog and tobacco, he was most ably assisted by his lubra — Queen Sally — of whom nothing can be said in praise, more than that she, lived-up to late in the fifties, and never had a family.’ [19]

(A great deal more could be said of the inferences made in these recollections, but this will have to pass for now.)

However, Branky’s presence in Benalla also can be found, in warmer tones, in the retrospective diary of John James Bond, a gold seeker who visited Benalla where his uncle, William Carpenter Bond served as district pound keeper, during the gold-rush of the early 1850s. William Bond had a house in the centre of the fledgling town (at what is now 56 Arundel Street [20]):

‘The natives (Blacks) are just as we see them represented. A few are now camped a little in front of this house. Benalla. There are always some in the township – women washing and so on. Men shooting ducks, stripping bark and co. for nobblers of spirit. They all are naturally of a cheerful disposition … Branky was our favourite black man[.] He was often in [and] out of the house in very free easy fashion. All of us liked him. A letter told me that he was killed in a quarrel by another black with the Tomahawk. Saw Branky got to the top of a high large tree, climbing by means of small notches which he cut out as he ascended in the smooth bark just large enough for the great toe. This tree stands in front of Uncle’s house. (All the limbs cut off by Branky).’ [22]

Branky’s easy visitations at William Carpenter Bond’s house indicate that like his father, he had maintained a strong attachment to the banks of Marangan, and strongly suggests that Benalla’s ‘black’s camp,’ rather than being on the periphery of town, was located near its early centre — which is where Branky came to blows with his killer.

Early map of Benalla, c.1850s (State Library of Victoria)

The circumstances of King Branky’s death were widely reported at the time, although not necessarily with great accuracy:

‘On Wednesday last [ie: 7 March 1860] one of the remaining few of the Broken River tribe of blacks received so much injury as to terminate his existence within about forty-eight hours after it was given. According to what I can learn, a blackfellow of the same tribe, called Jemmy, who is a very noisy fellow, and a great drunkard, went to camp, and, King Brankie not liking the noise, told Jemmy to be quiet, and got out of his opossum rug for the purpose of making Jemmy leave the camp, or be quiet; but Jemmy paid no attention to King Brankie, who, upon seeing that his orders were not obeyed, took a waddy for the purpose of trying the effects of physical force. Jemmy, not admiring the attitude of his king, stood upon the defensive with a tomahawk. From yabba yabba it came to blows, and, after various thrusts, cuts, and bad hacks, Jemmy succeeded in slaying his king, by driving his weapon through the skull.’ King Branky had not died immediately after receiving the blow to the head, however, apparently, ‘Dr. Lumsden made an examination of the fractured skull, and gave as his opinion that the death of the king was caused by a blow with a tomahawk, delivered by… Jemmy.’ [23]

The perpetrator, Jemmy, was arrested, taken to Beechworth and remanded in what Beechworth locals jokingly referred to as ‘Mr Castieau’s hotel’ (the Beechworth gaol). [24] His trial was set for the Beechworth Circuit Court of the Supreme Court on 12 April. [25] On the 11th, it was reported that an Aboriginal man and woman had been brought up from Benalla to Beechworth ‘per escort’ to give evidence in the trial. [26]

William Thomas of the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines came up from Melbourne to assist. Of the trial, he would record in his journal that the male witness ‘would give no information, & appears perfectly sullen as tho’ if he spoke, the Blk in the dock would be hanged, or fearful of the consequence if he gave evidence… he knew nothing and would speak of nothing. In fact the court & Judge felt regularly annoyed.’ A doctor testified that King Branky could not have survived as long as he did after receiving the blow to the head from Jemmy, and the female witness testified to having seen Jemmy land the blow to the opposite side of the head than the fatal wound. Jemmy, who had good legal representation, was acquitted by the jury. [27]

Decades later it was recalled that King Branky had indeed lived much longer after the altercation with Jemmy than what had originally been reported; that Jemmy’s tomahawk blow to Branky had ‘chipped a piece of the skull clean away, leaving the thin “vellum” which covers the brain unaffected, except by exposure to the air. Branky lived some five or six days after, when mortification set in and he died.’ [27] Afterwards, as we have seen, he had been buried in the traditional manner, next to that water hole known as ‘dead man’s hole,’ on the banks of the Broken River.

(Author’s note: There was also a King Brangy who lived predominantly in Oxley, and who was, according to his sister-in-law Mary Jane [Milawa] who testified at his death inquest in 1882, born on the Ovens River and was ‘King of the Ovens Tribe.’ [29] King Brangy is not to be confused with King Branky of Benalla, although the two do appear to have been kin.)

***

The next Aboriginal man of Benalla who was strongly identified as a leader of his people — not referred to as ‘King’ but who publicly named himself at a parliamentary inquiry into Coranderrk Aboriginal reserve as ‘Tommy Micky, chief of the Broken River tribe,’ [30] was commonly known by the name ‘Tommy Banfield’ (sometimes this surname is written as ‘Bamfield’ and ‘Mansfield,’ while Micky is also spelled ‘Michie’). His Aboriginal name was Bertdrak. [31] Europeans also referred to him by the nickname ‘Punch’. When married at Coranderrk Aboriginal reserve in 1868 to Eliza Werry, Tommy Banfield gave his father’s name as Michie, his mother’s as Lucy Neal, and his birthplace, Benalla. [32] His death certificate of 1893 named his father as ‘Old Michie,’ and indicated that he had been born c.1843. [33]

Tommy Banfield/Bamfield, aka Tommy Michie/Micky, Bertdrak, Punch, aged in his early 20s. (Photograph by Fred Kruger, at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, Victoria, c.1865-1866; Museum of Victoria).

As with his forebears, Tommy Banfield’s very early life is unknown, but some misinformation exists. In a letter to the Chief Secretary’s department written by Ann Fraser Bon, former owner of Wappan Station on the Delatite River, and advocate for the Aboriginal people of Coranderrk, Bon said of Banfield:

‘Punch about whom we have heard so much lately happens to be one of my boys. His mother the Chiefess of the tribe gave him to me many years ago to be my own “Picaninny” — He is a superior black — too much so for his “Protectors” — and when in my employ sometimes earns 12/ a day, with food and lodging.’ [34]

In this letter, Bon was attempting to impress upon authorities that Tommy Banfield was an intelligent and reliable man, whom she had known for a long time. However, in doing so she too much assumed a role of European maternalism: a quick check of some dates reveals that by the time she had arrived in Australia in 1858, Tommy Banfield was already around 15 years old, and especially by the standards of the day, no ‘Picaninny’.

Tommy Banfield’s association with Wappan needs disentangling, for it creates an impression that Banfield was primarily associated with Taungurung people and country. Anthropologist Diane Barwick, in her well-known essay Mapping the Past — An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904* suggested that Tommy Banfield’s father was Baalwick, and that it was ‘Baalwick [who was], remembered by [the] Bon family as “chief of Broken river tribe” and “chief of Delatite tribe” [who] took survivors [from Benalla] to … Wappan run c. 1844/7’. (Unfortunately she does not provide the evidence for this assertion). [36] In doing so, Barwick created the notion that Tommy Banfield’s father, Old Michie, and Baalwick, were one and the same person; which in turn, like Bon’s letter, makes it seem likely that Tommy Banfield lived on Wappan run from a young age. However, a newspaper article of 1934 clearly states that ‘on the pre-emptive [right of Wappan station] is the grave of old Baalwick, the chief of the Delatite River tribe.’ [37] This indicates that Baalwick was not King Michie (for the two men are buried in different locations, not to mention having been ‘King’ of different river systems on which each is buried), and that as such, the assertion that it was Tommy Banfield’s father who lead Benalla’s surviving Aboriginal people onto Wappan Station in Taungurung country looses credibility (unless solid evidence that suggests otherwise can be found). As we have seen, King Michie remained on country, and died in Benalla in 1853. Neither was he alone.

Certainly, Tommy Banfield was named by the great Kulin leader (in Woi-wurrung language, ngurungaeta) William Barak to be one of his three successors, [38] along with Robert Wandin and Thomas Dunolly. This suggests that he was integrated into and accepted within the Kulin community. However, throughout his life, he maintained deep connections to people who, by any definition, were his kin, who lived in Wangaratta (and later also in Wahgunyah at Lake Moodemere) in non-Kulin-speaking lands. And not only did Banfield maintain contact with them, but he advocated for them to the authorities, as revealed in letters written by Banfield to the Aboriginal Board of Protection. For now, I would like to leave room for my colleague Megan Carter to closely examine the evidence, and explain these kinship connections (which are part of her own), as well as Banfield’s concerted efforts to advocate for those he referred to as ‘my people’ in Wangaratta. [39]

***

What we can discern from all of these stories is that Benalla did have Aboriginal men who identified as leaders of that community at least up until the death of Tommy Banfield in 1893. Two of these three men, Tommy Banfield and King Michie, are clearly documented as having done their utmost to protect their people under rapidly changing circumstances. We may be missing vital pieces of the historical jigsaw puzzle to enable us to more fully know whether the third individual in this picture, King Branky, had acted likewise. These individuals are worthy of greater attention and recognition, especially in the town built around their beloved ‘Marangan’, their great ‘Mer-ry-an-gan-der,’ Lake Benalla, in the town of Benalla. In getting to know these historical figures, there remains much more work to be done.

*Note

In critiquing an aspect of Diane Barwick’s essay ‘Mapping the Past’, I do not wish to downplay her substantial achievement. Barwick stated that she wrote ‘Mapping the Past’ as a crib for scholars, in the hope that others would ‘expand and correct my attempt at mapping the past.’ This is the intention of my efforts. She was a giant among scholars.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2020. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

References

[1] Ian D Clark (ed), Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, Melbourne, 2014, entry for 23 February 1841.

[2] ‘Picturesque Victoria. Around Benalla.’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Thursday 24 July 1884, p.1.

[3] W.L. Murdoch, ‘Particulars concerning the blacks who is portraits appear in last issue,’ Science of man and journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, Vol. 3, No. 3, 23 April 1900, p.44.

[4] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA. (by AN OLD RESIDENT.)’ The North Eastern Ensign, Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[5] ibid.

[6] ‘A Native Burial,’ The Age, Friday, 24 September, 1858, p.6. (originally reported in the Ovens Constitution.

[7] The example of this extremely commonplace sentiment of the era, viz. that Aboriginal people were the original owners of the land, is quoted from: ’The Aborigines of Port Phillip,’ Southern Australian, Saturday 1 September, 1838, p,1.

[8] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA. (BY AN OLD RESIDENT.)’ The North Eastern Ensign, Friday, 14 July 1893 p.3.

[9] Clark, op. cit., entry for 8 February, 1841.

[10] Judith Bassett, ‘The Faithful Massacre at the Broken River,’ in Journal of Australian Studies, Number 24, May, 1989, p.18.

11] ‘SIR GEORGE GIPPS TO LORD GLENELG.’ (Despatch No. 115, per ship Superb; acknowledged by Lord Glenelg, 21st December, 1838.) reproduced in Australian Aborigines: Copies or extracts of despatches relative to the massacre of various Aborigines in Australia, in the year 1838, and respecting the trial of their murderers; compiled by the Colonial Office, Great Britain, 19 August 1839.

[12] ‘The Blacks,’ Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser, Thursday 29 September 1842, p.2.

[13] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA. (by AN OLD RESIDENT.)’ The North Eastern Ensign, Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[14] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA. (BY AN OLD RESIDENT.)’ The North Eastern Ensign, Friday, 14 July 1893 p.3.

[15] ibid.

[16] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA.’ Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[16b] Joseph WORTHINGTON Death Inquest, Cause of death: Visitation of God; Location of inquest: Broken River; Date of inquest: 19 Jan 1847, Public Records Office of Victoria, VPRS 24/ P0 unit 4, item 1847/75 Male

[17] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA.’ Friday, 14 July 1893 p.3.

[18] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA.’ Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[19] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA.’ Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[20] Bond’s property is marked on an early ‘Township Map of Benalla, Broken River. No. 59’, c.185-? State Library of Victoria.

[21] This location is most likely land owned by William Carpenter Bond at the time, at 56B Arundel Street, Benalla.

[22] John James Bond, ‘Diary of John James Bond’ [Retrospective ‘diary’, based mainly on a few letters that John Bond wrote to his family, recording his visit to Australia in 1853-1855. (89pp.)], (as filmed by the AJCP) [microform]: [M724], National Library Australia, 1915, pp:88-89.
The pound keeper was William Carpenter Bond, pound keeper from 1848.

[23] ‘MURDER OF AN ABORIGINAL KING.’ Mount Alexander Mail, Friday 23 March 1860, p.3.

[24] ‘ADELAIDE. BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. | Thursday evening.’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Friday 23 March 1860, p.2.

[25] ‘BEECHWORTH CIRCUIT COURT. April 12th, 1860,’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Wednesday 11 April 1860, p.2.

[26] ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser Published every Wednesday and Saturday. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11th, 1860,’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Wednesday 11 April 1860, p.2.

[27] Dr Marguerita Stephens (ed) The Journal of Assistant Protector William Thomas 1839-67, Volume 3: 1839-1943, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL), Melbourne, p.266, Entry for 12 April 1860.

[28] ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF BENALLA. (by AN OLD RESIDENT.)’ The North Eastern Ensign, Friday 28 July, 1893, p. 3.

[29] Inquest into the death of King Brangui, VPRS 24/P Unit 445, Item 1280, Inquiry 6 November 1882, Public Records Office of Victoria.

[30] ‘THE CORANDERRK INQUIRY.’ The Argus, Wednesday, 19 October, 1881, [Issue No.11,025], p.6.

[31] ‘MR. BERRY AND THE ABORIGINES.’ The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday, 30 March, 1886, p.5.

[32] Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages, ‘Marriage Solemnized in the District of Bourke, 1868, No in Register 362, 3 April, 1868.

[33] Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tommy Banfield, Death Certificate, Reg. number 10334/1893.

[34] Letter reproduced in ‘A philanthropist and lobbyist on behalf of Victorian Aborigines,’ in First Ladies: Finding Women in the Public Records Office Victoria, Revised edition originally published 1999© Australian Women’s Archives Project and Public Record Office Victoria, 2005.

http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/fl/flten00.htm
The letter itself can be found at VPRS 1226, Unit 4, Item 82/ X 4907, Public Records Office Victoria. I have not cited the original, only the published transcription.

[35] Joan Gillison, ‘Bon, Ann Fraser (1838–1936)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bon-ann-fraser-5284/text8911, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 14 September 2020.

[36] Diane Barwick, ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904’ Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984, p.128.

[37] ‘A Healesville Benefactress MRS. ANNIE F. BON, AND THE LATE MR. JOHN BON. Compiled from Various Sources by M.H.’ Healesville and Yarra Glen Guardian, Saturday 21 July 1934, p.3.

[38] Diane Barwick, op. cit., p.128.

[39] This is quoted from a letter written by Tommy Banfield, which is located in the Board of Protection for Aborigines Correspondence Files No. B313 Box 3 Item 42 Wangaratta and Wahgunyah, National Archives/Public Records Office Victoria.

Aboriginal place names around Wangaratta and beyond

17 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Uncategorized, Wangaratta, Woolshed Valley

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Aboriginal Toponyms, Place names

In the last week or so, there has been widespread community interest in, and concerns over, the inadvertent commemoration of ‘pioneers’ who were responsible for massacres of Aboriginal people (in light of the Black Lives Matter protests). Locally, this is seen in place names, including Faithfull Street in Wangaratta (named for George Faithfull), and the Warby Ranges (named for Benjamin Warby), to name just two of many examples. As people think of renaming places, there has been a corresponding interest in original Aboriginal place names. I am publishing this list of original local place names (below) as an addition to Megan Carter’s larger list. You can find this list on her blog at: It’s all in a name: a resurfaced collection Aboriginal place names in North East Victoria

In 1858, District Surveyor A. L. Martin, who was based at the Survey Office in Beechworth, supplied a list of local place names to the Surveyor General in Melbourne. These were ‘native names which I have been able to learn from a gentleman who has resided a considerable time in this District.’ [1] (I speculate either David or Curtis Reid, who were among the first non-Aboriginal people to settle in the area, and were still in the district in 1858, as likely candidates).

Currarrarbyandigee — the township of Wangaratta

Byamotha — Reid’s Creek or Woolshed

Bontharambo — Docker’s Plains

Currurargarmongee — Reid’s Station

Moyhu — Chisholm’s station, King River

Burrurrurgurmonge — Hodgson’s Creek

Kirah — River Ovens

(B?)amorrmongee — 3 Mile Creek, Wangaratta

Loahwambiah — One Mile Creek, Wangaratta

Mowongboga — Fifteen Mile Creek, Wangaratta

Bialagarngee — Everton

Notes:

On 23 February 1841, Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson recorded in his journal place names collected from local Aboriginal people, whom he spoke with while at Bontharambo station. One of these names, for the junction of the Ovens and King Rivers, was ‘Corram-beyan-didder’. This easily corresponds with ‘Currarrar-byan-digee,’ supporting the authenticity of this place name for Wangaratta, and more specifically the river junction area.

I also find it especially interesting that ‘Moyhu’ is an original Aboriginal name, which puts a convincing end to the myth that it was derived from two Chinese men, Ah Moy and Ah Yu! Likewise, as you will see on Megan’s list, Edi is also an original name, and is not a foreshortened version of ‘Heide’ as one finds as a dubious explanation in some local histories.

Finally, Aboriginal people often had multiple names for one water course, as they named them in sections.

So what do you prefer: Everton or ‘Bya-la-garngee’? Faithfull Street or ‘Corram-byan-diddah Street’?

Reference

Letter from A. L. Martin, District Surveyor, to the Surveyor General, Melbourne, 4 November, 1858, Public Records Office Victoria.

I have sighted a copy of the original letter as an appendix in Marie Hansen Fel’s unpublished report ‘These Singular People — The Ovens Blacks’, 1997. Fels did not provide a full bibliographic citation, but I would suggest the letter is held in either of these files:

VPRS 16685/ P1 unit 26, item Bundle 162, Book 2110

VPRS 16685/ P1 unit 26, item Bundle 162, Book 2115

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!

Revisiting the forgotten world of Victoria’s alpine valleys and ranges: the case for restoring our ancient open woodlands

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Benalla, Tangambalanga, Uncategorized, Wangaratta, Yackandandah

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Australasian bittern, Brolga, Bush stone curlew, Bushfire, Dingo, Freshwater catfish, Ian Lunt, Kangaroo grass, Matt Herring, Murray Cod, Ovens River, Red Gum woodland, Regent Honey-eater, Rufus Bettong, Silver Banksia, Stanley Plateau, Tiger Quoll, Tony Rinaudo, Trout Cod

For ecological inspiration, and climatic salvation, we need to revisit the ancient open woodlands of North East Victoria.

A vista looking south-east from Mount Glenrowan, drawn by Eugen von Guerard in the 1860s, shows the Ovens, King River and Fifteen Mile Creek Valleys clothed in open red gum and box woodland. Blakey’s Red Gum can be seen in the foreground.

Note: This is a referenced transcript of the lecture I delivered at the Stanley Hall in the Spring of 2019 for the Geoff Craig Memorial lecture, organised by the Stanley Athenaeum.

I’d like to start by offering my thanks to the Friends of the Stanley Athenaeum for bestowing upon me the honour of giving this year’s Geoff Craig Memorial lecture, which I’ve titled ‘Revisiting the forgotten world of Victoria’s alpine valleys and ranges,’ and which I have decided to subtitle, ‘the case for restoring our ancient open woodlands’.

This lecture has its origins in the exhibition, Fire on the Plateau — A History of Fire and its Management in Stanley, which opened at the Stanley Athenaeum in May to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the 2009 bushfires. It was curated by Ali Rowe, and I was employed as the principal researcher for the project with the idea that I would produce some panel text and a short essay. I started researching, and before I knew it, I had enough information for a book.

Today I won’t be speaking directly to the content of the book. Instead, I want to tell you about some of the broader insights I gained while I was researching. At the beginning of the project, myself, Ali Rowe and the Friends of the Stanley Athenaeum — in this case, namely Chris Dormer, Helen McIntyre, Janet Sutherland and Valerie Privett — brainstormed what we knew about the history of fire in Stanley. I asked, When was the last big bushfire in Stanley, prior to the 2003 fires? There’d been some big fire events in Victoria the 1980s — Ash Wednesday in 1983, and big fires through Mount Pilot and Mount Buffalo in 1985, and we expected that Stanley would have a similar history of bushfire. But no one could remember a bushfire in Stanley in the 1980s. We soon realised there were no stories about Stanley being burnt-out even in the infamous Black Friday bushfires of 1939, when most of Victoria was burnt. I trawled through the archives, and what I discovered was quite unexpected, at least to us: that there had been no significant bushfires on the Stanley Plateau for well over 100 years.

On reflection, what’s really interesting to me, is that we had started out expecting that Stanley would have this long history of big bushfires — it was almost as if we had projected our current expectations of the environment backwards through time — and it took a historical study to correct our view.

There’s no hard scientific evidence as to why Stanley had so few bushfires prior to 2003, but quite clearly, the area used to be a pretty safe bet in terms bushfire risk. The Stanley Plateau had a cool climate, with a high ground moisture content, and wet peppermint and blue gum forests, with ferny gullies that remained damp even in Summer; in fact it was so damp that if you walked through the forest, you’d come out with leeches on your legs. But as we all know, something really big has changed. The Plateau is drier and Stanley is now officially classified as an area of ‘extreme risk’ on the CFA’s Victorian Fire Risk Register.

When I started the project, I didn’t realise that I would be charting such a big environmental change. But during the research, I was engaging with letters, diaries, reminiscences and government records dating from the time of the arrival of Europeans in North East Victoria from the late 1830s onwards; and I came to realise that the environment I was reading about in these historical documents was so different from our current understanding of the environment today, that it now constitutes a kind of ‘forgotten world’ to us. However through historical records, we can revisit this forgotten world of North East Victoria’s alpine valleys and ranges, and see what’s changed.

***

When I was at university I was very fortunate to be lectured by a historian called Greg Dening, who earlier in his life had been a Jesuit priest. Dening used to talk about a particular Spiritual Practice originally taught to the Jesuit order by theologian Ignatius Loyola, which he in turn applied to his own method of composing history — a practice called ‘composition of place.’ In composition of place, when one reflects on a scriptural passage or events, one first imagines the scene in concrete detail, places oneself inside that scene, and then attends to the thoughts and feelings that arise in order to comprehend it. And this is what I would like for us to be able to do today with some of the vivid sites, sounds and sensations, that I have found in the archives, relating to this forgotten world of our alpine valleys and ranges.

A good place to start composing our forgotten world, is by using the reminiscences of George Kinchington. Kinchington was a child when he first arrived in the Yackandandah Valley in the winter of 1838. He was in the company of his family; his father was to be the manager of the newly formed Kergunyah station. They were among the very first non-Aboriginal people to enter the Yackandandah Valley. And he would later recall of it,

‘As we approached the Murramerangbong Hills and crossed the creek, I thought that of all the pretty places I had seen, Yackandandah was the prettiest. As far as the eye could reach stretched a great park, covered with large timber and under-growths of luxuriant grass. The creek itself could be seen for miles, and wound along in a wide and continuous bed of reeds and raspberry briars, with here and there a lake, in which were immense flocks of wild duck, widgeon, teal, black swan, and pelicans. The water, too, was beautifully clear and abounded with fish. Occasionally some native dogs, of which there were large numbers, would run across our path, and we would some times catch sight of a herd of kangaroo or wallaby, or see an emu raise its startled head to look at us. The country was very open; and with the exception of some native hop, grass trees, gebung, a little ti-tree, and some wild cherries, the land was quite devoid of scrub….’ [1]

This valley, in fact all of valleys of North East Victoria, were like parkland: grasslands interspersed with stately trees spaced widely enough to allow for easy travel — you could gallop a horse or pull a wagon through a valley, completely unhindered by undergrowth. Pre-Raphaelite artist Thomas Woolner who visited in 1852, described it as ‘splendid country that looked like an immense park left to decay and run wild: the trees shoot in sinuous, fantastic growth … the ground [is] spangled with serene little wildflowers’. [2] Woolner’s description of this park as being left to ‘decay and run wild’, was entirely appropriate, because by the time he was seeing it in 1852, European settlement had interrupted the Aboriginal burning regimes that had helped give the countryside its manicured, park-like appearance.

The native pasture in these valleys was spectacular; the first Europeans could barely believe their eyes. Local squatter David Reid noted that along the banks of the Ovens River at Tarrawingee in the late 1830s the kangaroo grass looked ‘more like a field of barley, or rather oats, than anything else’ and was so tall, it could be tied over a horse’s withers as it grew on either side. [3] I thought this had to be a bit of an exaggeration, but William Hovell (of Hume and Hovell fame) wrote in 1824 that in Victoria, ‘The grass .. is … frequently as high as [our] heads, and seldom lower than [our] waists.’ [4]

We can add to our composition of place by knowing that the soils of these valleys was soft, even spongy underfoot, because it had never been compacted by hard-hoofed animals. Early European arrivals had found their way into North East Victoria simply by following the impressions of cartwheels left by Major Mitchell’s expedition of 1836, which had sunk into the soft soils. Some Europeans were even distrustful of this weirdly open soil. Ovens Valley selector Edward Hulme complained of his ‘inferior crab-holey grassland’. [5] When in the Buckland Valley in 1853, English author William Howitt complained that ‘everywhere the soil is of a light porous quality, which absorbs the rain like a sponge, and in the heat exhales malaria. You may smell the dry-rot of decaying roots of trees as you walk over the surface.’ [6] Howitt thought the soils produced dangerous miasmas that were making the gold miners ill, but what he was describing was the rich smell of hummus, which retained moisture in soils, kept open and alive partly by the sheer mass of insect life.

You see, Howitt was a complainer, also about the insects here, which he said were ‘endless in numbers and form. Many are most singular and curious; but the ants, the flies, the centipedes, and the scorpions, are a terrific nuisance. … They cover the whole surface of the ground, I might almost say of the whole colony, of all colours and sizes; and almost every variety of them stings keenly. Nor is it the ground only on which they swarm; there is not a log lying on the ground, nor a tree standing in the forest, up and down which they are not creeping in myriads.’ [7] And I think, one can only imagine that the sound of cicadas and crickets in the summer must have been deafening.

Which brings us to another aspect of this forgotten world — the way it sounded. It was noisy! Across much of the countryside in Victoria were vast woodlands of silver banksia, which the colonists called ‘honeysuckle’. At Wooragee, Greta, Carboor, Myrtleford, Mudgegonga, and Whorouly — where the banksia vied with grasstrees — these woodlands, in season, were dripping with nectar, supporting huge numbers of insects, mammals — and of course, birds: black cockatoos and parrots, and songbirds — the sittellas, robins, honey-eaters, spine-bills, wattlebirds and friarbirds, made the bush a noisy place. It had been rumoured in England that Australian songbirds had no song — but Australian birds are louder and more melodious than any birds on earth. In fact, we now know that Australia is the ancestral birth place of songbirds. [8]

A map of newly surveyed agricultural lots at Murmungee (roughly 10km south of Beechworth), demonstrates that it was originally clad in a forest which included ‘Honeysuckle’ (Silver Banksia).

But it was at night that the sounds of the alpine valleys and ranges really came into themselves. Assistant Protector of Aborigines James Dredge complained of a night spent on Bontharambo station near Wangaratta in 1840, that he was kept awake all night by the ‘romping of rabbit rats’, [9] which were probably Rufus Bettongs — cute little animals, which scratch about and make a noise like a chainsaw when annoyed. Around Stanley, we still hear the hideous, choking growl of koalas in mating season, but we no longer hear the wailing, banshee-like cry of Bush Stone Curlews piercing the darkness of local forests. [10] Imagine what these two hideous calls sounded like in combination; and on top of that, Emily Skinner, the wife of a gold miner living in the Buckland Valley in the 1850s, described how the howling of dingoes at the top end of the valley would set off the next pack howling, so that the howling would spread down the length of the Buckland. [11] In 1881, Beechworth’s Ovens and Murray Advertiser reported that Mrs Morrison of Mudegonga had been ‘almost frightened to death with the yells of the dingoes all night’ when stranded overnight on the road to Stanley. [12]

And dingoes weren’t the only carnivorous predators in these forests. On 4 July 1854, American gold seeker Gordon Tucker celebrated Independence Day in Beechworth with a day’s sport of ‘killing native cats’. [13] He was shooting the glorious Tiger Quoll, aka the Spot-tailed Quoll — the largest marsupial carnivore of mainland Australia — it’s roughly 2/3 the size of a Tasmanian tiger — really, it’s a mini-Tassie-tiger with spots instead of stripes — with a piecing rasp of a bark.

But one of the weirdest sounds was a booming noise that came from swamplands, that many people thought could only be the call of the mythical bunyip; for it was a noise that came from an almost equally elusive and secretive marsh-dweller. William Howitt described its call, while travelling alongside a vast marsh near Wangaratta — the Greta swamp — in late 1852: ‘the most extraordinary thing there, was the booming of the bitterns. I never heard anything like it, and could not have supposed any bird capable of producing such a sound. It was like the low bellowing of bulls… but perhaps still more like some one blowing into the spout of a watering-[can]. The force and [the] compass of it, and the distance to which the sound could be heard, were amazing.’ [14]

The shallow cane-grass marshes at places like Tangambalanga, Bontharambo, and Greta not only supported the Australasian bittern, but also attracted flocks of Magpie geese, [15] and the dancing cranes we call brolgas, but which the Waveroo people called birranga. [16]

The colours of our forgotten world were different too. The Ovens River at Wangaratta wasn’t just clear, it was described as being azure-green. [17] And if you looked into that translucent azure-green water, you would see shoals of fish. At Markwood, in 1871, it was reported that fish of all kinds were constantly turning up in James Henley’s waterwheel, so that in half-an-hour there would be two dozen fish, chiefly bream [probably Macquarie perch] — some three and four pounds each. The small ones were returned to the river, but at least a hundred weight [50kg] of saleable fish were pulled out every 24 hours.’ [18]

Being able to see clearly what was at the bottom of a river could be a wondrous thing, but at the same time, it might put you off swimming. In 1885, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser recalled a time, ‘before the Snowy Creek and Omeo [gold] rushes took place, when [on] any day, in the then pellucid waters of the Mitta Mitta, one could see… fish, from the size of a minnow to the “leviathan,” …voracious codfish that could swallow a dog — or, for that matter, a baby — whole, disporting themselves in the depths among the boulders which are so marked a feature in the upper reaches of this lovely and picturesque river.’ [19]

Even tiny streams like Holmes’ Creek in Beechworth (which crosses Camp Street at the bottom of the hill), such a minor creek that barely anyone today even remembers its name, was a ‘beautifully clear stream with crayfish in it; and wild hop and may over-hung the water which sheltered the wild violet and geranium.’ [20] Beechworth was called Baarmutha by the Waveroo people, said to mean ‘many creeks’, which also suggests plenty of crayfish in winter. [21]

Creeks and Rivers often moved far more slowly than what they do today, as their banks were dense with reeds, and their waters snagged with timber. JFH Mitchell recalled that in his childhood, in the 1840s, the banks of the Murray River at Wodonga were dense with cumbungi and common reed, up to 20 feet high. [22] When it flooded in Spring, you could take a canoe from Wodonga to Townsend Street in Albury. [23] And when the water receded along the banks of the Ovens and Murray, it replenished the lagoons, whose warmer, stiller waters would be filled with river catfish, and thick beds of freshwater mussels. The catfish, which are now almost locally extinct, also thrived in the kinds of waterways like the Whorouly Creek and the Broken River, originally called the ‘Winding Swamp,’ that ceased to flow in summer. [24] George Kinchington explained, ‘The creeks stopped running about Christmas time [and] then became a chain of water-holes.’ [25]

What the woodlands surrounding these rivers, creeks and lagoons lacked in density they often made up for in height. In 1853, William Howitt reported fallen trees on the Nine Mile Creek up to 60 metres long. [26] That’s a tree which stood at least four storeys high; higher than the very top of the bell-tower on the old Beechworth Post Office. Today the tallest Brittle Gums we have in Beechworth, for example on the Golf Course, are probably 25 metres high. But where you have tall trees, you have a different animals. From the Gold Commissioner’s camp in 1853 on High Street in Beechworth, tent keeper William Murdoch recorded how, ‘One of the men shot a large flying squirrel, its length from the nose to the tip of the tail — four feet.’ [27] This was the beautiful Greater Glider, a wholly arboreal animal with such a huge wingspan that it can only glide safely between very tall, widely spaced trees. The presence of this glider tells us that our forests in Beechworth had mammoth and widely-spaced trees, mature enough to sustain these large flying marsupials in their canopies.

And imagining these tall tree canopies brings me to one last sensation that was once familiar but is becoming increasingly rare, and this comes from a Beechworth resident who wrote to the Ovens and Murray Advertiser in 1907:

‘Next to the Buckland Gap, probably the most delightful spot in the neighborhood of Beechworth was what was called the Cemetery Creek, but which has been more appropriately styled the Emerald Cascades by recent visitors, since [this] more nearly describes its beauties. … this charming locality is at the rear of Baarmutha Park, and consists of a wild glen. The well-worn path charmingly follows the parting stream of crystal water, which leaps from cascade to cascade for at least a mile, between cool-looking, moss-covered rocks. On a hot summer morning this glen was a most inviting scene for the painter, owing to the rare color effects that were produced in the natural objects from the bright sunshine, which with difficulty glanced through the clefts of the dense and beautifully disposed eucalyptus and [native] pines, dappling the deep green moss and grey rocks with its glories. No one ever visited it who did not loudly praise its wonderful coolness or its delirious shade.’ [28]

However, this letter was one of dismay, for the writer continued, ‘On visiting this spot a few weeks ago, sir, imagine my feelings in discovering these lovely trees, which were the cause of all this charm, were all rung [ringbarked] and fast dying! In a year they will be dead and falling, and nothing will be left but a bare, bold blazing mass of rocks. In this case there is I think not even the semblance of an excuse for the destruction.’ [29]

***

If you visit the Emerald Cascades today, I can guarantee you won’t recognise it. It’s a gully near the old rifle range at the back of the Beechworth golf course; which has trickle of water but no cascades. Its tree canopy is sparse, and the granite boulders have been swallowed by a mass of blackberry briars. Only a solitary tree fern still struggles on. In so many ways, the Emerald Cascades is a microcosm of the kinds of environmental changes we’ve wrought on the environment, and how far we’ve got to go in terms of restoring it.

In fact, if there was one lesson from the research done for Fire on the Plateau, it’s that the greatest environmental challenge we have now is how to restore and conserve the environment in ways that will accomodate climate change, but remain in sympathy with the environment of old. Designing ‘climate-smart’ environmental projects might sound like a controversial issue, but the reality is that even locally, ecologists and environmental organisations are now making some pretty valiant attempts to future-proof our forests and fauna:

In Chiltern where conservations have spent decades trying to conserve habitat for the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater, Trust for Nature and BirdLife Australia have given up on the idea of relying solely on local trees like Mugga Ironbark to provide enough nectar. The ironbark isn’t flowering consistently enough to ensure the survival of the honeyeaters, so they’ve started trials, planting super-tough non-indigenous native species — things like Hairpin Banksia, Crimson Bottlebrush, Spotted Gum, and Silky Oak — in an effort to guarantee that there will be food for the birds all year-round. Not so long ago, this would have been considered a form of environmental heresy.

Over the border on the Monaro Tablelands, the majestic Ribbon Gums (E. viminalis) — kind of like the Monaro equivalent of Victoria’s high country Snow Gums (E. pauciflora) — have been dying across the landscape since the 1990s. The weather’s been just too hot, and there have been too many droughts, and the gums are so water-stressed that they’ve become susceptible to invasion by Eucalyptus Weevil, which have been literally eating the tree canopies to death. Now Greening Australia and Upper Snowy Landcare have started running trials of 16 genetically different varieties of Ribbon gum, sourced from areas where the climate is hotter and drier, to see which varieties can withstand the changed climatic conditions on the Monaro.

Like the regent honey eater, the elusive bunyip bird of the marshlands, the Australasian Bittern, is also now critically endangered; and in their case, it’s due to loss of natural wetlands. The total population worldwide is now estimated at no more than 2,500 adults; and ecologist Matt Herring has made the amazing discovery that 40% of this global population has been forced to adopt the rice fields in the Riverina as their habitat during breeding season. Matt’s Bitterns in Rice project has been working with Birdlife Australia and the Ricegrowers’ Association to help farmers adapt their farming practices — things like water depth, and time-of-harvest — to help out the nesting birds. And to their credit, many rice farmers are starting to take pride in having bitterns in their rice. Herring says that, ‘There’s a growing body of global research investigating how human-made habitats can help fill the gap left by our vanishing wetlands, from ditches for rare turtles to constructed ponds for threatened amphibians.’ (And here’s where I quickly take my hat off to Beechworth Urban Landcare for their new frog pond on Silver Creek).

In short, there are now many environmental projects aimed at safeguarding flora and fauna against climate change, but if this is the way of the future, one might well ask, what’s the point of environmental history? What’s the point of us reimagining those forgotten valleys and ranges of North East Victoria from 150 years ago?

I think that the tangible sensations of this forgotten world — the coolness of the shade at places like the Emerald Cascades, the softness underfoot of healthy soils, the azure green sparkle of the Ovens River, and the orchestra of songbirds rising from open woodlands of stately gums, banksia and grass trees — these are ideas worth holding onto. I think they provide us with a vision.

I think that we might be able to have something approaching this stable and abundant environment once again, if we adopted a vision for restoring the ancient parklike woodlands of old. We still have the remnants of this woodland — in the form of veteran paddock trees — but these have a limited life span, and we need to bolster their ranks. Writing of Dunkeld at the southern end of the Grampians, ecologist Ian Lunt has described the way in which the remnant woodland there, while filled with venerable paddock trees, has not seen any meaningful regeneration. And he states, quite poetically (in his blog post ‘The Candles of Dunkeld’):

‘The woodlands bear the weight of a generation gap 100 years wide. We can’t fill that gap. But we can belatedly heal it. If we don’t, the woodlands won’t go on forever, but will peter out… We owe a huge debt to the farmers of Dunkeld. Their stewardship has kept the trees of Dunkeld alive for over a century. But stewardship of the past creates no future for the trees of Dunkeld. The Dunkeld woodlands need stewardship and more. They need some Succession Planning (and planting). Without a rapid transfusion of new plants, the beautiful woodlands of Dunkeld are doomed.’

And of course, so are ours in the alpine valleys and ranges.

It sounds like a big job, restoring woodlands, but elsewhere around the world we’ve seen the most spectacular efforts at reforestation in regions far tougher than our own, and I have to raise the example of Tony Rinaudo: he was a Myrtleford boy, who went on to join World Vision and has been instrumental in the reforestation of 5 million hectares of land in sub-Saharan Africa, simply by helping farmers to regenerate existing tree stocks. The farmers initially had some incentives (which is only fair), but when they saw that reforestation boosted soil fertility and crop yields, the project took off on its own.

The localised benefits of restoring the ancient woodlands of our alpine valleys and ranges are are profound. It’s a simple observation but — woodland creates its own local microclimate: the delirious shade of its trees really does create a wonderful coolness; the shelter of trees protects animals and pastures, and the evapo-transpiration from their leaves actually recycles rain into more rain. More tree coverage means less drought. Even if we forget about global climate change priorities like planting forests to capture carbon — and I’m not saying we should (!) but if we did — we still have plenty of reasons to restore our woodlands.

There’s not a fisherman in the world who wouldn’t like a bag a trout cod big enough to swallow a dog, there’s barely a farmer who wouldn’t want to have their stock grazing on rich native pastures — spangled with wildflowers no less, not a child who wouldn’t love to have the pants scared off them by the boom of the Bunyip Bird in Greta swamp. And personally, I’d like to see more Tiger Quolls in our forests again. The last sighting was at Staghorn Flat in 2015, but this is one of only a handful of sightings in the last 20 years.

There are dozens of interesting ideas I’d love to mention in relation to restoring our environment, which of course isn’t just about the trees and shrubs — there are regenerative agriculture practices including the use of diverse native grasses and different grazing regimes to restore soils and pastures; and there’s also the special need to slow down and retain water in our landscape, in the form of unregulated rivers, peatlands, marshlands, lagoons, and of course — importantly for Stanley as a high recharge area — retain ground water to feed natural surface discharge.

In conclusion, acknowledging how much the environment has already been degraded, and how rapidly it’s still changing in the face of climate change, can be psychologically debilitating. But I think if we care about the environment, that one of the most profound acts we can do now, is to raise our baseline of expectations. To do this, we have to commit radical acts of community remembering — we have to remember by whatever means possible and in as vivid terms as possible, the richness, diversity, and abundance that our environment used to have. We need to adopt that old Jesuit meditative practice of ‘composition of place’ — to hold onto to the vision of our ancient open woodlands — and share this vision, to raise the bar on what we will accept and create as our future environmental reality.

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

[1] ‘YACKANDANDAH IN 1838. SOME REMINISCENCES. BY MR. GEORGE KINCHINGTON.’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Saturday 16 September, 1899, p.8.
[2] Thomas Woolner, in Amy Woolner [ed.], Thomas Woolner RA – His Life in Letters, London, Chapman and Hall, 1917, p.20.
[3] Reminiscences of David Reid: as given to J.C.H. Ogier (in Nov. 1905), who has set them down in the third person, type-written manuscript, National Library of Australia, p.37.
[4] Bill Gammage, The biggest estate on earth : how Aborigines made Australia, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2011, p.175
[5] Edward Hulme, A settler’s 35 years’ experience in Victoria, Australia, M. L. Hutchinson, Melbourne, 1891, p.18.
[6] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Sydney University Press, 1972 [first edn: 1855]. This reference: Volume 2, pp.153-4.
[7] William Howitt, op. cit., This reference: Volume 1, Chapter 11.
[8] ‘Where Birdsong Began,’ Catalyst, ABC television, 10 March, 2015.
[9] James Dredge, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, Goulburn Protectorate, 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]. The diaries contain daily and weekly entries from 1817 to 1833 and 1839–1843. This entry: 22 April 1840.
[10] D. M. W. McKenzie, “To the Pioneers” Looking Back, The Early Days of Stanley, 1891, re-printed in association with the “Back-to” Stanley, January 1976, from the original publication by the late D. M. W. McKenzie.
[11] Edward Duyker (ed.), A Woman On The Goldfields, Recollections of Emily Skinner, 1852-1878, Melbourne University Press, 1995.
[12] MUDGEGONGA. Saturday. Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Tuesday, 8 February, 1881, p.2.
[13] Gordon Tucker, Journal, 1853 Apr. 12-1857 June 6. Manuscript 10649, State Library of Victoria. This entry: 4 July, 1854.
[14] William Howitt, op. cit., This reference: Volume 1, Chapter 9.
[15]
[16] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.46; for Waywurru language, see: Dictionary of Way Wurru and Dhudhuroa Language, Nyanda Ngudjuwa Aboriginal Corporation Way Wurru and Dhudhuroa Language Program, Wodonga, 2007/8 (draft edition).
[17] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volume 1, Chapter 9 (this edition Cambridge University Press digital editions, 2010, p.153).
Last summer (in early 2020), my son and I visited a swimming hole in the Upper King River. It was sufficiently clear enough that it did have a slight azure green tinge, and I was able to imagine what Howitt meant.
[18] ‘District Road Boards,’ The Argus Supplement, 25 January 1871, p.1.
[19] ‘Our River Fish’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Thursday, 6 August, 1885, p.2.
[20] ‘Old Memories’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 November, 1908, p.8
[21] Dictionary of Way Wurru and Dhudhuroa Language, op. cit.
[22] J.F.H Mitchell Papers, 1903-1923, State Library of New South Wales. Mitchell gives many descriptions of the environment around Albury-Wodonga in the 1840s in these often rambling type-written notes.
[23] David Reid, ‘Old Memories — Floods and Droughts,’ Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 30 December, 1898, p.16.
[24] For an amazing historical account of local fish stocks including catfish, see: Will Trueman, True Tales of the Trout Cod: River Histories of the Murray–Darling Basin, (Ovens River catchment booklet), Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), Canberra, 2012.
[25] George Kinchington, op. cit.
[26] William Howitt, op. cit., This reference: Volume 1: Chapter 13.
[27] William Murdoch, A Journey to Australia in 1852 and Peregrinations in that Land of Dirt and Gold, unpublished diary manuscript (digital form), held by the Robert O-Hara Burke Memorial Museum. This entry: 26 November 1852.
[28] ‘The Destruction of Beautiful Beechworth’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 23 November 1907, p.6.
[29] ibid.

First people of Beechworth — answering some criticisms

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, King Billy, Squatters, Tangambalanga, Uncategorized, Wangaratta, Yackandandah

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Diane Barwick, Gary Presland, George Augustus Robinson, Ian Clarke, Marie Hansen Fels, Norman Tindale, Pallanganmiddang, Pangerang, Waveroo, Waywurru

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.

This post relates to my previous post on the Pallanganmiddang — First Peoples of Beechworth and Beyond, addressing some potential criticisms of the research. Be warned: it is technical!

In my last post, I stated that from a historical perspective, the first people of the Beechworth region, and in fact a much broader area, were a local area group (in anthropological language, an ‘areal-moiety’ grouping, ie: belonging to an area, with a moiety attached), called the Pallangan-middang. The Pallangan-middang spoke a unique language which was neither Pangerang/Yorta Yorta, nor Dhudhuroa. They also appear in multiple detailed references in one historical source (the journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines) as a sub-set of a larger group called the Waywurru (Waveroo).

Since the last post was published, I have had some suggestions which in turn constitute arguments to the effect that I (and others) have misinterpreted the historical source materials. The body of this argument is that when Europeans talked to Aboriginal people and then tried to write down what they said, they got it wrong. One reason they got it wrong is because Aboriginal languages are difficult for Europeans to interpret and transcribe. Another reason is that they didn’t understand Aboriginal culture and frequently misinterpreted things. As a professional historian who trained at a university (La Trobe University), whose history department was internationally known for its ‘ethnographic history’, I was exposed to individual historians who made it their life’s work to grapple specifically with these kinds of historical problems. In a nutshell, these issues of cross-cultural interpretation do constitute real problems for historians. No sound historian would negate that argument, and would always seek strategies to attempt to compensate for the possibility of such misreadings.

Conversely, to consign to the ‘rubbish bin’ written historical source materials just because they were created by European colonisers, would mean loosing a lot of valuable information. Very few scholars of Victorian Aboriginal history (Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal), would consign the massive journals of writers like George Augustus Robinson or William Thomas, written mainly in the 1840s, to the bin — no matter how offensive some of the actions of these individuals with regards to Aboriginal people were. All historians should be suspicious of what their sources have to say, and attempt to ‘test them’ using historiographical practices such as cross-referencing, and placing source materials in their correct historical context.

Particularly when talking in a public forum, it is difficult to counter-argue an argument against one’s own work without actually pulling out enormous wads of source materials in order to demonstrate to lay people in the audience that I have already considered certain potential errors and done my best to compensate for the possibility of these errors. However, I would like to take this opportunity to address four specific arguments which suggest my work is the result of faulty interpretation of the historical source materials. I cannot prevent people from reading primary source materials however they like. However, I can at least respond to criticisms of my own work by explaining how I have gone about some specific points in relation to my interpretation of primary source materials.

Counter argument 1: ‘In the historical records, Pallanganmiddang is just a misspelling of Pangerang. They are the same thing.’

This argument was systematically dismantled by historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels in her monumental report ‘These Singular People — The Ovens Blacks, Supplementary Report, 28 July 1997’ written in response to anthropologist Rod Hagen’s critique of her initial report, produced for the Yorta Yorta Native Title case during the mid-1990s. However, because this report was never published, this argument continues to be raised.

My response to the argument that Pallanganmiddang is a misspelling of Pangerang runs like this: Yes, Europeans did struggle with spelling Aboriginal names and words, and frequently, they spelled the same name or word in several different ways. Aboriginal cultures were oral cultures, and there were no conventional ways of spelling Aboriginals names and words. However, when one sees attempts to write certain words written enough times, one can discern a similarity between these various attempts at spelling, which unifies them.

In Victoria generally, some common issues arise in spelling, which can be easily accounted for, if one is aware of them. The first is to do with the way Europeans struggled to record the sounds ‘P’ and ‘B’ which as a consequence are used interchangeably. Even today, as well as historically, one may often see ‘Pangerang’ written as ‘Bangerang’ (or even Bpangerang), but we are all aware that Pangerang, Bangerang and Bpangerang refer to the same group. Certainly one also finds, in the historical sources, Pallanganmiddang also written a ‘B’ instead of a ‘P’. (The same kid of transposition often occurs with the sounds ‘T’, ‘K’ and ‘Dj’.)

The second issue with spelling is cultural: it seems that the Pallanganmiddang people frequently deployed the Kulin areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—illum’ instead of the north east Victorian alpine areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—mittung’, depending largely on where they were in the landscape. So it is possible to see the name appearing as Pallangan-illum, or, Ballangan-illum, as well as Pallengan-mittung. (One also sees the second ‘a’ replaced with an ‘i’, and the third ‘a’ replaced with an ‘o’ — especially in geographical zones associated with Kulin peoples. So one sees Ballingo-illum, Ballingon-illum, or variations of this.)

In fact, we do see a lot of spelling variation in Robertson of the name Pallanganmiddang. However, he does spell Pangerang rather consistently throughout as ‘Pingerine’. Take, for instance, Robinson’s first visit into North East Victoria. On 20 April 1840, at Brodribb’s station on the Broken River (near Benalla), he meets a number of Aboriginal men, who may be passing through, or may be station workers. He writes:

‘We ascertained these natives belong to or were parts of three tribes [in fact, he goes on to list four, but I will list the two relevant to this discussion!]:
1. Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)
…
4. And the Pine.ger.rines, a large tribe inhabiting the country on the south and south west banks of the Murry.’

From this excerpt we can see that Robinson has clearly met two different groups, the Ballingoyallums and the Pinegerines.

The following February (1841) Robinson revisits north east Victoria, and on the 9th and 10th of February, he meets with a large mixed group of Aboriginal people on Bontharambo station (just out of Wangaratta). He sits down and records their names, gender, ages, what groups they belong to, and sometimes their kin relationship. On the 23 February 1841, he writes down his findings. He records the names of around 15 people who are specifically ‘Pallengoillum’ or ‘Pallengomitty,’ belonging to the ‘Waveroo’ or ‘Wave.veroo’ ‘nation’, plus another 10 or so generally Waveroo people. He also records about 28 ‘Pinegerine’ people. (As an aside, Robinson also records roughly equal numbers of Wiradjuri and Taungurung people on the same site on that occasion.) Insofar as I can see, Robinson has interviewed in this instance, around 95 people, and within that large group he has clearly identified people who are ‘Pallengoillum’/’Pallengomitty’ (Pallanganillum/Pallanganmiddang) as well as people who are ‘Pinegerine’ (Pangerang). The two groups are clearly identified, with exceptional clarity, as separate groups.

Counter argument 2: ‘Waywurru is really a misspelling of the Melbourne broader group Woiwurrung.’

This could easily be a legitimate concern. The argument runs along the lines that when Robinson was in north east Victoria, he was meeting a lot of Woiwurrung people who were in transit, using the Port Phillip route (ie: the modern day Hume Freeway, which was the original overlanding track), as a means of travel. Thus he was meeting Woiwurrung in North East Victoria, and he recorded them as ‘Waywurru’ (in fact, variations of this spelling such as ‘Wee-her-roo,’ ‘Waveroo’ and so on).

This seems plausible until one realises that Robinson had spent a lot of time in Melbourne around the Woiwurrung and that he could identify this language when he heard it spoken. However, in north east Victoria, he clearly treats the ‘Wee-her-roo,’ or ‘Wave-veroo’ as a new and unknown group, which he has to learn about. Whenever Robinson was unsure about something, and knew he had to continue to check the facts, he made a note in his journal to himself to ‘queri’ the statement.

When, on Monday 20 April 1840, Robinson met some ‘Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)’ , Robinson made a note to ‘query’ further about this group.

On Thursday 23 April 1840, Robinson wrote, ‘The natives at Dockers [ie: Bontharambo station] prostitute their women in like manner as do many other tribes: Goulburn, Waverong; Barrable, &c.’

Here we can see that within the same short period of time (four days), Robinson has chosen to identify ‘Wee.her.roo’ and ‘Waverong’ separately. Dr Ian Clark has accounted for the different ways in which Robinson wrote Waywurru: Wee.her.roo, Way.u.roo Wee.er.roo; Way.you.roo, Waveroo, Wavaroo, Wavoroo, Wave.veroo, Way.you.roo, Wayerroo (Ian Clarke, ‘Aboriginal languages in north-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered,’ Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22). Critically, Robinson only used these spellings in the geographical context of north east Victorian locations.

We can compare this with the way Robinson wrote Woiwurrung, frequently as ‘Waverong’ (eg: on 18 July 1839, 11 October 1840, 16 November 1840 as examples) and ‘Way.you.rong’ (1 June 1840). (There are probably more examples but I do not have time to scan the 800+ journal pages I have before me.) Moreover Robinson’s geographical context for using ‘Waverong’ never applies to north east Victoria (ie: country north of the Broken River).

It is easy to see that Robinson differentiated between Waywurru by creating the sound ‘—varoo’ on the end of the word — a linguistic gesture he retained exclusively for a group in north east Victoria; while in the case of Waverong, he created the sound ‘—erong’ on the end of the word, and used this in context appropriate to an area and people we now comprehend as Woi-wurrung.

One could argue that this differentiation is due to a dialectical difference between say Melbourne and North East Victoria, but that it still refers to the same group of people. That argument comes unstuck when one considers that none of the people whom Robinson associates with Wavaroo claim any connection to Melbourne: Quite the opposite; several openly claim specific connection to areas of land in north east Victoria. The same cannot be said for anyone associated with Waverong. There still exists a remote possibility that Pallanganmiddang were a non-contiguous areal moiety of ‘Woi-wurrung’, and that they pronounced it ‘Waveroo’. However it would require a lot of evidence to establish this in concrete terms, as a non-contiguous areal moiety speaking an entirely different language doesn’t fit the broader pattern of Kulin society.

Counter argument 3: ‘There is only one historical source for the term Waywurru, therefore its existence might be just the faulty perception of one person.’

In his paper published in the journal Aboriginal History (Volume 25, 2005, pp.216-227), titled ‘Ethnographic information and anthropological interpretation in a Native Title claim: the Yorta Yorta experience’, anthropologist Rod Hagen stated that with regards to the term ‘Waveroo,’ aside from the journal of George Augustus Robinson, ‘No other 19th century commentator makes mention of them.’ While there is not much evidence for ‘Waveroo’ as a term, it is easy to demonstrate Hagen’s statement as inaccurate. There are two other contemporary sources (squatters Benjamin Barber and David Reid) who agree with George Augustus Robinson, referring to a ‘Weeroo’ or ‘Weiro’ broad group in the area of north east Victoria north of the Broken River and south of the Murray River (Letter from Benjamin Barber, in ‘Replies to the following Circular Letter on the subject of the Aborigines, addressed to gentlemen residing too remote from Sydney, to expect the favour of their personal attendance upon the Committee, in Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, NSW Legislative Council, 1841; and David Reid in ‘Aboriginal Population 1860, The Argus, Friday 5 October, 1860. p.5). While Barber’s knowledge was mainly in relation to the area of Barnawatha Station, Reid had lived on the Ovens at what is now Tarrawingee, and had also lived in Yackandandah, and consequently his statement would reflect this experience. Three independent sources is not a substantial historical record compared to other large groups such as the Wiradjuri or Taungurung, but the paucity of information about them must be contextualised by the fact that the Waywurru/Waveroo were a comparatively small group which bore the brunt of violence from numerous overlanding parties travelling to Port Phillip, as well as violent squatters who settled in north east Victoria, all through the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Counter argument 4: ‘There are old maps, and these maps show the Pangerang on country where you say the Pallanganmiddang should be.’

Another criticism of my work on the Pallanganmiddang is that what I have written and describe doesn’t accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria. Some of them, like Norman Tindale’s map of 1940, revised in 1974, are very famous and well-regarded. Unfortunately, maps have a power to them that people don’t often question, but one has to remember that maps of Aboriginal Victoria are based on historical information.

The criticism of my work on Pallanganmiddang could be expressed more specifically as ‘Durrant’s work does not accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria produced before the 1990s.’ ‘Why discard maps produced before the 1990s?’ I hear you ask. ‘Surely old maps are more accurate?’ I hear you say. The simple answer is that in the 1990s, historians and linguists suddenly found themselves in possession of information about Aboriginal Victoria recorded far earlier than the oldest maps of Aboriginal Victoria (for instance, Brough Smyth’s map which appeared in his 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania.), and they began using this ‘new’ (in fact, much older) information to produce new maps. In particular, the Victorian Aboriginal Languages Corporation commissioned Dr Ian Clark to produce a new map, based on the new archival materials which had come to light. These new maps accord far more closely with the historical picture that I have painted of the Pallanganmiddang local group of the Waywurru broad group.

There is, in fact, a backstory behind the creation of these ‘new maps based on old material’:

By the early 1980s, the late, great anthropologist Diane Barwick (1938-1986), was dissatisfied with the Victorian section of Tindale’s maps, and was trying to unravel the issue of which Aboriginal groups occupied different parts of Victoria. She’d tackled some of Victoria, and published a major article titled ‘Mapping the Past, Part I’. She was in the middle of working on a new paper devoted to North East Victoria (intended as ‘Mapping the Past, Part II’) when she died tragically and suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. However, this is what Barwick had to say about Norman Tindale’s mapping in 1984, about two years before she died:

‘The best-known map of Victorian ‘tribes’ is the continental ‘tribal map’ published in 1940 by South Australian Museum biologist and ethnologist Norman B. Tindale, which was explicitly “based principally on recent fieldwork with additions from the literature”. Dr Tindale’s unparalleled record of ethnographic publications dates back to 1925, but it appears that the Victorian fieldwork which shaped this map was undertaken when he and Dr Joseph Birdsell were co-leaders of the 1938/39 Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition. Tindale’s 1940 tribal labels were admittedly the basis for more recent maps of language distribution in Victoria — with some amendments resulting from linguistic research during the 1960s and/or consultation of the original notes compiled by amateur ethnographers A.W. Howitt, R.H. Mathews and John Mathew, which were not accessible for scholarly study until the 1970s. Tindale’s 1974 revision of his 1940 map incorporated available information from recent research but necessarily relied upon published material, mainly the writings of Howitt, Curr, Smyth, R.H. Mathews (whose reliability he had questioned in 1940 but now acclaimed), and the few accessible Protectorate records from the 1840s. His tentative boundaries in central and northeastern Victoria were admittedly deduced from discrepant published sources…’ (Barwick, Diane E. Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904 [online]. Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984: 100-131. This reference: pp.100-101. My emphasis added.)

What Barwick was saying is that, with regards to North East Victoria, Tindale’s first map was compiled principally from his interpretation of four historical sources, written by men who were contemporary to each other: R. Brough Smyth, Edward Curr, Alfred Howitt and R.H. Mathews (and some of his own research conducted at places such as Cumeragunga). At a later date, Tindale had access to some field notes and manuscript materials left by some of these same men. Each of these men had his own distinctive limitations, and when their work was combined, there were discrepancies between them which were difficult to reconcile. There were a number of professional jealousies between them, but perhaps the biggest limitation of their work as a whole is that each man had laboured under the misapprehension that Aboriginal people would soon be ‘extinct’, which led them to believe that if they simplified or fudged some information for publication, that no Aboriginal people would be around to question their work at a later date. They were wrong.

By 1986, the year of her death, Diane Barwick had credible reasons for thinking she could revise the map covering North East Victoria on Normal Tindale’s by now famous map of Aboriginal tribes. ‘Why not get Tindale to do it?’ I hear you ask. —Tindale was 86 years old. ‘Why did Barwick think she could do better?’ I hear you ask. — Let me reply first with some rhetorical questions: What if some absolutely critical sources of information had simply vanished from the historical record, only to reappear at a later date? What if some source materials previously inaccessible were suddenly entered into a local public institution and made available to researchers? This is precisely what happened with regards to information about Aboriginal history in North East Victoria. Where there had been, at first, slender and contradictory evidence, there came a pivotal moment that changed everything: and this a happened when the journal of G.A. Robinson was returned to Australia from Great Britain!

George Augustus Robinson was the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District, from 1839 to 1849. Robinson was a prolific writer, and kept a daily journal as he travelled around the Port Phillip district (in what would become Victoria in 1851). His observations about Aboriginal people were made on location, usually written on the same day, and he often conversed with Aboriginal people and even recorded their names (both Aboriginal and ‘conferred’ white names). Robinson visited the northeast of Victoria in 1840, January-February 1841, 1842 and 1844, and recorded a considerable amount of information about the people he met.

Historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels has lucidly described the impact that having access to Robinson’s journal had on historians:

‘The return to Australia of Robinson’s material in 1949 (he took his papers back to England with him in 1852 and there they remained, inaccessible to scholars for nearly 100 years) transformed the nature of Aboriginal research in Victoria. We no longer had to rely on 19th century collectors of information with all the dangers of their filling in the gaps in knowledge with speculation (Howitt is a good example of this – in the 1904 edition of Native Tribes of South Eastern Australia he states on page 54 that ‘I have not been able to obtain any information as to the tribes occupying the course of the Murray between the Bangarang and Albury, or on the Ovens River lower than the “Buffalo Mountains”,’ but this absence of information does not prevent him from conjecture about them on page 101.)’ (Marie Hansen Fels, ‘These Singular People…’ p.8)

There is, however, something that Fels fails to mention — and that is that Robinson’s handwriting was atrocious. Deciphering his journal notes would only ever be a labour of love for a handful of the most diligent historians, anthropologists and linguists, like Diane Barwick and Fels herself. Thus, even up to the latter part of the 1980s, the Robinson journals remained an under-utilised resource. Historian and archaeologist Dr Gary Presland began transcribing some parts of Robinson’s journal. As soon as he did, it seems that other historians started borrowing his transcripts. In 1989, Presland wrote:

‘…the journal has proved to be an invaluable and, in some cases, unique source of data. Ironically however, although it has been used widely and is informing an increasing number of studies, it remains substantially unknown and untapped. In part this is due to the sheer physical volume of the source (the manuscript takes up more than one shelf metre). It is due also in part to the difficulties of reading Robinson’s poor handwriting. To a limited extent this difficulty has been lessened but more needs to be done towards publishing this invaluable source of information.’ (Gary Presland, ‘The Journals of George Augustus Robinson’, The LaTrobe Journal, No 43, Autumn 1989, p.12).

In fact, it wasn’t until Dr Ian Clark (of Federation University at Ballarat) undertook the mammoth, almost monk-like task of transcribing Robinson’s journals in their entirety, initially publishing them in sections from 1996-2000, that the average researcher had ready access to this incredible storehouse of information. There are copies of Clark’s monumental work available for purchase, but they are still very expensive. (In north east Victoria, the only public copy is at Charles Sturt University’s Albury campus library, which has an annoyingly incomplete set of Clark’s transcriptions. The current complete volumes that I use are on loan to me from a generous local person!)

To recap once again: Tindale’s 1974 map did not make use of the journal of George Augustus Robinson. Diane Barwick knew the Robinson material. She knew that in the 1840s, Robinson had repeatedly met and talked with numerous Waveroo people at places like Wangaratta, Oxley and Albury-Wodonga. Robinson even recorded a vocabulary of the Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru) language in north east Victoria — a language which would later go on to be studied by linguists in the 1990s. Clearly, these people, the Pallanganmiddang people of the Waveroo ‘nation’ (as Robinson described them) existed, but were entirely absent from Tindale’s map. Barwick was also carefully reviewing other resources, such as Alfred Howitt’s field notes and correspondences (held between three different institutions, but now available on line here). She had also examined the unpublished manuscript notes of R.H. Mathews (manuscript material in the National Library of Australia catalogued as MS8006), rather than his publications, and learned that his ‘Minyambuta group’ overlapped a little too suspiciously with Pallanganmiddang/Waveroo (she surmised the Minyambuta was an exonym for Pallanganmiddang language), and extended geographically as far as Wangaratta, which once again, was at odds with Tindale’s map. And so, she had started re-mapping the northeast Victorian section of Tindale’s map. And then before she was finished, she died. Vale Diane Barwick.

Diane Barwick’s work laid the ground work for Dr Ian Clarke, who had also transcribed George Augustus Roninson’s papers, to substantially revise the map of Aboriginal groups in North East Victoria. Clarke did not use Barwick’s manuscript papers (now in the State Library of Victoria) uncritically. However, he seems to have used them as a starting point for creating a new map based on early and credible documents such as George Augustus Robinson’s journal (to which we can now add the journals and papers of Assistant Chief Protector of Aborigines, William Thomas). My work accords well with Clarke’s work not because I am drawing directly from it, but because we are both using a storehouse of primary source materials far more substantial than what Norman Tindale ever had access to. And if Tindale was alive today, I am sure he would revise his 1974 map based on new sources, just as he had previously revised his 1940 map after new sources came to light.

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!

Don’t mention the ‘C’ word.

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, Convicts, Squatters, Uncategorized, Wangaratta

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Ben Barber, Benjamin Warby, Charles Cropper, Convict Ship Brittania, David Reid, Dhudhuroa, George Edward Mackay, George Grey, John Chisholm, Joseph Docker, Mogullumbidj, Mount Dispersion Massacre, Pelican Lagoon, Sir Thomas Mitchell, Waywurru, William Brodribb

Lately I’ve been wondering what kinds of people were living around the Beechworth area when gold was first discovered in early 1852. By this time, the local Aboriginal peoples had been reduced to small bands of survivors who had witnessed an horrific genocide of their families and clansmen and women — a genocide wrought by the first European settlers. While it cannot be said that every single white settler was directly involved in this genocide, the killers were thick among them — and so it’s worthwhile asking, in a broad sense, who were these people? The answer is, in fact, reasonably simple; even though generations of local historians almost never mention it.

Image: courtesy National Museum of Australia.

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes subject matter that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

While researching this period of early European invasion and settlement of North East Victoria (broadly mid-1830s to mid-1840s, although most of the settlement happened in a single year — 1838), I’ve come across a number of glaring ‘myth-conceptions’, which are perpetrated in just about every history book concerning the region. It’s perhaps understandable how such errors came about: the well-to-do early European settlers who continued to stay living in the region and who went on to have descendants who in turn stayed locally, became the people who were remembered best in local histories. (If you read local history, you’ll be familiar with names like David Reid and Thomas Mitchell). As a consequence, their experiences were taken as indicative of the whole picture of early European settlement in North East Victoria. And yet, numerically, these men were very much in the minority.

Conversely, the people whose involvement in settling the North East Victorian region was either comparatively brief, or those who did not go on to become ‘pillars’ of local society, were barely remembered at all. Thus local history became slanted in favour of the ‘stayers’, who would be forever memorialised as ‘our pioneers’ — as if the only early settlers of the region were free men who came here of their own volition, with the ‘heroic’ intention of single-handedly converting ‘virgin’ countryside into productive grazing land. To say that this picture is at odds with the truth on numerous counts is an understatement.

Several of the largest misconceptions perpetrated about the early European settlers of North East Victoria are ones of omission, and in this post I will tackle but one of them. To illustrate this point, I will for now avoid narrating historical events, if only to present a simple characterisation by way of examples.

***

It should be obvious that none of the ‘pioneers’ who ‘settled’ North East Victoria (the ‘squatters’ who took out licenses to ‘despature flocks and herds’ on Crown Lands, establishing the first pastoral stations of the region) did so single-handedly. When they first arrived in search of grazing lands, invariably with a few thousand head of sheep and/or hundred head of cattle in tow, they arrived in territory which was already fully occupied by Aboriginal peoples of the region: local groups of the Waywurru (Waveroo), Dhudhuroa, and the so-called ‘Mogullumbidj’ peoples [1]. They not only had to establish head-stations and out-stations from which stock could be managed, but do so while simultaneously dispossessing the original inhabitants. Such a feat could only be managed with the assistance of a labour force.

Each station commonly had a manager or overseer, and various stockmen, shepherds, bullock drivers, and sometimes their wives (who worked as hut-keepers). This workforce, which comprised the majority of non-Aboriginal people in North East Victoria from the late 1830s through to perhaps the gold rush of 1851-2 — people who have remained largely invisible in most local history books — were convicts, comprising either those who had been allocated as ‘assigned servants’ while still serving out their sentences, those who had been given a ‘ticket-of-leave’ (akin to being ‘on parole’), or those who had finished their sentences.

The predominance of convicts can be found in any description of the first overlanding parties to settle in North East Victoria. Among the earliest to attempt to settle were the Faithfull Brothers. After their ‘Convoy of sheep and Cattle’ was attacked and seven men killed by Aborigines at Winding Swamp (Broken River, present-day Benalla), in April 1838, Governor Gipps lamented to Lord Glenelg ‘These men (who were chiefly convicts) did not defend themselves, but ran at the first appearance of their assailants’. [2] The partnership of Morrice, Wilde and McKenzie, who would take up Kergunyah station, was rare among squatters in that they had decided to employ a free man, George Kinchington, as their station manager. Nevertheless, their overlanding party, which arrived with 200 head of cattle on the Murray in June 1838, also had an ‘ex-convict for stockman, and two convict prisoners, one acting as bullock-driver, the other as helper with the cattle.’ [3] Likewise, when David Reid Junior reached the Ovens River on 8 September 1838 (settling on what would become ‘Carraragarmungee’ station), he had been equipped by his father Dr David Reid with 500 head of cattle, 2 bullock wagons and teams and 6 assigned servants. [4]

Not only were members of the convict class to be found among the labourers of the pastoral runs; but emancipated convicts were, on occasion, also to be found as station holders in their own right. Among their number were George Grey and his family, at ‘Pelican Lagoons’ (a small run neighbouring George Faithfull’s, situated in the wedge of land between the Ovens and King Rivers, after which the property ‘The Pelican’ on the Oxley Flats Road is named today). While touring the North East of Victoria in the Autumn of 1840, Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, and Assistant Protector James Dredge, met the Greys. Robinson said of them, ‘These people have, I believe, been convicts… They are in middling circumstances and have commenced dairying, but appear not the most efficient’, [5] while Assistant Protector James Dredge, added dryly, that they were ‘a large family, apparently not remarkable for cleanliness or industry.’ [6] Before going to North East Victoria, Grey had operated a station in the Monaro district in association with Benjamin Warby, and it is likely that he came over with cattle from the Monaro to Wangaratta at the same time as, and in association with the Warbys, who took up land at Taminick Plains. [7] While Robinson wrote that, ‘One of the Warby brothers, I have been informed, has been transported for cattle stealing,’ [8] it seems that is it was Benjamin’s father, John Warby, who (with William Deards) had been convicted of stealing two asses in October 1790 and had been sentenced to seven years transportation. [9]

On the face of it, stealing two asses is not the worst crime known to man, but before you gallop away with the romantic notion that most convicts were downtrodden souls cruelly incarcerated for stealing a loaf of bread or a packet of sewing needles, let me impress upon you the findings of eminent academic historian Alan Frost:

‘It is one of the abiding myths of Australian history that many of those sentenced to transportation… were hapless victims of a savage penal code and an uncaring, class-driven society. It seems not to matter how often or with what clarity the real situation is explained… It would be silly to claim that there were never miscarriages of justice, or that harsh penalties were not given for what we should now consider minor offences. … However, the plain fact is that the majority of 18th century convicts sentenced to transportation were convicted of crimes that we continue to consider serious.’ [10]

This is to say, most convicts arrived in Australia after committing either violent crime, theft of a substantial criminal nature (often with threats of violence), or very occasionally, political crimes. For example, on Oxley Plains, one of George Faithfull’s original stockmen (and longest surviving — he would die a centenarian at Edi in the King Valley in 1903), had been transported for beating a man to death in a fist fight. [11]

And like all convicts, these people also had been subjected to a harsh penal system, which may have reinforced their worst tendencies. Squatter George Grey had been given a conditional pardon for what was originally a life sentence (he was an Irish rebel, convicted as a member of the agrarian-terrorist movement, the Defenders), and he also had been given three hundred lashes for his role in an attempted mutiny aboard the convict ship Brittania in 1797 — a voyage which in itself became infamous for the cruelty of its sadistic captain, Thomas Dennott. [12] In other words, the convict servants (and some of the lower-tier squatters) working on the stations of North East Victoria, were people who, for the most part, were either brutal before they hit the penal system, or had been brutalised by it.

Making matters worse, the region’s ‘Border Police’ force had been established ‘on the cheap’ by using soldiers who had been transported from South Africa to New South Wales as convicts. [13]

It’s an unstated fact, but the ability to undertake wanton acts of brutality was a payable skill on frontier. Brutality was of practical use in dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their land, and many convict labourers were — in their day — notorious for their violent attitudes and actions towards local Aboriginal peoples. Writing many years later of the years 1839-44, during which he had overlanded through Yackandandah, Barwidgee and the King Valley with a group of stockman, James Demarr recalled, ‘the white men had been flowing into this newly-discovered country with their flocks and herds… and many of the men they had brought with them were the scum of the earth, so that collisions with the blacks were inevitable.’ Demarr continued:

‘The blacks were driven away from their ancient positions, their hunting grounds taken possession of, their game either destroyed or driven away, and they themselves driven back into mountain fastnesses; the consequence was the black sort every opportunity of revenge, killing the solitary shepherd and stockman whenever they had the opportunity of doing so, and scattering, and partly destroying the flocks and herds. The settlers retaliated in their own way, and old colonists know what that means. … Many of the settlers were well-disposed towards the blacks, and there were men [i.e.: labourers] also like-minded, but the ruffian element mixed up with them, brought on conflicts with the blacks that the kindly disposed were powerless to prevent.’ [14]

Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, and Assistant Protector, James Dredge, were among those who came face-to-face with such ‘ruffian elements’ at ‘Myrhee’ station on the west bank of the King River, owned by absentee squatter John Chisholm (yet another station neighbouring George Faithfull) — ruffian elements which by May Day of 1840 had been inflamed by the fact that a shepherd on their run had been ritually murdered by Aborigines only days before. [15] Robinson wrote, ‘Harry Broadribb, a man who has been a prisoner, acts as overseer.’ [16] Dredge noted with displeasure, ‘His wife got some refreshment for us, but raved an swore awfully against the blacks.’ [17] Robinson provided more detail: ‘Mrs Broadribb is a low hard woman, been I imagine a prisoner. She was not acquainted with us and went on about the blacks in a most strange manner. She would have them all burnt, hung, drowned or any death, provided they were got rid of. She applied the vilest epithets to them and would shower out of volley of abuse upon Broadribb [not her husband Harry, but another squatter, William Brodribb on the Broken River] for harbouring the wretches.’ [18]

Two stockmen who worked for Dr George Edward Mackay at ‘Whorouly’ (on yet another station that bordered George Faithful’s ‘Oxley Plains’), became notorious for their violence towards the Aboriginal population, particularly after another attack made by a band of Aboriginals resulted in the death of one of Whorouly’s stockmen. Writing his anonymous reminiscences for the Border Post in 1875, one old station hand recalled Mackay’s stockman, named Bill Thomas — a ticket-of-leave man, who had served as a bullock driver on two of Major Thomas Mitchell’s expeditions into the interior, including the Third Expedition during which Mitchell and his party killed seven Aborigines near Mount Dispersion. [19] According to this writer in the Border Post, Thomas ‘was a most diabolical fellow – a perfect tiger – who was determined to have his revenge on the natives, and, indeed, there were others amongst us that thirsted for satisfaction. Some advised poison, but Thomas met them with the quotation – “Whose sheddeth man’s blood, by blood shall his blood be shed”.’ [20] Thomas clearly escaped any form of repercussions for his actions, but when word got back to Governor Gipps that ‘acts of cruelty had been committed on the aborigines’ of the Ovens district, none could overlook rumours and suggestions regarding the actions of stockman Ben Reid (no relation to squatter David Reid), whose ‘conduct toward the aborigines was complained of by Robinson’ and who subsequently had his ticket-of-leave cancelled and was returned to Sydney. [21] Ben Reid was no doubt among those who, in squatter Joseph Docker’s words, was responsible for the ‘considerable amount of black men’s blood which has already been shed.’ Robinson’s chief complaint against him was that, ‘Reid has had several collisions with the natives, it is feared many have been of fatal character to the aborigines.’ [22]

***

This characteristic aspect of the early settlement of North East Victoria — it’s settlement in the main either by seasoned absentee pastoralists or by inexperienced young sons of the same, who were in turn supported by a crude if not wholly brutal convict labour force — ranks among the factors which combined to make it possible for the European invaders to kill large numbers of local Aboriginal peoples, and to keep the facts of the matter sufficiently secret from government authorities so that effectively nothing could or would be done to stop it.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that every convict labourer was blood-thirsty and wanted to destroy local Aboriginal people — indeed at least three local squatters Joseph Docker (‘Bontharambo’), Ben Barber (‘Barnawatha’) and for as long as he was there, William Brodribb (who held a station on the Broken River which became known as ‘The Junction’, [and who was no relation to the manager of ‘Myhree’]), were notable for the way in which they all employed local Aboriginal people as labourers in the very early days of ‘settlement’. [23] In the Autumn of 1840, George Augustus Robinson ruminated in his journal on why some stations suffered from what was commonly termed ‘depredations from the blacks,’ including substantial losses from having stock either speared or chased away; whereas other station holders suffered almost no losses of stock at all. ‘Mr Broadrib said yesterday that the blacks had speared more of Mr Faithful’s cattle, than of any other person. … There must be some cause for this’ he pondered. ‘Mr Christie lost one or 200 cattle, yet these people say they never allow blacks to come to their stations.’ Conversely, the stations which employed Aboriginal people, and allowed them to travel and camp on the land, had few problems. [24] All is suggestive of a ‘top down’ attitude being responsible for the treatment of Aborigines: that whereas every station employed a brutal and brutalised labour force, on some stations these convict labourers were encouraged by their employers to slaughter Aboriginal people; whereas on other stations they were encouraged to act towards them with tolerance. And the Aboriginal peoples responded accordingly.

References

[1] Concerning the Waywurru (Waveroo), Dhudhuroa, and so-called ‘Mogullumbidj’ peoples, the best works I have read on the nation-boundaries and naming for these Aboriginal peoples, which take into consideration all previous work on the North East area (E.M. Curr (1883), R.B. Smythe (1878), A. Howitt (1904), R.H. Matthews (1905), N. Tindale (1940, 1974), D. Barwick (1984, plus manuscript material produced shortly before her death in 1986, now held in the State Library Victoria), M.H. Fels (1996, 1997), S. Wesson (2000), et al), are by Dr Ian Clarke. Clark has written his papers with a knowledge of the various professional limitations associated with earlier works — those written especially prior to access to critical primary source materials such as the Journals and collected papers of George Augustus Robinson, the journals of William Thomas, and the private papers of Alfred Howitt.

Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal language areas in Northeast Victoria: ‘Mogullumbidj’ reconsidered.’ Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 81 Issue 2 (Nov 2010), 181-192.

Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22

Clark, Ian, ‘Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang languages and social groups in north-east Victoria – a reconstruction,’ Aboriginal History, 2009, VOL 33, pp.201-229.

[2] SIR GEORGE GIPPS TO LORD GLENELG. (Despatch No. 115, per ship Superb; acknowledged by Lord Glenelg, 21st December, 1838.) in: Australian Aborigines: Copies or extracts of despatches relative to the massacre of various Aborigines in Australia, in the year 1838, and respecting the trial of their murderers; compiled by the British Colonial Office, 19 August 1839.

[3] ‘YACKANDANDAH IN 1838. SOME REMINISCENCES. BY MR. GEORGE KINCHINGTON,’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 16 September, 1899, p.8.

[4] Reminiscences of David Reid: as given to J.C.H. Ogier (in Nov. 1905), who has set them down in the third person, type-written manuscript, p.21.

[5] Ian D Clark (ed), Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, issued in 6 parts, Heritage Matters, Melbourne, 1998-2000, this entry from Volume 1, entry for Friday 1 May 1840, p.273.

[6] James Dredge, Assistant Protector, Goulburn Protectorate, 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]. The diaries contain daily and weekly entries from 1817 to 1833 and 1839–1843. This entry: Friday 1 May 1840.

[7] Harry Stephenson, Cobungra Station and Other Mountain Stories, published for the Mountain Cattleman’s Association, Omeo, 1985, p.3.

[8] George Augustus Robinson, Vol 1, 2 May 1840, p.275.

[9] For information on Benjamin Warby’s father John Warby, see entry on the well-researched website called ‘Australian Royalty’.

[10] Alan Frost, Botany Bay — The Real Story, Black Ink, Melbourne, 2012, p.54.

[11] ‘DEATH OF A CENTENARIAN AT EDI.’ Euroa Advertiser, Friday 27 February 1903, p.3.

[12] On George Grey, see entry on the well-researched website called ‘Australian Royalty’.
On the voyage of the convict ship Britannia, see Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1959.

[13] John Conner, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788-1838, UNSW Press, 2012.

[14] Demarr, James, Adventures in Australia fifty years ago: being a record of an emigrant’s wanderings through the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland during the years 1839-1844, Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1893, p.132.

[15] George Augustus Robinson, op cit. Volume 1, p.273, 1 May 1840, also 7 May, p.280.

[16] George Augustus Robinson, ibid. Volume 1, p.276, 2 May 1840.

[17] James Dredge, op cit., diary entry 2 May 1840.

[18] George Augustus Robinson, op cit. Vol 1, p.276, 2 May 1840.

[19] D. W. A. Baker, ‘Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone (1792–1855)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mitchell-sir-thomas-livingstone-2463/text3297, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 12 January 2019.

[20] ‘The Blacks,’ Border Post, Albury, NSW, 7 August 1875, p.2.

[21] Copy of Despatch No. 90, Gipps to Lord John Russel, 9 April, 1841, in 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.106-7.

[22] Joseph Docker to Governor George Gipps, 31 December 1840; and Enclosure 2 in number 25, Report of George Augustus Robinson to Charles Joseph LaTrobe; in British Parliamentary Papers, ibid., p.108.

[23] For Brodribb, George Augustus Robinson, Vol 1, p.232, entry for Monday 20 April; for evidence of Aboriginal people working on Docker’s and Barber’s stations, see their submissions to the NSW Legislative Council’s Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, 1841.

[24] George Augustus Robinson, op. cit. Vol 1, entry for 9 May, 1840, p.283.

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!

How effective is the ‘Coolgardie safe’?

10 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Eldorado, Low tech, Uncategorized, Wangaratta

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Coolgardie safe, Eldorado Museum, meat safe

I’d read many positive testimonials in relation to the legendary pre-electric cold-store unit, the Coolgardie safe… but I still wondered how well did it really work? When curiosity finally got the better of me, the Eldorado Museum Association came to my aid with the genuine article.

Coolgardie safe, courtesy Eldorado Museum, Victoria

In my first post of 2017, I’m going to momentarily diverge from the 1850s gold rush. Meanwhile, I hear you asking, ‘What is the Coolgardie safe?’ The short answer is ‘a meat safe’ — but there’s more to it than the Coolgardie safe being a ventilated, vermin-proof box in which to store perishable food.

The Coolgardie safe was invented in the 1890s on the goldfields of Coolgardie, Western Australia, by Arthur McCormick. McCormick had observed that a wet bag placed over a bottle cooled its contents, and that if this bottle was placed in a breeze, the bag would dry out more quickly, but the bottle would get colder. What he was observing was the basic principle of heat transfer that occurs during the process of evaporation: that as it transforms from a liquid to gaseous state, water consumes energy in the form of heat, taken from its surroundings. [1]

Designed to take advantage of the cooling effects of heat transfer from evaporation, the Coolgardie safe was a common household item in Australia until the mid-twentieth century, initially vying with iceboxes until finally overtaken by kerosene and electrical fridges. I’d read many descriptions and testimonials regarding the Coolgardie safe, but I still wondered if it worked, and if so — how well?

I knew that the Eldorado Museum had one in its collection [2], which, until recently, had languished ‘out the back’ until local Howard Phillips gave it a fresh jacket of hessian so that it could go on display. Once on display, members of the Ross family from Wangaratta recognised it as a model that had been manufactured by their family business in Wangaratta (albeit more than half a century ago), and so they donated a set of brass name plates to attach to it. It was my good fortune that the Eldorado Museum Association agreed to let me borrow this safe for a living history trial.

Manufacturing plate on the Coolgardie safe at the Eldorado Museum.

This particular Coolgardie safe is of a common type: a rectangular metal frame, which supports hessian sides, wired on. It has a simple hinged door on the front, and one internal shelf. The top of the frame has a galvanised sheet-metal tray (ie: a reservoir), which is filled with water. Strips of flannel are hung from the tray to contact with the hessian sides, which keeps them damp through a process of capillary siphoning (wicking). When a breeze comes, it passes through the wet hessian and evaporates the water. This cools the air inside the safe, and in turn, cools the food stored inside. The drier the air is, the greater the rate of evaporation, and the cooler the safe. The feet of the safe sit in a tray of water (also on legs), which acts as a moat to keep ants at bay, and collect water dripping from the hessian. Sometimes these trays had a tap to drain the water, but this model has only a simple spout. There is also a central vent in the bottom of the safe which vents through a little chimney passing through the middle of the reservoir at the top — and I’ve seen other Coolgardies with this feature.

Another Coolgardie safe complete with a lid over the water reservoir. This safe has had wire mesh added at a later date (probably for decorative effect) where the hessian panels would have sat. (Photo swiped a long time ago from a seller on eBay!)

Day 1, 9 February 2017

I put the safe under my back verandah and filled the reservoir to the very top, which really kicked-off the wicking process: water could be seen wicking from the flannel down and across the hessian panels in a matter of seconds. Initially the strips of flannel I used were only half the width of each hessian panel. To increase the amount of water wicking through the hessian, I doubled the flannels until they were virtually equal to the hessian panels. This optimised the wicking, and the safe began dripping continually from the bottom, as water ran off. Immediately, I could see why it would be necessary to have a drip-tray — simply to conserve and recycle water. (Ideally you would find an economic balance between enough wicking to make the safe functional, while preventing too speedy a loss of water from the reservoir.)

The water reservoir at the top is filled, and strips of flannel are draped over the sides to contact with the hessian panels.

After the reservoir was filled to the brim and the sides were wet, at 12.56pm, it was 30.5ºC in the shade of the verandah and 28.6ºC inside the safe, rendering a difference of 1.9ºC in temperature. (The thermometer I used was highly sensitive and constantly went up and down as much as 0.2ºC, and what’s more it read different temperatures under different places around the verandah, so my readings are a little rough.) I continued to monitor the temperatures, with these results (contrasting the temperature under the verandah with the temperature inside the Coolgardie safe, showing the difference between the two):

1.23pm — 29.6ºC vs 28ºC = 1.6ºC
1.32pm — 29.2ºC vs 26.4ºC = 2.8ºC
2.15pm — 32.3ºC vs 29.6ºC = 2.7ºC
2.42pm — 28.9ºC vs 25.6ºC = 3.3ºC

Perhaps the temperature would have continued to drop, but I decided to add a large pedestal fan to see if this would increase the rate of evaporation, and thus decrease the temperature. The short answer is, yes, it did.

3pm — 31.4ºC vs 26.4ºC = 5ºC
3.22pm — 33.6ºC vs 28.5ºC = 5.1 (and this temperature steadily fell…)
3.39pm — temperature inside dropping to 25.2ºC
3.42pm — 32.6ºC vs 24.7ºC (and my guess is, still dropping) = 7.9ºC

So I could say that the Coolgardie safe, when wicking steadily, ran from a bit over 2.5ºC to 3ºC cooler than the outside temperature, and between 5ºC to perhaps as much as 8ºC cooler when there’s a decent (albeit artificial) breeze.

Frankly, I don’t consider these to be amazing results. However, this was all without the drip tray beneath the safe. The drip-tray that came with the safe was rusted-through, so I hadn’t used it; but now I was beginning to wonder whether the tray may have also provided some micro-climatic benefits.

This question is something I’ve decided to pursue on the ‘morrow. As I write this, I’m about the pull a beer, chilled to 4ºC, from my fridge.

Day 2, 10 February 2017

I didn’t get started until later in the day, and it was a scorcher, topping a bit over 39ºC! This time I put the drip tray under the Coolgardie safe, and filled both it and the reservoir at the top. I didn’t use the fan at all. The results speak for themselves:

At 3.15pm it was 39.1ºC degrees in the sun, 36.9ºC under the verandah, and immediately 31.4ºC in the Coolgardie. This dropped to 30.3ºC within the next ten minutes.

Here are some readings:

3.15pm — 36.9ºC vs 30.3ºC = 6.6ºC
3.45pm — 35ºC vs 26.1ºC = 8.9ºC
4pm — 34ºC vs 27.8ºC = 6.2ºC

Now I could say that when fully set up, the safe is at least 6ºC cooler and maybe as much as 8-9ºC cooler than the shade of the verandah. These are the best results I could achieve on a very, very hot day, without the aid of a fan. I admit this wasn’t the most scientific trial, and maybe there are other ways to achieve better results. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Thanks to my sponsors, the Eldorado Museum. This is the second living history trial in which I have been ‘enabled’ by members of the Eldorado Museum Association and other friends from Eldorado. The first trial was the manufacture and use of a replica gold cradle based on one held in the Museum’s collection. You can read about that here.

[1] In my history of the Coolgardie safe, you may recognise information swiped from the Powerhouse Museum and Museum of Victoria.
[2] Indeed, there are very few domestic household items from the mid to late nineteenth century that the Eldorado Museum doesn’t have in its collection!

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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!

How effective is the ‘Coolgardie safe’?