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Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Life on Spring Creek

Tag Archives: Diane Barwick

Who were the First People of the Broken River?

01 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Benalla, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alfred Howitt, Bitteruc, Broken River, Devil's River, Diane Barwick, Duearan, Dueran, George Augustus Robinson, Ian Clark, Neddy Wheeler, Pallanganmiddang, R.H. Mathews, Waywurru, Yowung-illum-ballak

The widespread modern-day convention is that the upper Broken River Valley is regarded as Taungurung country: more specifically, the Yirun-illum-balluk local group (‘clan’) of the Taungurung-speaking peoples. However, a fine-tooth analysis of the primary historical sources tells a different story about the Broken River Valley stretching from Benalla to the doorstep of Mansfield.


1024px-Mount_Buller_from_the_Howqua_Valley

Mount Buller, Māarāain in Taungurung language, as seen from the Howqua Valley. 

Preface: This post is long and largely a technical discussion concerning the historical location of Aboriginal groups in the Broken River Valley between Benalla and Mansfield, according to the key primary historical documents. Like all historical records, these documents present a highly fragmented version of the past; and considering that they were created by European colonisers, offer a culturally compromised account. Nevertheless, some of these records do attempt to record information as stated by Aboriginal people of the period, and as such, represent the best archival information we have in terms of recorded Aboriginal voices relating to the country of the upper Broken River Valley.

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

***

Allow me to reassure you, dear readers, that modern-day Mansfield always was and always will be the country of the Yowung-illum-ballak local group of the Taungurung-speaking peoples. I wish to state early in this blog post, that when you look at Mount Battery, the Paps, Mount Buller, or the Delatite River, you should know that you are firmly in the country of the Yowung-illum-ballak local group of the Taungurung-speaking peoples, of the Kulin ‘confederacy.’ The Yowung-illum-ballak whom Europeans once called the ‘Devil’s River’ people. However, it is the purpose of this blog post to demonstrate that, insofar as primary documentary historical evidence is concerned, historically, Taungurung lands do not appear to have extended further down the Broken River to Benalla.

Ever since the publication in 1904 of Alfred Howitt’s Native Tribes of South-East Australia, the Broken River Valley from Benalla to Mansfield, has been described as Taungurung country, and more specifically, as belonging to a local group (‘clan’) said to be located ‘above and below Benalla’ known as the ‘Yirun-illum-baluk’. [Howitt, 1904, p.71] The same group is mapped in American anthropologist Daniel Sutherland Davidson’s book  A preliminary register of Australian tribes and hordes [1938], as extending as far north as the Ovens River Valley.

This idea of the existence of the Yirun-illum-baluk at Benalla was further solidified when the late, great anthropologist Diane Barwick listed this local group in her landmark paper ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904’ [Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984] as the ‘Yeerun-illum-balluk’ which she recorded, quoting from Howitt’s book, as ‘Broken River above and below Benalla’ and, quoting from Howitt’s field notes, as ‘by [sic] swamp below Benalla,’ adding ‘site of April 1838 “Faithfull Massacre”.’ [Barwick, 1984, p.128] Ian Clark reiterates this information in his book Aboriginal languages and clans: an historical atlas of western and central Victoria, 1800-1900 (1990), although as his source material, he quotes Howitt, Davidson and Barwick. [Clark, 1990, p.375]

Note the chain of evidence here: Clark cited Barwick and Howitt, and Barwick cited Howitt. Howitt is the key source under scrutiny.

I will openly admit that for several years, I have just trusted that Barwick’s analysis was correct, principally because she gets so much else right. However, her reference material in ‘Mapping the Past’ is not fully footnoted (she only uses superscript letters to demonstrate the authors of materials from which she has sourced information, but nothing more). This has made checking her references challenging. Nevertheless, Barwick did also state clearly in the same work that, ‘The clan lists which follow are merely a reconstruction from available evidence, offered as a gloss or “crib” for other scholars searching the archival evidence, in the hope that further work will expand and correct my attempt at mapping the past.’ [Barwick, 1984, p.113] On this basis, I hope that it is with Barwick’s blessing that I am about to ‘expand and correct’ a small part of her work (and in turn, my own, considering that I have uncritically referenced her material before).

Since Barwick wrote ‘Mapping the Past’, two important developments have occurred in terms of access to relevant primary historical documentary materials. Firstly, Ian Clark transcribed the Journals of the George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Port Phillip District in full, so that people like myself could have the luxury of repeatedly pouring over and pondering their contents. Secondly, the Howitt and Fison’s Archive project (a collaborative project which historian Amanda Lourie has had a major hand in conducting), has put virtually all of anthropologist Alfred Howitt’s hand written notebooks and documents (containing the notes which formed the basis of his book Native-Tribes of South East Australia) on-line, where they too have been, for the most part, transcribed. It would be an understatement to say that I am appreciative of these efforts, and it is on the basis of these developments that I am able to make this small challenge to the status quo.

My issue with Barwick’s placement of the Yirun-illum-baluk at Benalla can be summarised as: (a) the paucity of primary evidence which can positively place this clan at Benalla, and (b) the existence of contradictory evidence.

Firstly, to tackle the the paucity of primary evidence which can positively place the Yirun-illum-baluk local group [clan] at Benalla: upon reconstructing Barwick’s footnotes based on her statement of source materials, it is possible to see that her references to Alfred Howitt’s writings can be traced back to one single locative reference to the Yirun-illum-baluk in his original notes, comprising an original interview with Woiwurrung elder William Barak. This is that the Yirun-illum-baluk were located at ‘Big swamp, below Benalla’. The same notebook contains other notes about the extent of the Kulin world mentioning Benalla, but notably also including mention of known Pangerang [Yorta Yorta] lands at Echuca, suggesting Barak was broadly discussing a sphere of Kulin influence rather than strictly describing the boundaries of the Kulin world. [Alfred Howitt notebook XM759, held by Museums Victoria]

I will reiterate: the only direct evidence I can find that the Yirun-illum-baluk / Yeerun-illum-balluk were located anywhere near Benalla comes from Howitt’s original interview notes with Barak, and that simply says ‘Big swamp Below Benalla Yeerŭn illŭm ballŭk’.

When reading Howitt’s manuscript materials (field notes and draft version of text), in which he writes field notes, and then gradually refines his notes in order to work them into book form, it is easy to see how the Yeerŭm illŭm ballŭk, which in the earliest notebook is listed as ‘below Benalla’; is changed in a later notebook [Alfred Howitt notebook XM690, held by the Museum of Victoria] to the ‘Yiran-ilum-balluk of Goulburn River, Seymour to Benalla;’ to finally end up  in the 1904 book being described as being located at ‘Broken River above and below Benalla.’ (The spelling changes too, but this does not matter.) In other words, Howitt’s final published location of Yirun-illum-baluk does not accord well with his earlier interview notes, seemingly written when he was in direct conversation with William Barak. Indeed it very much appears that he has migrated the Yiran-ilum-balluk further north, so that they are no longer somewhere ‘below Benalla’ but ‘above and below Benalla.’ That the Yiran-ilum-balluk are located at Benalla appears to be his later interpolation.

Secondly, to tackle the existence of contradictory evidence: this can be found in two sources: the 1840s journal entries of George Augustus Robinson written in situ, and finally, in the interview notes of ethnographer R.H. Matthews, obviously written sometime after he had a discussion with Dhudhuroa man Neddy Wheeler. [MS 8006, National Library]

Evidence from the journals of George Augustus Robinson, 1840

The only known evidence written by someone who travelled through the Broken River Valley during the early European ‘settlement’ period — a written record in which specific named Aboriginal people and Aboriginal groups are attached to specific geographical locations — exists in the journals of the Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Port Phillip District, George Augustus Robinson. In April 1840, Robinson rode horseback along the east bank of the Broken River from what is now Benalla to the area of Castle Hill (ie: Moorngag area), visiting the ‘run’ of squatter William Broadribb, with its sheep and cattle stations dotted along the river. In May 1840, he also rode along the length of the west bank of the Broken River from what is now modern-day Benalla to modern-day Mansfield, visiting McKellar’s Lima run, Stuckey’s run (later known as Barjarg), and the conglomerate of runs then held by the Scottish syndicate ‘Hunter and Watson’. On this journey, he was accompanied by Assistant Protector James Dredge (of the Goulburn River Aboriginal Protectorate station at Mitchellstown).

Not only were Robinson’s notes written in situ, but they were written decades earlier than those by Alfred Howitt.

Broken River east bank, Benalla to Moorngag area

On the 20 April 1840, Robinson writes in his journal: ‘Bal.lin.go.yallum at Brodrib’s. … Rode on to Broadrib’s first sheep station two miles from the barracks [ie: Benalla Police Barracks]. Left this keeping to the east side of the river as it is called or rather a chain of ponds. At five miles from the last hut reached Brodrib’s head station… I was informed Mr Brodrib was at was the upper station, six miles, I resolved to ride on, particularly as I was informed several natives were there assisting in branding the cattle and I wished to be a spectator and also to see the country. East of the cattle station found the three Brodrib brothers with the cattle in one of the best built stockyards I have ever seen’.

This means that the squatter William Brodribb’s sheep station was two miles [3.5km] from Benalla, and the head station was 7 miles [approx. 11km] from the Benalla Police Barracks, on the east side of the Broken River. (This location is roughly marked by the prominent geographical feature of Mount Pleasant to the south. Interestingly, Robinson records the name of this location as ‘Pen.der.re’.) The cattle station is 13 miles [21km] from Benalla, roughly near Castle Hill Road.

At the cattle station, Robinson records that he communicates with eight Aboriginal men working for Brodribb. Six named men are said by Robinson to be ‘Worile.lum blacks’, one is Pangerang [which he writes as ‘Pingerine,’ ie: Yorta Yorta] and one is named ‘Dart.dark, 25 [years old]. This man is a Balling.yallum, belong to the Ovens River tribe at Broadrib’s.‘

This group of men was quite clearly a mixed group of station workers, only one or more of whom can be assumed to be ‘on country’, while the rest are outside of their own country. However, it is clear from his descriptions that the ‘Balling.yallum’ local group (‘clan’) belong to the Ovens River tribe at Brodribb’s station. Robinson also later records the presence of two more people — a boy from a Snowy Mountains ‘tribe’ and ‘Also a youth, 17 … belonging to the Ovens River tribe.’

Robinson comments that he has ascertained that ‘these natives belong or were parts of three tribes:’
‘1. The Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section* of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Broadribb (queri);
2. The Buth.er.rer.bul.luc, a section of the Tar.doon.gerong [ie: a Taungurung local group whose country is known to be located further south]
3. The Wor.rile.lum, a large tribe inhabiting the country down the Goulburn River and by the Murry, east side;
4. And the Pine.gar.rines, a large tribe inhabiting the country on the south and south west banks of the Murry.’

[*’Section’ is Robinson’s term for local group or ‘clan’.]

By 25 April 1840, Robinson is mulling over what he has learned to date about the local Aboriginal people of North East Victoria, and records in his diary:

‘Wee.er.roo; Way.you.roo: the name of the tribe at Brodrib’s: query?’

Quite clearly Robinson has the impression that the Aboriginal people at William Brodribb’s station on the Broken River at and above Benalla might be Waywurru people, that they are an Ovens River-based tribe, but are also the tribe at Broadribb’s run on the Broken River, but he remains unsure and notes that he should ‘query’ some aspect/s of fact.

Broken River west bank, Benalla to Mansfield area

Having travelled up to Wodonga, Robinson returns to Benalla and the upper Broken River in May, on his journey back to Melbourne. This time, he travels from Benalla mostly along the west bank of the Broken River, as far as modern day Mansfield.

On the 9 May 1840, Robinson visits squatter William McKellar, who is located ‘about 14 miles from the police barracks… on the main branch of the Broken River’. (This site is mapped by McKellar Road and what remains to this day as ‘Lima Station’.) From here, Robinson continues to travel further up the river, and on 10 May 1840, he arrives at Peter Stuckey Junior’s station (at what is now Barjarg station), where he stays the night.

On 11 May 1840, he travels further up the Broken River until he comes to the series of runs held by the Scottish company ‘Hunter and Watson’. Robinson says he can see Mount Battery in the near distance, and farther off, the mountains of ‘Mar.rine’ [Mount Buller] and ‘War.rine.but’ [Mount Timbertop]. He notes that ‘On a branch of the Broken River Hunter and Watson have their cattle station.’ He and Dredge meet the superintendent of this cattle run, Mr Young, and then ‘proceeded with Mr Young to Mt Battery, the head sheep station, which was six miles.’ [9.5km]

Three ‘black women’ are at the Mount Battery sheep station when they arrive. Writes Robinson, ‘These women are:
a) 1. Tore.ren.gor.oke, 25, 2. Under.mil.parng.go.nic.tare.rap, alias Betty, a Pal.len.go.il.lum, their country is near the cattle station at Broken River.
b) Tal.lan, 16 alias Mary Ann, a War.ing.il.lum gorroke. Warring: name of the big water river, the Goulburn is called Warrin.
c) Pil.lug.ger.nite, 30, a Yare.rer.nil.lum.

So once again we have a mixed group of women, two of whom (‘Betty’ and ‘Mary Ann’) carry the Taungurung feminine suffix ‘goroke’; and two of whom (the War.ing.il.lum women Mary Ann, and the Yare.rer.nil.lum woman) are certainly Taungurung, as Robinson notes their local groups — known Taungurung ‘clans’. This is to be expected, as Mount Battery is Taungurung country. Even a non-Taungurung woman like Betty might describe herself in Taungurung terms while on this country, hence her use of the suffix ‘goroke’, even though her natal local group (clan) is Pal.len.go.il.lum.

Critically, the woman ‘Under.mil.parng.go.nic.tare.rap, alias Betty,’ is from the ‘Pal.len.go.il.lum’ local group (clan), and Robinson says ‘their country is near the cattle station at Broken River.’ Robinson has only just come from Hunter and Watson’s cattle station on the Broken River, and we can safely assume this is the cattle station to which he is referring. This cattle station has been already described as being six miles (9.5km) from the Mount Battery sheep station.

Robinson re-meets these women plus another two the following day, on 12 May 1840, when he also meets ‘the Chief of the Yow.eng.illum tribe, Bit.er.ruc, a fine good natured old man, 50, called by the whites after the hill, Bay.er.lite’ and a number of other Yowung-illum-ballak local group men, including some of Bitteruc’s sons. What follows is an extraordinary statement by Bitteruc regarding the country of the Yowung-illum-ballak local group, which includes ‘Bayolite’ (Mount Battery), the Paps and the Delatite River. Robinson records: ‘Bit.ter.uc assured me it was his country and in his own language said good country my country.’ Critcally Robinson also adds ‘Bit.ter.ruc informed me that the Pal.len.go.il.lum country was at or by the cattle station, at least so I understood him.’

This is the second time an Aboriginal person appears to have told Robinson that Pallengoillum country is at or near Hunter and Watson’s cattle station. This station, located roughly six miles from Mt Battery on the Broken River, is clearly marked on a map of Hunter and Watson’s holdings, which was sketched by Robert Russel in 1846. It is the head station of their ‘Deuaran run’, where Blue Range Creek flows into the Broken River, which today is the homestead of Dueran Station.

Hunter and Watson'sRobert Russell’s 1846 map of Hunter and Watson’s station illustrates the Duearan station on the east bank of the Broken River.

tempImageMtrSbZThe front gate of Dueran station today, with the Broken River flats in the background.

Later still, on 1 June 1840, Robinson is told by Taungurung people about the  ‘Pal.lum.gy.mit.um: at Dow.koy.yong; to the NE of Mt Battery’. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a present-day Dowkoyong, although there is a Cambatong in the area (parish and road name). North-east of Mount Battery is the location of present-day town of Barwite, and further in that same direction in the ranges, lies the upper reaches of the King Valley.  So it would seem that ‘Dow.koy.ong’ is either at Barwite, Tolmie, a location in the upper King Valley, or even Cambatong.

By 10 December of that year, Robinson was writing of an Aboriginal who had been taken prisoner and sent to Melbourne, whom he recorded as ‘Jag.ger.rog.rar, conferred name Harlequin, belonging to the Pal.len.go.il.lum section of the Wavaroo tribe, country between the Broken River and the Hume [ie: Murray]…. locality, at Pan.der.ram.bo.go, Docker’s Plains’. In other words, Robinson had formed a firm idea in his mind of the extent of Waywurru country, and that it ran from the Broken River to the Murray.

In summary, in Robinson’s journals we find evidence to strongly suggest that, at the very least, the east side of the Broken River Valley belonged to a local group of the Waywurru people, called the Pal.len.go.il.lum or Bal.lin.go.yal.lum. (Linguistically, ‘P’ and ‘B’ actually represent the same sound in this context). In these instances, the name of this local group bears the Taungurung (and more broadly Kulin) suffix denoting a local area group, ‘—illum’. When we remove the Taungurung suffix, and replace it with the north east Victorian alpine suffix also denoting a local area group, ‘—mittung’, it becomes ‘Pallengomittung’. This is what Robinson is attempting to render when he wrote Pal.lum.gy.mit.um. Today, linguists commonly write this as Pallangan-middang.

Screen Shot 2020-10-01 at 3.44.01 am

A map of the Upper Broken River Valley. Red stars denote places which Robinson thought were areas of Pallangan-middang (broadly speaking, Waywurru) country. Blue stars denote areas stated by Yowung-illum-ballak ‘chief’ Bitteruc as being ‘his country,’ which included the Delatite River Valley.

Corroboration from the Dhudhuroa man Neddy Wheeler

Significantly, there is corroborating evidence to suggest that Robinson’s acquired knowledge — that the Broken River country through which he travelled belonged to the Pallanganmiddang local group of the Waywurru or ‘Ovens River’ people — is correct. This comes from Aboriginal man Neddy Wheeler, who told ethnographer R. H. Mathews that the people in the Broken River Valley spoke the same language as those in the Ovens River Valley; a language which he called ‘Minjambuta’.

As I explained in my recent paper Mogullumbidj: First People of Mount Buffalo (Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 91, Number 1, June 2020):

‘Just after the turn of the century, amateur ethnographer R.H. Mathews interviewed a Djinning-mittang man from the lower Mitta Mitta valley, Neddy Wheeler, who said that his people spoke Dhudhuroa, and that surrounding peoples south of the Murray River spoke …  ‘Minyambuta’. According to Mathews, Minyambuta was spoken in the Ovens River Valley from Wangaratta to Bright, to Beechworth, Mount Buffalo, and even in Benalla and the Broken River Valley.’ (Durrant, 2020, p.26)

Scholars Ian Clark and Diane Barwick have both noted the strong geographical overlap of Neddy Wheeler’s outline of ‘Minjambuta’ language with what is otherwise called by linguists ‘Pallanganmiddang’ [ie: Waywurru] language, and they have both suggested that Minjambuta was a synonym (or exonym) for Waywurru. (Ian Clark, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of “Waveru” reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22) However, when writing ‘Mogullumbidj: First People of Mount Buffalo’, I could not understand why, if Minjambuta and Waywurru language were one and the same, Neddy Wheeler had told R. H. Matthews that Minjambuta was spoken in the Broken River Valley — an area which one hundred years of scholarship has said was Taungurung-speaking country. Instead, I thought that the likely explanation was that ‘Minjambuta’ was a ‘language strategy’ which existed on the margins of country, allowing people of different languages to communicate.

However, when one examines the evidence for Pallanganmiddang local group country including the Broken River Valley from Benalla to just north of Mansfield, then Neddy Wheeler’s description of the extent of ‘Minjambuta’ language as including the Broken River and Benalla makes perfect sense. In essence, once the Broken River Valley is viewed as Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru) country, Neddy Wheeler’s description of the geographical extent of Minjambuta matches Waywurru country very well indeed.

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When one reads Howitt’s original interview notes with William Barak, Barak appears to state that Yirun-illum-baluk country is ‘Below Benalla.’ Perhaps if Howitt hadn’t amended this to ‘above and below Benalla’ in 1904, we would have thought differently about Aboriginal Benalla all these years. If Howitt had had even one Aboriginal informant from the Benalla or Wangaratta area, he may have written something different. However, I have little doubt that if scholars of an earlier time had the source materials in front of them that I do today, they too would have painted a different picture: one that explains how the Aboriginal Kings of Benalla were not Taungurung, but were in fact Waywurru.

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Additional note 15 February, 2021: since writing this post, I have made additional discoveries pertinent to the content offered here. This new information does not change the overall position of this post with regards Waywurru occupying at least the eastern bank of the Broken River, but it may add to the complexity of this picture. I will endeavour to write about it in the near future.

If you have any other thoughts on this, or any other information which you think can contribute critically to this analysis, comments and constructive criticisms are welcome.

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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!

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!

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