BUSH ENVIRONMENTS ’05 LaTrobe University, Bendigo

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER - COLONIAL EUROPEAN VS. ABORIGINAL PERCEPTIONSOF LAND USE AT THE TIME OF FIRST CONTACT (1830s-1850s)

This study looks at the time frame which starts with the first contact of Aborigines with the explorers, the squatters who followed them and the time of operation of the Aboriginal Protectorate (1838-1850) assigned to protect the interests of Aborigines in the Loddon District. Both Aboriginal language groups in this study (the Djadja Wurrung and Latji-Latji/Wergaia) fall within the Loddon District.

The aim of this paper is not to focus on the intricacies of land use by the Aborigines and Europeans around the time of first contact. Rather, I hope to understand more about the differing perceptions of land use and look at the way each group dealt with the huge change that was about to take place. It is a period in Australia’s colonial history that is difficult to face in that much of what occurred has resulted in devastation the land.

It is a difficult topic to not express an opinion about, much of the material being highly emotive. A sympathetic attitude has been taken towards the Aboriginal population, the group most devastated by the arrival of Europeans to the region.The conflicting perceptions are best outlined now.

ABORIGINAL PERCEPTIONS - DREAMING AND A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LAND

Everything under creation is represented in the soil and in the stars. Everything has two witnesses, one on earth and one in the sky… Everything is represented in the ground and in the sky.

Mowaljarlai & Malnic (1993) cited in Morieson (1996)

It is this basic tenet that underpins Aboriginal understanding of their place in the world. The land is inseparable from self in this indigenous way of knowing. It is a way of knowing developed over thousands of generations and tens of thousands of years of dreaming stories, passed on orally from one generation to the next.

EUROPEAN COLONIAL PERCEPTIONS

With the first European boats in Australia, came colonial attitudes and aspirations:

If it wasn’t the landowning glory boys seeking larger and larger stretches of land on which to graze their growing herds of cattle, it was the explorers looking forlornly across the flat semi-desert hoping to find new lands to conquer.

Bruce Elder from Blood on the Wattle (2003: 64)

From most reports, the frontier was a brutal place. The gold rush in 1851 changed the face of Victoria forever. Prior to this the squatters first arrived on the heels of the early explorers in the mid-1830s. Cited in Attwood (1999:13), frontier historian M.F. Christie paints this picture:

Pastoralism… required huge stretches of land, the same land that was at the heart of aboriginal society. The squatters’ sheep and cattle ate up the pastures on which the native game fed, and demolished the yams and mirr-n’yong roots which traditionally served as a staple in the Aboriginal diet… in rapidly settled areas, eeling spots, rivers, traditional camping places and sacred sites were fenced off and the Aborigines forbidden entry. In the interior, waterholes that had previously provided fish, duck and eels were spoiled by sheep or closely guarded by hutkeepers.

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Aboriginal campsites, chosen for the availability of water and seasonal food supplies, were taken over by squatters, who were attracted by the same advantages… Wherever the white man went, the native game was eaten out by sheep or shot for sport. Deprived of their former food sources, the Aborigines either starved… or obtained food in some way or other from the whites.

THE PROTECTORATE

Figure 1: The Loddon Protectorate covered the northwest of this map, including the three adjoining language groups of this study, the Djadja Wurrung, Ladji-Ladji and Wergaia. From Clark, 1996.

When the Port Phillip district (now Victoria) was first settled in the mid-1830s, “humanitarianism was at the height of influence upon British imperial and colonial government” (Attwood, 1999: 23).

Life on the frontier though, was as tough as ever. In the initial years after first contact in the region, deaths and massacres of aborigines were being reported, and many were not. Much of the conflict between squatters and Aborigines accused of sheep stealing, raiding of food supplies and hunting and gathering on pastoral runs. However as Attwood (1999:14) points out “perhaps the most common cause of conflict… was the inevitable clash between two very different economic systems”. Much of the historical knowledge of these events is unclear, imperfect or unreported.

In response to the growing awareness of “the devastating impact on indigenous peoples in colonies… where violence against Aborigines has been openly sanctioned by the government, and introduced diseases were cutting a swathe through Aboriginal nations”, a Protectorate was established with the general aim of “protecting the rights and privileges of Aborigines as British subjects”. The Protectorate consisting of a Chief Protector and four assistants had two main tasks. The first was to protect them from ‘encroachment on their property, and from acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice” and second, a more long term objective to civilise them through encouragement to “settle, teaching them agriculture and the like, and converting them to Christianity” (Attwood, 1999: 23).

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The task of protecting the aborigines in the northwest or Loddon District fell to Edward Stone Parker, an English appointee, with “no experience of local Aborigines or the colonial frontier”. (1999:25)

Parker started his appointment in 1839.With little understanding of the local Aboriginal tribal boundaries, their semi-nomadic lifestyle and the fact that the Aboriginal people “consisted in small hordes”, Parker quickly formed the opinion that the best way to manage aboriginal affairs was to form some sort of “fixed station to which [they] may invite and bring the Aborigines” (1999:25). Even by this time, the scarcity of traditional food had forced many Aboriginal groups to go “to pastoralists’ outstations where they got food either by begging and prostitution or else ‘by force’”(1999:25).

By 1840, the stations had been approved and a site was eventually chosen near Mt Franklin on Jim Crow Creek. It became known as the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford, or Lalgambook by the Djadja Wurrung.

As the station was built on Djadja Wurrung land, many accompanied Parker there. Not surprisingly, the station was not popular with the nearby pastoralists, as they saw it was threatening to their interests. Parkers initial was for food and medical assistance, both of which were in dire need among the Aborigines at this time. The station, which remained in operation until 1850, was well frequented by the Djadja Wurrung. However very few of them remained for any period of time, coming and going depending on seasonal changes, the need for food and availability of work from the local squatters.

The Aborigines’ approach to the station was a pragmatic one. They sought to maintain their cultural world by adapting European things to their own ends.

Attwood (1999:28)

This frustrated Parker no end as they resisted his missionary endeavours. The concept of the station being a central base for all groups in the Loddon District was unsuccessful. Not only did the Djadja Wurrung consider it “their place”, but “disparate Aboriginal nations were unprepared to congregate at a central Aboriginal station” (Attwood, 1999:30). After a decade in which some of the Djadja Wurrung had survived by working for squatters, but many had preferred to survive by continuing the gather and hunt traditional foods. Due to the ever increasing number and size of pastoral leases in the region, this had to be “supplemented by begging, prostitution and petty-theft” (1999:33).

By the end of 1849, an assessment of the Protectorate “concluded that the scheme had ‘totally failed in its object’ and subsequently recommended its abolition.” (1999:37). It should be noted at this time that the station was to serve the needs of Aborigines included the Latji-Latji clan from the Mallee, the other group of interest in this study.

THE CENTRAL VICTORIA REGION

“Much of the story of the Dja Dja Wurrung during the 1840s is a story of their relationship with Parker and this protectorate station” (Attwood,1999:25)

LANGUAGE GROUPDja Dja Wurrung are made up of made up of 16 tribes. Their territory can be seen in the language areas map (Figure 1).

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“Literally the word Djadja Wurrung defines both the name of the people and the language they spoke… djadja meaning (yes) and wurrung (speech) meaning literally ‘the people who say yes’”. (Tully, 1997:1)“The Dja Dja Wurrung were on friendly terms with clans to the north, south and west” (Attwood, 1999: 3). Thus it can be assumed that relations between the Djadja Wurrung and Latji-Latji were friendly. The same cannot be said for their easterly neighbours, the Daung Wurrung, who were sworn enemies. The Daung Wurrung were responsible for frequent raids on Djadja Wurrung territory and even large scale warfare took place (1999: 3).

FIRST CONTACTNot long after the first white explorer in the area, Major Mitchell in 1836, were

the squatters and pastoralists, who brought large with them large flocks of sheep. The immediate impact of this was that kangaroo and emus had to compete for food with the flocks in the open grasslands. The sheep also ate and destroyed the murrnong (yam daisy) which was one of the main aboriginal food sources. (Tully, 1997:6 & Attwood, 2003:4)

Interestingly, the devastating impacts of European arrival in Australia had been felt 40 years earlier by the arrival in Central Victoria of a small pox epidemic. This had been spread tribe to tribe, down from Sydney. So severe was this epidemic it is thought that more than two-thirds of the Djadja Wurrung were already dead by the time Major Mitchell arrived. It was incorporated into their myths, one account being that a large snake, Mindye (a large mythical snake that possessed great evil powers) blew magic dust over the Djadja Wurrung people to punish them for being bad. This resulted in scale-like sores (Tully, 1997:6 & Attwood, 1999:4). Wit the arrival of the squatters came a new wave of threats, “the late 1830s and the 1840s saw many deaths attributed to tuberculosis, syphilis, shooting, alcohol and poisoning” (Tully, 1997:6) or somewhat more scathingly “deliberate homicide, English justice & introduced disease” (Morieson, 1996:7).

In simple terms, the main stakeholders prior to 1850 could be grouped broadly into the following: squatters and pastoralists, the Aboriginal Protectorate and the Aboriginal people of the region.

After 1850, with the advent of the gold rush in Central Victoria, and the abolition of the Protectorate Station the situation changed dramatically. With the dramatic influx of miners, and many white men deserted pastoral runs to go to the goldfields, work was more plentiful for the Aborigines on these stations. On the down side was the fact that tens of thousands of people arrived, tearing down trees, turning old Djadja Wurrung campsites along streams into alluvial sites. Wildlife was killed or fled, plants were trampled and sacred sites violated (Attwood 1999:37). With all the bush inns and grog shanties springing up across the diggings, alcoholism became rife, with Aboriginal people often trading their meagre cash earnings for alcohol. Drunkenness became commonplace and deaths more frequent due to accidents and fights (1999:38). Mortality rates increased dramatically during the gold rush years.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ABORIGINES AND SETTLERSThe one constant that shaped relations was that above all else, it was “the

pastoralists desire to take up and secure good land” (Attwood, 1999:6). It has been noted that in early relations, aboriginal people accepted as equals the pastoralists when they first arrived on the land “as long as the newcomers respected the land, especially its sacred sites” (1999:6). As the Aboriginal people believed this was their land, there was very little chance of relations not being strained.

In the traditional way, these offers were made on the premise that the pastoralists understood or were willing to “accept their kinship rules of sharing and reciprocity” (1999:6). Interestingly though, even in these early days of white settlement, it is unlikely that the Djadja Wurrung people would not have heard “the word which passed along the Aboriginal communication lines (which) told of the < ASSIGNMENT TWO - STORY AND EXPERIENCE>

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invasion, the encroachment on traditional lands, the skirmishes and the massacres” (Elder, 2003: 64).

And this is exactly what happened. Starting in 1837 through to the end of the 1830s, the most valuable areas of the Loddon District (and as such a considerable portion of Djadja Wurrung country) had been taken up by sheep and cattle runs. As Parker commented (cited by Atwood 1999:5):

The very spots most valuable to the Aborigines for their productiveness - the creeks, water courses and rivers - are the first to be occupied.

The Djadja Wurrung were driven off their land, often forcibly, leading to conflict. Much of the killing in these days went unreported. Disease continued to wreak havoc, and many Djadja Wurrung resorted to begging and prostitution. This trend continued until the late 1840s when pastoral leases had taken up the remaining Djadja Wurrung land. When the gold rush began in 1851, the situation only intensified (Atwood 1999:5).

SIGNIFICANCE OF MT ALEXANDERJim Remedio (in Caldwell, R., Murray, K. (1993:68)) talks about Mt Alexander as an important Aboriginal site. It has cultural significance to all Victorian Aborigines, being a men’s initiation site. As such, it has both ceremonial and religious significance. Young boys were sent there and turned into men, by knocking out teeth as part of their initiation. The Aboriginal name for Mt Alexander is Leanganook. He also talks briefly about one ‘celebrated’ massacre close to Mt Alexander, Aborigines being accused of stealing sheep by a local squatter, Munro. The fact that this was such a sacred site would have made the slaughter all that much more devastating.

Highly respected local Aboriginal elder Brien Nelson is Parks Victoria’s Indigenous Team Leader for Central Victoria. He talked to students from the 2004 Bush class at Mt Alexander. He pointedly talked about Aboriginal people having respect for the traditions of other groups and clans: ‘It is disrespectful to talk about business that is not your own.’ While not directly stated, it was clearly implied that this sentiment extended beyond aboriginal clan boundaries and was equally (if not more) applicable to non-aboriginal people.

THE MALLEE REGIONLANGUAGE GROUP - Latji-Latji and Wergaia (see Figure 1)Both Latji-Latji and Wergaia are derived from a distinctive word for ‘no’ (Parker, 1996:16-18). The Latji-Latji and Wergaia groups shared 83% common vocabulary.

FIRST CONTACTThe first white man to see the Mallee was Charles Sturt in 1830 and Mitchell several years later. Both were repelled from travelling further up the Murray floodplain by the dense vegetation. Perceptions of the Mallee in the early days were of it being a “horrible region”, “a scrubby waste” - a generally inhospitable place, Mitchell referred to it as “one of the most barren regions of the world”. (Ross, 1986:5)

It was not until 1841 that the first attempt was made by the Protectorate to make contact with the Aboriginal people of the Mallee. Parker never visited the Mallee and so provided no first hand account of the aborigines in the far north west of the state even though this comprised a large portion of his protectorate area. His first attempts to contact those in the North West were made by aboriginal scouts from the area around his Aboriginal Station at Franklinford (Ross, 1996:6).

Anne Ross, who in 1986 prepared a brief of Aboriginal land use in the Mallee of NW Victoria for the Land Conservation Council of Victoria, concluded after her study that “because Europeans regarded the area as inhospitable, it was assumed that the

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Aborigines must have also found it inhospitable and thereby uninhabitable”. (Ross, 1986:7)

Although Aboriginal people of the region would have known about the impending arrival of whites through communication between tribes, first contact was not made until many years after it had been in other areas of Victoria. Of that contact, little is known, Ross’ study (1986:8) revealing that “it would seem that no first hand accounts of traditional life of the Mallee Aborigines have survived today”. It appears that that Latji-Latji occupied a large area south of the Murray River extending into the Hattah lakes systems and some of the other lakes further inland like Lake Raak. The closest first hand records come to describing contact with Mallee Aborigines is explorers through the 1840s, 50s and 60s seeing the smokes from “what were presumed to be Aboriginal fires” (1986:6).

Parker’s reluctance to travel within his Protectorate was frowned upon. It was his expectation that the Aborigines in his “care” (of the Loddon Protectorate) come to him at Franklinford. The Chief Protector, G.W. Robinson, who suggested that “since the Aborigines of the Murray and the Mallee rarely came to Franklinford, Parker should journey to the Mallee himself” (Ross, 1996:7), a request he never complied with. Robinson tried to visit the Mallee himself in 1845, but was halted by the Mallee scrub, just as the explorers had before him. Settlement in the Mallee was much slower than in other more habitable parts of the state. As in Central Victoria, the main stakeholders in the region were pastoralists although they moved much more slowly to take up this “scrubby waste”.

However, just as had happened in other regions around the state in the 1830s and 1840s:

“By the mid-1850s the rough justice of the native people came… In a series of confrontations, which they conveniently failed to report, the native police killed dozens of aboriginal people…Like so much of the killing on the frontiers, it was never reported. Like so much casual slaughter, in a few generations it faded from white memory.”

(Elder, 2003: 72)

The prime country along the banks of the Murray River was taken up by pastoral leases. After the Franklinford Protectorate Station was closed down in 1850, it would appear that little government assistance was offered to the Aborigines of this region. “An aboriginal mission was established at Gayfield in 1874… its northern boundary (somewhere near the present northern border of the Murray/Kulkyne National Park)”.

RELATIONS BETWEEN ABORIGINES IN THE TWO REGIONS

In terms of relations between the two groups, in language studies documented by Ian Clark (1996:16-19) the Latji-Latji and Djadja Wurrung clans share 63% of the same vocabulary, suggesting close and friendly relations between the two groups.

AUSTRALIAN ZODIACIt is not at all surprising that the clan considered the experts in reading the skies came from the Mallee, an area renowned for its flat terrain and clear skies.The Australian Aboriginal zodiac was brought to light by an in-depth study done by John Morieson of the Boorong Balug clan of Lake Tyrell of the Wergaia language group, in the northwest of Victoria. Stories about these stars and constellations, which can only be seen at certain times of the year, were created. Morieson believes that the Boorong zodiac acted like “a giant textbook in the sky, helping to regulate gender roles such as hunting and gathering and parental roles such as child rearing, fidelity and healthy genealogy” (Healy, 1998). All of the constellations represent different native birds, animals and people.< ASSIGNMENT TWO - STORY AND EXPERIENCE>

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Both the Latji-Latji and Djadja Wurrung language groups share many common words with the Boorong who consider themselves to be the experts. Victorian grazier, William Stanbridge, referred to first-hand accounts from Boorong elders who identified 30 celestial names for stars and constellations used by tribal aborigines (Healy, 1998). Stanbridge noted that these names were understood by the Djadja Wurrung ((Tully, 1997:14)

To the Djadja Wurrung, the main stars and constellations were the resting places of the creators of the world. The Dreamtime stories state that they were once on the earth and transferred to the cosmos.”

(Tully, 1997: 14)

Further, the fact that the Latji-Latji and Wergaia shared 83% of their language suggests that the celestial names and stories were widely recognised.

Other similarities that come to mind are:- Both regions were heavily wooded before European arrival. Both have been

dramatically cleared, the Central Victorian region especially, resulting in huge loss of biodiversity, and extinctions of numerous of plant and animal species. The Box-Ironbark and Mallee that we see today are vastly different to what existed before European settlement.

- Both regions are considered dry, regular water supply being a problem especially in these times of drought that both areas are suffering from.

- Both groups were subject to dispossession of land which they believed was their own through pastoral leases given to squatters.

- Both were subject to massacres at the hands of both the early explorers and pastoralists.

- Both regions were within the Loddon Protectorate although the Wergaia and Latji-Latji received far less benefit from the Franklinford station than the Djadja Wurrung.

- In 2004, six north-west Victorian Aboriginal groups joined forces in a bid to settle their native title claims - 1.35 million hectares in total - outside court. These groups include the Djadja Wurrung, Latji-Latji and Wergaia groups. (The Age Augst 3, 2004)

CONCLUSION

History has shown that the competing interests of the Aboriginal occupants and European settlers were completely at odds with each other in the period immediately after first contact. As with most Aboriginal groups throughout Victoria and in fact the whole country, disputes between settlers and Aborigines were rarely solved amicably, both sides resorting to violence on numerous occasions.

Disease introduced by Europeans wreaked havoc with the health of the Aboriginal people. The wholesale dispossession of land led to begging, prostitution, alcoholism and ultimately death. Survivors of this period, of which there are no full-blood Aborigines left in any of the regions of study, like Brien Nelson have accepted the challenge to what they can to pass on to future generations of Aboriginal people the stories of an oral culture that is at risk of disappearing forever.

In light of this, a recent article brings the enormity this challenge into sharper focus:

Australia is the only colonising country not to have apologised to the indigenous people who were dispossessed. Many indigenous people still suffer directly as a result of that dispossession… Now our Government, on top of its refusal to say sorry, wants to humiliate its indigenous citizens by

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denying them services unless they conform to behavioural standards that many, because of their disadvantage, cannot possibly meet.”

Carr, K. (December 2 2004)

Have we returned to the frontier days?

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REFERENCES

Attwood, B. (1999) ’My Country’: a History of the Dja Dja Wurrung 1837-1864. Clayton, VIC: Monash Publications.

Caldwell, R., Murray, K. (1993) Koorie Culture: Oral History Dilemmas (Chapter 4). In A Sense of Place: Shaping Oral Histories. Chewton, VIC: Mt Alexander Diggings Development Association.

Carr, K. (2004) Now for the Humiliation of the Aborigines. The Age December 2, 2004.

Chandler, M.J & L.G. (1980) Tribal Lands to National Park/ text: Mary J. Chandler ; photographs: L.G. Chandler. Red Cliffs, VIC

Clark, I. (1996) Aboriginal Language Areas in Victoria. Sourced from http://www.vaclang.org.au/report1.pdf

Elder, B. (2003) Massacres along the Darling River - 1835 to 1865 (Chapter 5). Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788, 3rd ed. Frenchs Forest, NSW: New Holland

Foley, G. (2005) The Koorie History Website. Sourced from homepage www.kooriweb.org/ foley /indexb.html

Healy, G. (1998) Good Heavens, an Australian Zodiac. The Weekend Australian Oct 24-25, 1998.

Darwin, N. (1999) The Loddon Aboriginals. Sourced from http://www2.sebas.vic.edu.au/staff/ndarwin/loddon.htm#protect

Massola, A. (1970) Journey to Aboriginal Victoria. Adelaide: Rigby Limited.

Massola, A. (1969) Wraiths of a Timeless Dream. The Age June 28, 1969.

Morieson, J. (1996) The night sky of the Boorong : partial reconstruction of a disappeared culture in North-West Victoria. Thesis (M.A.)-University of Melbourne.

Mowaljarlai, D. & Malnic, J. (1993) Yorro Yorro : Aboriginal Creation and the Renewal of Nature. Inner Traditions Intl Ltd

Nangiloc/Colignan & District Primary School websiteSourced from http://www.nangilocps.vic.edu.au/Kulkyne.html

Perkins, R. (2001). One Night the Moon. Australia: Siren Visual Entertainment

Ross, A. (1986) Aboriginal Land Use in the Mallee District of North Western Victoria: prepared for the Land Conservation Council of Victoria. Publisher unknown (Sourced from State Library of Victoria)

Slattery, D. (1998) ‘Cultural Perspectives on the Box Ironbark Country’ in Change in a Threatened Landscape. Box-Ironbark Ecology Course Notes. LaTrobe University Bendigo campus.

Tippet, G. (2003) Water Dreaming. The Age 19 April 2003. Sourced from http://www.theage.com.au/news/The-Big-Dry/Water-dreaming/2003/04/18/1050172757383.html?oneclick=true

Tully, J. (1997) Dja Dja Wurrung Language of Central Victoria. Maryborough, VIC: Australian Print Group.

No author (2004)Aborigines Join Forces on Native Title. The Age August 3, 2004. Sourced from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/03/1091476486533.html< ASSIGNMENT TWO - STORY AND EXPERIENCE>

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