AV0036_Gary Presland - 1.mp3

Transcript not currently available.

AV0036_Gary Presland - 2.mp3

I put a circle around general business because I forgot to put that big difference.
I just did it all in case.
I'll sort of run that down.
Well this is the wonder of the mugmaid.
Okay I think Ted's what we need to do is just make sure that the slides line up properly with the screen.
Oh, I'll be fine.
I'm sorry we can leave you.
I'm sorry Ted's doing that. I'll just explain.
Oh, what? Okay. Yes, only to do it.
That's not bad.
A little bit of focus.
That's really good.
Excellent.
Okay if we, if you could just turn it off for the moment.
Everybody see it for the nature of design.
That's why all that's so is rearrangement going on.
I'll just, in, in, in, uh,
I can put that over there.
Okay.
I sure could use this. This would be really good.
You could use it.
Yes.
I've often had a thought about,
I suppose, to put it as most succinct to enter the clothing.
In that I, I rather fancy myself giving sermons.
I did once have a, a secret desire to be the Bishop of Melbourne.
I've probably, the angry condition with Melbourne.
I've probably left my run a little late in this regard.
That's a bit to continue on the, a rather personal note.
I suppose I should, uh, an in response to Valdez's suggestion
that I, I give a bit about my own background.
I should start by saying, um,
in regard to what I'm going to speak about today,
and how I came to, uh, acquire the information that, that I did.
Uh, I suppose about, uh,
I'm just counting back years, about 13 years ago,
maybe 14 years ago, uh, I was employed, uh, to undertake a study
of the archaeology, the archaeology of the Melbourne metropolitan area.
And, at that time I was working for the, uh, state government of Victoria
as an archaeologist, uh, a wonderful little, uh, department called the Victoria
Archaeological Survey, which unfortunately no longer exists.
Uh, it was, um, uh, split in two, I think about two or three years ago,
around about the time that the, uh, uh, not long after, at least the Kenna Government,
uh, was elected and it was decided in their wisdom to, uh, uh,
split the archaeology department in two and to give some parts to one department
and one ministry and some parts to another.
Uh, but that's, that's another story, I guess.
Uh, in the, uh, all through the 1970s and, uh, into the 1980s, uh,
there was this department called the Archaeological Survey.
And the director of the survey in about 1981,
uh, applied to the Australian Heritage Commission in Candra
to fund a two-year study of the archaeological, uh,
the state of archaeology, archaeological sites in the Melbourne metropolitan region.
And I was, uh, the fortunate person who was employed to undertake that survey.
Now it was, initially it was a 12-month study with another 12 months to follow.
So of that 12 months, I spent the first, uh, three months in acquiring, uh,
putting together information from essentially library, uh, library sources.
And also building up, uh, some understanding of the geology, the botany,
the, uh, uh, flora and fauna of the Melbourne area as it might have been
at the time that Europeans, uh, first arrived.
What, uh, struck me immediately was that there had been an enormous amount of, uh,
change to the landscape in that time, in the time that, uh, in, at that time,
it was less than 150 years of European settlement.
And I was so struck by the, the, uh, dramatic nature of the changes that had
occurred to the landscape that I decided, when I finished the study,
at the end of the 12 months, that it was something which I thought had general
interest. And so I, uh, having completed the study, you know,
looking now for my notes, um, having completed the study, I produced, uh, this report,
which is, uh, the standard, uh, type of report that was required for the, uh,
Australian Heritage Commission at the time, and every, uh, municipal council
in the Melbourne Metropolitan area, uh, received a copy of this.
And I think there were only about 150 copies printed altogether because that was
all of the, uh, uh, copies that were required for the purpose.
But, uh, having completed that study, I decided that, uh,
uh, the information that I had was of much wider, uh, interest.
And so I wrote a, a book about it.
And, uh, that book, uh, was actually called The Land of the Coolen.
But it, and, uh, the best published in 1985, and, uh,
for nine years later, it, uh, sold out.
So, um, Penguin, uh, who had, uh, taken over the company that had produced the
book in the first place, uh, decided that they would, uh, reprint it.
And it was, it was republished in 1994 as Aboriginal Melbourne.
And it is now, uh, getting, uh, close to being sold out again.
Uh, just in two, that was in September, 1994.
And, uh, in that intervening two years that's, that's sold, uh,
something of the order of two and a half thousand copies of it.
So, it's, um, a subject matter which I think is still of great interest to people.
Not only, of course, the, the changes to the landscape, but, uh, more and more, I think,
the, uh, the subject of Aboriginal studies, uh, and particularly focusing on one's
local area.
And I guess that's what, that's, uh, what I've been asked to, to speak about today.
I have to say that, uh, firstly that, uh, people often, uh, want to know what was
going on or who, uh, was living in the area in their immediate area.
And if there are archaeological sites, Aboriginal sites recorded in, in their
immediate, uh, suburb, uh, in, in the vast majority of cases, say, for the suburbs of
Melbourne, the answer has to be, uh, the other aren't any sites recorded.
But that's not to say, of course, that, that Aboriginal people were not in the
area that didn't live in the area.
I mean, it's, it is taken as red that Aboriginal people, uh, lived, or if not,
lived on a permanent basis, then certainly used, uh, every part, uh, of, of the area
of Australia that is now called, uh, Victoria.
Uh, that's simply taken as red.
The difficulty, of course, in an area like Melbourne is that over the last, uh,
150-odd years that there's, in, in many areas, been an enormous amount of, of
development, urban development, industrial, uh, and originally, of course, farming
development, and that has tended to destroy, uh, a large number, uh, perhaps even, uh,
the majority of, uh, archaeological or Aboriginal sites that one might otherwise
have expected to find.
Nonetheless, there are a lot of sites recorded around the Melbourne metropolitan
area, and during our survey, I recorded, uh, I think something like 40, uh, more
sites, even in areas that are now quite, uh, comparatively densely populated.
Uh, one has to focus on particular areas to, to be able to find them.
You're not likely to find many sites, for instance, in the inner city suburbs,
uh, like, uh, Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond, uh, Paran, which are these
places of so, uh, so entirely, uh, uh, build over and, uh, covered with concrete
and, and, uh, and tar that, uh, any evidence of Aboriginal settlement or, or
Aboriginal use of the area is all but obliterated.
Even so, of course, there are places like, uh, there are sites like the, uh, uh,
uh, Scard Tree or the Corubbary Tree in, uh, at Burnley-Ovel, which is quite
clearly a tree which has some, uh, significance and, uh, tells us something
about the Aboriginal way of life.
What I guess I mostly want to speak about today is the, uh, the people who
would have been living in this area here, and I can tell you that there have been,
I think, some, uh, a small number of sites recorded in their immediate vicinity,
that mostly, uh, they are the type of site that you, do we expect to find,
would be, uh, trees from which a sheet of bark has been removed, and I'll speak more
in a moment about the uses that, that, uh, this sort of, um, artifact would have
been put to, but that also along, um, uh, Cun on Creek have been recorded sites,
uh, where, uh, quite clearly, uh, people have been living for, uh, some period of
time. The nature of archaeology in Australia is such that what tends to
survive is, of course, the material, uh, such as stone, uh, and so often the only
indications we have that people lived anywhere, uh, is a scattering of small
stone, uh, tools that, that have been made, or flakes, flakes of stone that have been,
uh, created in the process of creating, uh, stone tools, and once again I'll speak
more about that in a moment. What one doesn't find, uh, is, uh, the organic
remains of, of, uh, camp, uh, in campsites. There's very little bone material and
artifacts that have been made from, uh, materials such as wood or bone, uh, tend
to, uh, deteriorate over a period of time. But a stone, of course, is, uh, virtually
impervious to any, uh, natural process of, of, uh, degeneration. So, although you
might have, somebody might have, uh, stored a, um, say a hatchet, uh, in their
campsite over a period of, uh, hundreds of years, they wouldn't handle, and the
binding, they would have, uh, been part of that hatchet, would have disintegrated
or, or rotted away, and what's left is just the axe head. So, um, in a way where
we are dependent, uh, for what we know about Aboriginal, the Aboriginal way of
life, on recorded, uh, records, people, uh, documents, uh, eyewitness accounts,
observations that people made, uh, when Europeans first, uh, came to this part
of Victoria. So much of what I have to say about, about the Aboriginal way of
life, and the groups of people who live in, say, in this, in this part of Melbourne,
comes from a, uh, a detailed study of those sorts of, essentially, historical
accounts, and that, that's, those accounts, those accounts have been, uh, uh, bolstered
and, uh, and, uh, underlined, I guess, with archaeological finds that have been made
within the area. So, if we have the first, first slide down. The people who, uh, who
lived in this part of, of Melbourne were part, uh, of a much larger organization,
an organization of, uh, groups of people who, which covered all of the central
part of, of Victoria. The, uh, the title of the book that I originally wrote in
1985 was, uh, The Land of the Coolin. And Coolin was a word, an Aboriginal word,
of course, that, that meant, uh, human being. And the land of the Coolin, uh,
stretched from, uh, Worsens' Pomertery in the east to, uh, the, the oquays, to the
foothills of the oquays, uh, in the west and far north, as close to the Murray
River. And that area is an enormous block of land in, in central Victoria. Within
that area, there were, uh, five separate, uh, language groups, five groups of people
who, who spoke, uh, the same language, five separate languages or in the usual
terminology that people use is, is a tribe. There were five tribes of, of people. The
most, in Aboriginal society, there was, there is a, a variety of, of groups,
probably the most significant, uh, grouping in Aboriginal society is the clan. And
that relates to, essentially, a, a family, but not, not just a small nuclear family.
Basically, the people who make up a clan could trace their descent back to a given
individual. And the clan in Aboriginal society is the, is the land-owning, uh,
group. And a tribe is a group of clans, all of whom claim, uh, all of whom can speak
the same language and whose, uh, land, the individual clan estates joined together
to make one larger area. So, a tribal territory is really composed of a number
of smaller areas which we refer to as estates. Now, in this particular part of
Melbourne, uh, or the, or should go one step back, the, the, uh, tribe which lived in
in the area which is now Melbourne, or the area which is now covered by Melbourne,
was the estates, or considered the estates of two separate tribes. One of them was
called, uh, Bunurong. And I'm sure you've all probably heard of the term,
Bunurong. Bunurong people lived primarily on the, uh, morning to B
of Bunurong speakers. And their territory, their collected estates stretched from
and included Wootens' prometry and across to and included the morning to
peninsula, but also included a strip around the top of Port Phillip Bay, to as far as
the Werribee River. The other area, the other, uh, tribe living in the area which is now
covered by Melbourne, was, uh, the, were, the clans of the Boyburong. Boyburong
speakers, uh, there were five clans. One of them, or two of them actually, were
called Wurundjeri. There was a Wurundjeri-Willam and Wurundjeri-Ballak. And they,
they were Wurundjeri-Willam were the clan which focused on the, the Yarra River
around about this point and up to and including, uh, up to on the eastern side
of the, uh, uh, saltwater river, the Meribunong, up to as far as Mount William.
The other Wurundjeri clan which was Wurundjeri-Ballak, were to the south of, uh,
the Wurundjeri-Willam and boarded on their southern edge with the, uh, uh,
Wurundjeri-Willam and the Boonurong claims. The way in which, of course, whenever you
think of these things and you try and draw them out on paper, you immediately
have to adopt an essentially European mode of doing it. We draw lines on maps, on
paper to show where one boundary was, uh, between two grips, but that sort of
practice of course is, was not what would have happened in Aboriginal, uh, in the
Aboriginal world and the, the way we can work it out I guess is, is to think of it
in terms of drainage basins, the way in which the Boonurong and Wurundjeri-Willam, uh,
thought of the line between, uh, their territories was where the rivers drained
to the south was Boonurong where the rivers drained into the Yarra was Wurundj.
And if you know your, uh, your, uh, locality very well and I was, was surprised to find
this when I looked at the Melways earlier today, the boundary is not very far from
here, it's probably in fact somewhere between, um, Maroondah Highway and
Canterbury Road, uh, because if you don't have to go very far before you, you get to
where Danie on Creek is, and Danie on Creek of course flows to the south. If the river,
let's say the Koonan Creek is a tributary of the Yarra, then you're in Wurund
Territory, or in more, and more particularly Wurundjeri Clan Territory. And that of
course is where we are now, where this would be Wurundjeri Balak because the Balak was
between the Wurundjeri-Willam and the Boonurong. So that's, that's the, the, I guess the
rule of thumb was, uh, what the topography was, there is a point in which the rivers
turn and flow the other way. Um, on that, by and large, Aboriginal territories are,
uh, based on that sort of drainage basin, uh, style. So all of the area drained by the
Yarra River and its tributaries, including of course the Maroondah, was Wurund
Territory. Now, these people, these people, the five clans, who spoke Wurundjeri for
economic purposes, didn't always go around as clan groups because a clan might
consist of perhaps a hundred individuals. And on a day-to-day basis, Aboriginal people
in this part of, Aboriginal people in fact all over Australia, uh, including this part
of Victoria, were what we refer to as hunter-gatherers. They made their living
by hunting and gathering. Strictly speaking, we should refer to them as gatherer
hunters, uh, because by and large, the women gathered and the men hunted. And, uh,
I'll speak more about, I'll explain more about that in a moment. But in terms of
data-day economic exercises, a hundred people moving around is really too many. The,
uh, optimum size of a hunting, a phology group is probably about somewhere between
20 and 30 people. So, so groups tended to, to split up much more, and they consisted
of what, in, in economic terms and data-day functioning terms, uh, we would refer to
as a band. So, a clan of people, or the, uh, the Wurundjeri, uh, Wurundjeri,
Willem, clan, in this area would have, in most days, been found spread right through
their, their estates. There was an, an, and working in, in essentially small groups,
which might consist of, uh, two or three men and their respective wives. Uh, most
men, older men certainly had, uh, at least, uh, a couple of wives and sometimes three
and four wives. And so they had children. They also, uh, you'll find, uh, a number of,
you know, individual, uh, single men, uh, who would be traveling with the group for
various purposes. The connections between, uh, Aboriginal groups are enormously
complicated. Uh, the people who lived in this part of, of the, uh, the Port Phillip
region were connected to, to other groups who lived in the Golden River area. The
people who lived in the morning to Peninsula were closely connected to those who lived
in the Belloween Peninsula on the other side of, uh, of Port Phillip Bay. And the
connections that they had were primarily related to marriage or, or, uh, uh, you
know, revolving around the exchange of women, marriage partners. The reason for
this is that, or one reason at least, is that, uh, at times when, um, for whatever
reason, whatever, uh, climatic reason, there may be a, uh, a drought or, uh, some, uh,
even looking at it in the other way, a seasonal abundance in one area, in a
different area, there would, would be unlikely to be a drought. Uh, as you'd be
aware, the, the weather, for instance, in climate generally on the other side of
the dividing range is different to that that we have here. So people who were
connected, uh, people such as the Wurundjeri will, I'm living in this area, who
were connected to people who lived in the, in the, uh, Golden River area could be
sure that if they were facing a bit of a drought, then the chances are their
relations, the people to whom they were connected in the Golden River were doing
a bit better. And the reverse may be true in, in, in other times of the year. So
those connections existed to allow people the facility to be able to move
somewhere else. And if, uh, for instance, if you lived in an area that had a
coastline and, and, uh, whales, beaks themselves, uh, you would be able to let
other people know that there was this sudden, uh, abundance of food and the
people that you would let know. Of course, were those people who were connected to
you by marriage. The other reason for, uh, devising a system that, uh, meant that,
that you exchange partners a long way away was that it tends to, um, tell
against, uh, the problems of inbreeding. So that, uh, you, you make your, your
breeding grip as large as possible. The rules that, uh, that people applied in
these sorts of situations were, were traditional ones. They were laid down by,
uh, by custom and, uh, probably relate, uh, to, uh, stories and, um, in a sense,
myths, uh, that had been within the group for perhaps thousands of years and,
and related to the dreaming, uh, that people had. Uh, so that they were
traditional, uh, connections. They didn't, uh, when somebody, uh, had a, uh, a
daughter, uh, who was of marriage of age, they didn't think, well, who can I, uh,
give this woman to? Or is there a man around who married this woman? It was
pretty well set out already, that because the, everybody was, belonged to a
particular group, uh, almost like a religious, uh, grouping. And people who
were, they were basically two classes of, or two groups of people. One were, um,
these were once again based on dreaming characters. Uh, one people, one group
was bundle and one group was wah. And people who were, uh, bundles, always
married people who were wah. So if you, and the, were, and I think from memory,
were bundle. That was their clan, uh, moiety. And, so if I was living in this
area and I had a daughter who, uh, was of marriage of age, I would have, give her
to a man who was a wah from a far way as possible. Uh, and the furthest away,
of course, was in the, uh, the Goblin River Valley. So I would find a man who
was, who was looking for a, for a young wife, uh, who was a wah. So he was in
the right category and, and my daughter would then go and live with that man,
uh, as his wife. And that made a connection. Um, the great advantage of that,
sort of, uh, that sort of practice is that not only did I get rid of a, uh, a
daughter who I had to feed, but, um, it provided a, um, uh, uh,
uh, a dependency, um, uh, for, with that man. He then owed me something for the rest
of my life because I was giving to him, uh, a food provider, somebody who would
provide food for him as long as she was alive. And so he would owe me a favor
and the favor may be redeemed by, uh, allowing me to go and hunt or
forage in his territory. And so those connections which were formed by marriage
have that practical link, uh, and, and provide for ongoing connections because
that, that daughter of mine, when she has children, uh, their children will be of
the category, in this case, why. And so they will be looking to, for marriage
partners and the likely, uh, source of marriage partners will be in, in the same,
in the clan from which the mother had come because the, you alternate, if she
begins as a bunch of them, her children are wild because that's which the group
that she's married into. So you have these long standing and, and, uh, quite, uh,
long distance relationships as well that, that are going on. And people, there
were regular meetings of people, uh, of different moieties to, uh, carry on this
sort of business. So regularly you'd have all of the clans of the, uh, the
Kulin Nation, uh, meeting at particular spots and there were places around the
Melbourne area that this happened on a regular basis every, every year, every
six months. And those were occasions when wives were, or daughters, uh, or
sisters were given away in marriage and, uh, particular ceremonies were enacted
to, uh, perpetuate, uh, the world as it was, uh, to make, make sure that the world
kept ticking over, uh, in, in the way that it had been and to affirm and confirm
these sorts of links that, that I've been talking about. So people all over in
the central, uh, block of Victoria were connected in, in, uh, dozens of, of
different wives, uh, and, uh, connected in, intricately. So that, uh, it was, of
course, possible to travel only within that area because strangely enough, people
in, in the land of the Kulin, they knew everybody in the world. If, if you met
somebody you didn't know, then that person was not recognized even as a human
being because Kulin, Kulin is the word for human being. Anybody who wasn't one of
those five language groups wasn't a human being. He wasn't, well, she wasn't a
Kulin at all. Um, so not only couldn't you speak to them, but you wouldn't even
recognize them as, as being a, uh, proper human being. Uh, it was a nuss and then
sort of distinction. There was another group which operated in exactly the same
way that took up all the area of Gippsland. And these people were called Gennai or, or
Kurnai. Uh, and they operated, they had their own, uh, links spread right across
Gippsland and they were five, five or six language groups in that particular
nation as well. And these sorts of, um, uh, distinctions that are, that are drawn
between, uh, Kurnai and Kulin, uh, had been quite well documented in, in, uh,
historical terms, but also in archaeological terms because some, uh, some artifacts
which originate in, in Kulin territory are never found, uh, in, uh, Kurnai
territory. There's a particular type of stone which comes from, uh, Mount William
up there in the Masson and Rangers, uh, which is never found and it can be, uh,
specifically identified according to its, um, composition of, uh, of elements. And
whenever a stone axe is found and that's tested in this way, the material is always
found to the west and to the north, but never to the east. It's never found in, in
Gippsland, which, yes, of course, that there was a boundary that people didn't
trade, people who lived in the Port Phillip region didn't trade with people on the
other side of the Danneongs and that's borne out by the, all the historical
sources because Kurnai and Kulin were, uh, uh, uh, were sworn enemies. They didn't
recognize that the members of the other were human beings. So, we, um, we know, as I
said at the beginning, quite a lot about, uh, Kulin people primarily because of the,
of the historical sources that are, that have been compiled. People when, when people
first, when, so when Europeans first, uh, started to live in the Met in the, uh,
Port Phillip region, of course, the, uh, Aboriginal society was operating as it had
done for probably thousands of years, but very quickly began to, uh, I guess be, be
so disruptive that, uh, and people were denied access to traditional sites to the
point where, uh, it became extremely difficult to, to carry on a traditional
way of life. Uh, also of course Europeans, uh, introduced intentionally, um, in most
cases, uh, diseases which were fatal to Aboriginal people. So, the numbers of, um,
of deaths in Aboriginal society rose very quickly. Um, and that of course all of
those things meant that Aboriginal society, traditional Aboriginal society in the,
in the Port Phillip area, uh, suffered enormous loss and very quickly within a
matter of about 30 or 40 years, there were very few, uh, Aboriginal people living
in traditional ways in, in the Port Phillip region. So, it was really that sort of
30 year period that our observations come from how people were living, uh, the
connections that they had, and, uh, in some cases, as we'll, we'll see now drawings
of individuals. One thing about archaeology is you very rarely get a look at the
individuals because it tends to be, you're focusing all the time on material
culture. So you're, you're excavating stone tools or, or pieces of material
culture that have no names on them. And we're dealing with people who, who had no
written language. So they didn't write their name on in, in the, in the, um, a way
that we would recognize undoubtedly there were personal marks that, that were put
on, uh, on possessions. Although possessions were not numerous. And we're dealing
with a culture that, that it was not, uh, unlike our own, uh, focused entirely on
material. Uh, in Aboriginal society, there's a, there's an enormous focus, uh, and I, um,
a primacy, a, um, a major focus put on, on spiritual values. Uh, material values are
considered, uh, hardly at all. Uh, and this of course was one source of, of, uh,
puzzlement and, and simply lack of understanding on the part of, of Europeans
who saw Aboriginal people and, and thought well, these, you know, these people have
got nothing. Then they live very mean lives. In fact, they, Aboriginal people
live incredibly rich lives, both spiritually and materially. So I'll run
through a few of the slides. We might turn up. Okay. This, uh, uh, uh,
this, uh, some of these, I'll, I'll speak to some of these drawings. The first one
was a, a drawing of, of, uh, this man's wife. Uh, this man, uh, his name was, uh,
Billy Beleri was the, uh, the, the most important, uh, man in the Port Phillip
area at the time that Europeans arrived. He was, he was the head man of the, uh,
Borundjeri, Willem, uh, clan. Every clan, uh, had a head man who was the, uh, in a
sense the leader. I mean Europeans referred to these people as kings and
chiefs, but the more correct term was head man, uh, because in most instances
they had authority. People did what they were told. But in other instances, a
man like Billy Beleri would yield his authority to somebody else who might know
more about the particular, uh, circumstance that was going on. For instance, if there
was a, uh, a hunt for kangaroos or they were, uh, fishing for eels. Uh, there
were often people who, who had in a sense specialized in that particular aspect
of their culture. And, and in such circumstances their authority held sway.
For ordinary day to day activities, Billy Beleri authority, uh, was, was paramount.
If every clan of the five clans of the warrior wrong, the six clans of, of
brother wrong, uh, every clan had a head man, sometimes two men. Uh, only men,
I'm afraid, there were no head women. Uh, although women had any importance in
other ways, then they had authority in other circumstances. But every clan had
at least one head man. But of the collected, collected group of head men of the
Kulin nation, Billy Beleri's voice was, was, uh, that that was most listened to. He
was the, he was the most important man of all. And he had authority, the
keeping authority, uh, the, uh, the right to dispose of the material from the
Mount William axe quarry. An extremely important source of stone. And the one
I mentioned earlier about that's always traded to the northern and, uh, and west.
Uh, and extremely valued commodity.
These drawings, uh, these line drawings were done by, by William Thomas, who was a
an assistant protector of aborigines and, and the assistant protector for the
Melbourne area, Melbourne and Gippson. But he spent most of his time, um, around
Melbourne. Uh, within a matter of about five years, he was, he spent almost all
his time trying to, to keep the aborigines out of the settlement and, and to keep
the, uh, keep down the level of conflict that was going on between European and, uh,
curry groups. This man, uh, is, uh, windyberry, who was another important man in the, in, uh,
uh, curry society in, in Melbourne region. In 1840, there was a, um, an incident when, um,
uh, the army, a group of army personnel rounded up all of the, uh, Aboriginal
people they could find in the, in the Aboriginal camp, which was on the south
side of the era, where the, uh, uh, botanical gardens now are, and marks them into
the stockade. Uh, this man was one of them. He, he objected to being matched along
at gunpoint and, uh, he was shot dead, um, just like that, October 1840. Um, had the
next one. One, one thing that was interesting about that is that you can see that he has a, um,
uh, a mixture of, uh, material culture. He has a blanket around him, but he's
holding his, uh, his spear and, and, uh, boomerang shield. Uh, this is another
drawing. I think this one's actually by, uh, William Thomas. It doesn't look like he's
star, but I'm not sure. Uh, another man, Billy Billy, uh, areas, uh, car. Um, often they
took for reasons of their own, uh, it's a reason and attempt to, to fit into European
society. Um, people would take European names. Uh, we have photographs as well. This one's
back to front, but, uh, uh, it's a photograph, uh, of an Aboriginal man in, from this area,
a poor Phillip area. Uh, you can see that he has entirely, uh, traditional material
culture. He has a, uh, a cloak, which is probably, uh, kangaroo skin, boomerang, a
number of, uh, long spears. He's got a headband, uh, waistband, loin covering.
Also paintings. Uh, this is, uh, Jack Weatherly. This is a neural painting that, I think
hangs in, um, always part of the state library picture collection. Uh, once again, a, a
collection of, uh, traditional material culture, possum skin, cloak, uh, necklace of, uh, of
reed, um, and a boomerang. He's always, of course, always, of course, uh, an element
of, um, artistic license in these things.
Um, what's happening there as far as...
There was a, uh, there is a particularly fine collection of photographs, uh, not all of
which are Aboriginal, but in, which does include a number of, uh, images of Aboriginal people around
the Melbourne area taken in, um, 1856, I think. And this is, this is one of them, um, and you
can see in this case, uh, this Aboriginal woman and child, um, that's, there's a dog in the back there.
It looks remarkably lucky European dog. Um, and they, they have, they're wrapped in
blankets and sheets and they have metal panicans. So it was, uh, one of the, uh, the
outstanding elements of, uh, Aboriginal, uh, culture is that it's, it's tremendously adaptable.
People, uh, have lived in, in Australia for, in excess of 40,000 years. And in, in that time, in all parts of the, of the continent,
have had to adapt to a wide range of, of changes in climatic, uh, circumstance. But also,
in terms of, uh, adapting to the incoming, uh, culture of European, uh, people, what we find in
Melbourne is that, uh, Aboriginal people very quickly took up elements that were used to them,
uh, in their culture and metal panicans, things like that, uh, which replaced very quickly,
replaced the more traditional, uh, wooden, uh, panicans or wooden bowls, uh, was one, one example,
in blankets instead of plasma skin cloaks, uh, because I, I know it's much easier to get, of course,
but, but, indeed, I did the job just as well. And, and they fitted these elements into their traditional culture.
Thank you. And you can see in that, I don't know whether you noticed in that earlier, uh, picture,
the woman had, um, a lot of markings across her, uh, uh, chest. And I think that in fact, I, there's no reason to
believe this is so, but I think that that photograph is of the same couple, uh, that, that William Thomas,
through the first slide that I showed, because I have similar marker, I just have that sort of feeling. Um,
and if so, that would be rather remarkable in that that was Billy Beleri's wife. We have no photograph at all of, of Billy Beleri himself,
only that lion drawing. Uh, another photograph from that same collection, uh, which is referred to as the
son pictures of Victoria, taken by Anton Forgery and Richard Daintree, uh, 1857. And you can see there here, the, uh,
that, uh, most of the, some of the women have, uh, blankets at the end there, but the young girl at the back, he has
a Boston skin crack. Likewise, this girl also, uh, uh, intricately woven, uh, bag that she's carrying there. Thanks.
What we know of, uh, how people lived comes, of course, from not only from what we find in, in archaeological sites,
but also in terms of artistic representations of, of, uh, campsites. And here, I think we do, uh, get into the realms
of, of artistic license, because you find that in almost every case, uh, of a scene like this, there's a dog. Uh,
there might have been a lot of dogs around. And in fact, we know from the early accounts of Melbourne that, uh,
that the number of dogs running around in the streets was, was an immense problem. There were great packs of hundreds of
dogs at a time. But, uh, in, in these sort of essentially idyllic scenes, there's always a dog in the strategic sort of
place. And as part of, I think of the composition of, of the picture. Uh, but the thing to, I guess to notice in this picture is
that these things here, which are, and over here, we've got, uh, at least two varieties of, of shelter that, that, uh, people
created. Uh, these ones here are just quite large sheets of bark that have been cut off trees and laid against a, uh,
a framework which can be put up. Uh, this sort of, um, construction of camp, if, if you need to create a, um, uh,
a habitation of this sort, it could be done in a matter of about an hour. And, uh, there was, there was a fair amount of movement in, uh,
Aboriginal, uh, in, in the Aboriginal day-to-day life. Uh, not as much as, as might be, uh, thought and certainly not, not of the kind that would
suggest that Aboriginal people are nomadic. Um, in nomads, uh, are moving for a particular purpose and, and, uh, it is wrong to think
of Aboriginal, uh, society as nomadic. They, they moved certainly, but they may, uh, people may live in the one area and, and to give you a, uh,
a quite close example, people lived in, in the lagoons and swamps of Baliene, uh, for a month at a time, uh, on their seasonal movements around the area.
People, movement in Aboriginal society is, uh, purposeful in the sense that it is, uh, seasonal and it is for a particular, um, movement towards a particular object or place.
Um, it's, it's dictated to, to some extent, by the seasonal availability of, of resources, but also by the, the weather.
People during, uh, summer and spring where more would have been through this area. It's unlikely that, that people would have been living in this area, uh, in winter.
And as winter came in, people were moving up the rivers up into the high country. Um, it, it makes no sense to us to think of people living in the Dandenongs in winter.
But in fact, there's much more shelter to be had from, from wind, uh, and rain in the Dandenongs and there would be down on the open flat plains of the area of the, uh, and it's a place you would not want to be, um, even with a possum skin cloak on, in winter.
Thanks.
There are a number of representations of, uh, different sorts of camps, um, and camps, um, in the main, uh, uh, generally,
most camp scenes would have been for, uh, consisting of a small number of people.
Uh, once again, I mean, 20 or 30 people was, was quite a large group. Um, there's one, um, quite interesting reference in William Thomas's journal about, um, a number of people traveling along.
I think there was something like, um, uh, 70 people in the groove, and they decided very quickly that there were too many. So they split up into two.
I did a campsin, few people, there's a dog. Perhaps the most interesting element in this
particular drawing is that it shows the falls on the Yara River which is just in there,
that little line there. There's a set of falls across the Yara, you probably all know it's
the thing that... No, no, not the falls. Calling it a fall is probably sort of overstating
the case. Now it was actually down in, it was in across the river at a point between,
let me think, Queen Street and Market Street. And in fact, if you think about where the
customs house is, that was cited there because that's as far up the river as ships would
come, could come. And that was the point of which they birthed, that's where they unloaded
the goods, that's where they had to be, go through the customs process. And up that area
right there, the river was in fact deeper and a bit wider by the action caused by the action
of the water flowing at speed across the rocks. And it was a convenient stepping space for
people to cross the river in the early days of settlement because in order to get to the
settlement you had to actually go up the Marabenong River. And then to get into the Yara, there
was a big bend in the Yara River and you enter the Yara around about where Footscrew Road
crosses the Marabenong now was where the Yara joined on to the Marabenong. And strictly
speaking, and here I speak as a former resident of Footscrew, the Yara was originally a tributary
of the Marabenong and not the other way around. It was only in the 1880s in fact that they
took that bend out, that they straightened the course of the Yara from around about where
Victoria Dock is, straight through to the bay. And that then made the Marabenong a tributary
of the Yara and took out that big bend which I think was the original fisherman's bend.
So because, and then of course ships, another impediment to shipping in the river was that
there was a sand across the mouth of the river. In fact it was referred to as Sand Ridge and
that was the original name of Port Melbourne. And people got off the ships at Sand Ridge
and walked across the, on the southern side of the river through the swamps and crossed
the river at the, at the falls. So the water wasn't sort of, it wasn't a very deep falling
set of rapids but, and there were rocks allowing you to cross over and keep your feet dry.
And that's where they were. And that was the element that kept the river fresh. And that's
why it was called the Freshwater River as opposed to the Marabenong which was originally
called the Saltwater River. And that was only because of those rock rapids that the salt
could not migrate up the Yara and led to the, to the settlement being started at the point
it was. Thank you.
This is a photograph just a general sort of post shot of people sitting outside a, a,
a shelter. You can see the enormous sheets of bark that, that people would have used to,
to create quite a substantial one. This is essentially a post shot. I mean this is not
something that, that existed at the time Europeans arrived. It was set up specifically for the
photograph and was probably actually done, well it says he was, well maybe it was. There
was doing one of the major international exhibitions an Aboriginal camp set up in Royal Park for
the, for the delight and benefit of international visitors. It's a, it's a thing we would shut
about now but that was, that was the way that Aboriginal people were treated as no better
than an exhibition or an exhibit. Thank you.
And this is a, a lithograph showing us more camps scenes supposedly probably up in the
day longs area. You can see the fern trees and once again or a, a ubiquitous dog. Thank
you. Now I should talk, do you want me to wind up? I could go on.
I could be a toughie person.
I could be a toughie person.
Okay, I'll speed up. Okay. There's not the, there's not the, there's not the, the more
I could go on for hours talking about this as you probably gather. I mentioned earlier
that people, that Aboriginal Society, traditional Aboriginal Society is, in economic terms is
hunter-gatherer. In fact, it used to be thought up until probably 20, 30 years ago that there
were, well there were a couple of, of misconceptions about a hunting gathering way of life. One
was that it was essentially hand to mouth. The people constantly chasing food. That in
fact isn't the case. And in fact quite detailed studies of Aboriginal groups in, in what we
would regard as marginal environments like central and northern Australia can require
all the resources they need to supply themselves, like they can supply themselves with everything
they need by working in average three and a half hours a day. Now the first question
I'd have to ask is why did they know I worked seven and a half hours? They could do it in
three and a half. So they're effectively working a three and a half day week probably. The
second is that the hunting, the hunting activities provided the bulk of the food. In fact that
isn't the case. It's the gathering activities that provided the bulk of the food. In Aboriginal
traditional society, hunting gathering society, whether it's here in Australia or anywhere
in the world where hunting and gathering was the way of life. And I have to say that up
until 10,000 years ago hunting and gathering was the way of life everywhere in the world
until the discovery of the domestication of plants. That was the way everybody had lived
for the previous three million years in the world. So it's a tried and true method of
keeping body and soul together. The people had thought that by and large the hunting
part provided the bulk of the food. From early because I suspect that traditionally there
is a sexual division of labor in that men hunt women gather. And it was thought that the
men well, you know, being men, macho, they go out, get an animal and bring it back and
everybody feasts. In fact, the bulk of the food is provided and there is a gradation
as sort of a sliding scale depending on where you live, what sort of climate you're living
in. In tropical environments, probably something like 75, 80% of the food is in fact vegetable.
And the remainder is gathered by hunting, large or small animals. In Australia, in temperate
climates such as here, it's probably something like 60, 40. That 60% of the food that people
ate were in fact gathered by the women and 40% was provided by the men from their hunting
activities. So in fact, and this is the lowest seen here. These are three drones done by John
Haldewedge who was John Batman's surveyor. These are women picking or digging men on,
which is the Yamdazia perennial source of food. And they put it in their bags. And it's the
reason that most people, the reason that vegetable foodstuffs was a much more staple
diet is quite clear that vegetables don't run away. No matter how good hunters are, there
are times when they'll come back without anything at all. Women never came back without plants
and small animals who go not of course. Or if they live around the coast, it's the women
who collect shellfish. Once again, shellfish don't run away. Hunting strategies by and
large focus on camouflage. And here, I mean, the next few slides are basically different
sorts of ways of men had of catching came here. We've got the classic sort of creeping
up on the cup of emu whilst holding a bush in front of them. Thanks.
Another one, this is from George Robinson's diary. Here a man is holding a shield as covered
with bushes. He's sneaking up on a bird and slips the noose over the bush turkey or the
buzzard, bustard. Thanks. A variation on that, he's completely covered with bushes and he's
got a live bird and he's left hand tied to a string, tied to a twine, one or. This is
a hawk. The hawk swoops on the bird. Man swoops on the hawk. Don't know what you do
with a hawk once you'd caught it, but that would probably use the feathers for, I mean,
man. Fishing, of course, you can expect in this sort of, this sort of environment fishing
was a quite a common occurrence. And there were a number of different methods. This one's
the classic one of holding your light and brand near the surface. The fish comes up to
investigate the light. The man spears the fish and they can even cook it in the canoe,
which seems to be what's going on here, how they didn't set fire to the canoe. It'd be
on me. But there once again is another, another use of bark, of a slab of bark. And most, thank
you, most trees that have scars on them are referred to as canoe trees, although not
all of the bark could have been for canoes. This is a page from George Robinson's diary,
a very difficult writing, but basically he's drawn a weir, an obstruction across the river
that which funnels the water in through particular points here and here. And the people hold
an eel pot against the, on the downstream side and the fish just go through the hole
into the, into the eel pot. Pull out the eel, throw it around to a big, big stick, bite
its head off, throw it on the, the bank. That's the method they used. There's not a great
deal of probably not much eel catching in, in, around Melbourne area, although eels did
migrate up all of the, all the rivers, particularly in the western district, for breeding purposes.
But certainly there were weirs and one is recorded in, on the Melbourne on river in
1803, the first European exploring party saw one. Thanks. And another. That's it. Now
just very quickly, some of the material remains that you get from this sort of way of life.
This is a scarred tree that, that in there was a sheet of bark that was taken off the
tree. The tree continues to live, it hasn't been ring barked or anything. If it lives
long enough, it'll actually seem over completely. That's not actually in the Melbourne area.
I slipped up on in the, down in the western district. But the next one is, that's from
the, what's it called? Not the Atlantic Gardens, the, the, uh, uh, Fittroy Gardens. Yeah, Fittroy.
Oh, this is just a dead stump now, but in fact, that's, that's a reasonable sky. Each
one of those is 50 centimeters. Um, and there's something like 70 or 80 scarred trees recorded
around the Melbourne area, a lot along the area, just north of here, coupled in backburn.
One in Heidi. One, one beautiful one in Heidi. Um, yep. Thanks.
It's laying over a bit, but these are just a couple of small bits of, they finally work
on stone, which would have been used as spear points. Um, and the next slide, I think, actually
demonstrates the principle. These are the small, like, like this sort of thing, they formed
with a little flaking technique. You create a flat base on which to, uh, hold it against
the shaft of a spear, or, um, that's the usual model that you're finding. But of course,
you wouldn't find the spears with the, with the, uh, with the flakes, all you find are
flakes because the, um, they are the broken off or in, in the making, uh, or the, uh,
the spear shaft is just, uh, uh, rotted away because it's organic material that's been
bound around with a bit of kangaroo, kangaroo gut, uh, once again, organic material, which
disintegrates over a period of time, leaving, leaving only a few bits of stone. And I think
there's two more slides. Uh, this is, uh, not a particularly good example, but it's
an edge ground, uh, hatchet head. And that, that edge there has been actually ground on
you start off with a piece of stone about this big, which is a blank, and you take it
somewhere and the next slide gives you the style of, and this is a, a large outcropping
of rock, which is probably sandstone or something of gritty nature. And you grind, you have
your blank and you just rub it against the surface. That's put a bit of water into,
to create a, a lubricant and you grind away and eventually what you do is you actually
grind an edge onto the stone, which can be used for purposes of cutting down small,
uh, saplings or getting, you see, to bark off trees. Uh, usually they have handles.
Technically they're not axes, although they're all referred to as hand axes. In fact, they
are just, uh, an axe used two hands. These, these, these are the hand handles that long
and these are the grooves, the result of course is that you also, while you're grinding an
edge on the, on the hatchet head, you're also grinding a groove on the rock. And that's,
that's, um, that particular one is just the amount of mass of them. I think that's it.
That's it. I'll leave it there. I'm sorry, I'll sort of tend to go on a bit. Good mind
up. But if anybody has any questions, I'd be, uh, I'd be happy to answer them. I should
say that, uh, hatchet heads of that kind of found virtually all over Victoria, every farmer
in Victoria has a collection that he's, uh, or she has power up in their paddocks at
some time or rather. And all, and in three parts of the Melbourne district as well, uh,
they've turned up in people's backyards as they're digging it.
That's good.
One, so there alright, ask more questions before we get to the offered.
I suppose it's difficult to talk about these things other than European terms and you then
of course give a mistaken impression. I mean he can't be likened to Zeus who was the father
of God or the head god but bundle was the first creator spirit. He created the world
in this part or most of Victoria in fact. Whether or not that's actually bundle that's
pictured there. That particular bit of art is unique in that it is different to any other
art, Aboriginal art in Victoria. Indeed anywhere in Australia the closest thing is probably
there's sort of one of the figures from the northwest of western Australia but it's certainly
different to anything else. It's actually a figure that's a figure of man sort of and
he has two dogs, dingo dogs and decoration he's wearing as well. He seems to be wearing
a total marriage until he got buttons down the front and it's been there a long time
and it's not a comparatively recent thing so it's been very well documented, very well
studied.
Oh yes there's mittens all over the place. I didn't talk about mittens because primarily
the boy-ru-rung people who would have lived in this area did not have any beachfront because
the boy-ru-rung people who lived in the morning potential had of course the entire coastline
and then that strip around the top of the bay to Werribee and then it became a different
group. The Werribee and the boy-ru-rungs had no access to the bay at all and there are
mittens there are hundreds of them. There's something like 250 on Phillip Island they're
all around the bay, both the back beach and the bay side. The nearest ones here are at
Sandringham. Or archaeological sites are protected under the law under the archaeological
and Aboriginal Preservation Act not in 72 but if you mean physical protection, yes by
our ones that brought in our certainly. Often in many cases the best protection for these
things is anonymity. People just don't know they're there.
In Victoria there was I think there was about 30 separate language groups. Oh yeah well
yes the area I hadn't stopped to work it out and it varies according to I think varies
in my mind it seems to vary according to the amount of resource. So you find that the tribal
territories here in Victoria are smaller than say those in western New South Wales where
the resources are far less plentiful and in central Australia the tribal territories
are quite large for a given number of people. The numbers of people in a linguistic group
or tribe would be roughly the same but the area that could support them of course varies
enormously. In terms of the coolant there was obviously a lot of the kind that I talked
about but outside of the coolant say area not a huge amount it did exist certainly because
people were trading in Greenstone from or Diorite from Mount William has been found up
to 700 kilometres away. Now I had to get there somehow and people were trading. There was
a trading link in that case people were trading there's a particular type of read that was
useful for spears that grows around this one hill area and that was being traded for
Mount William and Stone. That's in this case I mean there are other documented trade links
that link up the Gulf of Carpentaria right down to the Lake area people were moving quite
phenomenal distances but whether or not whether it was one person would travel to as far as
they could and then pass on to somebody else who would then travel as far as they could
or one person going out in entire distance I suspect probably the former. You didn't
find people travelling in enormous distances but people did travel and they had safe passage
you know they carried a passport of sorts.
Yes. Oh yes I'm sure that the other thing too one has to bear in mind is that some people
have been able to do that. It's difficult to know to what extent the presence of Europeans
caused enormous differences to the traditional way of life. I mean Aboriginal society as
I said was tremendously adaptable so within a very short time all kinds of things that
were being done that previously would have been taboo even. It was only 30 years, 35
years I think from European settlement here that that Kurnai and Kulin people were getting
married because they just realised that in order to survive in this dramatically changed
the world we've got to adapt what we're doing and so movement of people might have
been as a result of so Europeans moving into an area push the Aboriginal people further
back who then of course would be intruding on their neighbours so that's a chain reaction.
I wonder whether when a girl from one area went into a company somewhere from the wrong
way did she take that language with us and maybe it was their fault or what's her name
because she has to learn their language. No in fact they were bilingual. Well not bilingual
in fact they were multilingual because you could speak your own language and the language
of your neighbours. The languages they were distinct languages I mean the five languages
of the Kulin were Angbunuong, Tongurong, Mathurong and Jajaraong or even as I just real them
off there you'll notice that they all have a similar ending they all in fact are wrong
languages. So they were of the same group I mean they were distinct languages we're
not talking dialects they were distinct languages but of the similar structure and related so
it wasn't difficult but because of these were people you were dealing with on a regular
basis you just simply spoke that language so it wasn't difficult. What was difficult though
was that a woman who say was brought up in this area right here wouldn't not necessarily
know she certainly wouldn't know the places that they had to go to get whatever resources
they needed but she also may not know the particular plants that she would be picking
up and using and to that extent young women I mean when women reached marriage or age
childbearing age they were given in marriage but they would not be the first wife so the
second so the first and second they might only be the third wife but the previous wife
or wives would induct them into the area and look after them.
Oh thank you and Gary. No more.
I don't think so.
I'm pretty sure that I don't.
Well thank you very much.
Well if you have and we will get something else.
You want me to provide a list of things I don't know.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And your collection is not complete until that time.
Well that's all right.
Yes I can go hand to hand to Helen as I look now.
We don't need to buy anything more we've got a collection of complete.

Gary Presland talk.pptx

Transcript not currently available.