Showing 2 items
matching The Argus, themes: 'aboriginal culture'
Diverse state (12)
Aboriginal culture (2)
Built environment (6)
Creative life (1)
Family histories (1)
Gold rush (1)
Immigrants and emigrants (2)
Land and ecology (6)
Local stories (6)
Service and sacrifice (1)
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Seeing the Land from an Aboriginal Canoe
... , rose 20 feet after a flood of the Goulburn River, the Argus reported that ‘passengers had to be ferried across one at a time in a native canoe.’[2] [1]Quoted in F Stevens Smoke from the Hill, (Bendigo, Cambridge Press 1969) p.28. [2]The Argus, Tuesday 1 ...This project explores the significant contribution Aboriginal people made in colonial times by guiding people and stock across the river systems of Victoria.
Before European colonisation Aboriginal people managed the place we now know as Victoria for millennia. Waterways were a big part of that management. Rivers and waterholes were part of the spiritual landscape, they were valuable sources of food and resources, and rivers were a useful way to travel. Skills such as swimming, fishing, canoe building and navigation were an important aspect of Aboriginal Victorian life.
European explorers and colonists arrived in Victoria from the 1830s onwards. The newcomers dispossessed the Aboriginal people of their land, moving swiftly to the best sites which tended to be close to water resources. At times it was a violent dispossession. There was resistance. There were massacres. People were forcibly moved from their traditional lands. This is well known. What is less well known is the ways Aboriginal people helped the newcomers understand and survive in their new environment. And Victoria’s river system was a significant part of that new environment.
To understand this world we need to cast ourselves back into the 19th century to a time before bridges and cars, where rivers were central to transport and movement of goods and people. All people who lived in this landscape needed water, but water was also dangerous. Rivers flooded. You could drown in them. And in that early period many Europeans did not know how to swim. So there was a real dilemma for the newcomers settling in Victoria – how to safely cross the rivers and use the rivers to transport stock and goods.
The newcomers benefited greatly from Aboriginal navigational skills and the Aboriginal bark canoe.
CULTURAL WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander users are warned that this material may contain images of deceased persons and images of places that could cause sorrow.
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Postcards: Stories from the Mornington Peninsula
... "Railway Communication between Melbourne and Mornington has long been felt to be of the highest importance to its future welfare". Argus Newspaper, 1875 ...Stories of a time in history when holidaying was a grand pastime, and when special and unique places in Victoria began to be appreciated, celebrated and shared in that iconic mode of communication: the picture postcard.
Inspired by postcards in their collections, eight historical societies developed themes to explore the history of the Mornington Peninsula.
This story is based on a touring exhibition which was initiated by the Mornington Peninsula Local History Network and the Mornington Peninsula Shire.