Student Research
Katie Goldhammer 2007 (Masters of Museum Studies: ELS802 Special Research Project)
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Object 1: Bark Canoe
Photograph: "Two Aboriginal men fishing from canoe", Port
Macquarie, circa. 1900
(Object 42000415, Australian History Museum, Macquarie University)
Photograph Caption:
"shows their traditional lifestyle at a time when it was quickly disintegrating under colonial impact," (Museums and Collections, Australian History Museum).
Object One: Bark Canoe
Photograph: "Two Aboriginal men fishing from canoe"
Port Macquarie, circa. 1900
(Object 42000415, Australian History Museum, Macquarie University)
Context of Photograph
Culture and Land
Altjira Rama, Aboriginal Dreamtime, or creation spirituality,
is a translation of this expression which means to see and dream eternal
things (Raffaele, 2003, 296). Looking at this photograph one may imagine a place
and a people, where life and how to live it is so engrained in culture and
time that no written laws are necessary. Social behavior and moral codes
are known and enforced without the use of federal systems or modern conventions
(Nicholls, 1952, 10). This society takes care of itself through its
unfaltering tie to and dependency on land that provides survival and social
structure.
What happens when the livelihood, family, and home is taken from someone who has only known one way to live for millennia? At the close of the nineteenth century European settlers had been in Australia for over one hundred years, with varying degrees of contact and disruption to Aboriginal society. The photograph "Two Aboriginal men fishing from canoe," appears straight forward and seems to depict a time when little contact has been made; these men are still able to fish and hunt in their traditional way. There is a hidden story, however, behind this picture and the people of the Port Macquarie area just before the turn of the nineteenth century.
Further Research
Port Macquarie: People and Places
Natives of Australia utilized every part of the land they lived on for
survival, but the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies finds an even
deeper connection and that "not only the social personality of men and women but also
the religious system is dependent on and made up of an identification with
a particular tract of land and its focal sacred sites," (Edwards, 1975,
73). The Port Macquarie area on the mid north coast of New South Wales,
is situated on the Hastings River and surrounding tributaries, and was inhabited
by two main groups of peoples, the Thungutti and Birpai Nations. This
area was first visited by European, John Oxley in 1820 (Port Macquarie Historical
Society, 1976, 1).
Natural Resources:
As the century progressed, Aboriginal inhabitants living in that area for
tens of thousands of years were steadily losing their traditional hunting
and gathering grounds to increasing settlement. In this costal river
system, Indigenous peoples used bark from mahogany and stringybark trees
for water transport, fishing, and for materials for hunting and cooking tools.
Tools:
Indigenous Australians used trees in a regenerative way for hunting and gathering "collecting
methods" for the past five thousand years, (Aboriginal Technology
and Bio Resource Collection, MU), to make clubs, spears, nets and axes, as
well as shelters. These finer, handled, "smaller and more delicate" tools
evolved from the stone tools used from 50,000 to 5,000 years ago. The
Macquarie University Bio Museum display describes that, "To survive
Aboriginals required an intimate understanding of the available resources
and their distribution. Much of the knowledge common to Aboriginal
Australians has been lost due to the impact of European Culture," (Aboriginal
Technology and Bio Resource Collection, MU).
Effects of Colonial Contact
The impact of colonization may be unapparent from the photograph of the bark
canoe, while in fact, natives "had experienced considerable loss
of life from the early waves of small pox, they had barely recovered when
British arrived to establish the settlement of Port Macquarie," (Port
Macquarie Historical Society, 1976, 1). Oral records from Elders
of the Birpai Nation record a substantial loss of life shortly after settlement
in the 1820's and 30's.
Land Displacement and Government Control:
In 1840 Birpai and Thungutti peoples attempted to fight back but many were
killed from superior weapons at "a place subsequently known as Blackman's
Point," (Port Macquarie Historical Society, 1976, 1). Between
1840 and 1900, the colony at Port Macquarie grew taking up more land with
little regard for any prior inhabitants, which caused the natives to be "systematically
displaced of their land and placed on to local reserves under the control
of the Aboriginal Protection Board," (Port Macquarie Historical Society,
1976, 1). Displaced from the Hastings area and now 'controlled,' some
Aboriginals were moved to reserves at Taree and Kempsey, while some retreated
further in to the bush and farther from their history and social context.
The Dick Collection:
This photograph comes from the Thomas Dick collection of Aboriginal peoples
in native scenes around Port Macquarie taken at the turn of the century. But
by 1900, the Birpai already "had suffered nearly a century of major
dislocation resulting in physical and mental deterioration," (Port
Macquarie Historical Society, 1976, 1).This is not shown in the photo,
however, because Dick was known to bring Aboriginals "further a field," who
had not yet suffered dislocation, in to the Hastings River area to shoot
the photographs.
Port Macquarie Today
Social Issues:
The effect of settlement on the men in the bark canoe may remain just an
image, but the impact of colonization and the subsequent disruption and dislocation
of Aboriginal peoples can be seen in Port Macquarie today. The Birpai
Local Aboriginal Land Council was formed in 1984 to address social issues
such as the 98% Aboriginal unemployment rate in the Hastings River Valley. Despite
this, there are no special services for childcare, health or legal aid for
Aboriginal peoples there. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission describes that "a remaining problem is the lack of a Culture
and Heritage Act in spite of a bill prepared in 1992 by the NSW Aboriginal
Land Council," ("Bush Talks", 2001, 1), and that
it is nearly impossible for a "dark-skinned Aboriginal person" to
rent a home in town.
"It is from the points where the heroes emerged and re-entered the ground that the present people derive their existence. These points which are the foci of personal identity lie at the heart of the peoples' religious beliefs and of their attachment to the land" (Edwards, 1975, 73). It has taken less than two centuries for the Aboriginal peoples of Port Macquarie to lose a well-functioning culture tested and evolved over tens of thousands of years. Perhaps a photo taken in another one hundred years, will reflect an intellectual community determined to preserve what is left of the timeless spirit of an ancient Aboriginal culture.
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