History, Fiction and the Breaksea Islanders. by Sarah Drummond
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1 Exiles and Island Wives: history, fiction and the Breaksea Islanders. By Sarah Drummond PhD thesis submitted to Murdoch University 02/09/2015 2 I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. .. Sarah Drummond 3 Abstract Exiles and Island Wives: history, fiction and the Breaksea Islanders PhD Thesis by Sarah Drummond Murdoch University In 1826, just prior to the colonisation of Western Australia, a disparate group of men, women and children lived on islands adjacent to what is now called Albany. They were sealers, abandoned by their bosses who had brought them from Bass Strait on the schooners Governor Brisbane and the Hunter. The small community included people native to New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land, Canada, North America, Western Australia and England. Exiles and Island Wives is concerned with investigating the people whom I call the Breaksea Islanders. As none of them left written records, there are three threads of this investigation: historical research, historical fiction and a discussion on the methodology of writing historical fiction. The historical research includes individual biographies of the Breaksea Islanders and an extrapolation of their involvement of the events of 1826 – 1827, when Major Edmund Lockyer arrived in Albany aboard the Amity to annexe the western part of the continent. Here I also discuss the Aboriginal women’s responses to abduction and trauma. The Aboriginal women and children in the small sealing community possessed little autonomy over their own lives and so the discussion on history and fiction is partly concerned with the portrayal of women’s agency in historical fiction. I also discuss the naming of Indigenous and non-Indigenous characters by both writers and people in positions of colonial power and, using Foucault’s Of Other spaces, discuss the cohesive factors unique to communities who live on boats and islands. The historical fiction component is the novel Exiles, based on the people and events in 1826 King George Sound. The purpose of the historical fiction is to reveal aspects of the Breaksea Islanders’ lives and motivations that may not be accessible through historical research. The Breaksea Islanders silence on history’s page meant they have been previously portrayed through the lens of government and newspaper reports, and by men in positions of colonial power. The novel seeks to invert this situation by centralising the lives of the Breaksea Islanders. The fiction component of this thesis was published by Fremantle Press in 2016 as the novel The Sound. 4 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Some notes on terminology 6 Map 8 Introduction 10 Exegesis Chapter 1. History: 15 1.1 “Some Bad Work Done Here” King George Sound, 1826-1827 15 1.2 East to West: the sweep of the sealers 21 Chapter 2. Biographies: 23 Men and Women and Children from the Governor Brisbane and the Hunter 23 2.1 Warrior, Wife, Sealer, Slave 23 Fanny 25 Dinah and Moonie 27 Kaurna Sally 30 Moennan and Manilyan 33 2.2 Women with Guns 1: Pallawah, Kaurna and Noongar Women’s Responses to Abduction and Forced Labour in the 1820s Southern Ocean 37 Resistance 37 Hunting, Dying, Surviving, Adapting 39 “Without names she threw them”: Infanticide and the Devil Dance 42 2.3Seawolves and Banditti: The Men of the Governor Brisbane and the Hunter 48 William Hook 48 Samuel Bailey 50 John Randall, James Kirby and James Everett 52 Pigeon and Robert Williams 55 Richard Simmons 58 2.4 Rough Lives in Small Boats: some thoughts on the natures and historical representations of the 1826 Breaksea Islanders 60 Chapter 3. Methodology: Bluebeard, Billhooks and Sealers: creating fiction from history 64 3.1 William Hook and the Heterotopia of the Boat 66 3.2 Bestowed, Borrowed or Brokered: the naming of people and place in Exiles 72 3.3 Women with Guns 2: Depictions of women’s agency in historical fiction 79 3.4 Predator Dreams 84 Thesis Conclusion 91 Fiction component: Exiles 95 Relics, Curiosities and Autographs 261 References 265 Appendices 278 5 Acknowledgements Many people have contributed to this project in so many different ways. For the reading, chatting and ideas friends, and the Albany postgrad’s group; thank you so much. Thanks to my Drummond sisters for their belief and love. For the friends who fed me meals, experiences and inspiration, especially Sheilah Ryan, and Jay and Selina Hill Cook; thank you. The Albany campus at UWA who gave me employment and a desk in the quiet blue room, my ever-patient children Maya and Morgan, adventure capacitator Pte. Quinn and my dad John Drummond; big thanks. Thanks to Colin Ryan who gave me and the pup somewhere to stay in the last hectic days of preparing to submit. Thanks to fellow researchers Ciaran Lynch, Murray Arnold and Dan Cerchi. Thanks to Kim Scott for his sage and navigational advice on writing historical fiction. Thanks to the staff at the Research and Development centre at Murdoch University. My most heartfelt thanks are saved for two amazing women who have been my bedrock over the last five years: my mum Carmelita O’Sullivan, and my supervisor at Murdoch University, Kathryn Trees. 6 Some notes on terminology Tasmanian and Kangaroo Island terminology: Pallawah: Self-name for people indigenous to Tasmania.1 Tyreelore: I have used the title Tyreelore specifically for Aboriginal women native to Van Diemen’s Land who lived with the sealers on Bass Strait and Kangaroo Island.2 Kaurna/South Australia: Language group of the people indigenous to Adelaide and the Adelaide Plains.3As South Australia was not settled by Europeans in 1826, I have referred to South Australia as ‘the mainland adjacent to Kangaroo Island’. Kangaroo Islanders: Sealers who became residents of Kangaroo Island prior to colonisation. Straitsmen: Sealers who became residents of Bass Strait islands. Pallawah names: Where possible I have used the indigenous names of individual Pallawah people, but where records are insufficient I have used the names they were given by Europeans, or the names by which they introduced themselves to Europeans. Tasmanian place names: Tasmania is called Van Diemen’s Land throughout the exegesis. Tasmanian sites and towns are given their European names due to inconsistent (or disputed) records of Pallawah place names. Tasmanian tribal structures and names: I have referred to Lyndall Ryan, Patsy Cameron and NJB Plomley for my references to Pallawah language groups and names. South Western Australian terminology: Menang: (Mineng, Minang) Noongar people who make up the clans indigenous to the King George Sound region of Western Australia. In the exegesis I refer to them as Menang.4 Noongar: (Nyungar) Language group of people indigenous to the south west corner of Western Australia. Sealers: Seal hunters who worked individually or for an employer in the nineteenth century. Noongar and Sealers Names: Where possible I refer to men, women and children by their indigenous and given names. Otherwise I have recorded people by the names used to identify themselves. Breaksea Islander community: In the exegesis I refer to the group of sealers (including women and children) who lived on Breaksea Island and other islands adjacent to King George Sound in 1826 as Breaksea Islanders. 1 See Matson-Green, V. and Cameron, P., ‘Pallawah women: their historical contribution to our survival.’ Papers and Proceedings: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Vol. 41, No. 2, June 1994: 65-70. However “There exists a majority of Tasmanian Aborigines who reject its use because it has an unsound history and has not been discussed by the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as to whether it is to be used or rejected.” Everett, J., ‘Review’, Oceania Vol. 69, No. 3.1999, p. 219. 2“The words ‘tyerrityer’ is translated to ‘island’ (Plomley, 1976:275) and ‘loreerne’ means ‘wife’ (Plomley, 1976: p. 472). Tyreelore has also been translated in more recent times to ‘island wives’ (Lehman in Alexander, 2005: p. 371) … See also Plomley pp. 77 and 256.” Cameron, P., Grease and Ochre: the blending of two cultures at the colonial sea frontier, Fullers Bookshop Pty Ltd, Riawunna Centre at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, 2010, p. 154. 3 Amery, R., ‘Kaurna in Tasmania: A Case of Mistaken Identity’, in Aboriginal History, 20, 1996, pp. 24 – 50, p.25. 4 See Arnold, M., A Journey Travelled: Aboriginal-European relations at Albany and the surrounding region from first contact to 1926, UWA Publishing, Perth, 2015, pp. 19-22. See also Mulvaney, J., and Green, N., Commandant of Solitude: The journals of Captain Collet Barker 1828-1831, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 289. 7 West Australian place names: English, Dutch or French place names in 1826 invariably reflected visitors’ approaches by sea (Recherche Archipelago, King George Sound, Swan River etc) and I have used these names in the exegesis. Western Australia/ New Holland: Western Australia was not colonised in 1826 and therefore I have used the terms New Holland or west Australia. 8 5 5 Map courtesy of Christopher Cook, Country Cartographics, www.ccarto.com.au 9 Brothels and colonies are two extreme forms of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilisation, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has also been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination.