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Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870

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Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 Black Gold Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 Fred Cahir Black Gold Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 Fred Cahir Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated Aboriginal History Monograph 25 This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/ National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Cahir, Fred. Title: Black gold : Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 / Fred Cahir. ISBN: 9781921862953 (pbk.) 9781921862960 (eBook) Series: Aboriginal history monograph ; 25. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Gold mines and mining--Victoria--1851-1891. Aboriginal Australians--Victoria--History--19th century. Dewey Number: 994.503 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published with the assistance of University of Ballarat (School of Business), Sovereign Hill Parks and Museum Association and Parks Victoria This publication has been supported by the Australian Historical Association Cover design with assistance from Evie Cahir Front Cover photo: ‘New diggings, Ballarat’ by Thomas Ham, 1851. Courtesy State Library of Victoria Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2012 ANU E Press Contents Preface and acknowledgements . .vii Introduction . 1 1 . Aboriginal people and mining . 5 2 . Discoverers and fossickers . 21 3 . Guiding . 35 4 . Trackers and Native Police . 47 Illustrations . 57 5 . Trade, commerce and the service sector . 67 6 . Co-habitation . 85 7. Off the goldfields . 103 8 . Social and environmental change . 109 9 . Governments and missions . 121 Conclusion . 127 Select bibliography . 129 Index . 145 v Preface and acknowledgements This project began with a humble request from my then Masters supervisor Dr Janice Newton to consider delivering a paper at a conference commemorating the 140th anniversary (1994) of the Eureka Stockade. She wanted me to speak about the role of Aboriginal people in that epoch-making event. At the time I was busy researching about the history of early colonial contact between the Wathawurrung people of the wider Ballarat region and the colonisers who usurped them of their lands. Unaware of the bountiful archival material that existed about Aboriginal peoples’ roles on the goldfields of Ballarat in the 1850s, I confess that my initial thought was ‘this will be one short conference paper’! I was completely taken aback to discover the vast array of primary source material – newspapers, miner’s diaries and other archival sources – that clearly showed ‘Aboriginal people had had a dynamic influence on the Ballarat goldfields’. Thoughts of researching and publishing further on this topic had to wait whilst I finished my Masters degree, worked as a teacher on several remote Aboriginal communities in northern Australia and got on with my hectic family life. It was not until 2001 when I had completed my Masters and began teaching Eco-Tourism at the University of Ballarat that I began to seriously consider filling in the huge gap that existed in history books about the role of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria. Conversations with Professor Ian Clark at the University of Ballarat and Tim Sullivan from Sovereign Hill followed, and gradually the viability of completing a PhD on the topic of ‘Black Gold’ emerged as a reality. I must thank Ian Clark for seeing the potential of the project and Tim Sullivan for agreeing to come on board as Industry Partner in what was to be a successful Australian Research Council grant. Many people at research institutions were pivotal in my quest for what was sometimes just a rakishly thin sentence in a manuscript or rare book. Tim Hogan at the State Library of Victoria was a marvellous ‘urger’, the volunteer staff at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria pampered me, the librarians at the University of Ballarat were Trojan-like in their assistance and many members of the Ballarat and the wider district Aboriginal community such as Jaara Elder Uncle Brien Nelson befriended me and applauded my efforts in exploring ‘our shared history’. Many people have generously contributed advice, time, information and encouragement to this study and l am indebted to all. Special gratitude goes to: my wife Sandy and my six wonderful children for listening ears, endless cups of tea and forbearance of me during hard times; my PhD supervisors, Professor Ian Clark and Dr Anne Begg-Sunter for their many invaluable insights and their guidance, encouragement, patience and friendship throughout the vii Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870 study; colleagues at the University of Ballarat such as Associate Professor Margaret Zeegers for their positive unfailing support; specialist assistance from Dr Laura Kostanski who was a great listening ear; my extended family who ‘put me up and put up with me’ on my research sojourns, especially Bernie and Robin and Liam and Carmel. I also thank Sovereign Hill (PhD Industry Partner) for their accessibility and financial support; David Bannear at Parks Victoria and Associate Professor David Goodman for support when it was really needed. Finally, I wish to thank Professor Peter Read for helping to transform my thesis into a book, Aboriginal History Monographs and ANU E Press for agreeing to publish it, and Dr Rani Kerin for being an exemplar ‘nudger’. I give thanks to Jesus Christ for sustaining me. Fred Cahir April 2012 viii Introduction By the time that gold was officially discovered in Victoria in 1851 the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate (1838-1850) had been disbanded, Aboriginal people had been dispossessed of their land by squatters and sheep, and they were now facing a second invasion – gold seekers from across the globe. When, by the mid 1850s, it became clear that gold was literally strewn across Victoria, the rush to the diggings by a mass of humanity began. This book dispels four common misconceptions surrounding Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria during the nineteenth century: that most Aboriginal people were attached to sheep stations rather than townships; that those few at mining settlements were on the periphery; that those on the periphery were bewildered spectators; and finally, that Aboriginal experiences on the goldfields were primarily negative. This book reveals that Victorian Aboriginal people demonstrated a great degree of agency, exhibited entrepreneurial spirit and eagerness to participate in gold-mining or related activities and, at times, figured significantly in the gold epoch. Their experiences, like those of non- Indigenous people, were multi-dimensional, from passive presence, active discovery, to shunning the goldfields. There is striking and consistent evidence that Aboriginal people, especially those whose lands were in rich alluvial gold bearing regions, remained in the gold areas, participated in gold mining and interacted with non-Indigenous people in a whole range of hitherto neglected ways, whilst maintaining many of their traditional customs. There is also evidence that Aboriginal people from Tasmania, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia were present on the Victorian goldfields. Histories of Aboriginal people and mining Published in the early 1960s, Geoffrey Blainey’s history of Australian mining The Rush that Never Ended, is studded with references to Aboriginal people in a number of significant capacities. Yet Blainey neglected to synthesise any broad acknowledgement of their part in the saga of Australian mining. Interestingly, the tendency for writers discussing West Australian, Queensland and Northern Territory goldfields history is to be more inclusive of the Indigenous experience than in Victorian histories where the Aboriginal presence is still predominantly held within frontier violence. Detailed historical studies of specific Aboriginal communities mining and participating in the communal life of goldfields are rare. Indeed, the incorrect attribution of gold discoveries to non-Indigenes, such as the famous 106 pound nugget of gold found by Aboriginal people near the Turon, invariably referred to as simply ‘Kerr’s Nugget’, illustrates how 1 Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870 Aboriginal people have been excised from Australian gold history. Generally, most writers restrict their 'Indigenous participation' lenses to the latter part of the twentieth century and almost exclusively to the northern or arid gold- producing regions of Australia. An important exception is the collection Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia (2001) edited by Ian McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew Reeves. This work departs from conventional assumptions about gold mining and Aboriginal people, namely that gold created an Aboriginal diaspora as people were forced from their territory. The editors and many of the contributors to this collection argue that while Aboriginal people suffered racial vilification and sustained oppression on the goldfields, this did not prevent their active resistance nor their active engagement with the industry. ‘Nowhere do we encounter Indigenes as passive victims of gold’, writes McCalman. He cites numerous examples of ‘extraordinary sagacity, agile resourcefulness’ and the harnessing by shrewd Indigenes of European compulsions. A contributor to this
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