The Invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800 - 1870

The Invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800 - 1870 Fred Cahir “MY COUNTRY ALL GONE THE WHITE MEN HAVE STOLEN IT” The invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800 - 1870 Fred Cahir “MY COUNTRY ALL GONE THE WHITE MEN HAVE STOLEN IT” The Invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800-1870 Fred Cahir Dr Fred Cahir is an Associate Professor in Aboriginal History at Federation University Australia in the School of Arts. He lives and works in Ballarat on Wadawurrung Country. His Masters and PhD focused on local Victorian Aboriginal history. His PhD ‘Black Gold: the role of Aboriginal people on the Gold Fields of Victoria’ was awarded the Australian National University & Australian Historical Association 2008 Alan Martin Award for ‘a PhD Thesis which has made a significant contribution to the field of Australian history.’ Over the past thirty years, Fred has worked with Aboriginal communities in both Victoria and the Northern Territory in many capacities and settings including: homeland outstations, TAFE, schools, Native Title groups, Registered Aboriginal Party’s, Universities, Traditional Owners, Aboriginal Cultural Centres Catchment Management Authorities and prisons. Fred works as a teacher/researcher consultant with communities, institutions and organisations exploring the application of Cultural Renewal Restorative Practices. I First published in 2019 by Australian History Matters, 9 Eleanor Drive Ballarat, VIC, Australia © Fred Cahir 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the author. ISBN: 978-0-646-80178-0 Printed in Australia by Revolution Print, Ballarat, Australia Digital Volume - ISBN 978-1-876478-47-6 Cover design by Wind & Sky Productions & Chloe Cahir. © Fred Cahir 2021 Graphic Design Matters by Stephanie Skinner BHS Publishing All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, no part of this To purchase/postal delivery of this book please email the author [email protected] publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author. Or visit: https://ballaratheritage.com.au/bookshop/ Front cover design illustrations: William Strutt, 1852, Waran-drenin, Waran-drenin, [of the] Warreneep [Warrenheip] Tribe. Warran-drenin, alias Mary, Lubra of Morum-morum-been, © The Trustees of the British Museum, (Davis Catalogue MS 145 RAI 1867) Oc2006-Drg41-Str. Wedge, John Helder, 1856, MAP OF PORT PHILLIP FROM THE SURVEY OF MR. WEDGE AND OTHERS. National Library of Australia, nla.obj-416707851 Back Cover design illustatrions: Tommy McRae, c 1890 Corroboree or William Buckley and dancers, Courtesy of University of Melbourne, 1961.0008.00001 Wedge, John Helder, 1856, MAP OF PORT PHILLIP FROM THE SURVEY OF MR. WEDGE AND OTHERS. National Library of Australia, nla.obj-416707851 II Contents Foreword I Authors preface IV Introduction 1 The First Invasion on Wadawurrung Country, 1800-1834 Chapter 1: Initial Contact 5 Chapter 2: Sealers and Whalers 23 Chapter 3: Convict Settlements 31 Chapter 4: Shipwrecks, Maroons and Merchants 47 The Second Invasion Begins, 1835-1850 Chapter 5: The Squatters and their Sheep 53 Chapter 6: Work on the Frontier 77 Chapter 7: Cultural Interchange and Cooperation 105 Chapter 8: Dispossession and its Offspring – Violence and Avoidance 121 Chapter 9: Missionaries 171 Chapter 10: The Aboriginal Protectorate 195 The Third Invasion: the Gold Seekers Chapter 11: The Wadawurrung and the Rush for Gold 219 Conclusion 321 Endnotes 323 II III AUTHOR’S PREFACE This book really began on the Nullabor Plain in 1983 when I was cycling solo across Australia from Perth to Melbourne. I was young, dumb and blonde – a bad combination. Not surprisingly, I ran out of food and water for several days. Standing despondently beside the highway, I vowed to myself that if I survived my ordeal I would learn all I could about ‘surviving in the bush’ skills. When I returned to Victoria, I began researching by consulting with Aboriginal community members and in history books. I found it remarkable that there was a bevy of history books written about resourceful white pioneers – yet there was a pregnant silence in these history books, which spoke of the Aboriginal Countries and communities. There was an even greater silence in the history books about Aboriginal resourcefulness, which I came to find, had expressly informed the white colonists ability to survive and thrive in Australia. I began to see that historians for over a century had placed a veil of sorts on the Aboriginal narrative about the settlement of Australia. Yet when I read the primary records – the written and pictorial records of the colonists who were the principal agents in the conquest of Aboriginal lands they often spoke frankly about both the frontier violence and the major contribution that Aboriginal people had played in the making of our regional and subsequently our national legends – our story lines. This book is my attempt at contributing to a reversal of this memory loss at least at a local level by reconstructing a telling of the invasion of Wadawurrung Country in the period 1800- 1870. Subsequently this is not so much an Aboriginal history book; it is rather a Shared History book. It is doubtful that this book would have come about without my wife Sandy’s unstinting enthusiasm for my research. Thanks are also very much due to my friends and colleagues at Federation University who have generously shared their knowledge and time with me. In particular, I wish to highlight the support and guidance I have received for many years from Professor Ian Clark. I thank Jary Nemo at ‘Wind and Sky’ – and my daughter Chloe Cahir for the cover design and Stephanie Skinner, a proud Wadawurrung woman for the graphic design work. I would like to also thank many friends and family (too many to mention) who have encouraged me. WARNING Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people should be aware that this book contains words and descriptions written by non-Indigenous people in the past that may be confronting and would be considered inappropriate today. It also contains graphic descriptions of historical events that may be disturbing to some readers. IV INTRODUCTION One of the difficulties in writing a regional contact history lies in the selection of appropriate terminology and spelling conventions. Conflicts arise between conforming to the standardisations of the discipline of history and a desire to accommodate the wishes of Aboriginal communities. The absence of trained linguists in the white community during the period of initial colonisation resulted in considerable differences of opinion over terminology and the spelling derivatives surrounding Aboriginal people and groups living in what is now known as the Geelong–Ballarat region. The first white chroniclers referred to the Wadawurrung using various names (over 100 different names were recorded by Ian Clark for the people in this study area) including Watowrong, Wartowrong, Wotowrong, Watourong and Wodowrow.1 Throughout this book, I have applied the term ‘Wadawurrung’ to all Aboriginal groups in primary documents that involve the known language area of the Wadawurrung. I have included other language groups such as the Boon Wurrung and the Dja Dja Wurrung, as the historical record clearly demonstrates that the Wadawurrung were at amity with them and co-existed along their borders at the time of initial colonisation.2 I have, in the main used Professor Ian Clark’s (1990) Aboriginal languages and clans: an historical atlas of western and central Victoria, 1800-1900 and Victorian Aboriginal Corporation of Languages (VACL) as reference points for clan naming, language boundaries and spelling. The period of recorded contact researched in this book is 1800–1870. The book has chronological and thematic chapters that, at times, crossover, reflecting the interconnections and interrelationships between some of the themes covered. The Wadawurrung are the Aboriginal people whose land includes the cities now known as Ballarat and Geelong. The estates of the Wadawurrung clans are associated with four major rivers: the Moorabool, Woady Yaloak, Barwon and the Werribee. Fiery Creek and the upper reaches of Mt Emu Creek are generally considered the western boundaries of the Wadawurrung, and the towns of Lismore, Shelford, Winchelsea and Aireys Inlet fall within the traditional western cusp of their estates.3 It is generally considered that the northern boundaries incorporate the towns of Ballan, Myrniong, Learmonth and Beaufort. Signifying their boundaries to the east is the mouth of the Werribee River, the Bellarine peninsula and part of the Cape Otway coastline and their northern boundary is the Great Dividing Range.4 Colonial observers in the 1840s often disagreed about the exact boundaries. By way of example Assistant Aboriginal Protector, Edward Stone Parker, considered that the Wadawurrung ‘inhabited the Mt Macedon District’. Parker’s colleague in the Western Port District, William Thomas, concurred and always referred to the tribe in the Mt Macedon District as ‘Wattowrongs’ (Wadawurrung). GA Robinson, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District, on his first journey onto Wadawurrung country wrote in March 1840: ‘They informed me that the mountains War.ren.neep [Warrenheip] and Pun.nen. yong [Buninyong] belonged to the Wartowerong [Wadawurrung].’ Robinson also initially conjectured at the Wadawurrung’s boundaries, noting ‘I think the Wartowerongs also extend as far NW. as Mt Cole’ but later revised his position.5 IV 1 ‘Wadawurrung language area and clans’ based on Clark, Ian D. (1990). Aboriginal languages and clans: an historical atlas of western and central Victoria, 1800-1900.

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