School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemShadows on the landscape: memorial aspects of the Great Ocean Road( 1999)Victoria's commemorative landscape is made up of a series of natural and constructed features comprising roads, bridges, memorial sculptures, avenues of honour, coastal fortifications and military memorabilia, yet their memorializing function is largely unrecognized by the general population. Some of these memorials have been linked with the scenic landscape and have become privileged as tourist sites. Their original meanings, however, have been blurred by twentieth century progress. This thesis examines one component of Australia's memorial landscape, the Great Ocean Road in South West Victoria, and questions whether there is a parallel between the Western concept of a memorial landscape and the notions of spirituality in the land which are a primary component of the belief structure of indigenous peoples. This leads to an examination of the local geographical landscape in relation to Aboriginal massacre sites, and a questioning of the congruence between such sites and the now memorialized battlefields of World War 1. Chapter One deals with the history of the Great Ocean Road and traces its development and construction from 1916 to 1932. Chapter Two examines the place of the Great Ocean Road in the overall scheme of post World War 1 memorialization, and questions why its original function has been so little recognized by the community. Chapter Three looks at the complex relationships between the physical and spiritual elements of the land as perceived by Aboriginal culture, investigates the Aboriginal massacre sites within close proximity to the Great Ocean Road, and questions why no memorials have been raised to Aborigines who died defending their land. The theoretical base of the thesis is supported by the notion that landscape is socially and culturally determined, and that place can be invested with spiritual potency. Finally, it is argued that for a place to retain its spiritual strength, regardless of the culture, the spiritual content must be recognized, ritualized and constantly refreshed within the culture.
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ItemGood men and true: the Aboriginal police of the Port Phillip District 1837-1853( 1986)Good men and true is the phrase used by the Commandant of the 1842 Corps of Native Police in summing up for Superintendent LaTrobe the outcome of the first experimental expedition of the Corps to the Western District. It is the age-old Service accolade, bespeaking praise and affection and pride in the troops under the command. This is a history of those men. Since Stanner wrote over twenty years ago that the Aborigines had been left out of Australian history, much has been written about them. Perhaps impelled by emergent black nationalism, maybe running parallel with it, this generation of writing about the Australian past has been useful and necessary in raising Australian consciousness to the extent necessary to take seriously the Aboriginal part of our joint past. To a large extent though, it has been an ethnocentric discussion of white behaviour towards Aborigines producing the Aboriginal people as subjects who seem to stand stock still, as one reviewer has said, and allow things to happen to them. It has produced the cultural perception of past and dead Aboriginal people as mainly victims, or in a few exceptional cases as heroic figures of resistance. Broome's observation about one chapter in one book is capable of general extension - we have replaced an earlier historical falsehood of a non-violent frontier with a new stereotype of a violent one. It could be added - with clearly defined and allocated roles, and moral evaluation thrown in for good measure. There is much truth in these histories, but even taken together, they do not encompass truth: they do not take account of positive Aboriginal choices. Our models of explanation, Stanner wrote, have been based either on the dramatic secondary causes - violence, disease, neglect, prejudice, or on the structure of Aboriginal society or both, but they have not taken into account Aboriginal initiatives towards European society, their curiosity, their zest for living, their choices, their creations. This study concerns itself with one of their choices - it is a history of co-operation, an Aboriginal success story. Why it has not been told before is puzzling: a cursory glance at the secondary section of the Bibliography (which is select, noting only those works which specifically mention the Corps) is sufficient to demonstrate a widespread awareness in the past of the Native Police Corps of the Port Phillip District. Yet out of all those passing mentions, it could scarcely be said that our knowledge has been advanced; five attempts only have been made to constitute the Corps as a subject of knowledge, and none to understand the men. Spender's question must at least be asked here, though it cannot be answered - "Why do we know so little about ... blacks for example, and why is so much of what we do know about them false, negative or derogatory. Who has made this knowledge, on what basis, and for what reasons?” Shades of Foucault. The explanatory processes used by white historians (which black historians reject) still draw their inspiration from Elkin's work. The story of Aboriginal co-operation in policing resembles to some extent the adaptive response which Elkin has described as intelligent parasitism. It was more though than that. Parasitism, however intelligent might well be an accurate description of the actions of men who choose a way of life for what they can get out of it, and abandon it when they get a better offer; or simply abandon it when its attractions dim, but it does not come anywhere near explaining in this particular instance the evident bonds of affection and loyalty which developed between the men who joined and their European officers. In this story, feelings matter. The Government's initial aim in setting up a Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District was two-fold: it wanted a policing force to deal with bushrangers, and at the same time, it hoped to "civilise" the men of the Corps. In this work, the civilising aim is ignored, except in so far as it was expressed in regulations for living, though it may be noted in passing that the Corps was described as the only success of all the Government's policy initiatives with regard to Aboriginal people. But success in European terms is not the issue. This enquiry is directed at the terms of existence for the men themselves; it seeks to tell the story of their choice, and to understand and explain it. The story and the explanation both turn around the dual consciousness of being Aboriginal and being a policeman.
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ItemThe Aboriginal response to white settlement in the Port Phillip district, 1835-1850( 1979)The nature of the Aboriginal response to Europeans in the first years of the settlement in the Port Phillip District has not been sufficiently investigated by historians. We know very little of the ways Aborigines perceived whites. This is not merely because few European contemporaries were interested to record the attitudes of blacks towards whites, but also because this lack of interest has been continued, and has influenced historians to direct study to other fields. Recently, however, works relating to interracial relations in other states have guided the search for understanding the past from the Aboriginal point of view - the 'other side of the frontier'. There are many issues and interests that have sparked this search, and probably the one most important motivation for this has been the ascendancy of black leaders who have offered their version of the past. Perhaps because of this, historical study has concentrated on interracial tensions in the early years of European-Aboriginal contact. However, in Victoria, the Aboriginal response to whites entailed peaceful adaptation and cultural resistance. Aborigines did not instantly recognize Europeans as enemies, and traditional foes were still hated and feared, far more than the newcomers. These traditional foes were Aborigines of hostile or unknown tribes. In this study, I have also been concerned to explain the dramatic population decline among the Aborigines in the years to 1850, as this, also, resulted from Aboriginal responses to whites. White settlement caused disease, depression, increased intertribal warfare, as well as interracial violence. Conflict between blacks and whites was only a minor factor in this depopulation, and it was not recognized as a cause by the Aborigines. According to them, intertribal hostility was the most immediate cause of death; but the white occupation of Victoria must be seen as the cause of the despair that led Aborigines to dispose of their newly-born children rather than raise families. Death, disease and infant mortality worked together to halve the Aboriginal population in the fifteen years to 1850; death and despair later led to the destruction of much of the Aboriginal cultural heritage and social cohesion. I have attempted to reconstruct the nature of Aboriginal population, society and culture at the time of first white settlement, in order to review the extent of change introduced by whites. Although the population dramatically changed in size and distribution, many of the social rules and religious beliefs of the Aborigines were maintained and some were possibly strengthened. This was a magnificent achievement given the pressure and degree of white influence. Most Aborigines peacefully rejected white values, maintaining their own beliefs, and changing only those aspects of their culture which did not intimidate their conceptions of the world. Few Aborigines adopted white values in the period to 1850, although in later years the reduced and disintegrated population came to accept many European principles, having lost many of their own. Whites were recognized as cultural enemies, and for the most part, white ways of thinking were rejected; but the Port Phillip District Aborigines did not regard whites as mortal enemies, for they were only hostile towards few whites, and directed their hatred towards those Aborigines who were strangers to them. For this reason, the Aboriginal resistance offered to whites was predominantly peaceful, a battle of the mind and not of the body.