A Concise History of New South Wales

John S Croucher

• Editorial: Woodslane Press
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781925868524
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Australian & Oceanian History

Professor John Croucher gives an account of the first and continuing history of the first peoples to live in the region now known as New South Wales, as well as its history from the days of British settlement and its more recent history, of the waves of other immigrants who have made New South Wales their home. Each section in the book focuses on a different cultural or historical aspect which is examined thoroughly from the beginnings of British settlement. The complete development of the state is told, weaving through these various areas of focus, along with the important people and events. Remarkable pioneers have helped shape not only the state but the country as a whole and their voices, some coming to us via oral history, others via historical documents, make fascinating reading.

1. Indigenous History

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Introduction

Pre-contact Indigenous history is very much open to investigation and enquiry. Bridges have to be constructed between evidence, such as archaeological finds, including middens, scarred trees, quarries, camp sites, ceremonial sites and rock art, and the observations of non-Indigenous people and Indigenous stories handed down for generations. In discussing the latter, respect must be shown for the intellectual property rights of Indigenous stories, especially when the writer of this account is not Indigenous.

Writing an Indigenous history of New South Wales is also made difficult as that state is a political consequence of the British occupation of Australia. It obviously had no relevance to the two distinct Indigenous groups: mainland Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Within these two groups there is a wide variety with different clans and nations having diverse languages and cultural practices. The boundaries of the areas that different clans called ‘country’ bear no relationship to the delineated area of New South Wales, itself changing over the period of European occupation as it initially included Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. To identify Indigenous people specifically of New South Wales therefore has its problems. However, in New South Wales, while people had clan names, they also referred to themselves generally as Koori or Murri.

The Indigenous peoples of NSW (and of Australia generally) are representatives of perhaps the oldest surviving geographically stable human culture on earth. It is estimated that Indigenous occupation of Australia has lasted approximately 65,000 years and that there were between 250 and 500 ‘nations’ or language groups. In New South Wales, Mungo National Park has yielded evidence from two skeletons, usually referred to as ‘Mungo Lady’ and ‘Mungo Man’, probably buried ritualistically. In 2003, these were estimated to be about 40,000 years old, with other estimates being up to 43,000 years.

Although the following observations are divided into sections for the sake of discussion, this in many ways distorts the Aboriginal world view, which is holistic. The spiritual affects the social; the social affects the environmental; and the environmental is inextricably linked to the spiritual as when sacred sites overlap ecological sanctuaries. Note that the terms ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Indigenous’ have been used interchangeably in this book.

Country and agriculture

Aboriginal peoples’ attitude towards land is quite different from that of Europeans, as they do not ‘own’ land but are tribal-based custodians of it. As an Australian based ethnographer of Aboriginal peoples, Deborah Bird Rose, explains, ‘Country, to use the philosopher’s term, is a nourishing terrain. Country is a place that gives and receives life. Not just imagined or represented, it is lived in and lived with.’

While not being conservationists in the modern sense, the control and care of land was an active pursuit intended to ensure that resources were not depleted. To this end, Aboriginal people did not try to tame the country, but worked with it. They knew the local conditions: which plants could be successfully encouraged, and which would attract what animals. They understood the migratory patterns of birds and many other animals They dammed and directed rivers, carving out cut channels through waterways and swamps. At Brewarrina on the Darling River in north-west NSW, for example, extensive and complex fish pens were created to use the currents of the Barwon River and trap fish and eels.

This care of the land was observed by knowledgeable and eminent Europeans. Both James Cook and Joseph Banks were astonished to find what looked like plantations and lawns, while Elizabeth Macarthur (1766–1850), the wife of John Macarthur (1767–1834), was pleasantly surprised to see what looked like an English park. The naval surgeon and author, Peter Cunningham, depicted the areas around Parramatta and Liverpool as being so lightly timbered that one could drive a gig through them unimpeded. Many early commentators were astonished at the ‘parks’ that they found timbered, covered with grass and no undergrowth. Despite this, the explorer and politician William Charles Wentworth (1790–1872) in his 1820 book, A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, declared ‘they are entirely unacquainted with the arts of agriculture’: a view that became endemic in colonial society despite strong evidence to the contrary.

What they did not realise, or did not wish to acknowledge, was that this was the result of Aboriginal land management. And one of its chief tools and allies was fire, mostly used to burn bush and undergrowth to encourage the growth of grasses for cropping, to attract animals for food and to prevent more volatile and unpredictable natural fires. This involved regular burning with low intensity fire which did not deplete the soil of nutrients but was sufficient to clear lands, encourage grass and allow for seeds which required heat to germinate. Areas of good soil were burned while forested areas were left standing, thus creating a rotating mosaic pattern of land clearing. Senior people, usually men, determined the burning path.

Aboriginal people were also agriculturalists, though perhaps not in the European sense. Land was not fenced nor soil ploughed. Rather than ploughing, they tilled across slopes, so avoiding the possibility of erosion. As people such as the explorers Thomas Mitchell and Charles Sturt observed, Aboriginal people collected grasses and piled them into haystacks awaiting threshing and grinding of the seed which was then baked. Such seeds were also traded with other groups, thus spreading the propagation of crops.

This selective harvesting and the use of fire assisted biodiversity. When Europeans commented on the abundance and regularity of the Aboriginal’s food supply, they were really commenting on the Aboriginal peoples’ skilful husbanding of resources. This care of land had a spiritual aspect, as land is full of rocks and trees which were regarded as containing spirits. As such, land was not to be assessed merely by economic potential. Within their clan lands, people were responsible for their own country, caring for it, singing of it and telling stories about it. They were not entitled to any role in other people’s country unless so authorised.

All of this care and responsibility required detailed knowledge of seasons, movements of animals, availability of water, nature of soils, winds, sky, sea, vegetation and landforms. This represented a scientific knowledge of land management and, as Aboriginal peoples had occupied these lands for so long, this should not be surprising. All the elements related to country were interdependent and all were alive with their own laws and culture. According to Fred Biggs, a Ngeamba man from the Menindee in New South Wales, ‘Sky country in particular was linked to the earth through seasons and weather’.

Culture and social organisation

Kinship was a very broad concept, but basically indicated how people were related to one another. Relationships went beyond the family in a European sense, or immediate kin, to the broad community in which Aboriginal people belonged, to a clan of variable size, even up to around 50 members. Each clan had a totem, usually an animal. But individuals could also have totems based on other factors such as their place of birth.

Totems were seen as linking people to the universe and all that was in it, with people of a particular totem being responsible for the care of it and its habitat. The concept of land was interwoven with culture and knowing one’s totem was part of ecological management: one knew the creature, but also the plants and habitat that nurtured it. The Yuin people of the south coast of NSW, for example, considered that the killer whales herded injured whales to the shore as food for the local people. They believed that they would be reincarnated as killer whales and would in no way harm these creatures. It was this combination of the practical and the spiritual that was common in Aboriginal culture.

Kinship and totemic affiliations also determined other social rituals, such as marriage. Marital relationships were arranged to avoid people marrying someone of their own broad family. These betrothals would often be organised at clan ceremonies, quite often with the woman’s mother being the chief organiser. The people of south-east NSW, for example, banned a man from having any dealings with his mother-in-law, except through a third party.

The husbanding of land was inextricably bound to spiritual beliefs, with the ‘Dreaming’ or ‘Dreamtime’ being a concept not unlike all creation stories. Supernatural creation spirits shaped all aspects of life and the paths on which they travelled across the land, giving it its form as ‘songlines’ or ‘storylines’. Songlines were very practical as they contained information concerning the land through which one travelled; for example, where there were waterholes. Laws were handed down to the ancestors, who then passed them on. Dreaming explained creation and determined correct behaviour, much as all religions do. These Dreaming stories carried morals, warnings, laws and culture. They were enshrined in an oral tradition of storytelling, with only some people having the right to tell specific stories. All species were regarded as having their origins in the Dreaming and different creatures changed from animal to human and back again.

In New South Wales and the south-east of Australia generally, a creator being, Nguril, was responsible for initiating the form of the land. A song from the Lachlan River area celebrates this:

Look here! Nguril did this!

That is what Nguril did.

Look here! Nguril did this!

Plain after plain, with flowing creeks,

To the River’s water.

Some sacred Dreaming stories were for men and some for women and these distinctions created degrees of exclusion and respect. Men, for example, might not be able to visit certain places or even look at the smoke from the fires of women in those areas. Gulaga in the Wallaga Lakes area of the south coast of NSW is a sacred female mountain for the Yuin people. But while there are places on this mountain that only women can attend, there are also places for everyone.

Burial practices varied, but simple burial or burial and cremation rituals were common, albeit with variations. The Darkinjung people, north of the Hawkesbury, for example, placed the knees near the head of the deceased. For the people around Port Jackson, personal items were buried with the body. While the Yuin people of the south coast buried some items with the body, they gave weapons to friends.

Sacred places were frequently indicated by the marking or painting of the trunks of trees. This was so in the construction of ceremonial grounds and cemeteries. Graveyards were established in places of beauty and trees, when saplings, were interlaced to create arbours.

These were by no means the only evidence of Aboriginal construction practices obvious to the early European explorers. While they could adapt their living conditions to their surroundings, such as living in rock shelters when fishing in coastal areas, they also resided for long periods in houses and villages. In one instance, the explorer Charles Sturt saw 70 domed huts on the Darling River, which he estimated could each hold fifteen people. On the Gwydir River in the 1830s, another explorer, Thomas Mitchell, reported a similar large village with substantial permanent huts. These were not isolated observations.

In addition to the construction of villages, grain stores, essential to balance times of plenty with leaner times, were erected by various means. Clay and straw compartments were built to store foods such as grains, fruit and nuts. This was also necessary preceding inter-clan ceremonial meetings t...