EARLY COLONIAL ETHNOGRAPHY
by David Andrew Roberts
There are numerous early nineteenth century sources
bestowing evidence of Aboriginal people and culture at the time
of first contact, written by an array of settlers, travellers
and colonial officials. These studies were of course inherently
deficient and biased, produced in the context of colonial invasion
and anchored in the myopic and often bigoted views of the period.
Generally speaking, the early colonial records offer little insight
into the real depths and intricacies of traditional Aboriginal
culture. Some critical religious information was recorded, much
of it offered by senior local Aboriginal men like Birabahn
and Gorman, but in the main the records are more explanatory of
culture-change during the frontier decades. They can at least
be mined for crucial information on Aboriginal material culture,
demography, settlement patterns and economy.
The principle sources are the papers of Reverend
L.E. Threlkeld, which have been used and cited extensively throughout
the Awaba project, and are listed in the Bibliography. An enormous
quantity of historical and cultural material can be gleamed from
Threlkeld's voluminous correspondence and mission reports, his
reminiscences and memoranda, and his language studies. Much of
this material was published by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
Studies in 1974 (Gunson
1974). Threlkeld was one of the few colonists to seek and
record Aboriginal knowledge and wisdom. Though there are naturally
limitations on the content and quality of his work, Threlkeld
was, for all his faults, an educated, professional and exceptionally
dedicated man who wrote with the authority of first-hand experience
and observation.
The earliest observations of Newcastle Aborigines
were made a quarter of a century before Threlkeld's arrival, by
Col. William Paterson of the NSW Corps, Lt. James Grant, the surveyor
Ensign Francis Luis Barrallier and the surgeon J. Harris, who
explored lower the Hunter River on the Lady Nelson in June 1801.
Their descriptions include remarks on Aboriginal fishing nets,
middens, canoes and campsites (Paterson
1801a; Paterson
1801b; Harris
1801; Grant 1803;
Barrallier
1802). Later that year, the superintendent of a coal mining
expedition at Newcastle, Mr. M Mason, met some large parties of
Aboriginal men, women and children, who "manifested the most
friendly dispositions" (Mason
1801).
In later years, important observations were
bequeathed by men such as Lieutenant Coke, Tyerman and Bennet,
William Henry Breton, Ludwig Leichhardt, John Askew and many others.
The historical data relating to the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie
area can be supplemented by evidence concerning the Worimi peoples
of the Port Stephens area, especially from the detailed observations
made by Robert Dawson while examining the Australian Agricultural
Company's holdings (Dawson
1830), and the Recollections of William Scott (Bennett
1929).
The Newcastle region, and particularly Threlkeld's
Lake Macquarie mission, attracted a number of touring delegations,
including James Backhouse and George Washington Walker of the
Society of Friends who made an extensive tour of the Australian
colonies between 1832-37. During a visit to Newcastle in 1836,
Backhouse and Walker spent time at Threlkeld's Ebenezer mission,
recounted in Backhouse's A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian
Colonies (1843), which describes meetings with "Beerabahn"
and Boatman, and details Aboriginal methods of obtaining honey,
the preparation of roots, fishing, tree-carving, trade with Europeans
and the use of boomerangs. (Backhouse
1843: 379-84).
Threlkeld's mission was visited three years
later by members of Capt. Charles Wilkes' United States Exploring
Expedition. In December 1839, shortly after arriving in Australia,
the ethnologist Horatio Emmons Hale (1817-1896) and the artist
Alfred T. Agate (1812-1846), journeyed to Lake Macquarie, meeting
with Threlkeld and "remnants of the tribes which about forty
years ago wandered in freedom over the plains of the Hunter and
around the borders of Lake Macquarie". An overview of the
Lake Macquarie tour was given in the second volume of the Narrative
of the United States Exploring Expedition (1845), containing
a detailed account of the mission, notes on Aboriginal bark cups,
huts and implements, and makes reference to local Awabakal identities,
Big-headed Blackboy, Jemmy, and Birabahn,
King Ben, King Shingleman, and Dismal (Wilkes
1845: 245-56). Hale authored the sixth volume of the expedition's
published report, Ethnology and Philology, which includes linguistic
material acquired from Threlkeld and Birabahn.
Alfred Agate made the famous portrait of Birabahn (Wilkes
1845: 254) that was used in Threlkeld's Key to the Structure
of the Aboriginal Language (1850). A possum skin rug collected
by the expedition is housed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington
(Meynard 2002).
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