Gippsland bit of history about my place

Post Reply
fuzzywuzzy
Posts: 6596
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:35 pm

Gippsland bit of history about my place

Post by fuzzywuzzy »

It's not a nice history especially when you have the children and grandchildren of those who did this all around you . I'ts not spoken about nor ever investigated as crime scenes but at least the good people have looked to have street names changed because we've hailed those who don't deserve it. and it's why Wendy would not have seen any blacks around when she visited.

well anyway on with the show.

firstly why we don't have any blacks ....except of course at the local aboriginal centre which is basically a low security prison....Oh hang on I tell a lie they play football for us in winter time . So I suppose they are around sometimes...personally I like the guys but history runs deep and there are many young people with family histories. Poor things.

White womans water hole is a place (before the fires) that we used to camp at and picnic sometimes. but it has a history to it that is both facinating and funny .

The white woman of Gippsland, or the captive woman of Gippsland, was supposedly a European woman rumoured to have been held against her will by Aboriginal Kurnai people in the Gippsland region of Australia in the 1840s. Her supposed plight excited searches and much speculation at the time, though nothing to put her existence beyond the level of rumour was ever found.

Accounts of her vary; in some she was an Anne MacPherson sailing to Sydney to join her fiance, Fraser, and her ship had sank off the Victorian coast. In other accounts she was on the ship Britannia wrecked on Ninety Mile Beach where male survivors were killed by Aborigines but she was spared.

One possible source of the rumours was that a group of white pioneers had come upon an Aboriginal camp near Port Albert which had been hurriedly vacated. They found some female attire and a towel (being used to block the end of a canoe) and a heart shape drawn in the ground. Another account has the heart shape near Sale and carved into both the ground and a tree (and from which a farm called Heart Station was named).

In any case representations to the government by settlers resulted in various searches by police and native police. One expedition left special handkerchiefs that she might come across, with a message in English and Gaelic (because it was thought she may be from the Scottish highlands) reading:

WHITE WOMAN! – There are fourteen armed men, partly White and partly Black, in search of you. Be cautious; and rush to them when you see them near you. Be particularly on the look out every dawn of morning, for it is then that the party are in hopes of rescuing you. The white settlement is towards the setting sun.

For some two years the Aboriginal people of the area were hunted for what they were imagined to have done. A boy called Thackewarren from the Warrigul people was captured and taught English, and used as an interpreter to tell his people that the white woman must be found. The Commissioner of Crown Lands, Tyer, was delighted when they promised to return her, and on the arranged day preparations were made to receive her. To the utter astonishment of all present, the Aboriginal people arrived with a carved wooden bust of a woman, the figurehead from the ship Britannia.

This figurehead could even have been the source of the rumours all along, in the possession of the Aboriginal people, becoming a real woman in the retelling. However, none of the white people took the figurehead as an answer to the mystery.


to me it was probably just another excuse to kill off more aboriginals.
fuzzywuzzy
Posts: 6596
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:35 pm

Gippsland bit of history about my place

Post by fuzzywuzzy »

The Aboriginal people of East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, known as the Gunai/Kurnai people, fought against the European invasion of their land. The technical superiority of the Europeans' weapons gave the Europeans an absolute advantage. At least 300 people were killed, but other figures estimate up to 1,000, however it is extremely difficult to be certain about the real death toll as so few records still exist or were even made at the time. Diseases introduced from the 1820s by European sealers and whalers also caused a rapid decline in Aboriginal numbers. The following list was compiled from such things as letters and diaries.[1]

1840 - Nuntin- unknown number killed by Angus McMillan's men

1840 - Boney Point - "Angus McMillan and his men took a heavy toll of Aboriginal lives"

1841 - Butchers Creek - 30-35 shot by Angus McMillan's men

1841 - Maffra - unknown number shot by Angus McMillan's men

1842 - Skull Creek - unknown number killed

1842 - Bruthen Creek - "hundreds killed"

1843 - Warrigal Creek - between 60 and 180 shot by Angus McMillan and his men

1844 - Maffra - unknown number killed

1846 - South Gippsland - 14 killed

1846 - Snowy River - 8 killed by Captain Dana and the Aboriginal Police

1846-47 - Central Gippsland - 50 or more shot by armed party hunting for a white woman supposedly held by Aborigines; no such woman was ever found.

1850 - East Gippsland - 15-20 killed

1850 - Murrindal - 16 poisoned

1850 - Brodribb River - 15-20 killed

There is very little evidence to back up any of these claims. Gippsland squatter Henry Meyrick wrote in a letter home to his relatives in England in 1846:

The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 450 have been murdered altogether.


fought against the invaders eh? ...sorry but I can't believe that .me thinks some cultural differences around food supply might answer a few questions here .

Gippsland massacres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
User avatar
tabby
Posts: 2535
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2010 3:41 pm
Location: Virginia

Gippsland bit of history about my place

Post by tabby »

Interesting history, Fuzzy! And violent yes, but of its time too.

It's not mandated that they live at the aboriginal centre, is it? I'm assuming that's an option for them?
fuzzywuzzy
Posts: 6596
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:35 pm

Gippsland bit of history about my place

Post by fuzzywuzzy »

HM Prison Won Wron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I remember the town meeting where somone stood up and said "we don't want there kind here" Fortunetly there were a lot more enlightened people in town. It wasn't really opposed . A lot of business comes from prisons/rehab centres. And yarram really needed it, it was a huge loss economically to the town when t he prison closed .

Yarram seeks more funds to go with Indigenous rehab centre - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Post Reply

Return to “History”