Exploring Place in The Australian Landscape (2022)
Exploring Place in The Australian Landscape (2022)
Exploring Place in The Australian Landscape (2022)
in the Australian
Landscape
In the Country of the White Cockatoo
David S. Jones
Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape
“This profoundly important, unique work helps to bridge the gulf between
Koorie and Western perceptions of the Australian landscape and ways of seeing,
being and understanding the world and our place in it. It is concurrently sophis-
ticated, erudite and poetic, offering a rare depth of insight.”
—Dr Joshua Zeunert, Senior Scientia Lecturer, University of
New South Wales, Australia.
“This timely and well written book is based upon the author’s close personal and
professional relationships with the Western District region of Victoria that spans
many decades. It heralds a new way of relating to Australian cultural landscapes,
which encourages the merging of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous realms of
knowledge and perception of country in the aim of producing a novel and more
respectful sense of place that will prove more meaningful to all future Australians.”
—Dr Philip A. Clarke, Consultant Anthropologist & Adjunct Senior
Research Fellow at Griffith & Federation Universities.
David S. Jones
Exploring Place in
the Australian
Landscape
In the Country of the White Cockatoo
David S. Jones
Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation
Djilang/Geelong, Australia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore
Pte Ltd. 2022
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Warning
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that
the following text may contain voices and names of People
who have passed and who have ventured into the Dreaming.
Foreword
Cultural landscapes reflect the interactions between people and their natu-
ral environment over space and time … A cultural landscape is a complex
phenomenon with a tangible and intangible identity. The intangible com-
ponent arises from ideas and interactions which have an impact on the
perceptions and shaping of a landscape, such as sacred beliefs closely linked
to the landscape and the way it has been perceived over time. Cultural
landscapes mirror the cultures which created them. (my italics)1
1
Plachter H and Rössler M (1995) ‘Cultural Landscapes: Reconnecting Culture and Nature’ in
Bvon Droste, H. Plachter & M. Rössler (eds.), Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value—Components
of a Global Strategy, Jena: Fischer; p.15.
vii
viii Foreword
places; something we see with our eye but interpret with our mind.2
Underpinning Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal attachment to country
and landscape, respectively, are deeply rooted values, ideologies, and
meanings which give rise to a sense of human identity. Aesthetic response
to both in the context of aesthetics as a way of seeing based on experience
and traditions may be seen to have cross-cultural connections and com-
mon ground as well as differences. It is these aspects of sense of place
through knowing Country or Landscape that permeate and inform
the book.
2
Meinig, D W, (1979), ‘Introduction’ in Meinig D W (ed), The Interpretation of Ordinary
Landscapes. Geographical Essays, Oxford University Press, New York.
Acknowledgement to Country
I would like to acknowledge the Peoples who are the Traditional Owners
of the Country’s upon which this book and its substance originate. I pay
my respects to their spirit and passion in their past and present and emer-
gent custodianship of these Country’s, including its lands, waters, skies,
and terrestrial and aquatic inhabitants. I thank them for their sharing and
participating in this educational journey. In addition, I would like to pay
my respect to the Elders in past, present, and emerging of the Gunditjmara,
Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri, Bunurong, and Kaurna Peoples who have
opened up their voices to me and I extend that respect to other Aboriginals
and Torres Strait Islander Peoples within this readership.
You have been here for 200 years and look how much of my Country you white-
fellas have stuffed up. We have been here for 60,000 years, and we are now
attempting to fix your mistakes so that we can be here on our Country for the
next 60,000 years. You guys need to learn better. (Bell pers. comm., 2012)
ix
Language, Grammar, and Referencing
xi
xii Language, Grammar, and Referencing
At the core of this publication, there are many people who have directly
or indirectly had a voice and affect upon this journey and its research.
Each cannot be individually named but most of my guidance, support
and encouragement lies with the following people who charted my for-
mative thinkings: Dan Rose, Anne Whiston Spirn, Jim and Curtis
Sinatra, Jane and Malcolm Calder, Ian D. Clark, George Seddon (dec.),
John (dec.) and Cecily Fenton, Charlie and Amanda Fairbairn, Sam
Winter-Cooke, Natalie Gray, Robert St George, John Benwell, Christa
Wilmanns-Wells, Uncle Paddy Roe (dec.), Frans Hoogland and members
of the Goolarabooloo Community the numerous students and graduates
of the RMIT Landscape Architecture course who have shared with me
their friendship and inquisitiveness, and new-found colleagues from the
University of Pennsylvania that maintained their interest and communi-
cation with me. In particular, thanks to both my parents and family who,
while have grown weary of the original thesis and this publication proj-
ect, have continued to supporting ask after it and its progress into this
publication. The enticement to pursue this work was also made possible
by the Sinatra’s, James Weirick, Leon van Schaik, Dan Rose, Ken Taylor
and George Seddon (dec.) and Anne Whiston Spirn. This research is
about places and their sensibilities. Thoughts and experiences of two con-
tinents have influenced this journey and this publication. It is in
xv
xvi Acknowledgements
1 Entering
the Journey into Genius Loci 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Sense of Place 3
1.3 Journey into Landscape 6
1.4 PreCursors for This Journey 9
References 10
2 P
lace, Country, and Genius Loci 13
2.1 Introduction 14
2.2 Navigating the Western Philosophy of Genius 16
2.3 Navigating the Landscape of Genius 20
2.4 Navigating Country [of Genius] 30
2.5 Roadmaps to Reading, Experiencing, and Understanding 38
References 42
3 Sense
of Place: The Western District of Australia 49
3.1 Living in Australia Felix 50
3.2 Rhythms: The Land Beyond the Sky 56
3.3 Rhythms Tapestry 67
References 68
xvii
xviii Contents
4 1
800–1840: Country Dreaming 71
4.1 ‘Here Is My Country …; My Barbary …’ 71
4.2 Paths Through Grasses 82
4.3 Points on Waark 88
4.4 Scoria, Bough, and Leaf 96
4.5 Dancing Fires in Grasses 100
4.6 White Cockatoo Twilight 112
4.7 Sacred Voices in the Landscape 129
4.8 Country Dreaming Tapestry 138
References144
5 1
830–1870: Colonial Noontide155
5.1 Designs and Reflections 155
5.2 Swagmen to the Skies 174
5.3 Campfires on the Plains 184
5.4 Split Slabs and Bluestone 199
5.5 Cowpastures of Themeda214
5.6 Land of the Hunt 232
5.7 ‘Light on the Iron’ 242
5.8 Noontide Tapestry 254
References261
6 1
860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’273
6.1 Knowing ‘The Land Out There’ 273
6.2 ‘Where the Earth Met the Sky’ 286
6.3 Markers on the Plains 296
6.4 Crowning Follies 302
6.5 ‘Immeasurable, Grassy Plains’ 313
6.6 Domains of Jumbucks 329
6.7 ‘Rust on the Iron’ 340
6.8 Sunlit Afternoon Tapestry 352
References358
7 Salient
Threads and Contemporary Narratives371
7.1 Introduction 371
7.2 Salient Threads 372
Contents xix
8 Sense
of Place Mappings403
References406
R
eferences425
P
lace Names Index475
xxiii
xxiv List of Figures
xxv
xxvi List of Tables
1.1 Introduction
In 1870 English colonial author and stockman Adam Lindsay Gordon
(1833–1870), reflecting the embers of past campfires, penned the follow-
ing poetic gaze.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 1
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_1
2 D. S. Jones
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly I. (Mackellar 1918, 59)
1
Note, in this book, ‘white cockatoo’ is the generic local name often used for the sulfur-crested
cockatoo (Cacatua galerita), an avian species prolific across the Western District.
4 D. S. Jones
but also in the tangible and intangible avenues we express and narrate our
appreciation and celebration of this thought, and a place. This includes
the thoughts of authors including Seddon (1972, 1979), Sauer (1925),
Cronon (1996) and Meinig (1979).
ICOMOS, or the International Council on Monuments and
Sites/Conseil international des monuments et des sites, has more recently
defined sense or ‘spirit’ of place in its Québec Declaration on the Preservation
of the Spirit of Place (2008), as:
and more micro-place specific rather than regional. The reflectivity has
only validated the veracity of the Western District inquiry entertained in
Traces in the Country of the White Cockatoo (Chinna junnak cha knæk gru-
gidj): A Quest for Landscape Meaning in the Western District, Victoria,
Australia (Jones 1993), which was undertaken under the supervision of
Rose, Spirn, Seddon and Sinatra. Thus, Chap. 7 offers a pre- and post-
reflection of the salient points in this inquiry and methodology.
The mental complexity of this place was evident to me every time I
ventured out into the Western District expanse with a colleague.
Journeying chatting in the car, suddenly conversations would come to a
grounding halt when the passenger re-orientated themselves into the
intangible entry gate of this landscape and went quiet with awe. While
their over-whelmingness was palpable, so was their inability to talk, orally
ask questions, as they sat as a car passenger visually surveying this land-
scape trying to find logic in its personality. Thus, an echo of Gordon’s
poetry in a contemporary mind.
With this in mind,
Chapter 1 provides an Introduction to the basis and scope of this
book, introducing ‘sense of place’, raising several questions and charting
the reader’s journey.
Chapter 2 immerses the reader into the nature and narratives associ-
ated with ‘sense of place’ charting definitions, theories, key narrators and
their lens. Included is also the methodological strategy for this research
and discussion, and its multi-disciplinary and multi-temporal strategies.
Chapter 3 takes the reader quickly into the spirit of the Western
District, in a multi-temporal poetic.
Chapter 4 offers a translation of Aboriginal sensibilities to this overall
landscape from 1800 to 1840 explaining many of its associative patterns,
seasonal characteristics, cultural and social nuances and relationships,
and attempting to narrate a multi-Country generational landscape borne
from over 60,000 years of occupancy and care—a ‘calm before the storm’.
Chapter 5 explains the transformative colonisation acts of 1830–1870
that wrought change to this landscape, sought to understand or control
it, attempted to carve new dynastic fiefdoms, of which much of Nature
and respective Aboriginal communities responded to these uninvited
1 Entering the Journey into Genius Loci 9
intruders through their own means with both being overtly colonised
and disenfranchised.
Chapter 6 surveys the colonised canvas that unfolded from 1860 to
1900 as the ‘golden fleece’ subjugated the ‘land of the white cockatoo’
and fiefdoms populated the District recasting the landscape in the mirror
of their ancestral homelands in nomenclature, habitat, vegetation, animal
and story.
Chapter 7 considers and synthesises the salient points of the Western
District’s sense of place, explored in Chaps. 3–6, and additionally reflects
upon research and narratives undertaken since 1993 as to
commonalities.
Chapter 8 reflects upon genius loci, and the sense of place of the
Western District landscape, and the concept of sense of place overall
offering conclusions.
landscape, are blinked by the dust of colonial ambition and cultural bag-
gage, can be imperfect and coloured, but at least offer a rich insight to
analyse. The latter research strategy has been tested in contemporary
research by the author and through discussions with many Indigenous
friends and engagements and still holds true.
Further, that being a non-Indigenous Australian I neither can claim to
be an expert in Indigenous Knowledge Systems nor have the right to nar-
rate such as an expert or Indigenous representative or delegate. Rather,
the text within is scaffolded and synergised from the voices of others,
including and specifically Indigenous peoples as much as possible espe-
cially when relevant.
Additionally, the reader needs to recognise that the word and term
‘Aboriginal’ is a Western-contrived word that became a generic term.
Mischievously, it is an act of colonisation in its own right, as it disenfran-
chises and disguises the over 250 Indigenous Country’s and Nations
whose peoples oversaw, and still today oversee, the custodianship of this
continent’s lands, waters, seas, skies and its bowels. So, Country and clans
names are used throughout where Country specific or clan specific, in
preference to ‘Aboriginal’. Thus, the ‘Western District’ nomenclature and
space is a derivative of colonial explorer Thomas Mitchell’s ‘Australia
Felix’, and belies Gunditjmara, Djap Wurrung, Gulidjan, Gadubanud,
Wadawurrung Peoples then and today.
Referencing in Chaps. 3–6 has been condensed due to publication
limitations, the bibliography remains intact and updated, and the fine-
grain detailed referencing is in Jones (1993) to aid researchers.
References
Benterrak, K, S Muecke & P Roe (1984), Reading the Country: Introduction to
Nomadology. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Cronon, W (1996), Uncommon ground: Rethinking the human place in nature.
New York: WW Norton & Co.
Hunt, JD & P Willis (eds) (1988), The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape
Garden 1620–1820. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
1 Entering the Journey into Genius Loci 11
Jackson, JB (1984), Discovering the vernacular landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press
Jackson, JB (1994), A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time. New Haven, CT, Yale
University Press.
Jones, DS (1993), Traces in the Country of the White Cockatoo (Chinna junnak
cha knæk grugidj): A Quest for Landscape Meaning in the Western District,
Victoria, Australia. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania.
Lippard, LR (1997), The lure of the local: Senses of place in a multicentred society.
New York: The New Press
Mackellar, D (1918), My Country: A Poem by Dorothea Mackellar with
Decorations and Illustrations by J.J. Hilder, Sydney 1915, in The
Art of J.J. Hilder, Smith and B. Stevens (eds.), p. 28. Sydney, NSW: Angus &
Robertson.
Meinig, DW (1979), The Beholding Eye Ten Versions of the Same Scene in The
Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, DW Meinig and
JB Jackson (eds.), pp. 33-48. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nicholson, M & DS Jones (2020), Wurundjeri-al Narrm-u (Wurundjeri’s
Melbourne): Aboriginal living heritage in Australia’s urban landscapes in KD
Silva (ed.) Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes of the Asia-
Pacific, pp. 508-525. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Powell, B, D Tournier, DS Jones and PB Roös (2019), Welcome to Wadawurrung
Country, in DS Jones & PB Roös (eds.), Geelong’s Changing Landscape:
Ecology, Development and Conservation, pp. 44-84. Melbourne, Vic: CSIRO
Publishing.
Relph, E (1976), Place and Placelessness. London, UK: Pion.
Robb, FM (ed.) (1962), The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon. Melbourne, Vic:
Oxford University Press, 1946; reprint, 1962.
Rose, DB (1996), Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape
and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.
Sauer, CO (1925), The Morphology of Landscape, University of California
Publications in Geography 2: 19-53.
Schama, S (1995), Landscape and memory. London, UK: Fontana.
Seddon, G (1972), Sense of Place: a Response to an Environment, the Swan
Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Seddon, G (1979), The Genius Loci and Australian landscape, Landscape
Australia 2: 66-73.
12 D. S. Jones
Seddon, G & M Davis (eds.) (1976), Man and landscape in Australia: towards an
ecological vision: Papers from a symposium held at the Australian Academy of
Science, Canberra, 30 May-2 June 1974. Canberra, ACT: Australian
Government Publishing Service.
Tuan, Y-F (1977), Space and Place. London, UK: Edward Arnold.
Tuan, Y-F (1979), Landscapes of Fear. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
2
Place, Country, and Genius Loci
One could also write, reminiscing about the Western District landscape:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 13
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_2
14 D. S. Jones
2.1 Introduction
To understand and appreciate the genius loci of place is to enter into a
complex philosophical realm of Western writings; one that many disci-
plines—from geography to social science to architecture to landscape
architecture to anthropology—have all separately entered into at the
same as seeking to learn from past authorship explorations. These writ-
ings have evolved, wavered, postulated, and struggled to offer a frame-
work to aid the reader and the translator seeking to conserve a place’s
2 Place, Country, and Genius Loci 15
The material nature we inhabit and the ideal nature we carry in our heads
exist always in complex relationship with each other, and we will misun-
derstand both ourselves and the world if we fail to explore that relationship
in all its rich and contradictory complexity.
2 Place, Country, and Genius Loci 23
From all these writings, landscape is perceived and read through con-
temporary Western eyes as a dynamic cultural landscape artefact, an
expression of humanity’s conscious or vernacular ‘designed landscape’.
Such mirrors Sauer’s (1963, 343) much-quoted definition that ‘the cul-
tural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group.
Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural land-
scape the result’. But event before Sauer, authors were articulating defini-
tional inquiries about the nature of a ‘cultural landscape’. The notion first
resonates in the European tradition of landscape painting where many
European artists painted landscapes in favour of people, squeezing people
into minority roles in their paintings enveloped within specific land-
scapes. Such reflects the origins of the word landscape that merges land,
with the Germanic verb of scapjan/schaffen to mean ‘shaped lands’. In this
historical linguistic use, lands were then interpreted as being shaped by
natural forces with their unique details or characteristics—landshaffen
(shaped lands)—evolving into being the focus of ‘landscape’ paintings.
While the genesis of the term ‘cultural landscape’ lies in the scope first
expressed by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel in the 1890s as ‘land-
scape modified by human activity’ (Jones 2003), it was German geogra-
pher Otto Schlüter, in 1908, attributed as first using the phrase ‘cultural
landscape’ as an academic term in the early twentieth century and that
there was a need for a Landschaftskunde (landscape science), which would
position geography as a separate discipline. His argument split landscape
into two types: (a) the Urlandschaft (transl. ‘original landscape’) or a land-
scape of pre-major human induced changes; and (b) the Kulturlandschaft
(transl. ‘cultural landscape’) being a landscape created by human culture
(Bharatdwaj 2009, 6; James and Martin 1981, 177).
Hashemnezhad et al. (2013, 7) have recently written:
Sense of place is the relationship between man, his image and environmental
characteristics. This concept on the one hand is rooted in subjective experience
of people (memories, traditions, history, culture, and society) and in other hand
is affected from objective and external influences of the environment (land-
scape, smell, sound) that these lead to various association of a place. So sense of
place is a complex concept of emotion and attachment to the human environ-
ment which is created from people adoption and use of places.
24 D. S. Jones
Landscape therefore is not simply what we see, but a way of seeing: we see it
with our eye but interpret it with our mind and ascribe values to landscape for
intangible—spiritual—reasons. Landscape can therefore be seen as a cultural
construct in which our sense of place and memories in here.
This sentiment echoes Hoskins’ (1955, 14) plea for ‘research’ in the
field because ‘the … landscape itself, to those who know how to read it
aright is the richest historical record we possess’, and a tone that Jackson
(1951, 3) repeated later writing later in his inaugural issue of Landscape
that ‘a rich and beautiful book is always open before us. We have but to
learn how to read it’. In later years, Lowenthal (1975, 12) reinforced this
plea, observing, ‘It is the landscape as a whole—that largely manmade
tapestry, in which all other artefacts are embedded … which gives them
their sense of place [sic]’.
A core thread in these discussions is the way and manner we ‘write’ and
‘read’, as that is the conventional Western instrument of our values and
mental images. Writing, whether text or oral or paint or design express,
comprises narratives of human hand and or imagination. Such expres-
sions are informed by our values, our cultural baggage, and the context in
which such reside and ‘painted’.
26 D. S. Jones
Table 2.1 Western story and narrative distinctions and relationships. Source:
author, adapted from Potteiger and Purinton (1998, 11), who adapted it from
Chatman (1978, 26), and re-adapted by the author
Strategy Form Shape Types
Narrative Story Content Events, characters, settings
Telling Expression Verbal, dance, landscape, film, manifestation
Table 2.2 Western and aboriginal tangible and intangible story and narrative
distinctions and relationships. Source: author, adapted from Potteiger and
Purinton (1998, 11), who adapted it from Chatman (1978, 26), and re-adapted by
the author
Strategy Structure Form Shape Types
Narrative Western human Story Content Events, characters, settings
tangible Telling Expression Voice, dance, landscape,
spiritual manifestations
First Nation Story Content Events, characters, settings
human tangible Telling Expression Voice, dance, landscape,
spiritual manifestations
Western human Story Content Poetics, sounds, events,
intangible characters, settings
Telling Expression Voices, patterns, landscape,
spiritual manifestations
First Nation Story Content Poetics, voices, sounds,
human events, characters, settings
intangible Telling Expression Poetics, voices, patterns,
landscape, spiritual
manifestations
Table 2.3 Western landscape narrative typology. Source: author, adapted from
Potteiger and Purinton (1998, 11)
Landscape
narrative type Typology explanation
Narrative Place narratives associated with routines, rituals, or events
experiences
Associations and Place narratives associated experience, event, history,
experiences religious allegory, and so on
Memory Place narratives associated that serve as the locus of
landscapes memory, both public and personal
Narrative setting Place narratives associated that enable defined settings for
and topos a narrative; for example, mountaintops, waterfalls,
springs, and chance meetings that take place on the road
Genres of Place narratives associated by culturally defined stories or
landscape genres
narratives
Processes Place narratives associated with natural actions or events
caused by some agency (wind, water, economics) that
occur in succession or proceed in stages towards some end
(progress; entropy)
Interpretive Place narratives associated that tell what happened in a
landscapes place
Narrative as form Place narratives associated that offer a means of giving
generation order (selecting, sequencing. etc.) or in developing images
in the design process
Storytelling Place narratives associated that celebrate specific stories
landscapes with explicit references to plot, scenes, events, character,
and so on
Sense captures my deep intuition for country, community and site. It encapsu-
lates my sensitivity to people and to landscape and my ability to make sense of
place, understanding its rhythms, its environments and its secrets and therefore
his acknowledgement that a design process necessarily distils, abstracts and styl-
ises and that the public may only connect with partially, subliminally or not at
all, and that all that is understood is that the design is driven by a designers
coherent sense of place … [and thus] treads a fine line between literal and
abstract and between nostalgic and obtuse.
Zube et al. (1982) similarly have categorised this ‘art of designing’ for
sense of place as be enveloped into their ‘experiential paradigm’ whereby
‘this considers landscape values to be based on the experience of the
human-scape interaction, whereby both are shaping and being shaped in
the interactive process’. More recently, Trieb (1995) has categorised this
approach of designing, ‘The Genius of the Place’, as involving
the worship of the Genius of the Place … to consult the spirit of the place
as a means of rooting landscape design in a particular locale … The pres-
ence of the genius is a bit more obvious in undisturbed land, but there is
precious little of that around these days; the genius is hardly unaffected by
changes in atmosphere and climate. Still, the genius provides major sup-
port for landscape design and its rationalization today.
Country in Aboriginal English is not only a common noun but also a proper
noun. People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a
person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about coun-
try, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows,
hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a gener-
alised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms
like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’. Rather, country is
a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and
a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourish-
ment for body, mind, and spirit; heart’s ease.
Our creation story and songlines are all connected, Country is a living entity.
We can close our eyes and hear our language from our Country being spoken by
our birds and all things around us. We can open our eyes and see our stories and
connection, we can walk barefoot and feel our Mother Earth. We can tradition-
ally burn Country for it to heal and renourish. Our cultural structures cared for
our Country for thousands of years. We as Wadawurrung People will continue
to advocate, care and walk together for our future generations and all people
living and visiting our Country, ‘Wadawurrung Country’.
Table 2.4 Conceptual country layers. Source: abridged from Nicholson and Jones
(2020, 515), varied by the author
What’s the first thing that enters your mind when you hear the name of your
country? ‘Matri lerri weti ngirrbuty tyen.’ [I am happy now], sometimes
referred to as having a ‘good binyji’ [feeling of being glad all over]. ‘I can look
every place. All the sites pass by me like a slide show. I see my (old people)
walking across the great plains, making camp, I can still remember their voices
as they would cry out, laugh and chatter with one another … I vividly remem-
ber my childhood. Once again I am there with them’ [sic]. (Deveraux 1997, 72)
A ‘healthy’ or ‘good’ Country is one where all the tangible and intan-
gible elements do their activities respectfully and in harmony. Harmony
equals the ‘nourishment’. Rose (1996, 10) observes that
… because there is no site, no position, from which the interest of one can be
disengaged from the interests of others in the long term. Self-interest and the
interest of all of the other living components of country (the self-interest of kan-
garoos, barramundi, eels and so on), cannot exist independently of each other
in the long term. The interdependence of all life within country constitutes a
hard but essential lesson.
Not understanding any of this, you will fail in engaging with First
Nation’s communities in Australia in a design or planning project. Also
communicating and collaborating with more than just an Elder can steer
away from tokenistic gestures of consultation as they hold specific sets of
knowledge, while others in their community hold others that can assist in
creating a complete picture of their narrative and culture.
Therefore, while Country may be an area of land that is overseen and
managed by an Aboriginal group, like the Wadawurrung people, with
the Creation Beings transferring Wadawurrung culture and language to
their People; the relationship between Wadawurrung people and their
Country extends beyond the Western sense of time. Such time is sung,
it is in the stories embodied in and specific to Country, and is the spiri-
tual source of knowledge essential to Wadawurrung past, present and
future. Thus, Country is alive and intelligent and provides everything
that its people need. Country exists physically outside as a living place
that the Wadawurrung and animals and Creation Beings inhabit and is a
place through which one learns culture and gives it due regard as a tem-
plate for being human in a proper and respectful way. Country provides
everything the Wadawurrung need to equip their life, curate their land
and water, feed human and animal, offer language and nomenclature as
a library, and provide the operational structure to their society. For today
and into the future, it is in anticipation of the return of their Creation
Beings. It is all a design, a master plan.
In Western eyes, the landscape canvas is a product of design, hosts it,
and also informs it. In Wadawurrung eyes, landscape canvas is a design
historically established by Wadawurrung Creation Beings that both ani-
mals and humans engage with in partnership today, of which our Creation
Beings established the original landscape patterns, and the rules and pro-
tocols about Wadawurrung Country occupancy and use. In this sense,
‘design’ is not simply about the deliverables of conventional Western
briefs, but equally about individual people and animals who design by
their actions. It is also about the locus of that design. Wadawurrung cul-
ture exists in patterns and living conversations of relationships with our
Country. Any designed landscape, master plan, playground, nomencla-
ture use, and so on needs to be informed by respectful discussions with
38 D. S. Jones
The structure of a place is not a fixed, eternal condition: as a rule, places change,
and sometimes even rapidly. This does not mean, however, that the genius loci
must necessarily change or be lost. … The stabilitatis loci is a necessary condi-
tion for human life. … Protecting and conserving the genius loci means concre-
tising its essence in ever-new historical contexts. Respecting the genius loci does
not mean copying ancient models, but highlighting the identity of the place and
interpreting it in a new way. Only in this way can we speak of a living tradi-
tion that justifies the changes referring to a series of local parameters.
To take care of a place and its genius loci, it is necessary to know how
to see and recognise them; furthermore, we need to know how to inter-
pret their value. The care and reconstruction of places in sustainable
forms therefore require active, conscious citizenship, capable of combin-
ing contextual knowledge with expert knowledge through forms of par-
ticipatory democracy.
Seddon (1979), in ‘The Genius Loci and Australian Landscape’, pro-
posed a landscape interpretation and management approach to under-
standing Australian landscapes whereby
those who are responsible for the care of landscape in this country can do much
to resist the effects of homogenising technology, to individuate by understanding
and clarifying the locally distinctive—in short, by respecting the genius loci.
What follows are some suggestions as to how this might be done, and some pos-
sible reason for doing so. The suggestions are all commonplace, but they are
nevertheless regularly disregarded:
His guideline criteria for interpreting include the following: (1) under-
stand the geology and display it where you can; (2) study the landform,
and build in sympathy with it, if possible; (3) study the soil; (4) interfere
as little as possible with the natural hydrology; (5) study the natural veg-
etation, and the existing vegetation; (6) respect the cultural landscape;
and (7) analyse the genius loci of our landscapes, and celebrate them.
In today’s Western knowledge systems, genius loci still remains an
assumed knowledge realm, a theory in its own right, and one lacking the
veracity to inform and guide design and or assess landscapes as to their
true measure of sense. As observed by Thompson (2003, 68), ‘the fact
that an idea has a long pedigree does not make it true or useful … The
question is really whether the genius loci is just a poetic piece of animism
or whether it can be given some more definite and useful sense’. As pos-
sible answers, Jones (1993, 2002) offers a possible framework, and Brook
(2000) guides, with both concluding that genius loci is not a single idea
but a tapestry of ideas and threads. In the shadow of extensive defini-
tional interpretations of the idea, the former has positioned the frame-
work in a dynamic cross-temporal model, whereas the latter has not
addressed time. Brook (2000) offers genius loci interpretative answers in
40 D. S. Jones
the human tapestry and relational threads wherein certain places are the
abodes of special beings, as well energy fields, authenticity, coherent nar-
rative, local distinctiveness, essence, character, ecosystem, pantheism,
panpsychism, health, and special atmosphere. Jones (1993) offers genius
loci interpretative answer threads in the holistic human and non-human
realms and relational threads of domains, pathways, gathering places,
shelters, plants, animals, Dreamings, and nature’s rhythms. Both recog-
nise that genius loci is a tapestry possessing a weft of threads.
The following chapters methodologically follow this eight-themed
framework, summarised in Table 2.5, of which the detail is set out in
Table 2.6.
The application of the eight-themed framework is, in this research,
applied and tested upon one landscape. But, it is tested and evaluated
against three slightly over-lapping time phases—1800–1840, 1830–1870,
1860–1900—as these possess distinct human occupancy and governance
regimes and cultures. Figure 2.1 diagrammatically expresses this temporal
x thematic inquiry. This methodological strategy offers a unique insight
normally not afforded by generic loci inquiries that consider a point in
time as their reference frame, thereby lacking the capacity to harness and
consider the dynamic and temporality quality of landscape as being an
agent in assembling relationships. Interestingly, the first time phase
affords a capacity to consider the landscape’s place values against an
Table 2.5 Cross-comparison of the Jones (1993) and Brook (2000) frameworks.
Source: Adapted by the author
Jones (1993) Brook (2000)
Domains [Country] Abodes of special beings
Pathways Energy fields and abodes of special beings
Gathering Places
Shelters Health
Plants Ecosystem
Animals
Dreamings/imagery Coherent narrative
Pantheism
Panpsychism
Special atmosphere
Rhythms Local distinctiveness
Essence
2 Place, Country, and Genius Loci 41
Table 2.6 The detail of the Jones (1993) thematic framework. Source: author
Domains • The spatial estates and edges of a place or landscape, and
[Country]: names of points and expanses we designate to identify them.
Each landscape has some form of spatial delineation, a set of
distinct characteristics that distinguish it from other landscapes,
and instil confidence in knowing where I am
Pathways: • The mental and earthly pathways, routes, journeys across and
through a landscape. Journey is an implicit metaphor in
landscape occupancy, whether real or mental or metaphysical,
in Australia
Gathering • The points, nodes, and landmarks that are focus for activities.
Places: Our camping places, places of daily life-sustaining activities and
death, and places of residency that instil kinship and sensibilities
with a community
Shelters: • The places of habitation or shelter created by humans within
the landscape. Edifices in shapes and forms constructed from
organic materials in the landscape that resonate with senses of
domain and meaning
Plants: • The vegetative fabric that carpets the landscape. The differing
foliage with its colours, grains, textures, structures, and foods,
which establish part of the sensory feeling and taste of the
tapestry
Animals: • The residents of the animal world which equally participate in
the tapestry—whether faunal, avifaunal, insect or aquatic—
shaping part of its experiential weft, and the means by which
humans harvested them
Imagery: • The mental answers and dreams that are expressed in myths,
artefacts and artistic creations to celebrate human presence and
to explain the latent forces experienced in and interpreted from
the landscape. It involves the media used to articulate landscape
spirit
Rhythms: • Clouds, droughts, floods, fires, skies, and so on—around which
the above themes modulate their patterns, irrespective of
human or animal attempts at domination or control, and the
uniquely human sensory responses to these events and
occurrences
Aboriginal lens, drawing upon and tempered by colonial eyes and writ-
ings. The latter resources today provide important evidence of occupancy,
knowledge, language, and story for many of the contemporary Aboriginal
communities who are seeking language revival, reconciliation and treaty
aspirations, and in guiding the formulation of their Country Plans as
Western instruments of their vision for the future custodianship and
management of their respective Country.
42 D. S. Jones
Theme: Domains
Theme: Pathways
Theme: Shelters
Theme: Plants
Theme: Animals
Theme: Imagery
Theme: Rhythms
Fig. 2.1 The temporal x thematic inquiry employed in this research. Source: author
References
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than-human world. New York: Vintage Books.
Alanen, AR & RZ Melnick (eds) (2000), Preserving Cultural Landscapes in
America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Antrop, M (2000), Background concepts for integrated landscape analysis,
Agricultural Ecosystems & Environment 77: 17–28.
2 Place, Country, and Genius Loci 43
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 49
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_3
50 D. S. Jones
onotonous flat plain. White cockatoos quietly browse on grass seeds in the
m
adjacent paddock. Slower, and slower the car moves.
A solitary figure is struggling with the wire at a paddock corner; a wide
brimmed hat shadowing the face, blue heeler at station. Jack is checking his
lines and carrying out regular repairs. He is a veteran of his land with a lineage
tracing back to expansive runs in the ‘wilderness’ and green folds in the
Scottish Borders.
What voices and environmental traits control our connections and arouse
our faculties to distinct atmospheres or sensations in a landscape? There
is an acknowledged envelope of spirit in the Western District. One senses
power; but it is not just the expansiveness, the intensity of light, or the
unchanging vegetation and cloud patterns. It is a combination of factors
that subtly emanate psychological control over the resident and visitor.
The District engages an individual in a particular ‘church’,
… a society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same
way [and] … that they translate these common ideas into common practices.
scratches, stains, and dust particles that are integral to human lineage or
time. These produce a particular sense of place.
* * *
The pastoral notion lies in the lush green pastures of England and
Scotland. It is a notion where man and nature collectively create a land-
scape that entwines beauty, variety, and harmony with utilitarian agricul-
tural (and scientific) activities together in a Claude-like representation.
Parklands encompassing stately homes that exploited the artistic, the
vista, the mysterious and eighteenth-century landscape school ideals,
were a product of this notion. Within the parklands was a humanised
identity seeking to evoke a sense of picturesque beauty with ancient
foundations:
Figures 3.1 and 3.2 depict the conceptual vegetation units and extent
of this volcanic plain.
The notion fits uncomfortably with the Western District although
some illusory sketches lie in the paddocks of ‘Mount Noorat’ and
‘Murndal’. A tension is present between any pastoral ethic, any pictur-
esque notion, and a landscape. The pastoral notion is a product of
European cultural sensibilities transplanted and a utilitarian objective to
‘clean’ the landscape of its litter and untidiness. Deliberate orchestration
of this landscape came from functional need and from nostalgic cultural
baggage of enclosure changes in the British countryside.
Colonials did not determine to create a new, improved landscape con-
forming to their ideals in the District. Rather they fashioned it within
their functional conceptions of agriculture without regard to Aboriginal
52
D. S. Jones
* * *
The individual mind is imminent but not only in the body. It is imminent also
in pathways and messages outside the body, and there is a larger mind of which
the individual mind is only a sub-system. This larger mind is comparable to
God and is perhaps what some people mean by God, but it is still imminent in
the total interconnected social systems and planetary ecology.
* * *
56 D. S. Jones
I could not help noticing … that the foot of the Cross rests upon that mysterious
region of void and darkness, which looms forth as a black spectre amidst the
glowing beauties of the brilliant galaxy … Fancy pictured a stray spirit, lost in
that starry Light-house upon the borders of the dark ocean.
* * *
I would stand …
Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
The ghostly language of the ancient earth.
the soft, blue, humanless sky … [that provokes] the pale, white unwritten
atmosphere of Australia, [where:]
58 D. S. Jones
All creation is new and strange. The trees … The graceful shrubs, the bright-
coloured flowers, ay, the very grass itself, are of species unknown in Europe;
while flaming lories and brilliant parroquets fly whistling, not musically,
through the gloomy forest, and overhead … countless cockatoos wheel and
scream in noisy joy …
* * *
children into little pieces. Each piece however retained life-like tur-ror
[worms] so bullito, bullito, koor-reen, pit-ker-reen [great, great storms and
whirlwinds] lifted the pieces into the sky like flakes of kabbing [snow].
Carried in the clouds, Bunjil dispersed the pieces, scattering men and
women over the earth, as he pleased. The good men and women were also
reconstructed as stars. This explanation of human creation and distribu-
tion is guided by the belief in Bunjil; his retributions from the sky are
expressions of displeasure with his children on beek. In his position as the
star Fomalhaut, he watches over Aboriginals and distributes punishment
or rich game.
This conception of evolution was ever present in Aboriginal culture in
south-eastern Australia. It was, however, not incorporated by the subse-
quent European culture that occupied the same landscape. The following
two stories are poignant examples of confrontations of myths with reality
during the mid- to late 1800s and highlight different perceptions and
ideologies by alternate cultures to the issues of phenomena and spirits.
On the banks of Wuurong yæring, a waterhole in Spring Creek, a ‘band’
of Aboriginals were startled while fishing by what they perceived as
Muuruup. This fearsome bad spirit, ‘maker of bad-smelling smoke’, nor-
mally visited beek in the form of lightning. The Gulag gundidj of the Girai
wurrung, at ‘Merrang’, described their sighting of Muuruup as ‘a huge
black man, carrying a great many spears, with a long train of snakes
streaming behind him, “like smoke from a steamboat”’. At the waterhole,
Muuruup bellowed loudly during the afternoon and evening terrifying
Aboriginals, shaking ‘two tomahawks in his head’. On his departure in
the morning, his distinctive footprints were tracked to an open wood-
land, where he was confronted by warriors who sought the tomahawks.
The astonished Muuruup scoured beek, ‘bellowed, shook his head (with a
sheet of tin tied across his face), and charged’.
The first story tells of the confrontation of Aboriginal mythology to
the bullock, an animal not present in their traditions. The second, as fol-
lows, tells of the confusion wrought by Aboriginal presence that inspired
prehistoric notions of Stonehenge.
In the 1870s, a story was reported in Chambers’ Miscellany of antiquar-
ian stone-circles on waark from a squatter’s letter sent to Scotland. It was
reported that the circles, 3–330 m in diameter with stones of varied
60 D. S. Jones
shapes and sizes, often with an inner-circle, had no oral Aboriginal ‘tradi-
tion’ attached thereto; thus attracting prominence as the Australian ver-
sion of Avebury. Period lithographs in Australia, New Zealand, and
Scotland portrayed awesome pillars of stone on waark, and commentar-
ies postulated as to their antiquarian and religious purposes. Local inves-
tigation subsequently disproved these stories. The heaped arrangements
of stones, instead, were constructed for wind shelter by Aboriginals
because timber was sparse on waark. Another squatter later noted that
‘the natives there formed these break-winds of stones, placed on edge in
a circular form, some of them very perfect, leaving the opening generally
toward the east, the prevailing winds coming from the north-west and
south-west’. While waark Aboriginals certainly manipulated random
stone arrangements for ceremonial and ecological purposes, no mega-
lithic circles are now attributed to them.
In both instances, the landscape provoked responses that were peculiar
to the observer’s cultural traditions and beliefs. Both sought answers to
what they saw and experienced by drawing upon their myths and belief
systems to attach credible answers to phenomena. These responses were
later shattered as cross-cultural information engendered an alternate
comprehension of the incidents.
* * *
holes and producing fear from its ‘terrifying bellowings’. While the
Bunyip today may be identified as the Australian Fur-Seal (Arctocephalus
pusillus), the stories transcended fact and readily entered into colonial
literature about waterholes. Many a child was told to stay away from a
waterhole because of the Bunyip’s presence—an oral tradition that has
been copied into contemporary children’s literature. The abodes of
Aboriginal spirits, however, were not accepted with such credence.
While the Bunyip is linked to place in Aboriginal mythology, the con-
cept of a ‘picturesque’ landscape transposed by English, Irish, and Scottish
thought remains the antithesis of the plains morphology; and yet, it was
attempted. Landscape was deliberately created, planted, structured,
drained, and dammed by squatters. The nature of this newly contrived
cosmos became an expression of colonial domination and alienation.
Actions drew their inspirations from vales in the Borders, the ‘parkes’ and
commons of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, and the tra-
ditions of the British enclosure movement. The accessible literature of
William Kent, Uvedale Price, and John Claudius Loudon perhaps assisted
these attempts. The irony was that one culturally created landscape was
being mentally and physically manipulated to construct an alternate cul-
tural landscape.
What was being manipulated, celebrated, and enshrined was land and
its contents. A material commodity to exploit for some, a corporeal realm
to steward for others. This striking contradiction in perceptions and uses
to ‘land’ underlies the clash between Aboriginals and colonials in the
District. Alternate cultural beliefs and traditions determined landscape
relationships and treatments, but the greater environment orchestrated
the natural and cultural patterns and events. In contrast, Mitchell was the
‘harbinger of mighty changes’ to this ‘sublime solitude’ of terra nullius.
Land was treated as an open resource that an individual could ringbark,
plough a line, or peg out a distinct segment of open space, vegetation, or
water resource. But the squatter also became a communal recipient of
rain, shine, fire, flood, and plague. Distinctively the ‘run’ formed an indi-
vidual’s ‘range’—an exploitable item, and a forage ground to be exchanged
for monetary or resource gain. Territory was distinct, articulated on paper
and on the surface as traces, and subject to mutual resource sharing only
by negotiated agreement. New mytho-totemic relationships to land were
62 D. S. Jones
* * *
Seasons envelop this landscape in regular cycles bringing with them blos-
soms, rains, dryness, birth, and migration. Their presence signals rituals
in human, animal, and floral life patterns. To appreciate their impact
upon a landscape is to comprehend the changes in patterns, colours,
scents, atmospheric affects, and distinct modes of behaviour in people,
animals, and flora. Summer, autumn, winter, and spring are Western
abstractions of these cycles. Aboriginal time and activities were controlled
by the signals that each environmental change announced (i.e. flower-
ings, migrations of animals, and climatic occurrences), and time was not
dissected into distinct calendar compartments or periods with similar
nomenclature. European seasonal terms used herein are to aid temporal
identification only.
‘A hot dull haze was over the forest and mountain … In short, summer
had come with a vengeance; every one felt hot, idle, and thirsty, and
“there was nothing doing”’. Summer, or late dry season, weather was
‘usually hot and dry’, but to some the ‘summer morn was refreshingly
cool, the first hour’s ride was delicious’. Bursaria called forth creamy fra-
grant flowers. On the Silver Banksia, Golden and Late Black Wattles yel-
low flowers bloomed in the sun, and ruddy billows of Kangaroo Grass
inflorescences taunted the heat. Manna Gums, so favoured by Koalas,
flowered and exuded its sweet liquids, prized by Aboriginals, down whitey
smooth ribbons and on weeping leaves. Characteristic traits were the dry-
ness, heat, south-west to south-east zephyrs, and the risk of fire:
In its wake:
OH, gaily sings the bird, and the wattle-boughs are stirr’d
And rustled by the scented breath of spring;
Oh, the dreary, wistful longing!
64 D. S. Jones
* * *
The literal energy in the sky prompted a narrowing of the iris because
of its brilliance and harshness. ‘How blue the sky!’ was the exclamation,
in all its variations. If the sky was ‘azure blue’, then clouds became impor-
tant actors. They held patterns, caricatures, and signs of impending events
and endowed the ‘flowery plains’ with seeds of renourishment.
3 Sense of Place: The Western District of Australia 65
* * *
Baillieu (1982): 102; Benterrak et al. (1984): 13; Berndt (1964):
258–295; ‘Boldrewood’ (1969): 14, 25, 35, 61, 91–92, 94, 101, 110,
198; Bonwick (1970): 37; Chauncy (1972): 234–235; Corris (1968):
41–42; Coutts and Lorblanchet (1982): 85–86; Critchett (1990): 19–29;
Dawson (1981): 49–50, 105–106, 108–109; de Serville (1980): 35, 36;
Doolan (1979); Elliott (1967): 21–23, 65, 163; Fox (1985): 29–36; Gott
and Conran (1991): 6–7, 38, 46, 55; Hay (1981): 6, 11, 14, 24; Hoskins
(1988); Hunt and Willis (1990): 354–355; James (1981): 81; Jones
(1991): 35; Kiddle (1962): 99, 112, 428–429; Kingsley (1952): 119–120,
147, 198–202, 295, 303, 322, 328, 378, 427; Kirkby (1978): 256;
Lawlor (1991): 43; Lawrence (1981): 19, 365; Mack (1988): 61; Massola
(1957): 19; Massola (1961); Massola (1969): 107–108; Michell (1975):
4; Mitchell (1965): vol 1, 159, 333; Pierce (1987): 154, 226, 274;
Poulston (1984); Rappaport (1967): 1; Richardson (1946): 163; Robb
68 D. S. Jones
(1962): 59, 88, 115, 116, 122, 177, 332; Sayers (1970): 41–42; Scarlett
(1988): 146–149; Smyth (1972): 242–243, 423–424, 428, 435–440;
Taylor (1989): 30; ‘Twain’ (1897): 82, 154, 224, 230; Upfield (1991);
Watts 1983; Zola and Gott (1992).
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4
1800–1840: Country Dreaming
* * *
Central within both Aboriginal and Western notions of place is that it has
some form of tangible or intangible but definable edge that dislocates it
from another place. In both also, spatial territory is constituted within
this bounded realm, or composed of sequentially clustered component
spaces that collectively form place: this is a part of the concept of Country.
The difference was that Aboriginal spatial delimitation was more subtle,
often invisible, and commonly tied to geographical features and habi-
tat zones.
Sense of ‘ownership’ to Aboriginals was in their stewardship of a tract
of Country for and on behalf of Dreaming ancestors. Aboriginals belonged
to the landscape rather than the landscape belonged to Aboriginals. While
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 71
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_4
72 D. S. Jones
* * *
The territory belonging to a tribe is divided among its members. Each family
has the exclusive right by inheritance to a part of the tribal lands, which is
named after its owner; … When the boundaries with neighbours meet at lakes
or swamps celebrated for game, well-defined portions of these are marked out.
One … [was] dealing, not with ‘land’, but with ‘country’, land already related
to people … . [O]ne must use at least three categories: clan or descent-group
country often containing disregarded areas; range-country sometimes over-
lapping with other ranges so as to form virtual commonages for a set of groups;
and ‘company’ country between estates and/or domains.
While land was ‘parcelled out among themselves’, its division was by
layered zones that co-related to patrilineal or matrilineal descendancy,
totemic associations, and ecotonal dependency implications. Central to
this layering were the Country’s of the inhabitants—distinct environmen-
tal and economic spatial tracts.
A Country was a patrilineal or matrilineal descent-group or locus com-
prising a wide tract of the landscape with numerous mytho-totemic-
ritually associated sites within. A ‘range’ was a tract of landscape over
which a land-using group, a ‘band’, hunted and gathered to maintain life.
Occupation of the ‘range’ varied according to seasonal variations and sus-
tenance resource availability. ‘Estate and range together may be said to
have constituted a domain which was an ecological life-space’. ‘Life-space’
dependency was a key facet in ‘estate’ existence.
Country also possessed a collective domain of neutral territories, song-
line corridors and installations, and common resource harvesting spaces.
Thus ‘clans’ and land-using groups (‘bands’) comprised the human spatial
territorial units, with collective title to a greater Country, and with over-
lapping ‘ranges’ and ‘partially interpenetrative domains and life-spaces’.
Disregard of boundaries, other than permitted by way of songlines and
collective tracts, was disregard of customs and rules. Boundaries were
demarcated with clear definition according to their purpose: place names
were a key intellectual vehicle in delimitation because names identified
Country and points known to be in possession of a clan, or within their
mytho-totemic management responsibilities. Identification itself there-
fore constituted demarcation, and any natural or geographical feature
could serve as one of many ‘signs’ or ‘fences’ of these boundaries.
Domains of collective ownership also existed. ‘[Lake] K[e]ilambete …
[was] neutral ground’: a place to settle disputes and transact other busi-
ness. Songlines and trade routes were collective tracts enabling the safe
traverse of landscape and contained interconnected and numerous
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 75
* * *
Because boundaries were well defined, and ‘identification itself was suf-
ficient demarcation’, the material, historical, and symbolic values of
places held ownership identification to particular ‘clans’ and ‘bands’ by
inherited possession. This Country relationship made (and continues to
make) determination of boundaries difficult within Western notions and
documentation practices, especially given contemporary ethnographic,
anthropological, and historical literature. It was also hampered by pho-
netic mistranscriptions in languages, meanings, and descriptions.
Notwithstanding these difficulties a number of principles are still evi-
dent. Language boundaries generally correlate to Country boundaries.
The former has commonality in words and grammatical constructions
linking dialects in chains of mutually intelligible languages. The latter is
the traditional locus containing a site or a series of sites of mytho-totemic
significance where demarcation is a product of the human mind. In these
contexts, a comparative set of boundaries is best derived from reliance
upon both languages and Country’s, of which more is known about the
former than the latter in colonial and contemporary literature.
Boundaries were distinctive, permeable, or extensive. A boundary
could be a part of a tribal focus upon a river and exist, not in the water-
course, but imprecisely somewhere along either of its sides; it could lie
along the distinctive crest of a mountain range; or it could vary from 3 to
16 km wide across an infertile or uninhabited tract of landscape. Line
delineation was aided by clearly distinguishable natural features, isolated
76 D. S. Jones
* * *
Every myth contains earthly anchors, often at the beginning, end, and
during a story in the form of place names. Place names announced a
‘voice’ and bespoke meaning and personality into geographical features.
It was not simply that Wer.row.wer.rer was an appellation for a space on
Tarnpirr [Mt Emu Creek], or that Lehuura meant ‘nose’ (on the northern
peak of Mt Leura), but that there was a metaphysical story or association
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 77
* * *
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 79
On the morning of June 20, 1841, at ‘Merino Downs’ the Chief Protector
of the Aborigines interviewed a group of Aboriginals from the Darkogang
gundidj:
When I asked their names and where the country was [that] they belonged
to … [a] man with emotion struck the ground and said, ‘Here is my country,
deen deen—here here’. And the old woman who had chronicled in her memory
the long long history of her country took up the theme … And then in a dejected
and altered tone deplored the loss of her country and its original enjoyment.
Three facets are illustrated in this outcry. First, the term Country—a
spatial four-dimensional landscape—rather than land or place is consis-
tently used to describe their landscape in transcriptions. Second, there is
an expression of belongingness, of connexions, to the landscape. Third,
an expression of individual relationship or metaphorical connexion to
landscape is implied in the chronicling of landscape associations. These
facets all express an image of place or landscape; the notion of custodian-
ship, although not explored here, would add more facets.
Country was a strong concept, and each family, band, clan, and tribe
viewed a certain tract of landscape as their domain to inhabit and care for.
The terms Cha knaek in Djab wuurung, Mææring an in Kuurn kopan noot,
and Mææring in Peek whurrong, which meant ‘my Country’, illustrate this
point. The term Country was articulated in the pointing to and the nam-
ing of places and features: ‘To this day the older men can clearly point out
the land which their fathers left them and which they once called their
own’. At ‘Mount Mitchell’, it was observed:
And with much emotion and gesticulation, he stood up and, stretching out his
arm, said ‘my country, merygic, barburic, good country’. And verily is so. A
finer country cannot be.
He was anxiously desirous I should know Burumbeep was his country. Stamping
on the ground, he exclaimed, Country belonging to me; country belonging to
me. My barbary (my country).
There was not a sense of ‘ownership’ in these words, albeit the transla-
tion, but an image that he was caring for, or looking, after that Country
for his Dreaming ancestors. His obligation was one of inherited responsi-
bility to look after places, sites, landscapes, and the physical environment
thereon. Inheritance, because each landscape tract contained features
associative of ‘mythic beings, or deities, who in the Dreaming left part of
themselves there’, and each clan name perpetuated an ‘inherited respon-
sibility for … [the] land’ of that gundidj. Landscape, and places within,
were an inherited repository of resources and knowledge. Appellations
were the written ‘titles’ to clan Country’s, and held the ‘texts’ of the past,
present, and future occupants.
Each family has the exclusive right by inheritance to a part of the tribal lands,
which is named after its owner; his family and every child born on it must be
named after something on the property.
If you will write to the government for us, and get us off here, I will do work for
you and will never leave you … I always wish … to be in my country, where I
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 81
was born … This country don’t suit me I’m a stranger in this country I like to
be in my country.
Intrusion into a Country foreign to one’s clan was also deeply felt:
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
Each tribe was a stationary expression of the region of earth from which it
emerged; connecting these … was a circulation system called the songlines.
Directed by a complex, unwritten calendar of ceremonies and rituals, tribal
peoples would move along these songlines and interact with people of other
regions … This universal culture was like the blood that unites all functions
and parts of a living organism.
Pura; the Brambambult brothers travels stretched across the ‘estates’ of the
Djab wurrung, Jardwadjali, and Wergaia clans; and the Lake Buninjon
myth tells of a great spiralling ‘pine tree’ to the sky’s ‘starry vault’ that
connected the two domains and the hunting grounds. Each includes
hunting, death, searching, and journeying across diverse landscapes in a
series of interconnected stories and localities. Places acquired appellations
synonymous with passages, or events related thereto. Each place was a
signpost for directional advice that mixed together with oblique physical
and metaphysical references to construct a route map:
Bound by ‘sacred time’, a cyclical and repetitive continuum, Dreaming
characters and their journeys in songlines survived through time by chart-
ing quests for the interior of human self and meaning of where I am.
The remarkable linguistic similarity in terms linked to journey in the
District support. Phonetically similar prefixes (bar-, brar-, par-, tar-, dha-
, tarn-, and bah-) are all linked to meanings, including way, perennial and
ephemeral watercourse flows, and pathways, as analogues of journey.
* * *
distance of every 8 km, were the locational criteria for major pathways.
Waterholes also guaranteed opportunities for yowwir [bird] snaring or
yapeetch [yabbies] as food sources.
* * *
achieved from tree hollows stuffed with dry leaves and bark, or fires on top
of hills. Signal smoke, or the representation of it reflected in the sky, was
deemed a compulsory command disobeyed only by the forfeiture of life.
* * *
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 89
Cultural places held special meaning for Aboriginal life on waark. They
were places of great summer hunts for emus and kangaroos, sources for
the celebratory harvesting of fish and eels in the mid dry and good wet
seasons, points of trade exchange, or places of artifice. On waark, these
points included, in particular, Mirræwuæ [Black Swamp], Tæ rak [Lake
Condah] and Konda [Condah Swamp], Cor.ramut [Caramut], Gnurad
[Mt Noorat], Gilambidj [Lake Keilambete], Boloke [Lake Bolac], the Cro.
cup.per ije swamps below Duwil [Mt William], and the banks of the
Hopkins at Burumboluk [at ‘Berrambool’] and Baronga.
In the late dry season, ‘great meetings were held at Mirræwuæ, a large
marsh celebrated for emus and other kinds of game … The place was
selected on account of its being a central position for the meetings of the
tribes occupying’ waark. ‘None of the sea coast tribes attended … as they
were afraid of treachery and of an attack on the part of the others’. It is
conceivable that Mirræwuæ also facilitated the trading and exchange of
goods from particular Country’s. This may explain why so many Wil-
im-ee moor-ring [Mt William], the ‘home of the tomahawk’, greenstone
hatchets, and axes were diffused across waark deep into Buandig Country’s.
The mid-dry and good wet seasons were periods for fish and eel har-
vesting in the yere.roc [weirs]. Eels were highly prized during the mid-dry
season, on their migration to the sea, and were caught in large numbers
by arrabines [large tapering plaited nets] in yere.roc’s that could ‘accom-
modate the needs of large groups’. Many of the Dhauwurd wurrung clans
would regularly assemble around yere.roc’s and along Darlot’s Creek,
erecting stone structures or hut-like refuges for rain shelter, and feasting
on the supplies of migrating eels and fish.
Boloke was considered the most important centre on waark. Its abun-
dant and nutritious eels in the mid-dry season were deemed a rich and
valuable food source, ‘during the eeling season, from eight hundred to
one thousand Natives at one time have been seen; … These masses are a
collection of or representative of tribes, and the eeling … seasons are
wisely taken advantage of by them for holding their great social and polit-
ical meetings’.
When the mid-dry season rains came and the eels migrated, Aboriginals
gathered around Boloke and along the banks of Salt Creek from Tuureen
tuureen, ‘from great distances. Each tribe has allotted to it a portion of the
90 D. S. Jones
stream … and the usual stone barrier is built by each family, with eel
basket in the opening’. A linear ‘village’ was constructed along the Creek,
often as far down as ‘Merrang’, for one to two months, enabling oppor-
tunities for inter-clan ceremonies and social gatherings, and the chance to
barter and exchange goods including Burumboluk and Mt Stavely
greenstone.
Beneath Duwil was a vast fishery system of an ‘area of at least 15 acres
[6–7 ha]’, called Cro.cup.per ije, constructed to harvest eels.
made from greenstone, mollusc shells, sapling timber, cord or net, reeds,
or Grass-tree caudex that were treasured. Exchange compensated for eco-
logical and resource deficiencies in their ‘estates’, but also, again, it per-
mitted the diffusion of songs, dances, and place names.
Gnurad appears to have been a major exchange point for the highly
prized diorite greenstone from Wil-im-ee moor-ring, and Daung wurrung
and Wurundjeri Country’s, given its extensive diffusion throughout waark.
Greenstone from the Burumboluk and Baronga quarries, however, only
moved westwards from Djab wurrung into Buandig Country. Greenstone
from Dogs Rocks and Ceres, near Geelong, in Wadawurrung Country was
also traded westwards into the District. Stone from the Jallukar quarries,
in Boner balug clan territory within Djab wurrung Country, was also
traded mainly southward into Dhauwurd wurrung Country. A small
amount of black chert and diabase greenstone was also quarried from Mt
Stavely in Djab wurrung Country.
Non-stone goods were largely hunting, gathering, and painting equip-
ment and supplies. Mallee saplings, the rare ‘bundit’ wood, the caudex
stalks of ‘Black-boys’ from the Wergaia, Ganubanud, and Gulidjan
Country’s provided timber for spears, leeowils, and spear-throwers. These
were often exchanged for kangaroo and possum skins, Burumboluk green-
stones, chert, quartz, obsidian, hatchets and hatchet stones, red ochre
from the Otway sea cliffs, and mollusc shells from sandy shores along the
Hopkins River. The scope of trade goods, coming from Country’s over
200 km away, indicates that Gnurad was one of the most significant
exchange centres in south-eastern Australia.
Gilambidj was deemed a meeting place for settling quarrels and dis-
agreements. ‘Keilambete is neutral ground. The tribes met here to settle
their disputes and transact other business connected with their political
relation’. Its convenient location, near a fresh water spring, below Gnurad,
and in the centre of Girai wurrung clan Country, proved an ideal location
for camping.
The greenstone quarries of Burumboluk and Baronga on the Hopkins
River, in Gnareeb gnareeb gundidj clan Country—on ‘Nareeb-nareeb’,
‘Fernlea’, ‘Chatsworth House’, and ‘Berrambool’ stations—were major
artifice sites on waark. Several diorite outcrops and deposits occur along
the Hopkins and Grays Creek bear extensive grinding groove traces
92 D. S. Jones
indicating that this industry must have occurred over numerous genera-
tions. The quarries primarily supplied waark clans as ‘sixty percent of
Berrambool specimens [analysed] are confined within 100 km from the
source’.
* * *
Burial sites were the most deceptive of landscape creations. Some qual-
ified as landscape art by their earthwork beauty, associative iconography
on trees or earth, or subtle arrangement. Their qualities and ceremonial
purposes, however, were extremely important to Aboriginals and illus-
trate a ‘peculiarly stable and ancient human order’, holding a great deal of
inscription of meaning on the landscape. Respectfully, they are not dis-
cussed in this text.
* * *
there was … a regular Aboriginal settlement … There was on the banks of the
creek between 20 and 30 huts of the form of a Beehive or sugar loaf, some of
them capable of holding a dozen people. These huts were about 6' high [182.8
cm] or [a] little more, about 10’ [304.8 cm] diameter, an opening about 3' 6"
[106.6 cm] for a door which they closed at night if they required with a sheet
of bark, an apeture at the top 8 or 9’ [20 or 23 cm] to let out the smoke which
in wet weather they cover’d with a sod. These buildings were all made of a
circular form, closely worked and then covered with mud, they would bear the
weight of a man on them without injury [sic].
Locations, near permanent water enabling easy access to fish and eel
supplies, near bush cover suitable for bird snaring, near supplies of root
plant foods especially the swampy habitat of poorteetch [Cumbungi], or
on high ground enabling a good vantage, appear to be criteria for settle-
ment establishment.
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 95
The great size of them, and the vast accumulation of burnt earth, charcoal, and
ashes which is formed in and around them, is accounted for by the long con-
tinuance of the domestic hearth, the decomposition of the building materials,
and the debris from their frequent destruction by bush fires. They never were
96 D. S. Jones
Points for daily living activities were present throughout waark, and in
the stony rises, wherever abundant food resources and reliable water sup-
plies were prevalent. They illustrate a ‘complex hunter-gatherer’ relation-
ship with the landscape and validate the thesis that Aboriginals were, in
this District, a semi-sedentary culture contrary to European notions that
they had a nomadic roaming culture.
* * *
There is a fine clean lagoon at this place and the best water I have tested in this
district … There are fish in this lagoon, eels and round the banks I counted 6
places the native had made for fishing, … round the edge of the lagoon sup-
ported by fork sticks. I also saw a weir across the river for catching eels. This
place, Pat.wor.deet, is a very romantic spot. The rocks at the falls are windstone
[sic]. The scrub is rather thick near to the lagoon, good shelter for the natives
and a screen from wind.
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 97
* * *
The principal [wuurn] one is the permanent family dwelling, which is made of
strong limbs of trees stuck up in dome-shape, high enough to allow a tall man
to stand upright underneath them. Small limbs fill up the intermediate spaces,
and these are covered with sheets of bark, thatch, sods, and earth till the roof
and sides are proof against the wind and rain. The doorway is low, and gener-
ally faces the morning sun or a sheltered rock. The family wuurn is sufficiently
large to accomodate a dozen or more persons; and when the family is grown up
the wuurn is partitioned off into apartments, each facing the fire in the centre …
* * *
Stone was also used in two other applications. One was for artifice, the
other was to disguise water springs or wells.
Lithic scatter sites of largely unprovenanced stone artefacts are today
very common across waark. Varying in size, from a few square metres to
several hundred square metres, they were often located next to perennial
water systems. Scatter sites indicate places of stone material manufacture,
repair, and use in the daily activities of hunting and gathering.
Hammerstones, anvils, cores, and debitage, greenstone flakes, hatchet
100 D. S. Jones
head blanks, and sandstone grinders, stone tool and axe manufacture and
repair locations and quarry sites were prolific. At others, basalt and sand-
stone grindstones suggest ochre and plant food processing, while imported
coastal flint, Gariwerd sandstone, non-local cherts and chalcedonies, and
Wil-im-ee moor-ring [Mt William and Mt Camel in central Victoria]
greenstone at sites validate the premise that extensive trade and exchange
networks existed across waark throughout Djab wurrung, Dhauwurd
wurrung, Girai wurrung, Gulidjan, Djargurd wurrung, and Buandig clan
Country’s.
Major sites of artifice included the greenstone diorite quarries of
Burumboluk [Berrambool] and Baronga on the Hopkins River near
‘Berrambool’ and ‘Chatsworth House’. Irregular masses of protruding
sandstone provided grinding blocks for the greenstone axe ‘blanks’ that
had been retrieved from quarries within and along the Hopkins’ banks.
Stones were collected, fired, before being doused with cold water causing
them to ‘explode’ and fracture. The sharp chips and flakes were then
ground, often with abrasive watered dust to assist the process, on the
blocks to form prized spear, axe, and hatchet heads.
Springs, on waark or in the open woodlands, were a highly prized
asset, as the myth about Taarwill [the Australian Bustard], Chirmp-
chirmp [the Lark] and Kuutchon [the Brolga] demonstrates. Regular late
dry season camps were established around these sites and to be deprived
of them forced ‘bands’ to relocate to other perennial sources. Near Tappoc:
At a clump or copse of tea tree [I] saw a native well, about 2½ [76.2 cm] deep
and water. The hole was about a foot [30.4cm] wide at top. To get the water
out of such holes the drinking reed is indispensable. Beside which, the water can
be obtained without disturbing the sediment. Grass is laid in the well and the
water filters through it.
its notes and the Yellow Buttercup which I saw nowhere but in the rich valley
of the Wannon.
Journal entry, September 10 [sic, 11], 1836, Granville Wilson Chetwynd
Stapylton Journal, 1836.
* * *
The general character of the Western District south of the mountains is flat with
a few isolated Volcanic Hills and is composed within two natural divisions, the
wooded and the plains.
But on this flat surface were ‘open grassy plains’, ‘picturesque lakes …
fringed with luxuriant shrubs’, ‘strips of forest’, ‘excellent grass’, and
‘enormous trees of the mimosa or wattle’. Myths and the practice of gath-
ering plant foods and medicines established a seasonal relationship of
caring for those patterns. ‘Agricultural’ or ‘natural gardening’ practices by
Aboriginals through soil preparation, burning of grass covers, thinning,
and plant diffusion, enabled the continued seeding, flowering and regen-
eration of plant species. Such practices, started some 60,000 years ago,
also constituted a cultural impact upon vegetation that dictated its con-
stitution, density, diversity, and the regimen of fire dependent species.
Cultural precepts fostered a relationship dependent upon the regular nur-
turing and maintenance of ecological systems to ensure that adequate
foods and fruits were available for Aboriginal occupants, and in anticipa-
tion of Dreaming ancestors.
102 D. S. Jones
* * *
Here is a country which infallibly will be inhabited ere long. The settler will
have no timber to clear away, the soil, fruitful in the extreme and the pastures
for flocks and herds rich and unbounded to an immense extent. Plenty of water,
in short, it has not a drawback or objection belonging to it.
In the early dry season, Aboriginals located their camps around drying
swamps and on dry mounds as good wet seasonal rains ceased and soils
evaporated excess moisture. The golden dandelion-like flowers of muurang
[Murnong] bloomed and its roots were collected. Other tuberous food
plants that flowered included parm [Bulbine Lilies], creamy popoto
[Milkmaids], purple Chocolate Lilies, Early Nancy, Greenhoods, taaruuk
[Small-leaved Clematis], and the fruits of blue-purple mookitch [Kangaroo
Apple], corollas and orange-red palatt [Cherry Ballart], and spiked flower
stalks. Hedge Wattles, Prickly Moses, muutchung [Blackwood], and kar-
rank [Golden Wattle] warmed with profuse yellow-golden flowers, and
wuurak [Silver Banksia], Ranunculus, Helichrysum and Ozothamnus spp.,
and Tree Violet flowers were also in bloom. The mookitch and palatt pro-
duced yellow-orange and orange-red edible fruits, and the wuuloitch,
Wallaby, and Spear grasses billowed in silver and red tinted waving
inflorescences.
In the late dry season, muurang was still being harvested, and grasses
continued to flower. This time was considered ‘the unfavourable season’
due to water scarcity. Aboriginal dietary focus was upon abundant kanga-
roos and emus herds. The wuurott [Manna Gum] exuded its sap and the
sugary Lerp (or Larp) was collected from its leaves. Other flowering food
plants included yellow Everlastings, Blue Devils, Austral Bluebells,
magenta Purple Loosestrife, pink tarook [Pink Bindweed], greenish fluffy-
headed Pussy-tails and Featherheads. Also flowering were the cream-
yellow-golden Lightwood, karrank, warrarakk [Late Black Wattle],
wuurak, and kuukee karann [Sweet Bursaria], with the Prickly Tea-tree
and palatt in whitish and greenish flowers. Other food and fibre plants
available for harvest included young poorteetch, Marsh Club-rush, pue-
wan [Potato Orchid], Inland Pigface, and the orange-yellow fruit of
mookitch with its blue-purple hued flowers.
During the mid-dry season, Aboriginals favoured campsites above
watercourses and around swamps. Muurang roots were still harvested,
but dietary attention was upon mo’om [fish] and puunyart [freshwater
eels]. Only the minute peeal [River Red Gum] flowers, the scented white
or pink Silky Hakea flowers, and the greenish flowers of palatt bloomed
in a landscape that was drying out.
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 105
lava stone … for sharpening the murnong stick. I saw one of them at work
preparing the murnong stick. This they do by first chopping with tomahawk or
other sharp instrument the stick, giving to it a dual edge. They then harden it
in the fire and give it a finishing touch with lava stones. Lar, iron stone.
Today the native women were spread over the plain as far as I could see them,
collecting Panmin, murnong … I inspected their bags and baskets on their
return and each had a load as much as she could carry.
plant … [muurang was] usually found growing on the plains with a bright
yellow flower’ that made the species easy to find without firing. Tuberous
roots were washed and then laid in rush-work baskets in ground ovens for
steaming or roasting for eating. This cooking method also imposed con-
siderable labour upon the women, ‘inasmuch as the baskets are made by
them; and as these often get burnt, they rarely serve more than twice’.
Basket weaving was an important activity. Women often wove the vigor-
ous longitudinal fibrous stems of poong’ort [Sedges] split into fine strips,
from strong kærk leaves, or from long smooth fibrous leaves of walritch
[Spiny-headed Mat-rush]. Reddish colours were added by including leaves
of the variable Sword-sedge. One significant product of basket weaving
was the design and fabrication of arrabines, usually from walritch. An
extremely important weaving construction, they enabled the extensive har-
vesting of puunyart and mo’om during the good wet and mid-dry seasons.
Stream flows were manipulated, diverting ‘the current through an opening
into a funnel-mouthed basket pipe, three or four feet [91.4 or 121.9 cm]
long, two inches [5.1 cm] in diameter, and closed at the lower end’.
The eel pots are placed over the holes, and the fisher stands behind the yere.roc
or weir and lays hold of the small end of the arrabine or eel pot … made of bark
or plaited rushes with a willow round mouth and having a small end to prevent
the eel from rapidly getting away.
and is about two feet and a half [76.2 cm] long, with a broad almond-
shaped end, about a foot [30.4 cm] long, terminating in a sharp point’.
Axes were of split saplings with the wedge-shaped stone affixed by kanga-
roo sinews and adhesive wattle gum. Wood boomerangs varied in size
and purpose. Water buckets, called popæær yuu, of wattle bark sheet dou-
bled over, sewed, and glued together, with cord handles, were common.
Water vessels, called torrong, were ‘made of a sheet of bark stripped from
the bend of a gum tree, about four or five feet [121.9 or 152.4 cm] long,
one foot [30.4 cm] deep, and one [foot] wide, in the shape of a canoe’.
Other bags were constructed from wattle, warngar [Messmate], or
stringybark lined inners and covered in animal skin, other barks, or bas-
ket weaves. Knives were formed from reeds or kawee leaves: ‘a reed about
a foot [30.4 cm] or a foot and a half [45.7 cm] in length, split in half
lengthwise … The sharp edge of the reed is the saw with which they cut
their meat … It was … about ¼ of an inch [1.0 cm] in diameter’. Wattle
and eucalyptus gums were prized as adhesives; poorteetch and kærk fibres
were used as cords or strings; palatt wood was ideal for spear throwers;
and the timber of kuuluurt [Drooping Sheoak] and paperbarks were used
for boomerangs, fire sticks, spears, implements, and digging sticks.
‘Fire-stick farming’ on waark was a common practice. The ‘smoke
[that] arose from many parts of the lower country, and shewed that the
inhabitants were very generally scattered over its surface’ was not simply
campfires but an act of firing the landscape. In a vegetation community
that was dependent upon fire for the stimulation of regenerative pro-
cesses, the Aboriginals performed an enigmatic role as an ecological agent.
Often, in the act of harvesting muurang, they burnt the grass ‘the better
to see these roots’. Firing of long marsh grasses in the late dry season was
also a mode of attracting and entrapping birds. Firing also promoted
young fresh grass shoots which were the preferred food of browsing kan-
garoos and emus:
The face of the whole country [north of Tappoc] had been burnt and the rushes
of the swamp and the young grass anchistiria [T. triandra], had attained to a
growth of 7 or 8 inches [17.7 or 20.3 cm] and a most verdant appearance.
* * *
108 D. S. Jones
The scope of these Aboriginal relationships with plants and the landscape
must also be considered in the context that Aboriginals have been major
instruments of environmental change. Repeated firing, natural ‘garden-
ing’, and camp site defaecation processes ‘cleaned’ the landscape, created
fresh regrowth, increased vegetation mosaic diversity, manipulated suc-
cessional processes and the stability of Allocasuarina sp. woodlands,
increased soil salinity, and concentrated sites of soil fertility.
These impacts appear particularly pronounced in the past 10,000 years
of District landscape occupancy supporting the hypothesis that the land
had undergone alterations by means of Aboriginal actions. Conventional
thought now acknowledges that Aboriginal firing did impact the land-
scape by promoting grassland spread and the loss of woodlands. Firing
created open accessible ground and reduced nesting opportunities for
birds and mammals. Apart from stimulating fresh grass shoots fire was
also necessary for promoting germination, fruiting, or tuber formation.
Over time, regular firing caused incremental declines in soil mineral fer-
tility and organic matter depth. There now appears to be a greater set of
cultural alterations, apart from impacts upon fauna that may have been
consciously precipitated by Aboriginals.
Firing of the District’s landscape certainly ‘cleaned’ up undergrowth
and litter, but it appears also to have manipulated the mosaic to perpetu-
ate the grassland structure and its strong antagonism to trees. Firing also
promoted new shoots, plant seeding, and the nurturing of tuberous sta-
ple food plants. Conscious thinning of the latter, in ‘natural gardening’
processes, ensured manipulation and proactive stimulation of food and
fibrous plant supplies. Regular seasonal occupation of favoured campsites
resulted in the accumulation of food, shells, other refuse, and defaecated
plants seeds and nutrient-rich excreta creating favourable soil composi-
tions conducive to the growth of food plants, edible tubers, and fruit
trees and shrubs. The long-term ramification of this pattern is an increase
in the distribution and frequency of favoured edible plant ‘gardens’ and
the promotion of ideal micro-environments by digging and soil aerating
acts. The collective acts of firing and ‘gardening’ conceivably resulted in a
dysclimax of a woodland mosaic thereby fostering the present grassland
landscape.
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 109
* * *
Many plant species were used for Aboriginal dietary sustenance, artefact
production, and for medicines. Central in daily activities was muurang.
The muurang which somewhat resembles a small parsnip, with a flower like a
buttercup, grows chiefly on the open plains. It is much esteemed on account of
its sweetness … The roots are washed and put into a rush basket made on pur-
pose, and placed in the oven in the evening to be ready for next morning's
breakfast … The muurang root, when cooked, is called yuwatch. It is often
eaten uncooked.
available throughout the year. The starchy roots of taaruuk and tarook
were ‘cooked in baskets, and kneaded on a small sheet of bark into dough’.
The latter was an alternate staple food in the good wet season to muurang.
The radish-like, highly starchy tuberous roots of kullum kulkeetch [Native
Geranium] were also pounded after cooking to reduce its tannin flavour.
There is, however, little ethnographic mention of seeds being collected
and ground, such as the Nardoo of the interior, to supplement this heavy
tuberous root diet.
Other foods included the bland boee wan [Native Bread], the starchy
tap root of gnuritch [Austral Hollyhock] that was baked and beaten before
eating; the mucilaginous starchy rhizomes of muulaa [Austral Bracken]
which were ‘roasted in hot ashes, beaten into a paste’; the sticky and sweet
fruits of Mistletoes which were eaten raw; and the Summer ripened fruits
of Inland Pigface which were eaten raw, or its salty succulent leaves which
were eaten with meat as a salad. Juicy ripened fruits of palatt were picked
and eaten in the good wet and early dry seasons, as were the red berries of
the barring-gootch [Native Raspberry], creamy poloitch [White Elderberry]
berries, and early ripened fruits of mookitch.
Kawee, when stripped, also provided a food source:
It was a portion of the grass-tree top. This was first pulled out of the stem … and
then a length of soft, white, succulent matter neatly twisted off the lower
extremity, where it had been embedded in the rugged trunk; it reminded me of
asparagus in the proportion of tender to tough.
Other foods included juicy young leaves and stems of tallark [Sow
Thistle], nectar gums of warrarakk and karrank which when diluted in
water were favoured drinks, and the nectar of flowering wuurak cones
that flavoured water supplies. The highly prized lerp (larp, or buumbuul),
from small-sap suckling insects containing sugar and formed on wuurott
leaves was eaten directly or mixed with water as a drink. At ‘Trawalla’, the
‘Manna falls very abundantly from the gum trees at certain seasons of the
year. I think it was in March I gathered some. It is very good, and tastes
like almond biscuits’. Mushrooms, varieties of fungi, and yellow Marsh
Cress were also eaten, and possums stuffed with herbs and cooked were a
favoured dish.
112 D. S. Jones
* * *
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 113
* * *
114 D. S. Jones
* * *
The good wet season was a lean period for animal foods but plant foods
were more abundant. Aboriginals moved away from sodden soils to camp
on drier ground with cover. In the grasslands and woodlands, snared yow-
wir and speared mammals (kuuræ, wallabies, kowwirr) supplemented
Aboriginal reliance upon mo’om; staple plant foods were common in diets.
Freshwater Herrings migrated downstream, and tuukuurwill and Murray
Cod migrated upstream, in flooding waters; it was a time when kowwirr
laid their eggs, dingos gave birth, when pun’ya [Ring-tailed Possums] bred,
when yuurkuurn [Blue-tongue] and Shingle-back Lizards and yuluwill
[Echidna] hibernated, and when kuurang and wuin wuin [Tiger and
Brown Snakes] were low in activity. But mo’om were biting at Tæ rak.
The early dry season was a bountiful time in the grasslands and wood-
lands. Aboriginals camped around swamps, lakes, and creeks, but regularly
moved these camps depending upon available plant and animal foods, and
ground dryness. Yowwirr, bird eggs, shellfish, yapeetch, mo’om, yarram, rats,
kuurnwill, muurndarnk, puunyart, and large and small mammals were
bountiful, supplementing the staple plant, the muurang [Murnong]. It was
a time when the kuyang dakk [Lamprey Eels] and juvenile puunyart
migrated upstream, and when kowwirr eggs were poached.
These four ‘seasons’ provide a demographic subsistence model. These
were, however, not definable periods to Aboriginals. Rather, climatic
changes and signals and announcements by arrivals, departures, births,
and hibernations of animals and plants were their environmental ‘calen-
dar’. A layer of cultural rules and principles also regulated who, when,
and how many of those species an Aboriginal could hunt and kill, and
their permissible uses for clothing, medicines, diets, and in nomencla-
ture. A constant companion to Aboriginals were dingoes who acted as
domesticated hunting dogs, as noted in the myths. They were, however,
not as nomadically wild as contemporary images portray.
* * *
As each tribe left its own country, it spread out in line, and all united to
form a circle of fifteen or twenty miles [24 or 32 km] in diameter. By this
means the kangaroos and emus were enclosed, in order to be driven to an
appointed place … At a fixed time the circle was perfected by arranging the
men so that they stood about two hundred yards [182 m] apart. The circle
then began to contract. As they drew near to the central camp both young
and old [men and women] joined them, and formed a line too compact to
allow escape of the game; which, frightened and confused with the yells
and shouting all around, were easily killed with clubs and spears.
Apart from these drives, animals were chased, often with dingoes,
trapped, speared, or retrieved from their trees or ground burrows. The
dingo was an active and skilful hunter of kuuræ, seldom getting hurt, and
always out-running their prey. Kuuræ were also stalked in the grasslands
by Aboriginals with a ‘circular shield of leafy branches’, remaining
motionless if the kuuræ looked about, until within spear throwing
distance.
Large and small animals were cooked in stone lined and covered ovens.
Meean, kowwirr, and kuuræ often were skinned and cut into pieces to fit
in oven holes. Possums were skinned, or the fur plucked, and cooked in
hot embers often with the entrails removed and the cavity stuffed with
herbs. Kuuræ tails were singed to remove the hair, preventing meat juices
from escaping, and then toasted. Kuurnwill and muurndarnk, considered
good foods, were also toasted in hot embers.
Possum and kuuræ skins were highly prized for clothing, blankets, and
rugs. Pun’ya and willæ were often used by women as clothing—‘in
puris’—and as blankets. Furs also served as decorative pieces and clothing
in corroborees and ceremonies. No use was deemed for meean or wirng-
buul fur, or the skins of muurndarnk or kuurnwill, but mirwil skins were
cured in hot embers.
120 D. S. Jones
and are eaten alive … with as much pleasure as a white man eats a living
oyster … Roasted in embers, they are delicate and nutty in flavour, varying in
quality according to the kind of tree into which they bore, and on which they
feed. Those found in the trunks of the common wattle [muutchung] are con-
sidered the finest and sweetest.
Having first roughly plucked it, they took off the skin, which they stuffed with
tender gum twigs; thus prepared, it was delicately roasted at a slow fire, and
124 D. S. Jones
then rich, yellow, oily lengths of what looked like the thickest of the fattest pos-
sible goose-skin were trimmed off and swallowed, as the Lazaroni of Naples are
said to suck down macaroni.
The time for kowwirr egg laying was marked by the arrival of Waa
[Canopus; Carina] on the horizon. The first egg was called purtæ wuu-
chuup. Waa represented the Crow in the myth of Gneeanggar (Wedge-
tailed Eagle) [Sirius; Canis Major]. Gneeanggar’s attendants, still
searching, were the Pleaides to the Pirt kopan noot of Djab wurrung.
Kuurokeheear [the Pleaides], however, to the Kuurn kopan noot of
Dhauwurd wurrung were a flock of Grugidj. Gneeanggar’s three sisters,
Kuupartakil [Orion’s Belt], also followed. Fomalhaut [Piscis Austrinus]
represented Bunjil, and Tuulirmp [Centauri] was chirmp chirmp. Kuurn
kuuronn and Gnæang kuuronn [Large and Small Magellanic Clouds] were
male and female kuutchon, respectively. The upper twilight at sunset was
kuurokeheear [white cockatoo twilight] and the under arch was kappi-
heear puuron [black cockatoo twilight].
* * *
Here I observed a large weir at least 100 yards [91.4 m] in length and though
the first I had seen, I was assured by its structure and its situation before I
reached it that it was the work of the Aboriginal natives. I called to Pevay …
He said they got plenty eels [from it] and then showed us how they did it by
biting their heads and throwing them on shore. This weir was made of stout
sticks from 2–3 inches [5–8 cm] thick drove in to the ground and vertically
fixed, and other sticks interlaced in an horizontal manner. A hole is left in the
centre and a long eel pot made of basket or matting is placed before it and into
it the eels gather and are thus taken. It is probable that 2 or 3 such pots are set
in large weirs. This weir must have been 100 yards long [91.4 m], at least, and
made with wings or corner pieces at the ends thus, or similar to it [sic.].
I measured this weir with a tape, 200 ft [60.96 m]; 5 ft [1.5 m] high. It was
turned back at each end and two or three holes in the middle was left for plac-
ing the eel pots as also one at each end.
These yere.roc or wiers [sic] are built with some attention to the principle of
mechanics. Those erected on a rocky bottom have the sticks indented in a groove
made by removing the small stone so as to form a groove. The wier is kept in a
straightline. The small stones are laid against the bottom of the stick, verging or
forked sticks … These sticks are 3, 4 or 5 inches [7.6–12.7 cm] in diameter
4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 127
some of the smaller wiers are in the form of a segment of a circle. The convex
side against the current.
A specimen of art I had not before seen of the same extent and therefore required
some time to inspect it … These trenches are hundreds of yards in length. I
measured at one place in one continuous triple line for the distance of 500 yards
[457 m] … An area of at least 15 acres [6.0 ha] was thus turned over.
The plan or design of these ramifications was extremely perplexing … All its
varied form and curious curvilinear windings and angles of every size and
shape and parallels, etc; at intervals small apertures left where they placed their
arabines or eel pots. These gaps were supported by pieces of the bark of trees and
sticks … Some of the banks were 2 feet [60.9 cm] in height, the most of them
a foot [30.5 cm] and the hollow a foot deep by 10 or 11 inches [25.5 or 28
cm] wide. The main branches were wider.
* * *
painted in a small cave behind a large rock in the Black Range near Stawell,
but I have not seen it, nor have I heard of anyone seeing it.
Alfred W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, 1904
* * *
* * *
was there, and how it fitted into the temporal nature of landscape. They
reflected familiar in a comprehensible reality and held an eternal quality
by their repetition and aural memorisation in ‘fundamentally unchang-
ing statements, valid for all time’.
Landscape held important props for myths, without which they had
no local validity or identification. Land, particular points, spaces within,
and criss-crossing mythical paths, served as literal expressions of the pur-
pose of land stewardship to Aboriginals. As Dreaming beings journeyed
across the landscape, their ‘camp’ sites, their spiritual presences and
routes, or the places where they ‘made themselves’ or ‘turned themselves’,
established a three-dimensional environment that imbued with social
purpose. Each clump of ‘honeysuckle’, waterhole, or cluster of rocks told
of a particular meaning, or of a set of different meanings, often intercon-
nected with the biological web (prominences on the horizon, or the the-
atre in the landscape above, as examples). Landscape therefore spoke with
sacred voices or ‘ghostly languages’. A potency prompting one squatter to
write: ‘What spirits wake when earth is still?’
It is, then, the land which is really speaking—offering, to those who can under-
stand its language, a explanative discourse about how it came to be as it is now,
which beings were responsible for its becoming like that, and who is or should
be responsible for it now. The physiographic sites and places were like the
Djabter headings of a book, and each one has much to say.
Rock paintings, totemic sites, and burial sites were expressional instal-
lations linked to these myths and voices. They facilitated human celebra-
tions to actors and meanings implicit in myths. Another response evolved
from environmental or landscape transformations of mythic ancestors. It
is these two responses that are explored here.
In contrast to recorded myths, there is little known about landscape
installations erected or constructed to celebrate these spiritual ancestors.
Ochre paintings, rock arrangements and stone alignments, were the more
recognisable landscape installations. Over time, they were unconsciously
or deliberately destroyed by the plough, cattle grazing, stone wall masons,
firing, patina of age as their presence, purpose, and meaning were with-
held from colonial invaders. They remain question marks in the land-
scape within unknown technological and cultural functions.
Extant ochre paintings are limited on waark [open plains] if you
exclude the numerous shelters in Gariwerd [The Grampians]. Only
Bunjil’s Cave and The Cave of the Serpents are now known. At Bunjil’s
Cave, a representational Buddha-like spirit image, sitting on his haunches,
accompanied by two dogs (one in white pipe-clay), is portrayed in red
ochre. White pipe-clay has been added later to the figure in a series of
dots, epaulettes, and stripes much like the image of a soldier’s tunic. The
image is a powerful figure in a crypt-like hollow of a granite tor and is
distinctively unlike the highly stylised and symbolic motifs of bars, pig-
ment stencilled hands, and stick figures of ‘lizard men’ that characterise
Gariwerd ‘art’ shelters. The linking trait in the latter is the commonality
of motifs to a number of sites, unlike an image that is a pictorial venera-
tion of a human-like spirit. Bunjil was to the clans of western and central
Victoria an influential good spirit who created and peopled the land-
scape. Accordingly, the figure holds special and unique significance.
The appellation ‘The Cave of the Serpents’, or ‘Langi Ghiran Site 1’,
offers a different representation again. Red pigment has been applied by
finger or brush execution to create 24 different types of motifs in a visu-
ally unique and rich composition. Serving potentially a ceremonial or
ritualistic function, contemporary conjecture ‘re-interprets’ the mural as
a landscape map:
134 D. S. Jones
The principal figure in the painting is that of a man wearing a chignon and
shown in profile … In his hand he holds a snake, not a “disproportionately
large boomerang.” The tail of the snake ends the nondescript design which is
seen on the left. The round designs are water-holes or lakes surrounded by reeds.
The two club-like objects are fish, perhaps eels, and the long, upright ladder on
the right another snake.
Deen maar [Lady Julia Percy Island], off the coast near Yambuk, and a
‘connecting’ cave on the mainland, Tarn wirrink, have been recognised as
totemic centres where ‘clans and phratries go … until reincarnated’.
On the sea coast, opposite Deen Maar … there is a haunted cave called Tarn
wirring, ‘road of the spirit’, which, the natives say, forms a passage between the
mainland and the island. When anyone dies in the neighbourhood, the body is
wrapped in grass and buried; and if, afterwards, grass is found at the mouth of
the cave, it is proof that a good spirit, called Puit puit chepetch, has removed the
body and everything belonging to it through the cave to the island, and has
conveyed its spirit to the clouds; and if a meteor is seen about the same time, it
is believed to be fire taken up with it. Should fresh grass be found near the cave,
when no recent burial has taken place, it indicates that someone has been mur-
dered, and no person will venture near it till the grass decays or is removed.
The cave looks out to Deen maar, on the end of a series of desolate
rocky crags appropriately called ‘The Craigs’, with whistling zephyrs con-
veying spirits of the dead. It is known to be a totemic centre from whence
dead spirits were conveyed up into the cloud landscape.
If these natural sites were affixed with meanings, or were places with
some form of artistic display to commemorate a myth, then installations
especially created on the earthen surface must equally demonstrate ritu-
alistic importance.
Attention at burial sites was on detail, ritualistic patterns, and the need
to dispose hygienically the body flesh. There was also a landscape scene
constructed for each pyre and final burial location. Pyres should not also
be confused with mirnyongs of camping places, although mirnyongs did
on certain occasions become muuru kowuutung or muuruup kaakee
[ghostly places] to Aboriginals. Such experiential scenes disappeared in
the winds and with the passing seasons into the broader landscape, but
their sites still held symbolic, often sacred, meaning to Aboriginals.
* * *
There were also myths that explained the presence and form of particular
hills, streams, lakes, gaps, and depressions in the District. Land features
were deeply and irrevocably tied to particular Dreaming actors. They pro-
vided information, located home Country’s, warned of apparitions, and
collectively tied a regional mass of clans together spiritually by their con-
sistent set of narrated statements.
A number of other explanations were later recorded about landscape
features. Karriitch [Australites], peculiar black stones strewn on waark,
were believed to be magic stones returned ‘home’ after a mission of medi-
cine. A clump of trees on the banks of Tarnpirr, near Wuukuurn
[Darlington], with the appellation Karriitch denoted the location of their
source. The Taap heear waterholes near Minjaar [‘Minjah House’] pur-
portedly were created by an ‘earthquake’, an event also experienced on
the lower Barng by three clans holding a ‘korroboræ’. Sounds, ‘like the
galloping of horses’ accompanied by violent ground shaking ‘ran about
and pushed up blackfellows’, are Puulornpuul’s recollections of the event.
But these were earthly landscapes. Above, held up by great props, was
the immense landscape of the dark sky. In this sky, Fomalhaut repre-
sented Bunjil [the Eaglehawk], and the hunting ground of the Barnk [the
Milky Way] was believed to be where, symbolically, Aboriginals [large
stars] chased game [small stars] into the ‘coal sack of the ancient mari-
ners—that dark space in the milky way near the constellation of the
Southern Cross’—called Torong.
138 D. S. Jones
There were also stories linking the stars to Dreaming ancestors and
mythological events on the earth. Stars remained the eternal bright eyes
of their earthly entities.
Spirits and ancestors also lived in or were linked to landscape features.
Purra Purra [the Red Kangaroo Ancestor] had her miyur or ‘sacred water’
at Pura Pura, and Waa had his at Dyurnera in the upper Glenelg valley.
Buurt-kuuruuk, a Aboriginal woman devil, ‘as tall as a gum tree’ and usu-
ally accompanied by her ‘dark-coloured bandicoot’, lived along and near
the mouth of Barng. Neulam-kurrk, in the image of an old woman, lived
in the sink-holes, caves, and depressions along Pare.in.gid.gid.galler [Fiery
Creek] and devoured children. Muuruup neung kuurn tarrong’gnat, or the
‘devil in the moon’ spirit also took children. Colbumatuan-kuurk, who
lived near Pare.in.gid.gid.galler, was a strong and violent wind. Orokeets,
‘two imaginary evil spirits’, male and female, lived in the ‘home of the
Black Cockatoo’ near Larneejeeing. They could appear with the appari-
tion of a partial eclipse, and placed fear in the minds of Aboriginals.
Mischievous Net-nets lived within the Stony Rises around Konda [Lake
Condah], where the feared ‘Black Ghost’, Mahrach, also walked. A
dreaded but great serpent, Myndie, lived in a waterhole at Warrebaal. The
Muuruup, ‘sometimes called “Wambeen neung been-been aa” or “maker of
bad-smelling smoke”’ lived at Ummekulleen deep underground but could
kill people on the surface with lightning. Malignant spirits also lived in
the medicinal spring waters of Lurtpii below Kolerer. And, of course,
there were also the Bunyips who lived in waterholes and deep lakes
including Bamerong near ‘South Challicum’, in Tarnpirr, in the reeds of
the Wannon, in Lake Buninjon, in a spring called Wuurong killing near
‘Mount Fyans’, or in the dark waterholes of Barnk [the Milky Way].
There are undoubtedly many more stories explaining landscape cre-
ation, and its spiritual inhabitants within features, that are untold. These
collectively comprise part of the sacred, hidden voices in Country.
In terms of the Domains theme, the evident traits are: a sense of pur-
poseful responsibility to care for the landscapes’ biological health was
enshrined in Aboriginal belongingness to their hereditary Country and
knowledge of one’s location, positioned within the greater Dreaming
map, explained a Aboriginal’s role and responsibility to that landscape;
space was multi-layered in purpose and role, and divided in responsibility
according to language, moiety descendancy and land usage thresholds,
but interconnected by neutral and collective tracts, places, and pathways;
boundaries were distinctive yet permeable and often extensive according
to environmental factors and the relevant myths and traditions; spatial
delimitation recognised equity of resource access and communal sharing
of spaces and resources during times and seasons of little or plenty, and
Country often involved two or more ecosystems; ‘title’ to Country was
validated by knowledge and expression of the place names, myths, and
songs relevant to that tract; linguistic commonalities were a binding
thread in ‘estate’ delimitation and clan activities; the volume of space and
the intensity of occupation prompted the creative and equitable dissec-
tion of landscape through subtle means, having regard to rich natural
habitats or tracts; place names were an extremely important element in
the landscape, and they identified space, acted as signposts, celebrated
past events, and re-ignited the mythic consciousness of Aboriginals; and,
each name possessed a library of knowledge that could be instructional or
informative, and could pertain to mythological events and passages, con-
temporary Aboriginal history and incidents, or bio-geographical infor-
mation about the resources, micro-climatic patterns, or geographical
form of the site.
For Pathways, traits evident are: journeying through landscape was
necessary to enable the acquisition of mythological, symbolic and bio-
logical information about Country and about the songlines that traversed
it, and that pathways were the vehicle to permit this acquisition; major
pathways and songlines generally correlate to neutral trade routes, the
criss-crossing passage ways of mythic Dreaming ancestors, and to north-
south natural corridors which were aligned with or linked to perennial
water sources; pathways interconnected places of trade, ceremony, arti-
fice, harvest and hunt, and facilitated the transfer of artefacts, raw mate-
rial, foodstuffs, news, stories, and myths; and pathways were
140 D. S. Jones
* * *
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4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 143
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(1968d): 317–320; Massola (1973): 126–131; Mathews (1904a): 62,
66–68; Mathews (1904b): 281–282, 293, 297, 364, 365–367, 369;
Mathews (1907): 47–48; McBryde (1978): 354–382; McBryde (1984a):
132–153; McBryde (1984b): 267–285; McBryde (1986): 79, 84, 88, 89,
90; McGregor and Oaten (1985): 2, 14–15; Merrilees (1968): 1–24;
Mitchell (1965): Vol. 1, 211–212, 216, 237, 253–254, 255–256, 269,
270, 272, 273, Vol. 2, 256, 257, 259, 274, 332, 333; Mortlake Historical
Society Book Committee (1985): 8; Müller-Willie (1984): 2–7; Mulvaney
(1964): 427–429; Myers (1986): 54; O’Neill (1993a): 11, 22; O’Neill
(1993b): 11; Patton (1930): 161, 185, 186; Powell (1992): 215–216;
Presland (1977a): 7, 43, 70, 83; Presland (1977b): 11, 14, 15, 18, 26, 35,
36, 42–43, 44, 48, 49, 60, 62, 64, 65, 71–73, 84, 85–86, 87, 91, 93,
115, 117, 118; Presland (1980): 50–51, 56, 58, 59, 65–66, 70, 71A, 80,
89, 91–92, 102–103, 105, 106, 109, 111, 119, 124, 137, 141, 148,
144 D. S. Jones
Figs. 15, 16, 23, 24; Pyne (1990): 1132–1133; Pyne (1991): 79–83;
Robson (1987): 12, 17, 18; Ruhe (1986): 30; Scarlett (1988): 146–147;
Shaw (1969): 68; Singh (1982): 90–108; Smyth (1972): vol 1, xxxvi, 1,
8, 34, 124, 126, 139–141, 191, 196, 242–243, 434, 435–444, vol
2234–235; Society for Growing Australian Plants Maroondah, Inc.
(1991); Stanbridge (1861): 299–300; Stanner (1965): 1–26; Stapylton
(1971): 110, 117; Stuwe (1986): 6, 22–23; Sutton (1916): 119–121;
Taylor (1976): 34–43; Tindale (1957): 31; Tunbridge (1987): 2–4; Watt
(1986): 19–22; West (1971): 67; Williams (1984): 182, 187; Williams
(1987): 310–311, 312, 314, 316–320; Willingham (1983): 146; Willis
(1964a): 12–13; Willis (1964b): 397–398, 404; Willis (1984): 27; Zola
and Gott (1992): 1–4, 6–9, 15, 25, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43,
44, 46, 47, 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58–64.
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4 1800–1840: Country Dreaming 153
* * *
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 155
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_5
156 D. S. Jones
* * *
To the surveyor, Mitchell, in 1836, the ‘flowery plains and green hills’
were but ‘a fair blank sheet’ of Crown land: a cartographer’s dream. The
‘haziness in the air prevented … [him] from perceiving clearly the distant
horizon’, and the clouds of Western ideologies permitted a colonial arro-
gance that characterised Indigenous inhabitants as lacking social struc-
tures or possessing formal residency in those ‘verdant plains’.
To terra nullius—‘no man’s land’—colonials laid claim to and squatted
upon tracts of the landscape. The lack of distinct visual representations
and traces of fences, structures, symbols of culture and technology belied
what was extant within the landscape. Instead:
No trace of man or habitation was there, ‘nor roof nor latched door’.
But the ‘light which never was on sea or shore’ was there, to shed a celestial
glory over the untilled, unfenced, half-unknown waste.
The ‘blank sheet’ prompted imagined paper landscapes that were based
upon landscape features without metaphysical associations. Defined as
two-dimensional spaces, they used an amalgam of vaguely positioned
lines, landscape features or structures, and natural boundaries.
In the interregnum of such divisions, runs were organised and formed.
Colonial stations or runs of some 8000–20,250 ha were carved out of the
terra nullius, on top of Aboriginal Country’s under a new set of social and
economic mental structures that, least of all, sheep and kangaroos com-
prehended nor respected.
Central to this land division was the transferral of Crown tenure sys-
tems, which evolved in feudal England in 1290, to the Australian conti-
nent. Land was held feudally to the King or Crown under ‘fee simple’, or
as estate or leasehold in remainder, under a system called Old or General
Law. The latter title formed the basis of licences. Subsequent allocation of
Pre-emptive Rights and sale of land in fee simple under the General Law
system, by the lodgement and registration of documents, established a
colonial version of map anchorages and oral literatures. Until replaced by
the Torrens system in 1862, it formed an over-arching system of socially
structured land ownership and easement provision, and thereby ensured
a sense of land familiarity and security, in the second phase.
* * *
‘Golf Hill’ run was partially bought in ‘five sections on [the Leigh River],
commanding a frontage of upwards five miles [8.0 km]’, containing
1712 ha with the rest held in squatting leasehold under licence, but was
managed as an integrated whole.
Special Surveys were permissible from March 1841. Surveys allowed
the acquisition of at least 2072 ha (or 20.7 km2) in an unbroken tract for
about 24 s. a hectare (12 s./acre), later increased to about £2 a hectare
(£1/acre). Under this provision, the Rutledge Survey and ‘Cherongemarah’
were acquired amidst much controversy.
The Sale of Waste Lands Act (1846), the Waste Lands Occupation Act
(1846), and the Order-in-Council (1847) resolved much of the uncer-
tainty about land tenure. Occupation outside the ‘settled districts’ was
altered to permit 14-year leases, an annual licence fee to the Crown of
£10 with a tax per head of livestock, a threshold of 51.8 km2 per run, and
a carrying capacity of not ‘more than 4000 sheep or 500 head of cattle, or
a mixed herd of sheep and cattle, equal to either 500 head of cattle or 400
sheep’. The opportunity to acquire a maximum of 259 ha at about £2 a
hectare surrounding a ‘homestead’ by ‘right of pre-emption’, and the first
right to buy the whole or part of the ‘improved’ run at the expiration of
the lease, were also available. Pastoral lease and Pre-emptive Right acqui-
sition were subject to survey (the ‘marking off and drawing [of ] plans
of … runs’), the erection of a ‘homestead’, and associated ‘improvements’.
Boundary disputation was subject to authoritarian adjudications of
Commissioners for Crown Lands. Land within 4.8 km of the sea, or
16 km from Portland, could also be acquired as fee simple freehold under
General Law given its redesignation as a ‘settled district’. Pre-emptive
Rights involved the marking of an invisible rectangle in the landscape by
pegs or survey stones, whereas Pastoral leasehold required the delineation
of runs by furrow, notch, and quill. Both, once completed, enabled the
transfer of run leases by sale and purchase. With increased security of
tenure, run holders started station building programmes, including the
‘improvements’ of fencing, land clearing, homestead and woolshed con-
struction, and flock breeding.
The tide of selection calls, for ‘opening the land’, increased as the prof-
itability of gold mining decreased in the late 1850s. These calls were not
satisfied by the loophole-ridden Nicholson Land Act (1860), or the
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 161
amended Duffy Land Act (1862), as both continued the squatting lease
stranglehold on the landscape through ‘dummys’. Nonetheless, farm
selection was achieved in some localities. The principle of selection before
survey permitted farms between 16.2 and 259 ha to be acquired from the
Crown at about £2 a hectare, or on a probationary lease at about 2 s. a
hectare, subject to ‘improvements’ and plant cultivation on part thereof.
Hidden in the Order-in-Council (1847), in section 9, was a far-reaching
provision that enabled the survey of ‘township’ reserves. These designated
reserves were also exempt from pastoral leases and Pre-emptive Right
acquisition. This provision expanded upon the intent of the Bathurst
Instructions (1825) or ‘locationally non-specific guidelines’, and the Ripon
Regulations (1833) which permitted sale by auction of Crown lands and
the reservation of lands for public purposes or works. Under all three
regulations or orders, land could be set aside for ‘township’ purposes, for
utility reserves, or for the protection of environmental resources, thus
continuing traditional British land-use needs and arrangements.
The consequences of the Order-in-Council, however, were more far-
reaching. First, an acceleration of ‘township’ site surveys and proclama-
tions occurred, though often invalidating established private
entrepreneurial activities at river crossings, lakesides, and good camp
sites. These reserves officially endorsed a sense of place, value, and pro-
spectivity upon potential ‘township’ sites. Second, a diversification of
reserve identification and survey was instigated to resume land for min-
eral resources, Aboriginal Protectorate Stations, water and river side
reserves, recreational purposes, and timber production, albeit based upon
rudimentary environmental knowledge. The Land Acts (1860 and 1862)
reiterated and expanded the nature of ‘township’ reserves under the
notion of ‘public purpose’ Crown land reserves and offered an avenue for
a greater amount of land to be reserved through public petitions.
By 1853, land designation for ‘township’ and ‘public purposes’ in the
Portland Bay pastoral District totalled 82 reserves on 1048.8 km2 of land.
This comprised some 37.5% of ‘township’ reserve hectarage set aside
under the Order-in-Council for the entire colony of Victoria. ‘Township’
reservations and surveys in the District included 40.5 ha set aside for a
‘church, glebe and a school’ around the Kilnoorat manse, a reserve around
Lake Bolac for salt extraction, water frontage reservations on the Glenelg,
162 D. S. Jones
* * *
commence a map of the province (purely Aboriginal) with the names of Districts
and localities, the national divisions of territory and sectional sub-divisions, as
also their numerical strength and political relation with the cheif [sic] men at
particular periods and any remarkable circumstance connected either with the
original inhabitants or the natural resources of the country.
each of these tribes has its own district of country—its extent at least, and in
some instances its district boundaries being well known to the neighbouring
tribes. The subdivision of the territory even went further than that; each family
had its own locality.
away they could not go to another country for they would be killed’. One
could only threaten ‘to murder the shephds unless they left the place’, ‘to
go or they would kill me’, or to ask the ‘Hutkeeper to go away and leave
them in possession of the hut’ in recognition that ‘that’s my country
belonging to me!!’, ‘Deen! deen! (here! here!)’. Respect of Aboriginal ter-
ritoriality, however, was understood by some colonials.
Each has its particular location and boundary beyond the limits of which they
seldom go except on special occasions when they visit each other; indeed they
appear to be under strong apprehensions if they by any circumstance are induced
[to pass] through [their] respective limits … In the course of our travelling in
cases of natives having been persuaded to accompany us, but upon their
approach to the boundary of another tribe they openly avowed their determina-
tion to leave or shrank away.
* * *
The principal function of paper rules was run or land delimitation. This
was first, and most cheaply, achieved by a plough line being etched on the
earth’s surface, until security of tenure encouraged the erection of timber
post and rail fences. In the interregnum timber hurdles in folds, tempo-
rary or mobile fence structures, secured flocks in the evenings or during
shearing.
Plough lines served as invisible fences until post and rail fences were
erected in the 1850s. Sheep and cattle, as well as kangaroos and emus,
grazed pastures of their choice oblivious to such human territorial mark-
ings, and Aboriginals probably pondered the metaphysical meanings
behind these strange linear surface etchings. A plough line represented a
‘boundary’ between runs. Lines, such as the furrows between ‘The Gums’
and ‘Blackwood’, or between ‘Mount Hesse’ and ‘Barunah Plains’, where
errant and unsupervised sheep were constantly ‘impounded’, existed
until a time when fences prevented these problems. A ‘plough furrow,
boundary’ between ‘Merrang’ and ‘Konawarren’ lasted into the 1860s,
both in practice and on government survey maps. ‘Wooriwyrite’ was
defined, in 1854, on three sides by furrow lines, marked trees, or dray
roads, with the fourth being Taylor’s River [Mt Emu Creek]. There were,
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 165
the late 1850s and early 1860s. Some 25.7 km of brush fencing, costing
£362, including wages, was erected on ‘Carngham’ in the 1850s. On
‘Eurambeen’, the cost was 1 s. a yard [0.914 m less rations in 1855, com-
pared to 4 s. a rod (5.29 m) of split timber fencing obtained from the Mt
Cole forests in 1856. By 1858, 1.6 km of post and rail, costing £42, had
been erected on ‘Langi Willi’ at a time when 5.6 km of wire fencing cost
only £70; by 1863, some 88.5 km of post and rail or wire fencing com-
pleted the ‘Langi Willi’ run enclosure.
Alternatives to timber fencing were scoria or dry stone walls, or the
later adopted wire. The first dry stone walls appeared in the late 1840s as
part of Pre-emptive Right delineation, being applied on ‘Purrumbete’ as
sophisticated crafted structures for cattle, and later rabbit control. Often
employing overhanging ‘copings’, projecting steps, and excavated foun-
dations, they created a strong visual feature. By 1857, a huge 6.7 km wall,
0.9–1.5 m wide at its base and 1.5–1.8 m high, had been erected on
‘Purrumbete’ along the southern and eastern perimeters to delimit cattle
and sheep pastures from the wilds of the Stony Rises. This structure fore-
shadowed walls of a similar but lesser scale around the run erected from
1856 to the 1880s. Locally produced Wire, however, had the advantage
of cheapness, ‘durability, tastefulness and security for fire’. Experiments
on ‘Golf Hill’, ‘Terrinallum’, ‘Glenormiston’, ‘Wando Vale’, ‘Eurambeen’,
and ‘Langi Willi’ in the late 1850s proved its value though it still needed
posts to support the wires.
* * *
* * *
168 D. S. Jones
As squatters diffused out across the plains, selecting the choicest pas-
tures for their flocks, they claimed large tracts, or ‘runs’, of the landscape
comparable in size to peerage Duchys. Registration of claims required
that an appellation be affixed to the run for identification purposes. Run
names, however, appear to have been designated as an act of territorial
domination, before any bureaucratic requirements. These properties,
accordingly, acquired Aboriginal, generic, or names that recalled person-
alities or were derived from appellations affixed to geographical features
previously ‘discovered’ by Mitchell.
Run names identified a presence and a sense of personal domain. Names
chosen showed a distinct preference to Aboriginal nomenclature. They
were either phonetically corrupted appellations told to squatters by
Aboriginals as representing a ‘place’ or a feature on the run, or, often
unknowingly, geographical characteristics contained within the run. In the
Counties of Dundas, Grenville, Hampden, Ripon, Normanby, and Villiers,
Aboriginal or Aboriginal-derived terms were applied to 43%, 54%, 64%,
61%, 17%, and 37% of run names, respectively. The low figure for
Normanby is illustrative of its location at the head of the early south-
western expansion of squatters into the landscape, who showed a prefer-
ence to appellations across a broad range including generic appellations.
Notwithstanding the predominance of squatters with origins from the
Scottish Lowlands and Borders, or from the southern English counties,
there was only minimal usage of run names that recalled the villages or val-
leys of their homelands. In the Counties, runs carrying Scottish derived
appellations were 6%, 4%, 2%, 0%, 14%, and 5%, compared to English-
derived appellations that were 16%, 0%, 2%, 0%, 10%, and 7%, respectively.
Despite this pattern, there was a strong preference to generic place
names that celebrated the pastoral qualities of the landscape, or were
derivatives of names common in the British Isles. The latter included
examples, such as the use of Celtic (strath, glen, byrne), Anglo-Saxon
(dale, mere, vale, −tun, grange, −ham), Scandinavian (kirk, wald, wick, −
by), Norman French (Richmond), or Irish (bally, dun, drum, clon). Thus,
run names, such as ‘Carngham’, ‘Ingleby’, ‘Darlington’, ‘Pullemere’,
‘Grange Burn’, ‘Greenvale’, ‘Springbyrne’, ‘Richmond Hill’, recalled the
squatters’ British or Irish heritage, and often attached Aboriginal-derived
prefixes or suffixes to titles.
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 169
The name [applied to the run] was allotted by Charles [Burchett] who said
that as in the old country places were ‘The Oakes’, ‘The Ashes’, ‘The Beeches’, and
so on, he thought it most befitting that an Australian homestead should be
known as ‘The Gums’.
For all the choices, the preference was strongly towards an Australian-
styled appellation or Aboriginal-derived names (43% of total runs in the
six Counties). The second preference (17%) was for celebratory generic
appellations. Third preference appellations recalled personalities (10%)
or used names previously designated by Mitchell (10%).
* * *
* * *
170 D. S. Jones
This territory, still for the most part in a state of nature, presents a fair blank
sheet, for any geographical arrangement, whether of country divisions—lines of
communication—or sites of towns, &c. &c.
As we have taken the country from the natives—land, rivers, mountains, lakes,
and all—surely we ought to take the names also.
Taylor’s river [Mt Emu Creek]. I do not know to whom this stream is indebted
for its English name, but it was surely the height of bad taste to substitute such
a common-place designation, for whomsoever it may have been given, for the
beautiful aboriginal name which the stream has doubtless borne for time
immemorial.
Using the two sets of criteria, the distribution pattern when applied to
a catalogue of natural feature appellations for rivers, creeks, hills, moun-
tains, swamps, lakes, lagoons, and points in the District is scattered, but
still shows a marked preference to personality-based etymologies.
Aboriginal etymologies are 10% in Dundas, 42% in Grenville, 49% in
Hampden, 8% in Normanby, 19% in Ripon, and 11% in Villiers, com-
pared to personality-based names of 40%, 26%, 18%, 44%, 25%, and
31%, respectively. Geographical features that carry names allocated by
Mitchell are more numerous in Dundas (30%) and Normanby (15%),
and generic names are more frequent in Hampden (19%), Ripon (23%),
and Villiers (20%).
Three main traits arise from nomenclature use in this phase. First, use
of Aboriginal etymologies for place and geographical feature names was
strongly heightened by bureaucratic policies towards their adoption, and
local squatter interest in the re-application of indigenous nomenclature.
Second, the phase witnessed a major transition in selecting place names
for hamlets or townships, but more often only non-Aboriginal-derived
appellations changed. Third, no transition is evident for natural features
that predominantly carry non-Aboriginal-derived appellations.
* * *
Almost the only wood seen on these plains is what is called lightwood, or black-
wood … The trees that are thinly scattered over these delightful tracts are chiefly
the graceful lightwood … The botanical name of this beautiful tree is ‘Exocarpus
Cupressiformis’.
* * *
Colonial wanderers feared a lonely death in the bush. The idea haunts
thought and prose, and draws upon a ‘dichotomy of courage and desola-
tion’. This is encapsulated in the remarkable literary ballad of ‘The Sick
Stockrider’: the fusion of the experiential landscape into a dramatic
monologue. Providence deeply underpinned its central metaphor of jour-
ney, mirroring the pathway of life—the journey.
Pathways in this phase were not defined by kilometre posts, nor
enclosed by fences, not constrained by time; it was if Aboriginal sense of
time transcended any physical arrangement of way or passage. One just
travelled and the landscape became a personal allegory of colonial life. In
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 175
* * *
children of the [Mortlake] school collecting around their campfires at the old
quarry and listening with their eyes and ears wide open to the stories of the
teamsters’ trips over the Bolac Plains into the outside world as it was then, to
those children, with each of them looking forward to the day when they would
be big enough to start out to have a look at this ‘wonderland.’ At that time it
was the Never-Never country to them.
* * *
The roads were knee-deep in mud, the creeks full, the nights long and cold.
However, grass was plentiful, and
‘Little cared we for wind or weather,
When Youth and I lived ‘there’ together.’
so away. ‘Vogue la galér’ [… across the plains].
This scene was constantly retold in stories about the trials of journeys.
‘Dust, dust, dust’ or ‘wets, mud, and mire’ were typical summer and win-
ter road surfaces. This monotony was only disrupted by creek fords,
lonely inns, vernacular stockyards, and clumps of trees in the ‘barren and
uninteresting … trackless ocean’.
Passage through the Stony Rises involved the ‘most dreadful road you
can possibly imagine … all the way like the bed of a dry creek’. But
‘roads’ on the plains were equally wanting: ‘bush tracks are very puzzling
and in some places almost invisible … you hardly see more than a sheep-
walk’. ‘A beastly domination of filth and mud’ dogged the traveller, ‘knee-
deep … in pure mud’ one negotiated a winter track through ‘impassable
seas of mud’, and, stations were ‘130 miles [209.2 km] in the Wilderness
without road or communication’ for the most part of this phase. Indeed,
in summer ‘the ground both in front of the carriage, and on either side
appeared to be a vast lake or inland sea through which there was no trace
of a road, as far as I could see, in any direction’.
Descriptions of roads throughout this phase told of daunting seas to
wade through or tempests of dust to negotiate. They were ‘very rough’ or
‘extremely soft’ in the 1840s, ‘fearfully bad’ but ‘rather romantic’ in the
180 D. S. Jones
late 1860s, or ‘impassable in winter’ due to ‘very deep wheel ruts’. In other
seasons they were more reliable, but were ‘tortuous’ in sections through
swamps, rivers, and forest swaths. Deep ruts and wandering tracks fol-
lowed bullock routes, and swaths of browsed grasses denoted major stock
routes. Mud quagmires or swamps did not impede bullock passages. They
only encased the hooves and wheels in mud and seed. The air was
rent with the thunderous diapason of … hoarse blasphemy, with the deep-
toned, sullen thud of the whips, or with the cursing, encouraging, entreating.
[One witnessed a] … chaos of hurtling horns and staring eye-balls, of slaver-
ing mouths and low-bent scrawny necks. [On hill climbs there was] … a
vision of blood, and a sound of demoniac oaths. A crash of commingled whips,
bullocks, yokes, chains … a long, deep, ominous, rolling explosion, one deadly
roar of culminating and murderous profanity and, at last the crest of the hill
is gained.
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass
is good;
They camp, and they ravage the squatter’s grass till never a blade remains;
Then they drift away as the white clouds drift on the edge of the salt-
bush plains.
* * *
The panorama was, however, slow to reach because the carriages were
constantly bogged in the gluepots of the ‘Red Gum Country’. The ‘sur-
face under the pressure of the cattle was immediately converted into
white and liquid mud’ requiring block and tackle and the felling of tim-
ber to construct fords, to reach the ‘open grass country’. Once in the
Valley, however, the ‘vehicles trundled’ easily across the vales. The ease of
passage deteriorated as they followed the Glenelg southward and then
through the thick Myamyn forests. Travel past Condah was hampered by
the ‘various swamps or boggy soft hollows’, and the ‘rough sharp-pointed
fragments of rock’, in the stony rises.
The vista from Mt Napier, eastwards, promised ‘an extensive tract of
open grassy land’ stretching into a haze. This land was only reached after
traversing more swampy streams resulting in loss of bullocks: ‘One was
suffocated in the mud, and the other having lain down in it, could not be
made to rise’.
Entering upon the plains, ‘a finer country could scarcely be imagined’
and the vehicles continued ‘without difficulty’. ‘The cart-wheels trundled
merrily along’, halting below Mt Abrupt to enable the ‘tourists’ to climb
the eminence and experience ‘a truly sublime scene’. Beyond were the
‘blue and purple’ peaks of Gariwerd melting into the distant skyline, and
outward a ‘vast extent of open downs’ that stretched to the Pyrenees.
Advancing ‘we again found the ground so soft and boggy’ causing a
lengthy encampment at Lake Repose to rest both the party and bullocks.
The outward journey, thereafter, was much easier and a ‘line’ stretched
from Lake Repose through the Pyrenees to the upper Campaspe, from
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 183
the tracks of the ‘heavy wheel-carriages and worn-out cattle’, that were
still discernible in the early 1840s.
This journey resulted in the spatial entity of ‘Australia Felix’—an inspi-
rational landscape that would create
in every direction, the country was perfectly clear of every obstruction, and the
horseman could gallop fearlessly along wherever he pleased—no turnpike gates
in the way, no four-rail fences, no hedges or ditches, no indications of the pres-
ence of man in any direction, except, perhaps, where a flock of fine-woolled
sheep were cropping the rich herbage under the charge of a solitary shepherd
and his dog, or a herd of sleek cattle browzing in the distance.
184 D. S. Jones
Henry Kingsley’s travels through the District between 1854 and 1857
sketched an adventurous plot retold in The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn
(1859). Though drawing more upon the Kiewa and Snowy River Valleys,
Croajingolong scenery, and oral literature, it has many passages that recall
of sojourns at ‘Squattlesea Mere’ and ‘Langi Willi’, his visits to ‘Dunmore’,
‘Carngham’, ‘Nerrin Nerrin’, and possibly visits to ‘Gorrinn’ and ‘Mount
William’.
In the winter of 1857, James Bonwick, Colonial Inspector of
Denominational Schools, travelled through the District on an official
assessment of educational opportunities and facilities. The Narrative of an
Educational Tour (1858), of this lone arduous horse-back journey, pro-
vides invaluable insights into the transitional phase of the District from
an unfenced ‘wilderness’ landscape into one possessing many symbols of
Western civilisation. Passing Tower Hill and Belfast to Portland, he noted
a region of swamps, heartless forest, barren wastes, heathy scrub, lifeless des-
erts … [where] Now and then a small oasis would gratify the traveller with its
real grass, its Blackwood, Cherry [Ballart] and She Oak, when the limestone
could shake off the sand, clay or gravel.
* * *
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 185
To the lonely shepherd camping beneath the Southern Cross, the land-
scape was one large void. A minute speck in the greater composition of
things, encompassed by strange noises, the constant ‘lowing’ or ‘roaring’
of sheep and cattle, and a sense of isolation. Warmed only by flickering
flames in a campfire, and the reassurance that the Cross would not disap-
pear, a traveller rested musing the scene:
The Southern Cross was at first erect, and in its natural position as a symbol; …
I gathered comfort in the thought that other travellers in other lands were gaz-
ing then upon its triumphant glory, and faith assured me that in a little while
I should see it again in all its gorgeous perfections … The Cross once exhibited
to the admiring eye of man never disappears. When that eye is closed to all ter-
restrial objects, we shall still admire the cross, though upon another, an eter-
nal, shore.
* * *
There is an Australian bush ethic that was inspired by the sense of isola-
tion within the landscape. It induces hospitality and ‘mateship’, whether
around a campfire or at a colonial homestead: the ‘friendly wilderness’. A
tired visitor could chance upon a homestead’s evening shine, open the
door, and stand entranced.
No one was in the room, but the tea things were set out and the candles burn-
ing, so I stood with my hands on the latch of the door gazing at the cozy scene
for some moments.
Though supper was over, my hospitable host extended towards me the pannican
of tea, a couple of potatoes, and a pice [sic] of boiled beef, apologizing for the
want of bread, regretting my loss of the track, and proffering the share of his
blanket for the night's repose. I cordially accepted the supper, but courteously
declined the coverlid … Altogether I was much pleased with the yarn of my
shepherd friend, and, when he rolled into his blanket, I felt in better spirits to
face my night in the Bush.
* * *
The alternative to such hospitality was always the ‘most dreadful abomi-
nation’ of a shelter—the inn. At crossings, fords, or fresh water springs,
the characteristic inn was the first commercial building constructed, an
outpost of ‘civilisation’, to cater for travellers, bullockies, shepherds, and
stockmen. And around this pivot was erected a scatter of rough ‘wooden
erections painted white … and several brownish things scattered here and
there’ comprising houses, stores, sheds, and blacksmiths’ and carpenters’
shops, like a cluster of Winter encampment Aboriginal structures around
a central meeting space. Though there was ‘nothing like what you would
call a street in it’, and each township had its own character and setting,
their roles were the same: permanent cultural repositories of trade, arti-
fice, communication, and ritual.
The hamlet of Timboon [Camperdown], in 1846, grew from an out-
station of ‘Purrumbete’ with the erection of a ‘respectable Bush Inn’ and
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 189
more northerly and drier ‘Streatham-Mt Emu Road’ until the discovery
of gold. By 1846, the road was well-travelled and a chain of inns served
travellers. One could change horses at ‘Mount Sturgeon’, breakfast at an
inn on the Hopkins crossing, pick up passengers at the ‘comfortable cot-
tage’ of ‘Lake Bolac’, and rattle over Fiery Creek onwards for an overnight
stay at ‘Gregory’s Inn’ on Mt Emu Creek.
This route quickly became the main road to the Ballaarat diggings and
connected to the Chinese track from Guichen Bay. ‘Dunkeld township
contained six houses, besides a couple of hotels … [and] a substantial and
commodious National School’; Wickliffe was only an ‘incipient town-
ship’ five years old, ‘boasting of nine houses, two stores, … a well built
hotel’, a denominational school, a new double bridge across the Hopkins,
and several vernacular ‘Bush huts’; ‘Lake Bolac’ station marked a future
township; and, Streatham was ‘as unsentimental a place as can well be
conceived … The houses were wretched looking places, neither too clean
nor tidy’. Here was an unsumptuous and disagreeable ‘House of
Entertainment’, a doctor, a blacksmiths’ shop, a post office, and a scatter
of houses ‘without a garden wall to shield from the wind’. Skipton, how-
ever, was ‘greatly thriving’ on the diggings road, though it only consisted
of ‘but six houses and six tents in the township proper’ and a brick church
on the outskirts. A bridge spanned Taylor’s River [Mt Emu Creek], and a
hotel and a store, in a ‘large Tent’, graced its edge.
The southern plains route also evolved from a sequence of creek fords,
roadside inns, and a growing scatter of houses and stores. This route was only
established as a result of the difficulty in finding a suitable coach and bullock
route through the Stony Rises. Elephant Bridge [Darlington] started as a
ford, with Davidson’s Inn, until a bluestone and cast iron ‘substantial struc-
ture’ bridge was erected over Taylor’s River in 1849. By 1857, the township,
renamed Darlington, consisted of the Mt Elephant Hotel, a ‘store, a smithy,
and four houses’. A hamlet was formed around the Browns Waterholes
[Lismore] ford near ‘Gala’ and the White Swan hotel served travellers in the
1840s. By 1857, Lismore consisted of a ‘small postal village’ with a scatter of
houses, a store, the Hotel, and a blacksmith’s shop. Further eastward, the
wattle-and-daub ‘Frenchman’s Inn’, or ‘The Golden Fleece’, was erected in
1842 at the Woady Yalloak River crossing on the future site of Cressy.
* * *
192 D. S. Jones
been cleared and fenced in. The stock on the station consists of seven bull-
ocks, one bull, four cows, three steers, one yearling heifer, three calves, and
two hundred and twenty sheep … The buildings are but temporary. They
consist of four huts, in which a few of the blacks reside. The remainder live
in mia-mias. There is a store house and a missionary’s slab hut.
* * *
Those Stony Rises of Eeles [sic] could reveal many a tale of rapine and murder.
It was to these pathless solitudes that the Blacks were accustomed to drive sheep
pillaged from the flocks of the early Settlers … Some … years ago, however, the
nest of robbers was gained, and the tribe almost exterminated.
‘Gnegne’ [no good] was the Aboriginal appellation for the ‘Greenhill’
homestead site on Muston’s Creek after the late 1840s. The name recalls
‘the abundant fishing and favourite ground’ of the Omebegare rege gund-
idj clan, which became ‘extinct—so the natives informed me’ in late 1840
when the clan competed with shepherds for the pastures and a waterhole.
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 195
* * *
A Bush Burial (1890) portrays a lowly epitaph to death and burial in the
rural landscape and is synonymous with many colonial ritualistic scenes.
Like sacred rocks, graves scattered across the landscape and hold forebod-
ing and contemplation upon their discovery. The Stock-keeper’s Grave,
also, recalls the ominous power of bush burials, because
a funeral in the bush is a very rare and very impressive occurrence. I only know
of one other spot where a white man is buried; it is the grave of a shepherd who
was speared by the natives some time ago, and the valley where he now lies is
called the Murderer’s Valley. I never passed through it without feeling a kind of
horror. The grave is fenced in by rough paling.
Like isolated sacred shrines, they epitomised the sense of personal iso-
lation and refuge in deity traditions in the landscape.
There were many reports of isolated graves during this phase. A mur-
dered shepherd was buried in a grave where he fell on ‘Keilambete’,
‘enclosed with 4 hurdles’, in 1840. A colonial, who ‘died a natural death’,
was buried at The Woolshed [Hexham] in 1840, and a shepherd, who
was speared in 1840 on ‘Mount Rouse’, lay ‘fenced in and under a clump
of honeysuckle trees’ about 275 m from the homestead. A lone grave
marked by a simple wooden cross near Yambuk recalls a shepherd speared
in 1846. A lowly grave, with headstone and picket enclosure, was created
in 1854 near to ‘Gringegalgona’ homestead, testament to the spearing of
another squatter.
Some stations created small private cemeteries or burial enclosures
near their homesteads. A private cemetery enclosed by a stone wall was
established on ‘Naringal’ in 1841 for the station family and employees. A
private burial ground was established near a ford over the Mt Emu Creek
on ‘Carranballac’. A little cemetery, planted with cypress and pine to
196 D. S. Jones
* * *
Fancy pictured a stray spirit, lost in that orbless space, directed homeward by
the gleam of that starry Light-house upon the borders of the dark ocean. It
would not be the only spirit guided heavenward amidst the gloom of nature by
the rays of the Cross.
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 197
Hills were the most discernible beacons. Ewen’s Hill, near Cobrico,
was long known as ‘Mackinnon’s Hill’ after the owners of ‘Marida Yallock’
station. Mt Elephant provided the ‘swagman’s lighthouse’ in the middle
of ‘Old Man Plain’. It rose with portent significance in the centre of Larra
(1857). Mt Abrupt assumed the role of the western ‘lighthouse’ on the
plains. It was a ‘grand and romantic feature … [that would, propheti-
cally,] serve as a beacon to welcome the settler and at once points out the
very tract of country he is seeking’. It reminded one ‘of Virgil’s—
“praeruptus aquae mons”; for in certain aspects it strongly suggests the idea
of a vast mountain-wave, of which the broken summit, curling and top-
pling over, is threatening to engulf some unfortunate vessel in the fath-
omless abyss’.
To another, the serrated points were threatening: ‘The teeth of the ter-
restrial saw [were] seen piercing the blue of the Heavens’. Other promi-
nent hills included Mt Noorat, Mt Napier, the ‘singular and abrupt
appearance’ of Mt Sturgeon, and the ‘solitary Hill’ of Mt Rouse. The
latter proved a popular local picnic spot in the 1840s and 1850s:
A grand picknick [sic] given by the neighbours on the top of Mt Rouse … in the
evening they all descended to Blackwood when there was Mischief … and hum-
buggin kept up the whole or rather short night and the next day we ascended to
Mount Rouse a second time and spent the Second night at a neighbour-
ing station.
The tall, flat-topped volcanic hill which hung before him like a gray faint cloud
when he started, now rears its fluted columns overhead, and now is getting dim
again behind him.
enjoyment, and to the artist romantic inspiration. It was here that Lake
Bullen Merri (1857), Basin Banks 20 Miles South West of Mount Elephant,
1857 (1857), and Lake Gnotuk (1857) were composed by von Guérard.
The images conceived were relentlessly horizontal using the panoramic
viewpoint to aggrandise sublimity and the profound. This approach drew
from his earlier painting that celebrated the equally novel feature of Tower
Hill (1855). The latter was a feature of ‘enchanting character’, and a geo-
logical curiosity, prompting one to exclaim:
Let the few who value sentiment in the colony, who sympathize with nature,
who love an undisturbed communion with the grand and sublime, join one
and all in securing for themselves and posterity the authorized declaration, that
Tower Hill shall be an everlasting Reserve.
* * *
There was a sitting apartment on one end into which the door-opens the other
is partitioned off with rough boards and again subdivided into two bedrooms;
in each apartment there is a glass window, a thing seldom to be seen as deal
floors, but there is neither lathing nor plastering about the concern. An erection
at the gable of the sitting room forms the fireplace and a table and four stools is
all the furniture excepting two stretchers for beds and if more are wanted they
are placed on the floor.
* * *
The first structures in the District were ‘an unequivocally local response’
to the landscape. Expressive of the ‘Victorian primitive’, they brought
together resources of bark, timber, reeds, and mud, in the erection of
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 201
split into strong thick planks … placed on end in a kind of frame. They do not
fit close, but betwixt each plank there is generally an open space of about an
inch [2.5 cm], which those who like comfort plaster up with mud, but others
do not trouble them themselves.
* * *
the inducements to plunder, their fear of the invaders, the depression caused by
the appearance of a race possessing appliances so much superior … and the
impossibility of preserving inviolate the lands which their people had held for
ages, caused them to wander aimlessly from place to place.
But the cause was more simple. Colonial denial of traditional, favoured,
and well-watered camp sites by their occupancy resulted in the abandon-
ment or destruction of permanent winter housing. These changes height-
ened a nomadic, and dislocated, relationship with the District’s landscape.
* * *
made of a wooden framework of maple trees then covered with rough plaster,
white-washed on the outside and lined and papered inside and a bark roof—
only four rooms and two of them skillions; big roofs sloping to the outer wall
and very hot and small.
These forms were still austere, simple, and rectangular, lacking preten-
sion as compared to the ‘substantial and well-finished brick’ Palladian
homestead erected at ‘Golf Hill’ in 1846.
The year 1851 proved a watershed in the District. In one year, the land-
scape suffered the ravages of Black Thursday bushfires, the social rituals of
Colony separation from New South Wales, and the madness of gold dis-
coveries on its doorstep. Homestead development slowed in favour of land
acquisition and enclosure establishment, and it was only after 1853 that
construction recommenced. Emblematic were the single-storey bluestone
residences of ‘Burswood’ (1853) and the refined Regency styled ‘Maretimo’
(1854), with its spreading verandah, both erected near Portland. Other
homesteads constructed included the pre-cut weatherboard and brick
208 D. S. Jones
* * *
* * *
except in the case of about 40 or 50 sheep which were dipped in warm water
and then turned into a yard where they were allowed to drip for a about 20
minutes instead of being thrown into cold water immediately after their immer-
sion in the warm. In these the dirt was so much softened as to be in a great
degree removed before they reached the spout.
generally built of wood and weatherboards; the floor is boarded, and a fine rat-
tling breeze rushes in at all parts … The stable, as it is called, is a place tossed
up of all manner of things; it has a kind of a roof, with slab sides of the rudest
material, and is often dangerous in passing, from old spike nails and broken
bottles; dung and filth are there a foot or two [30.4 or 60.9 cm] deep; at the
head of the staff is an old gin case fixed as a manger for oaten hay.
Most early township structures echoed this ‘primitive’ style. The first
store erected at Mortlake, in 1854, was of green cut slabs with gaps that
rapidly widened as the panels dried. This was very different from the
three-storey utilitarian squared rubble flour mill erected just two years
later in Mortlake, with its windmill driven machinery. In 1857, the mill
installed a steam engine to operate new machinery for flour production
to counter the unreliable winds and erected an impressive square blue-
stone chimney that became a local landmark. The homestead at
‘Goodwood’, in 1856, also ran a small waterwheel-driven grist mill with
an extensive water race some 3.6 cm deep.
Quarries, as centres of artifice creation, became larger commercial
operations to serve the demand for bluestone construction materials. A
quarry near Tooli-o-rook [Derrinallum] supplied most of the 50 cm thick
stones used in the township’s buildings, as well as nearby homestead
buildings.
Township buildings were mostly ‘irregularly built and situated’ of
weatherboard, timber slab, pisé, or bluestone. Forming a collective non-
descript ‘village’ clustered around the hallowed inn, they were similar in
arrangement to homestead ‘villages’. A visitor to Rokewood poi-
gnantly wrote:
This place is colonially termed ‘a township’, there is nothing like what you
would call a street in it … all that catches the eye is about four or five wooden
erections painted white with verandahs and several brownish things scattered
214 D. S. Jones
here and here which when you come nearer, you find to be the un-painted
houses of the inhabitants, which are like the others made of weatherboarding
and roofed like them with bark or shingles.
* * *
To colonial intruders, the landscape in the 1830s and 1840s was ‘a fair
blank sheet’, a land ‘open and available in its present state’ where ‘the set-
tler will have no timber to clear away’. A visitor could remark, in pictur-
esque terms, of Wando valley:
While the vision was joyous, the ‘garden’ still needed enhancement
through colonial lenses. Clearing of weeds, preparation of soil, additional
soil fertilising, and exploratory planting with new seeds were all deemed
necessary to improve the ‘garden’. It was left to the ‘wands’ of the axe,
plough, fire-stick, and seed packet, to fulfil this agenda. Few indigenous
plants were envisaged as useful, except for fodder or warmth. Only the
wrath of nature indicated that all was not ‘paradise’, in colonial eyes, and
that the ‘cowpastures’ could sustain only so much disruption to the
Aboriginal-constructed cultural landscape.
Figure 5.6 depicts the places mentioned in this section.
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 215
This section examines the garden of the 1830s–1870s and the way in
which it was prepared and cultivated. ‘Wilderness’ was captured, cleared
and conquered, new crops and grasses were diffused over old patterns and
regimes, and cultivation modes shifted from ‘natural gardening’ to
orchestrated monoculture for the benefit of sheep. In particular, it is the
botanical images of this landscape, disruptions of previous practices, acts
of clearing and replanting, and the retribution of nature, that are reviewed
in this section. In the passage of time, the progressive disappearance of
summer reddened Kangaroo Grass inflorescences signalled that the land-
scape surface was being rewoven to serve alternative browsing needs. The
objective remained the same—of feeding, sheltering, and stabilising—
but the ‘sheet’ was purposefully reorganised to satisfy different objectives
and ideological structures.
* * *
prevailed also the eucalyptus, stringy bark and gum, lightwood, cherry
tree, and wattle, also tea-tree’. By the 1850s and 1860s, most of these
forests had been ringbarked, cleared and burnt, and swamps were being
drained and ploughed of their shrubs and grasses.
On the open plains, around ‘The Woolshed’ [Hexham] and Caramut,
the landscape was ‘lightly timbered with honeysuckle (stunted) and gum
trees … [which were] more like shrubs”. A visitor perceived an open
savannah plain, thinly spaced with banksia, stunted gum, eucalyptus’ not
more than 60 cm in diameter, and plenty of the ‘grass anthistiria’. The
scarcity of timber, on the ‘barren spewy soil’, that resulted over the 1850s
and 1860s reinforced that plains’ ready acceptance as a treeless image.
Open woodland forests of Manna and River Red Gums, groves of
‘wild honeysuckles’, and a verdant grassland, occupied the plains around
‘Wooriwyrite’ in 1840. This pattern was also recorded in von Guérard’s
sketch of Mount Shadwell … (1857) with thick vegetation marking the
serpentine Mt Emu Creek. Colonial tradition records that native grasses
in this locality grew in tussocks permitting a squatter to walk about with-
out treading on them.
Mt Noorat was densely forested with ferns, Manna and Swamp Gums,
Blackwoods, and numerous shrubs in 1841. The landscape around was
‘tolerably well wooded’, ‘very thickly timbered’ towards the south, and
‘marine plants and eucalyptus’ skirted lake and swamp edges. ‘Healthy,
but comparatively young trees’ covered all sides of the eminence in the
1850s, although cutters were felling part of the timber. A shepherd could
still complain about ‘the blasted place being so thickly timbered and
scrubby’ in the late 1850s.
In the ‘garden of Australia’, an immense meadow of thick Kangaroo
Grass and ‘handsome blackwood trees’ thinly coated the landscape
around Timboon [Camperdown] and ‘Purrumbete’. In 1844, the site for
Timboon was still covered by a ‘dense scrub of Tea-tree’, but by 1857, a
settlement had been established on the ‘rich sward’. Forests of open Silver
Banksia, Manna Gum, and Blackwood fringed Lake Purrumbete and
luxuriant foliage still grew in the ‘crater garden’ of Mt Porndon. It was a
‘good grassy land’ on the edge of the ‘treeless’ plains.
It was a dry dusty landscape, ‘strongly antagonistic to trees’, with only
unbrowsed tussocks of grass swaying in the winds like a ‘waveless sea’. Tall
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 219
Other dreary plains—cold, exposed and wet in winter; parched dusty and broil-
ing in summer. Their dull uniformity depresses one. There is nothing to interest
you. The eye beholds nothing but the circular horizon, like a boundless sea.
* * *
* * *
The growth of good, nutritive grass is prevented [by trees]; … The only practi-
cable remedy proposed is that of Girdling the trees. By this simple process we cut
off communication between the root and the branches, as the band of liber or
new wood is exposed in the removal of the bark. The sap ceases to run, the leaves
fall but once more, and the grass is open to sun and air.
Cherry Ballart remain on the plains today. Even islands of dense wood-
lands on hills, such as Mt Noorat, Mt Rouse, Mt Elephant, and Mt
Napier, were transformed into grassed ‘cloven hills’ by 1900. One could
view an ‘ocean of unbroken greenery’ in the 1830s, but by 1841, the
same scene was being felled of timber:
The settlers for 25 miles [40.2 km] round procure their timber from this hill
[Mt Noorat] … Some white men were splitting timber and making han-
dles … Ascended Knorart by an easy path on the SE side, made by the splitters
and handle makers in quest of timber with their drays … From the top of
Knorart had a fine view of this woodland country. Indeed the country is toler-
ably well wooded.
Felling was rampant and unforgiving. The cross-cut saw aided felling,
the adze stripped and split logs, the auger drilled holes for pegs and
wedges, and the mallet and ‘jumper rod’ assisted splitting. On ‘The
Union’, some 6070 ha of heavily timbered Blackwood, wattle, and
Drooping Sheoak were ringbarked, cleared, and burnt. Much timber was
also cleared and swamps drained on nearby ‘Quamby’. Homestead sites
were opened up, and dray loads of Shelford Forest wood were cut and
carted to ‘Mount Hesse’. The Digby stringybark forests supplied many
shingles, palings, and post rails for the surrounding stations. Thick bank-
sia forests around ‘Monivae’ and ‘Murroa’ stations were extensively felled
till ‘scarcely one remains’. Timber hurdles were carted from Mt Langi
Ghiran and Mt Cole forests to supply ‘Yalla-y-poora’. Kilometres of
brush fences, substitutes for hurdles, ‘simply the trees as they are felled
thrown along in long lines, and their branches piled along them’, were
common sights on many runs.
Like Aboriginals, squatters made use of available natural resources to
fabricate shelters. Timber in shingles, slabs, and boughs was used to fulfil
this objective. Reeds and swamp grasses provided thatching, or sheets of
bark substituted for shingles. The practice was extensive, concerning some:
I beg leave again to state [that] the destruction of timber by barking to cover
huts & sheds is so great that in a short time little of the valuable timber will be
left. In most parts of the District it is scarce, & in many parts where there were
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 223
fine forests there are few good trees. One wool shed lately erected, no less than
500 trees have been barked and destroyed. In two years this must be done over
[and re-shingled] again … Some check should be given to this destruction.
The paucity of timber, while ideal for sheep grazing and easy station
establishment, meant that it readily disappeared for infrastructure and
firewood needs. The arrival of fencing, promulgated in enclosure and
land tenure requirements for ‘improvements’, hastened this loss.
Wood for fuel and hurdles, from the Shelford stringybark forests, was
regularly carted to ‘Mount Hesse’ in 1857. Apart from forest clearing the
browsing by sheep, cattle, and bullocks of the choicest shoots, grasses,
reeds, and tree foliage and the disruption of regular firings suppressed
plant fertility. A common observation was that ‘sheep and cattle tread
down the young trees’. Sheep especially preferred the rosettes and shoots
of Murnong, but could be satisfied by other plants. At ‘Wando Vale’ suc-
culent native grasses were quickly devoured: ‘all was eatable; nothing had
trodden the grass before them. I could neither think nor sleep for admir-
ing this new world to me who was fond of sheep’. At Mt Emu, grass
which ‘mingled with wild herbage, of which sheep are remarkably fond’
was rapidly devoured. Below Mt William, reed and rush fringed creeks
were favoured food to ‘hungry cows and gaunt working bullocks’, and
bullocks regularly felled sheoaks below Mt Elephant to feed their charges.
On ‘Wooriwyrite’ grazing stock wantonly consumed tree and grass shoots
preventing their growth into saplings and trees. Possums also adapted to
the juicy new foods carried on fruit trees, and their populations escalated
without regular hunts; the attributed cause of much eucalypt dieback
around Terang in 1861.
Recognition of vegetation loss was not wholly perceived except where
it could be linked to increased erosion and pasture decline. Instead, the
ideology of tree girdling held sway and the landscape deteriorated.
Concentrated browsing and trampling by sheep, hard hoofed animals,
also assisted soil compaction. Tall perennial summer grasses, especially
Kangaroo Grass, were over browsed permitting succession by shorter
perennial winter native grasses, such as Danthonia and Stipa spp. Native
herbs and annuals became more common as the first exotic grasses and
weeds took hold. As grazing disturbance increased, the density of
224 D. S. Jones
Herbaceous plants and grasses give way for the silk-grass and the little annuals,
beneath which are annual peas, and die in our deep clay soil with a few hot
days in spring, and nothing returns to supply their place until later in the win-
ter following. The consequence is that the long deep-rooted grasses that held our
strong clay hill together have died out; the ground is now exposed to the sun,
and it has cracked in all directions, and the clay hills are slipping in all direc-
tions; also the sides of precipitous creeks—long slips, taking trees and all
with them.
A rather strange thing is going on now. One day all the creeks and little water-
courses were covered with a large tussocky grass, with other grasses and plants …
[but now] springs of salt water are bursting out in every hollow or w
atercourse …
[making] the strong tussocky grasses die before it, with all others … The strong
clay cracks; the winter rain washes out the clay … [and] when rain falls it …
rushes down these ruts, runs into the larger creeks, and is carrying earth, trees,
and all before it.
areas drained after works on the Rutledge Survey swamps below Tower
Hill. New plough machinery also assisted soil tilling and stump removal
by replacing bullock and chain clearing methods.
* * *
at ‘Condah Hills’ and ‘Wando Vale’, took great pride in their vegetables
and their ‘great umbrageous apple trees … covered with fruit of the finest
and size and quality’.
In 1851, the surrounding landscape on ‘Gherangermarajah’ was a ‘deso-
late dreary place, not a blade of green grass’, except a large enclosed garden
dominated by bearing fruit trees, ‘sweet smelling white flowers’, and
orchids. A similar garden was nurtured at ‘Wooriwyrite’ where, through a
‘valance of vines’ on the verandah, one could look down over the fruit trees
in the front garden, and the vegetable garden beyond, in a panorama simi-
lar to the view from the verandah of ‘Langi Willi’ that was framed by pas-
sion-flowers, jessamines, and magnolias. As swamps were drained around
Lake Keilambete one squatter planted hawthorn hedges along the drainage
channels. In the valleys of the Barwon and Moorabool, and on the Barrabool
Hills, vines were planted from 1845 as part of a burgeoning wine industry.
Pines were planted along the sweeping driveway to ‘Monivae’, and orchards
of apples and pears, were cultivated with numerous flowers and vegetables
at ‘The Hill’, near Colac. Grapes were tried on ‘Berry Bank’, tobacco on
‘Gnarkeet’ in the late 1840s, and vines were planted in the extensive gar-
dens surrounding the ‘Koort-koort-nong’ homestead.
Seeds of numerous invasive exotic plants also came with all these intro-
duced species. The first, and most recognisable, were the emblematic
Spear and Variegated Thistles of Scotland that naturalised from the early
1850s. These were followed by other escapees, including hawthorns, orig-
inally used in hedges, Sweet Briars from abandoned garden sites, black-
berries that were introduced for their fruits and rivulet stabilisation
potential, and South African Boxthorns that were originally conceived as
hedge plants. The Burr Medic, or ‘trefoil burr’, also spread westward from
the foothold it gained in the Moorabool River pastures in 1853.
At ‘Murndal’, hawthorns were extensively planted around the home-
stead and along paddock boundaries as ornamental and shelter hedges.
Boxthorn and Osage Orange were also used sparingly. Thistles were first
perceived as problems on both ‘Murndal’ and ‘Purrumbete’ in the late
1870s. In contrast, thistles were taking hold around ‘Dunmore’ by the
mid-1850s, requiring employment of thistle gangs.
* * *
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 227
Apart from ornamental trees, vegetables, fruit trees, and flower gardens,
colonial attention was focused upon the cultivation of cereal crops and
grasses. Wheat and sheep fodder grasses were extensively sown during the
1840s–1860s until wheat and grain were sown in the Wimmera and
Mallee. Thereafter lucerne and fodder grasses dominated in the District.
A concern for pasture improvement and a desire to increase browsing
capacity and quality accompanied sheep diffusion.
While oats and hay were favourite cereals sown on stations, by 1862,
some 10,920 m3 of wheat was annually produced in the Warrnambool-
Port Fairy locality. Colonials, however, experimented with cereal crops,
especially wheat, much earlier. By 1839, ‘Merino Downs’ had 3.2 ha of
‘wheat nearly all out in ear and a splendid crop’, and ‘Murndal’ was creat-
ing ‘corn stacks’ in 1841. Wheat was grown and gristed on ‘Goodwood’
in the 1850s, and ‘Mount Hesse’ posted a return in 1861 of 3.64 m3 of
oats on 2.0 ha, 0.76 m3 of barley on 0.6 ha, and 30.6 tonnes of hay on
5.6 ha on a total of 18.7 ha of cultivated land. Lucerne and barley were
experimented with on ‘Dunmore’ in the 1840s and 1850s. Around Mt
Shadwell, in the 1850s, farms produced 1.4–1.8 m3 of wheat on average
lots of 0.5 ha (with land prices from £10 to £20 per ha) and shipped the
grain to Ararat for milling. ‘Trawalla’ was also planting wheat in 1840 to
reduce pastoral operating costs given the price of flour was at £82 per
tonne. Experiments with ‘wheat on a large scale’ were undertaken at
‘Baangal’ influencing other local cultivation attempts. On ‘Berry Bank’,
oats, barley, and wheat were cultivated in the 1850s and 1860s.
Experiments were undertaken unsuccessfully with tobacco in 1863 but
successfully with lucerne and rape in 1866. On ‘Titanga’, ‘no more than
ten per cent [of pastures were] under crop at any one time’. Grain was
first harvested on ‘Glenormiston’ in the Summer of 1840, producing
‘Four stacks Wheat, one Small Stack Oats and a small one of Barley’. In
the 1850s, ‘Golf Hill’ regularly sowed oaten hay, oats, and barley, before
replacing these with lucerne.
* * *
before it”’ later produced better results. Thus, ‘the seed does not lose its
vitality in passing through the cattle’s stomachs so that in a few years it
covers the run’.
* * *
Against all the changes wrought on the landscape there were still nature’s
elements to endure. Natural environmental cycles still influenced plant-
ing, harvesting, shearing, and clearing routines. Between 1830 and 1870,
colonials had to face uncertainties and hardships from bushfires, frosts,
droughts, floods, plagues, and landscape changes, the strength and influ-
ence of which instilled a portent fear of the Australian environment.
The Black Thursday fires of February 1851, that became emblazoned
in colonial minds, perpetuated this fear. The ‘heavily vaporous sky …
became lurid and awful’, casting a pall ‘such as may have hung over the
buried cities when the volcano heaved its fiery flood’. Scenes of flames
leaping from tree tops or pacing the wind, are captured in Old Melbourne
Memories (1884), and The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859), recall-
ing harrowing stories of these fires. The ‘Purrumbete’ stock book records
the event in one succinct entry: ‘Feby.—151 Bullocks & Cows melted at
Geelong’.
In 1859, von Guérard painted a scene of terror and violence in Bushfire
between Mount Elephant and Timboon, March 1857 (1859) of vibrant
flames and smoke competing with a full moon. It was to be a continuing
epitaph of the fear and apprehension of self-propelled bushfires in an
‘unconquered’ landscape. Fire was ignited from natural, deliberate, or
accidental circumstances, but its passage wrought pain and damage in the
eyes of colonials who refused to accept it as a natural trait of the land-
scape. It was a fearful scenario ‘when the great grass crop [on ‘Muntham’],
summer ripened, was occasionally ignited in a dry autumn, and like a
prairie fire, swept all before it’.
There were also many smaller bushfires—‘a pillar of smoke by day, and
a pillar of fire by night’. While ‘Mahwallock [“Mawallok”] Run had been
surrounded by fires, but had escaped almost untouched’ in 1851,
‘Ballangeich’ unluckily suffered two devastating fires. In December 1842,
a bushfire swept the ‘Wando Vale’ valley resulting in a paucity of
230 D. S. Jones
thatching reeds but ‘lovely dark green’ grass shoots. Early 1854 witnessed
‘bush fires raging about Black’s Hill [Mt Noorat], Noorat’, and a further
fire razed the locality in 1867. Fires blazed on the hills north of Skipton
and in the Pyrenees over Christmas 1857. In December 1862, ‘a great
bushfire swept’ along the Grange Burn destroying a number of stations.
Fires were deliberately lit in the dense scrub of the Curdies River valley in
1866 to permit exploratory passage. A further fire ravaged some 25,000 ha
of the District landscape in March 1865.
Droughts always accentuated bushfires, and coincidentally the latter
was always followed by heavy rains. As ‘Boldrewood’ recalled:
The ground … has cracked in all directions, and the clay hills are slipping in
all directions; also the sides of precipitous creeks—long slips, taking trees and all
with them. When I first came here, I knew of but two landslips … now there
are hundreds found within the last three years.
* * *
For colonials, the landscape was one of plenty. ‘What glorious times I
had, gun in hand, or with our three famous kangaroo dogs, slaying the
swift marsupial’. A boundless garden availed itself for the hunt.
Figures 5.7 and 5.8 depict the places and Selected Runs mentioned in
this section.
In the colonial wake, sheep, horses, cattle, and other animals were
introduced to fulfil daily and recreational needs. Sheep dominated the
new relationship with landscape. To Aboriginals, what animals that
grazed on their landscape were part of their dietary plate, although some
retribution was later evident. Native fauna, especially dingoes, kangaroos,
emus and cockatoos, were added to colonial menus and fulfilled ‘aristo-
cratic’ leisure pursuits. Introduced fauna and avifauna soothed the pangs
of homelessness providing both melody and kinship. Animals also
acquired a symbolism peculiar to this landscape. These five aspects are
explored in this section. In a continuous theme between 1800 and 1900,
the landscape remained a haven for the hunt shifting subtly from a suste-
nance to a recreational-monoculture function. A blurring of the two
functions is evident in this phase.
* * *
Flocks were first moved from Portland into the vales of the Glenelg
and Wannon in August 1837. Flocks were also driven through the
Warrion Hills and around Lakes ‘Korangamite’ and Gnarpurt to the
‘Plains of Promise’, up the Leigh River valley to the foothills of Mt Misery,
south-westerly along ‘Mitchell’s Line’ to those ‘verdant plains, as yet
untouched by flocks or herds’, or across the ‘wastelands’ from Port Phillip
to Adelaide. In essence, pastoral settlement was not an orderly spread
from Portland but ‘a growth of connections between three main nuclei’.
By 1839, there were at least 70,226 sheep in the District, west of Geelong.
Pastures, adequate water, and a prospect initially determined home-
stead sites. Pastures were undefined, heat and silence intolerable, ‘blacks’
a nuisance, isolation daunting, dreams immense, yet through it all ‘the
rhythmic processes of lambing, washing and shearing had to continue’. A
concern for selective breeding required that ewes and rams were not
mixed in flocks and that lambing strain be minimised. ‘Yearly lambing,
usually in the spring, replaced the old system of rapid breeding, and the
lambs were weaned at five or six months instead of at twelve’. Such a regi-
men demanded multiple flocks, and strategic shepherding, to ensure
purity. Wool merchants also encouraged that
the utmost attention [be] exercised in washing their Flocks, and of their Fleeces
being packed for the London markets free of the coarser parts, and divested, as
much as may be possible, of all soil, impurity, and damaged locks.
* * *
that they should treat the Europeans in a similar manner’. The answer to
this dilemma is in the way Aboriginals saw the landscape as their Country:
In the thought … land and water, people and clan are an act of the creator
totem and the mythological ancestors, who always announce in myth and cer-
emony that this is the country of such and such a clan; to expropriate this land
as a conscious act would be impossible.
enjoined … to steal sheep no more, for if they did the white people would shoot
them and then they would all be gone and then when I or any person belonging
to me came again there would be no black fellow.
In 1839, there were ‘at least 70,226 sheep’, but by July 1845, 2680
horses, 64,747 cattle, and 1,058,366 sheep grazed in the District. Their
presence, as commodities in colonial eyes, was deemed by Aboriginals as
constituting part of their communal food resources. ‘Natives rushed
Burns flock and succeeded in getting 3 sheep’ for food.
There were 601 fine ewes … all dead; some skinned; others skinned and quar-
tered; some cut open and the fat taken out and piled in skins [as practised with
kangaroos caught], but most of them just knocked on the head with a stick [as
one would a kangaroo]; meat, fat, and all mixed with the fine sand of the
stringy-bark forest.
On the 18th the blacks again attacked the shepherds … and drove off 1,014
sheep … a party went out to recover the sheep, and they described the road as
strewed with dead carcases.
Incidents of small flocks being taken were more common than these
large numbers. The reasons for the ‘wanton’ killing of ewes and rams,
perceived as wasteful maiming and abandonment, may also have been
deliberate acts of harassment and annoyance to colonials, or rituals of
food preparation and storage disturbed in mid-process, raise unanswered
theories. Were these acts expressions of territoriality, the consequences of
food shortages brought on by droughts, or an extension of Dreaming
relationships with the landscape? These questions beg uncertainty as
Aboriginals also successfully managed sheep flocks. They copied, dili-
gently, acts of folding sheep, and were successfully employed as shepherds
and station hands. Yet they did not attack colonials deliberately by force,
as an act of war, or as an act of retribution. In contrast, this relationship
was not extended to fellow Aboriginals who intruded upon their Country
or Country’s.
Superintendent Charles LaTrobe, in 1842, summarised the
predicament:
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 239
Situated as you are [in the Port Fairy District], it is far easier to deplore your
losses than to prevent them. The evils you complain of, are those which have
everywhere accompanied the occupation of a new country inhabited by savage
tribes. Even under circumstances far more favourable … I need scarcely remind
you, how little real security has been enjoyed …; the savage tribes are not only
upon our borders, but intermingled with us in every part of this wide district.
The racial violence of the early 1840s, triggered by ‘three bad years’ and
the summer drought of 1842, culminated in ‘The Eumeralla War’. ‘There is
not a pool of water [in 1842], suited for the purpose of a station, of which
they are not bereft’. Violence dissipated after the ‘War’, but erupted again in
the ‘exceptionally dry’ summer of 1844. By this time, many Aboriginals
were seasoned to sheep grazing and homestead practices, thereby enabling
larger flocks, and numbers of horses and cattle to be ‘stolen’.
‘Bulgarrer’ [sheep] would appear to have been viewed as an element of
Country, to be shared as Aboriginals had shared their possessions with
colonials. The passage of time, from 1837to 1845, witnessed dramatic
sheep and cattle number increases, extensive grazing on the staple
Murnong and other tuberous plants, heavy culling of kangaroos and
other animal food sources, prevention of landscape burning practices,
and exclusion from favoured waterholes, eel fisheries, and springs. All of
these forced drastic changes in daily routines for Aboriginals, from com-
plex hunter-gatherers to the idealised nomadic ‘gang[s] of savages’.
* * *
It was the ‘glorious times’ of hunting kangaroo, wallaby, dingo, emu, and
the flocks of cockatoos and ducks, offsetting the endless hours supervis-
ing sheep, that instilled a sense of freedom resulting in a ‘tradition of
violence’:
Here in these wilds reigns the liberty of rags and the freedom of dirt … Here in
fact one feels at liberty—in England, “Cabin’d, Cribb’d, Confined.” Oh, my
dear Sir, Australia is the land of liberty.
The ‘times’ began with the need for sustenance, progressed to sport
game, and then in later years developed into a ‘pleasurable’ means of
240 D. S. Jones
In single file the beaters march along the paddock side until three-quarters of a
mile from the corral they spread out across the end of the swamp, and then, a
few yards apart, advance in a long line, beating the tussocks before them … So
keen is the heart of man to hunt and slay that the kirk even becomes excited,
and throws his waddy at a retreating rodent with a murderous aim … a very
small rabbit with a wild and scared expression in its eyes, runs at me, I make a
stand. The animal is evidently clean daft, terror has deprived it of instinct, and
the bitterness of death is past … [The] Official record—A few hundred rabbits,
two hares, a snake and a bandicoot.
The ethos of the hunt was in both adult and child. Children raided
parrot nests, trapped rabbits and quolls, and domesticated magpies as
pets. Squatters, shooting, ‘killed a brace of spurwinged plovers, a brace of
quail, a snipe and a pig’. They shot at brolgas and cockatoos who raided
corn and new seed, snared or shot ‘Wild Plains Turkeys’, shot at ducks,
Cape Barren Geese, and emus, and laid poison for ‘eagle-hawks’. Only a
few lakes were refuges for ‘a large number of wildfowl, black swans and
ducks, whom we now see sailing about in peace and safety, the swivel-gun
fiend having been abolished’.
Animals provided a vernacular menu. Parrot pie was a favourite at
‘Trawalla’:
Parrots are very good eating; many a parrot pie we had. The white parrots are
I think, the best; next, the white cockatoo …. On New Year’s day 1841 …
what good things we had in the bush. We had kangaroo soup, roasted turkey
well stuffed, a boiled leg of mutton, a parrot-pie, potatoes, and green peas; …
The [magpie] bird thus alluded to [on the verandah] broke into a gush of
melody, so rich, full, and metallic, that they both turned to look at him … he
began dancing, crooning a little song to himself … And lastly he puffed out his
breast, put back his bill, and swore two or three oaths …
Some species were also greatly admired. ‘It is a beautiful sight to see a
number of emus running across a plain’; there were ‘many beautiful
birds … particularly parrots and cockatoos’ around ‘Trawalla’.
Of the native fauna, the dingo was vehemently hunted. A bounty of 5
shillings was quickly gazetted by the authorities. Their ‘mournful howl
breached the evening’ silence, and ‘mangled carcases and tufts of blood-
ied wool’ denoted their wake. While innovative devices were constructed
to deter them, only the hunt was perceived as the ultimate weapon in
culling this animal.
* * *
242 D. S. Jones
While many animals were hunted, many were also imported to allevi-
ate the perception of silence,
those delightful reminders of our early home … the plains, the bush and the
forest … have had their present savage silence, or worse, enlivened by those
varied, touching, joyous strains of Heaven-taught melody which our earliest
records show have always done good to man.
* * *
The symbol of a lone horseman in search of ‘that pastoral Eden, the gar-
den of Australia’ is emblematic of squatting upon the Australian
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 243
landscape. Blinkered by the dream of the golden fleece, the colonial also
experienced a landscape fraught with unusual silence and solitude, pro-
voking longingness and contemplation. This setting inspired ‘grotesque’
and ‘melancholy’ realms and features that were accentuated by haunting
sounds at night. A colonial expressed these insights and responses in artis-
tic and literary directions, using a vocabulary of ‘sublimity’ and ‘strange-
ness’ in highly descriptive prose and oils. Though things were unfamiliar
compared to ‘thickly-verdured English meadow[s]’, or ‘alien to the con-
stitution’, colonials still surveyed the freedom of these new domains as if
‘possessed [with] the prophetic eye’.
All these progressive wonders were to be evolved from the lone primeval waste
upon which a solitary horseman then gazed in the autumn of 1844. And the
wand of the squatter sorcerer was to do it all. I might then have seen lakelets
glittering in the sun, orchards and cornfields, barns and stables, mansion and
offices, a village in itself, the spacious wool-shed, the scientific wash-pen, had I
possessed the prophetic eye. But Fate held her secrets closely then as now. Only
the vast eucalyptus forest, stretching unbroken to the horizon, waved its sombre
banners before me. Only the scarce-trodden meadows of the waste lay unfed,
untouched around me.
This section explores the landscape imagery created in the path of the
‘wand of the squatter sorcerer’ to explain these unfamiliar environments.
Their responses and perceptions include literary and artistic traces that
celebrated the landscape and perpetuated myths about the Districts’
power and cultural symbols.
* * *
Every landscape [by von Guérard] is an accurate portrait of the scene it pro-
fesses to pourtray [sic]; every tree and flower has not merely its local character,
but its botanical peculiarities; and yet the whole is a picture in the fullest sense
of the word, and a fine picture.
It is a greatful [sic] relief to look at some of his pictures here, such as the Stony
Rises and the Fern Tree Gully, after visiting the feverish Turner Gallery, with its
chrome yellow sunsets, dingy azures and so forth. It is one thing to invent
incredible skies and impossible atmosphere effects in a cockney studio; and
another, and a much better thing, to study from nature herself in your
sunny clime.
his skill is of an unusually high degree and a delicate warm feeling. His Mount
William appeared excellent to us and was the most pleasant of his landscapes …
no less is the artist characterized by his gum tree vegetation which almost gives
him that much loved Italian colouring typical of the olive trees.
Italy. A similar scene was depicted in View of the Grampians (1870): ‘The
lords of creation are represented by a couple of Aborigines … whose pres-
ence, while it gives life to the scene, is not out of harmony with the pri-
maeval appearance of nature with which they are surrounded’. Precariously
perched, isolated, a band of Aboriginals are positioned confronting the
scenery like explorers surveying an awe-inspiring ‘wilderness’. In both the
pastoral and Aboriginal Arcadian scenes:
His landscapes may not present quite fifteen hundred different grasses as there
are not generally so many to be found in the bush scenes with which his pencil
is familiar, but they offer a minutely laborious description of almost every leaf
upon the gum trees, and of every vein and crevice in the rocks, which would
make them delightful illustrations of a treatise on the botanical or geological
features of the Colony.
* * *
The trees, surpassing in size the largest English oakes, are of a species we have
never seen before. The graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the very
grass itself, are of species unknown in Europe; while flaming lories and brilliant
248 D. S. Jones
parroquets fly whistling, not unmusically, through the gloomy forest, and over-
head in the higher fields of air, still lit up by the last rays of the sun, countless
cockatoos wheel and scream in noisy joy, as we may see the gulls do about an
English headland.
There was nothing which some people would consider to be romantic or pictur-
esque in the scenery on which I gazed. But the ‘light which never was on sea or
shore’ was there, to shed a celestial glory over the untilled, unfenced, half-
unknown waste.
There would be roads and cockatoo fences, with obtrusive shingle cottages, and
wheat-fields, barns, and threshing machines—in short, all the hostile emblems
of agricultural settlement, as it is called.
‘I like it not; I would the plain hay in its tall old groves again’.
We looked across the plain; the stretch of grass I have described was lying before
one like a waveless sea, from the horizon of which rose the square, abrupt-sided
mass of basalt … it appeared a dim mass of pearly gray, but tonight, in the clear
frosty air, it was of a rich purple, shining on the most prominent angles … with
a dull golden light.
‘The more I look at that noble fire-temple, the more I admire it’, said the Doctor
[Mulhaus].
sounds … in the deep stillness’ of the plains were chilled by the ‘monoto-
nous cry’ of ‘a morepork’. And above, watching, was a ‘blue cloudless
heaven’ casting a ‘soft gleam of bright hazy distance, over the plains and
far away!’ Distance, monotony, greyness, melancholia, the ‘broad well-
grassed plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just
left it’, are common literary metaphors of this landscape. They were signi-
fiers that Gordon brought to life in his ‘narrow sensory framework’ that
stressed light, journey, intenseness of landscape, and a love of bush, birds,
and flora.
The literary pathos of the phase, implicit in The Sick Stockrider, Ye
Wearie Wayfarer, or A Dedication, inspired many bush ballads. The for-
mer was symptomatic of the colonial swagman or sundowner, a narrative
of journey and the haunting fear of a lonely death in the bush, whereas A
Dedication was Gordon’s ‘declaration of allegiances’ to his adopted land-
scape. A Dedication was a self-searching realisation of the confusion in
aged colonial minds of longingness for England. Yet, it also captured a
growing awakening to the innate characteristics of this newly adopted
landscape. It represents a symbolically charged allegory of the District’s
colonial landscape. Sun, endlessness, and the sense of place, draped in
reckless independence also pervades other stanzas:
* * *
The ‘glad chirrup’ of the cicada was but one of the sensory traits at play
in the experiential landscape in A Dedication. The poem also caught the
rhythm and ‘ring’ of riding, the ‘chaunts’ of marsh frogs, and the tones of
bush silence. These all tell of the sensations of noise, smell, depth, lack of
day or night that were acute experiential landscape traits to the intruder.
Scents of the bush and plains, quietly shedding their perfume fragrances
to the stock-rider, was a sensory trait readily perceived:
252 D. S. Jones
One could sit back ‘and blow the cool tobacco cloud’, as sheep slum-
bered in their folds, or as the stock maintained their ‘continuous lowing
or “roaring” in stock-riders’ vernacular’. At night, ‘the atmosphere was so
amazingly pure’, causing ‘the gum-trees whisper overhead’, their shadows
mocking the white moonshine, with the ‘golden wattles … scenting this
cool, transperent [sic] night’. Those haunting sounds of day and night—
of cockatoos screaming in noisy joy, frogs croaking in creeks, ‘the mourn-
ing reeds’ low sigh’, the ‘rustle of a million crawling things’, and the
constant screams of insects in the ‘plains that glowed red’—provoked
daunting prose:
Voices deep in the landscape cast haunting spells with their ‘moans’,
‘wails’, ‘crys’, ‘weird yells’, and ‘screams’. The dreariness of a gloomy
monotonous setting accentuated these feelings and sensations. The sub-
tleness of scents whispered past in zephyrs, the ‘thick kangaroo grass
under my feet, quite as thick as an English meadow’, was reminisced
about. A sense of the unknown and unfamiliar watched over colonial
dreams and journeys.
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 253
* * *
These are scenes of fatalist reflection and conclusion, at the end of joy-
ous independent lives on the plains. It is a tone that wafts in The Bushman’s
Lullaby through the authors’ self-questioning of his landscape allegiances,
and it is a note indelibly sketched in von Guérard’s canvases about the
tensions of colonial expansion. What was the colonial prospect, or vision
of a future? How did one ably express ‘divine poetical feelings’ to land-
scape or place? Was a transect of time, or an allegory of life’s journey, the
answer in a landscape that was tormented by all that was opposite to
those in Europe? The way to breach these scenes, evidently, was to layer
descriptive prose and scientific documentation in the hope of unlocking
hidden secrets that would enable a comprehension of this environment.
Within these attempts, however, romanticism, sublimity, ‘English’ tenac-
ity, tradition, and a pervading freedom of independence directed thoughts
and reactions to landscape. A dark side was easily portrayed because it
was the most blatant to view and sense. It beheld ‘beauty and terror’,
together, grasping at the screaming joy of white cockatoos as a metaphor
to explain the landscape making it come to life. Operating negatively and
positively, the literary and illustrative sketches produced a sense of place
borne in ecological self-adjustment to a new environment.
The open plains landscape accentuated this dilemma—of foreignness
and monotony. It was one in which the essences were difficult to encapsu-
late except by deviating off into scenes of stock drives, rutted liquid mud
roads, promising homesteads, or sites of greater topographical interest and
novelty. These aspects were much easier to describe or explain than the
sheer vastness of what lay under ‘the sky-line’s blue burnish’d resistance’.
* * *
* * *
‘Bruni’ (1903): np; Abbott (1880): 97–102; Adamson and Fox (1981):
123–133; Anderson (1969): 7, 17, 31, 62, 110–112; Andrews (1986);
Anon. (1873): 65; Arrowsmith (1853): Map 2; Australian Council of
National Trusts (1983): 216–217; Baillieu (1982): 32, 38; Barnard
(1933): 20; Barnes (1986): 97; Bassett (1954): 396, 406, 408, 425–427,
430, 431, 433–434, 446, 454, 518, 519, 533; Baxter (1970): 395–398;
Beer (1989): 65–66; Bennett (1982): 230–232, 235; Berndt (1964):
258–295; Berndt (1982): 4; Bird (1986): 8, 9; ‘Boldrewood’ (1969): 13,
14, 15–16, 17, 18, 25, 28, 29, 35, 37, 39, 41–47, 61, 84, 88, 91–92, 94,
101–104, 119, 124, 133, 138, 139–140, 149–150, 154, 176, 177, 196,
198; Bonwick (1970): xiii, 9, 10, 12, 20, 22, 28–32, 33–34, 35–36, 37,
38, 39, 40–41, 44–45, 46, 48, 57, 69, 70, 72, 77, 78–79, 87–89, 93,
97–98, 120, 121, 123, 126–127, 128–129, 131, 133, 153–154, 155,
156, 158–159, 160, 161, 162–164, 166–171, 172–173, 174, 175–181,
182, 183–185, fn. 8, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24; Bonyhady (1985): 10, 37, 38,
53–54, 55–56, 77, 89–90, 91, 92, 93, 126, plate 4, plate 5; Bonyhady
(1986): 49, 51, 175, 180–183; Bride (1969): 42, 55, 96, 120, 125, 137,
163, 164–165, 167–169, 177, 184–185, 192–193, 268, 336, 394, fn.
11, 13; Brooks (c. 1839); Brown (1935): 222–225, 228, 237; Brown
(1941–1968): Vol. 2, 14–15, 244, 245, 246, 247; Vol. 3, 622–625; Vol.
5, 523; Brown (1987): 6, 12, 32, 52, 68, 99–100; Bruce (1980): 32, 40,
43–48, 49, 54–62, 81, 84, 160; Cabena (1985): 1–8; Cannon (1983):
453; Carter (1911): 14–17; Chapman (1965): 1, 18, 23, 29, 37, 39, 45,
55, 57, 58, 60, 70, 72–75; Christie (1979): 50, 75; Clark and Whitelaw
(1985): 134–135; Clark (1987): 2–18, 110; Clark (1988): 17–18, 19,
20, 22, 24, 25, 47, 82, 83, 84, fn 75; Clark (1989), 16; Clark (1990a):
6–7, 8–14, 62–63, 67, 68–82, 97, 121, 181–183, 238, 239, 253, 265;
Clark (1990b): 67, 68–82; Clark (1990c): 97, 101, 103–104, 108,
111–112, 114, 118, 121; Cole (1984): 16, 18–19; Cole (1991–92):
137–142; Comstock (1974): 96; Conley and Dennis (1984): cover, 16,
17, 18; Connah (1988): 87, 88, 89, 90, 96–100; Cornish (1975): 173;
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 259
5–57, 58, 62, 65, 66, 72–82, 83, 85, 97, 128, 130, 133–135, 136, 138,
161, 162, 171, 179, 189, 237, 238; Massola (1966): 128–129; Massola
(1968a): 197–200; Massola (1968b), 317; Massola (1969): 23–24, 40,
44, 45, 46, 48–49, 52, 55, 57, 60; McAlpine (1963): 57; McGregor and
Oaten (1985): 1–2, 7, 10, 12, 37, 91, 94; McLaren (1987): ix–xii, xiv,
14, 16–17, 29, 32, 35, 39–40, 41, 43, 46, 50, 63–72; McLellan (1989):
28, 30; Mellick (1973): 91–94; Mellick (1982): x–xxii; Mellick (1983):
53, 70–74; Miller (1972): 4, 8; Mitchell (1965): Vol 1, 1–7, 40–44;
Mitchell (1965): Vol. 2, 159, 201, 202, 207–211, 213–214, 215, 242,
243, 245, 248, 252–253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261–274,
332, 333, 334; Moore (1959): 503; Moore (1962), 170, 177–178,
180–181; Mortlake Historical Society Book Committee (1985): 5–6, 17,
18–19, 20, 23–26, 39, 45, 64, 57, 126, 154–155, 158, 165; Murdock
(1921): 94–100; Notman (1989): 4–5, 6–7, 19, 26–27, 28, 40–42,
66–67, 95–96; O’Dea (1992), ix–xi; Oldham and Stirling (1969): 31;
Oman and Lang (1980): 1–2, 6, 10, 11–12, 13–14, 15, 17, 22–23, 24,
26, 27, 28, 34, 35–37, 47, 50–51, 82; O’Neill (1993a): 11; O’Neill
(1993b): 11; Opie (1986): 4–5, 11–12; Parker (1849); Parker (1854):
11; Parsons (1973): 68–70, 84–87, 188, 232–235, 235–238, 238–243,
257–260; Patton (1930): 186; Peel (1971): 8, 74–75, 76, 78, 96, 99,
101, 105, 112, 113; Peel (1974): 96, 105; Poulston (1984): 16, 19, 22,
25–26, 27, 28, 33, 52–53; Powell (1968a); Powell (1968b): 59–66;
Powell (1968c): 346, 347, 352, 353; Powell (1969b): 14; Powell (1969a):
22–23; Powell (1970): 34–37; Prentis (1983): cf., 30–31, 81–83, ch. 5;
Presland (1977): 2–3, 4, 5, 6, 9–11, 12–13, 15, 17, 18–19, 21–23, 24,
25, 28–29, 35, 37, 41, 45, 47–49, 51, 53, 54–55, 66, 67, 70, 71–73,
74–75, 76–78, 81–83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 96–97, 111; Presland (1980): 24,
25, 29, 30, 31, 35, 41, 43, 47, 48, 51, 52–53, 58, 59, 60, 62, 65–67, 79,
80–88, 89, 99, 108, 111, 118, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 146, 150–151;
Ramson (1966): 77–90; Ramson (1991): 5, 8, 11–12; Robb (1962),
11–22, 72, 115–116, 119–122, 132; Ronald (1978): 26, 50–53, 68–70,
146; Ross (1911): 60, 61, 64, 65; Rutledge (1965): 110–127; Sagazio
(1989): 20–22; Sagazio (1992): 116–117, 118, 119; Sayers (1972):
13–14, 15, 16, 18; Seaton (1988): 2, 71, 101–104, 112–115; Shaw
(1849): 12–13; Shaw (1860): 27; Shaw (1969): 21, 22–23, 24–25, 27,
32–33, 65–68, 70–73, 78, 80, 84, 88, 95–97, 104–105, 121, 133, 137,
139, 185, 186, 187, 191, 193–194, Fig. 1, plate 3 opp. 65; Smith (1975),
5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 261
162–164; Smyth (1972): Vol. 1, 128.; Smyth (1972): Vol. 2, 186; Sowden
(1972): 25, 165–169, 184–185, 186–187, 202–203; Spreadborough and
Anderson (1983); Stapylton (1971): 98, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113;
Starforth (1853); Stewart (1975): 87ff; Stuwe (1986): Map 2; Tanner
(1979): 69, 72, no. 92, 98, 99; ‘The Vagabond’ (1981), 61, 63, 72, 80,
87, 88, 89–91, 95–96, 101, 103, 105; Thomas (1869): 62; Thomas
(1988): 40, 50, 62, 81; Tipping (1982): 44, 63; Trangmar (1956): 11;
Trollope (1873), 69; Tunbridge (1987): 2–6; ‘Twain’ (1897): 83–84;
Victoria (1992), 161; Vines (1990): 13, 16–17; Viollet-le-Duc
(1864–1868); Warner (1958): 18–19; Watkin (1911): 89–97; Westgarth
(1888): 45; Whitehead and Whitehead (1986), 43–44, 52–53, 64, 70;
Williams (1984), 173–188; Williams (1987): 314, 316–317; Willingham
(1983): 64, 66, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 84–95, 97, 113, 119–121, 146,
148–150, 152, 154, 156, 157, 179, 280; Willingham (1984): 63–64, 65,
66, 68–69, 70, 71–73, 78; Willingham (1987): 3; Willis (1963): 163,
165; Willis (1964): 398; Wright (1985); Wright (1989): 1–15, 49–60,
53, 56, 57, 58–59; Yule (1988): 30, 35, 38, 40, 53–54, 57, 58, 61.
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5 1830–1870: Colonial Noontide 271
* * *
‘The land out there’, by the mid-1870s, was a reconstructed cultural land-
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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 273
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274 D. S. Jones
* * *
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 275
Fig. 6.3 Road board districts 1863. Source: W.S. Logan, “Local Government Boundaries,” 1966
277
278 D. S. Jones
* * *
having selected fifty acres of land which for the greater part of the year is covered
with water, I wish to know whether I may be allowed to select again, the above
land being quite worthless.
Another complained that of 113.7 ha, the land was ‘so wet and poor’
that it prevented crop and cereal germination. Near Timboon, selectors
along Curdies River in 1877 found extensive thick forests to clear, requir-
ing the ‘marking of trees, so as to find my way back’ out of the timber,
before land could be cultivated. A simple dray access track of 3.2 km with
two bridges into a selection ‘took us over a month … [of ] falling large
gum trees’.
Selection required improvement works to the value of £1 per acre to be
undertaken within two years to ensure granting of the right of acquisi-
tion. Initially, improvements involved fencing the selection before any
clearing and cultivation could start. A dwelling structure also had to be
erected to satisfy a residency requirement. Such conditions, given the
quality of the allocated land, prompted part-time farming activities or
agricultural cooperatives. Examples of the later evolved in the Moravian
communities of Tabor and Hochkirch (Tarrington) in 1853, and ‘home-
steading’ initiatives from 1891 to 1913 near Coleraine, Casterton and
Branxholme, as radical solutions to urban unemployment problems,
assisted by the Settlement on Lands Act 1893.
The underlying socio-political agenda for closer settlement of the
District, beginning with squatting between 1830 and 1870, was enshrined
in land acts. This agenda continued into the 1930s notwithstanding the
landscapes’ reluctance to accept the intensity of ‘stewardship’ activities
compared to natural agricultural practices under Aboriginals.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 281
* * *
the ground, and chipped as necessary to create the exposed sides; smaller
stones were used as ‘plugging’ or ‘pinning’ to create a smooth finish and
to prevent rabbit entry.
Dry stone walling was carried out in and near to stony rises. Walls were
erected extensively on ‘Purrumbete’ from 1856 and were maintained
especially to minimise rabbit intrusion from the Stony Rises, although
the railway line pierced this defence. Walls were also built on ‘Mount
Fyans’, on ‘Glenormiston’, and on ‘Larra’, and around Kolora and
Derrinallum in the 1860s. A beautiful 1.8 m high ‘bride price’ was erected
at Kolora, and in 1880, on ‘Mount Noorat’, ‘I pulled down old fences
that harboured Rabbits and built Rabbit proof stone walls with founda-
tions sunk’ 38.1 cm underground. ‘Jancourt’ was ‘entirely surrounded
[by 1885] with a rabbit-proof slab-fence’ to deter these terrors. An
8.85 km long dry stone wall was erected as part of the ‘Mount Hesse’-
’Barunah Plains’ boundary in 1862, and walling continued on ‘Mount
Hesse’ until the 1880s. Dry stone walling was also used at ‘Berry Bank’
between 1863 and 1866 to completely encircle the station.
Imported wire fencing rapidly subsumed the landscape, becoming
more prevalent as it became cheaper from local manufacture. Wire was
experimented with on ‘Golf Hill’ and ‘Terrinallum’, and advocated for by
squatters on ‘Glenormiston’, ‘Wando Vale’, and ‘Ercildoune’ in the early
1850s. On ‘Langi Willi’, in 1858, 5.6 km of ungalvanised, low tensile
wire was erected, and nearly 13 km of two rails and two wires were erected
between ‘Barunah Plains’ and ‘Mount Hesse’ in 1862. A 1.02 tonne ‘of
No. 5 fencing (‘Bull’) wire’ was used on ‘Purrumbete’ as part of extensive
fencing works. This activity continued past 1883 with the use of heavy
gauge ‘bull’ wire. Some 21.4 tonnes of ‘bull’ wire was also ordered for
‘Wiridgil’ in 1878. One can imagine the fencer, struggling with double-
cranked braces km after km, week after week, only to have ‘to do a big
round of repairs to wire fences’, such as on ‘Wooriwyrite’, year after year.
Wire had been used extensively on ‘Langford’ by the late 1870s and was
the predominant fencing mode on later selector subdivisions.
By the 1880s, barbed wire substituted the use of heavy gauge wire.
Timber post and rail fencing was however still used on several stations. In
1878, River Red Gum fencing of some 11,000 posts was ordered for
‘Purrumbete’ ‘as we all know the Red gum will soon be all gone’. In the
284 D. S. Jones
following year, 12,000 1.8 m high pickets were ordered for more fencing.
Timber fencing, 2.1–2.7 m high, 1.6 km long, was erected on ‘Goodwood’
in late 1865 as part of a kangaroo and stockyard complex, and paddocks
around Framlingham in 1885 were still divided ‘by a rough log-fence’.
On ‘Mount Noorat’, ‘posts and Railes’ were extensively used in confor-
mity with contractual conditions that required the splitter
to split and cart 100 Posts 6 feet 9 in long 5 × 7½ [2.1 m × 12.7 × 19.05 cm]
to be split from the back to be butted off three feet [0.9 m] from the base
and to be well charred the same distance also 1000 Rails 9 ft. long 7 × 2½
[2.7 m × 17.78 × 6.35 cm] to be split off the Quarter. The whole to be split
of good sound straight timber.
* * *
Of these three sciences, the botanical lexicon infused quickly into the
vernacular language in the landscape in contrast to the other two. By
1900, a mixture of both common and scientific botanical names were
used in both literature and conversation in the District.
* * *
Changes in place names were minimal in this time period although a
fascination with Aboriginal-derived etymology appears to have been
heightened. One traveller wrote:
The most striking new feature of this journey seemed to me the picturesque and
beautiful River Hopkins—beautiful in all but its name! Why give such starched,
hard, dot-and-go-one names, when there are Eumeralla, Wannon, Doutagalla,
Modewarra, Yarra Yarra, and countless other such natural and genial modula-
tions to had of the natives for the asking?
* * *
* * *
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 287
Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in the
mists of early morning, her history looms vast and gigantic.
Figures 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6 depict the places, railway line routes, and
routes of travellers mentioned in this section.
The lines foreshadowed an awakening to the ‘local sense of local beauty’
brought by literary travellers and artists who journeyed and explored the
landscape. This time period was marked by a technological innovation in
movement—the train—that alleviated the sense of monotonous distance
and brought accessibility to the landscape. Secondly, a maturing of cul-
tural attitudes heightened a change in perceptions away from European
differentiation and longingness. This section surveys the changes in the
time period through the oils and inks of a number of influential
personalities.
* * *
Fig. 6.5 Routes of travellers. Source: H. Cornish, Under the Southern Cross, 1975; M. Kiddle, Men of Yesterday, 1961;
289
‘M. Twain’, Mark Twain, 1973; ‘The Vagabond’, Vagabond Country, 1981; Jim H. Willis, “Baron von Mueller’s
Involvement,” 1988
290
D. S. Jones
* * *
Iron roads entered the District from Ararat in 1877, skirting the ‘flowery
plains’ below Gariwerd’s escarpment, and meeting at Hamilton in the
same year that rails were brought up from Portland. The captivating nov-
elty of the iron monster provoked clichés of ‘advancement’, ‘technology’,
and ‘progress’, arousing riotous political debates to ensure rail connec-
tions to townships and patrimonial estates in the District. Casterton and
Coleraine were connected in 1884 and 1898 by branch lines. A major
line came up from Warrnambool, by way of Koroit and Penshurst, to
Hamilton in 1890, joining with the recently opened Terang to Port Fairy
line. A branch line connected Penshurst to Dunkeld in August 1890 but
was closed in March 1891 and dismantled in February 1898.
Iron roads were a symbolic representation of ‘progress’. They opened
up the landscape to the traveller and provided an avenue for trade. Behind
this façade was also a technological imposition upon the landscape. Rails
required linear enclosures that contradicted original land settlement pat-
terns. Paddocks, allotments, stream edges, plantation strips, and forests
were all dissected by linear embankments of bluestone ballast, crowned
with interred lengths of River Red Gum, and two lines of iron. The land-
scape was redrawn, cut, filled, dissected, raised, channelled, tunnelled,
bricked, streams relocated or bridged, trees cut and removed, and the
lines mocked by ‘spartan architecture’ that honoured rituals of au revoir
and welcome. The latter provided symbolic stopping points in a mecha-
nised ‘walkabout’ on landscape.
River Red Gum sleepers and bridge piers came from Echuca, or were
cut from the Mt Cole and Otway forests, and the Victoria Valley forests.
Ballast quarries cut bluestone rubble from numerous hills and escarps;
quarries on the Hopkins and at Mt Stavely served the Ararat-Hamilton
292 D. S. Jones
line, and Mt Rouse served the Penshurst vicinity. Bricks were formed
from local clays to line culverts and colour the ‘spartan architecture’ of
stations ‘of brick construction with slate roofs’.
Railway construction also caused disruption and heartache for gra-
ziers. Colonials at ‘Purrumbete’ were frustrated with the alignment, con-
struction, and progress of the line through their holdings. Standard
fencing along the line was not sheep-proof, engines set fire to grasses, the
alignment cut through stone rabbit-proof walls, ballast quarries were left
forlorn, platforms or sidings were never convenient, and there was the
sheer frustration of dealing with bureaucracies. Notwithstanding all these
difficulties, the steam vehicle of ‘progress’ did not acquire a place in paint-
ings as it did in North American frontier images.
* * *
roads led out straight in several directions, all at right angles with one
another, … they were still long straight, road[s]: You could [still] see for miles
on every side, to where the earth met the sky.
* * *
The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, and looks like a level roof
of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it—as seamless as a blanket, to all
appearance. One might as well walk under water and hope to guess out a route
and stick to it, I should think.
If there was monotony in such a window frame, the scene was different
on his return from Adelaide, in short dray rides. ‘The time, noonday; no
wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant—and the mercury
at 92° in the shade’. The air was ‘fine and pure and exhilarating [sic] …
great melancholy gum trees’ edged roads through an expanse of ‘empty
space’ comprising ‘an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom’ caught
his eye as well as native birds, and ‘the majestic march of a flowing sea’ in
the clouds above. His ‘cream-white’ clayey road ‘led through a forest of
great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and sorrowful’ to that same ‘halting-
place’. Contradicting Froude, ‘Twain’ found
Cornish, holidaying Under the Southern Cross (1880) in the late 1870s,
was ‘determined … to go to Hamilton partly to see what the country was
like’. From the train window at that ‘halting-place’, ‘the land was every-
where neatly fenced and trenched … The country is everywhere so desti-
tute of rivers that artificial drainage is necessary’. Passing near Mt Stavely:
The flocks about here seem interminable, and as our train whisked through the
fields, thousands of startled lambs scampered away to their mothers with terri-
fied cries of ‘m-ma’.
November 1853 von Mueller traversed the plains quickly, passing Lake
Colac and Mt Noorat before following the Hopkins River to climb Mt
William, and enter the Wimmera and Mallee. In the mid-1870s, he
returned again, briefly, to the District. His quaint, mythical, lone person-
age, on a white steed, with knowledgeable breadth, is woven into the
landscape and the plot of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) as Dr Mulhaus. Buvelôt
made an extensive sketching trip across the plains, reaching Coleraine at
the invitation of, and in search of commissions from, pastoralists.
Favourite scenes at ‘Mount Fyans’, ‘Terrinallum’, Coleraine, and Wannon
Falls, were recaptured in his paintings. The most detailed account of a
journey through this landscape are articles written by ‘The Vagabond’
and published in The Argus. He records the sui generis railway fare, the
primitive fastening of passengers into carriages, the delightful views from
windows as well as his travels by horse, dray, and coach throughout the
plains. ‘Tower-hill Lake and the islands therein are picturesque, curious,
and attractive alike to the tourist and the scientist’—a ‘sacred’ place. In
Woodford, ‘the buildings [were] irregularly built and situated, none of
that cardboard regularity visible in the road and houses which Australia
has borrowed from America’, and then there was the cleanliness and sweet
smells of dairy farms:
On past fields divided by hawthorn hedges, the sweet perfume of whose flowers
fills the air; on past many a fertile potato patch, and many a paddock where the
milch cow and the pig peacefully fatten … Soon we come to the … primal bush.
* * *
296 D. S. Jones
* * *
* * *
this landscape. By the turn of the century, familiar colours, smells, and
cultural structures had taken hold in the landscape, analogous to other
English and Scottish influenced cultural landscapes.
This section explores these centres of cultural maturation and provides
a summary of their roles in the landscape. Townships, centres of public
resort, and places of reverence matured into prominent meeting points to
exchange artefacts and information, to celebrate religion and history, and
to recreate.
* * *
Mortlake and Penshurst. The latter was ‘quite a place’ with its gridded
townscape, three churches, banks, hotels, school, railway station, steam-
driven flour mill, tanneries, and numerous substantial stone-built and
weatherboard cottages, with a dusty thunder echoing from the scoria and
stone quarries on an escarp of the treeless Mt Rouse.
A visitor to the ‘straggling township [of Hamilton in 1885 met] with
many new houses, and a good deal of corrugated iron’. Here was ‘a beau-
tiful town’ with a prosperous community of 3300 citizens, with houses,
government offices, banks, churches, flour-mills, carriage and coach fac-
tories, botanic gardens, schools, and ‘stores and shops, everything required
for necessity, comfort, fashion, and luxury’ could be procured.
To the west, a traveller entered the vales of the Wannon: ‘rolling, open
downs, thickly grassed, soil evidently of the very best quality’ that were
depicted in the Rococco pastoral scene of Bush Creek, Coleraine (1874).
Coleraine, with a population of about 700, nestled in a hollow ‘in the
midst of trees and cultivated paddocks’, with a long broad street sur-
rounded by white-painted weatherboard houses, brick façades of banks,
stores, council chambers, railway station, post and telegraph office, inns,
school, mechanics’ institute, and flour mill, with River Red Gum saw
mills in the distant vales. Downstream, the townscape of Casterton ‘seems
clean, and neat, and prosperous’ with ‘hills all around dotted with pleas-
ant residences’ of about 850 residents. An ‘entrepôt for the produce of the
border’ due to its rail terminus and river crossing, the town also hosted a
post and telegraph office, inns, school, mechanics’ institute, brick council
chamber, stores and hotels, steam flour mill, foundry, tannery, and nearby,
granite quarries and River Red Gum saw pits.
South of Mt Napier, the townships of Macarthur, Hawkesdale and
Woolsthorpe were quiet, ‘orderly and moral place[s]’ of some 150–300
residents each. Composed of churches, banks, mechanics’ institutes, post
and telegraph offices, hotels, ‘good stores, blacksmiths’, and wheelwrights’
shops’, they were quite pleasant communities serving surrounding sta-
tions and selections.
On the plains, the little wayside inn crossings were growing into small
towns united in their wide main streets and typified by the ‘weatherboard
cottage with glass windows and neatness of paint, then the picket fence
in shining white surrounded by tasteful gardens’.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 299
* * *
* * *
In the late 1860s, Buvelôt spent several weeks sketching in the valleys of
the Wannon, including sites at the Upper and Lower Wannon Falls. The
Upper Falls of the Wannon (1874) captured a magical scene of public
resort in the landscape:
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 301
The music of waters in the midst of the profound solitude of an Australian wild
can easily be imagined from the picture.
The Falls provided inspiration for numerous artists in this time period,
as did a number of other natural features that became points of public
resort. The Wannon Falls (c.1860) was ‘very much admired’ in its represen-
tation of scenery. At ‘any season this … [was] a most picturesque and weird
place’ that captivated the visitor and provided sites for many ‘chicken-pie
and champagne’ picnics. A similar inspiration and picnic spot was located
below the Hopkins Falls, but it never attracted the artists’ attention.
The 121.4 ha Basin Banks reserve, a natural focal point near
Camperdown, hosted many picnics and sailing adventures on the lakes.
Adjacent to 1.2 ha Botanic Gardens were ‘smooth walks, soft springy
lawns, beds of flowers, and a miniature grove of pines’. But, ‘unfortu-
nately for the public, Mount Leura … [nearby, was] not a public reserve’.
Here was an eminence that enticed the tourist into being a trespasser to
gain a panorama that was otherwise freely accessible to a visitor to the Mt
Rouse public reserve.
At Koroit, Tower Hill was ‘picturesque, curious, and attractive alike to
the tourist and the scientist’. Notwithstanding this praise, in the 1880s,
the Reserve had become very different from the sublime image in Tower
Hill (1855):
The fine trees on the cones and the craters on the island, all gone excepting a half
dozen or so and the banks turned into a cabbage garden. But what was a thou-
sand times worse than this ruthless destruction of ornamental timber, the lower
portion of the lake is turned into a stinking mud pool.
These were ‘sacred places for a great people’s pleasure’ and they became
major gathering points of public resort in the District during this
time period.
* * *
302 D. S. Jones
* * *
I even dread that the prevailing mania may infect myself and induce me to
erect a more expensive building that will be suitable for the estate under
more adverse circumstances which I fancy I can see looming in the distance.
and entranced in the sheep. This section examines the products of this
mania. Monuments that reinforced a set of stories and myths, unique to
the District, based around the landscape spirit and the sheep.
* * *
High prices for washed and quality fleece on the London markets in the
1860s and mid-1870s were catalyses for building booms over the same
years. The post-1870s homesteads arose from an era that witnessed
increased pastoral technology in woolshed design, shearing techniques,
sheep washing and breeding methods, resulting in improved fleece quality,
improved pastures, fencing forms, and complementary building forms.
Post-1870s constructions continued the use of bluestone, encircling
verandahs, and a flair for architectural design evinced in 1840s–1870s
homesteads. These traits were, however, expanded in a flourish by skilled
craftsmen, the imagination of architects, and fathomless bank balances.
Bluestone became a sculptural form yet maintained its uniting force in
the landscape. Gothic Revivalism and Classicism were adopted as domi-
nant stylistic languages creating a strong regional design insignia. And
verandahs became garnished in delicate cast iron lacework as these out-
door rooms were expanded in size and role. The single-storey Classical
Revival bluestone and slate tiled ‘Kolor’ (1868) with its asymmetrical
plan, dominant tower with bellcast roof, and circular pagoda-like veran-
dah, epitomised the high craftsmanship that could be obtained from the
stone. Its solid form, texture, and ready availability from the District’s
quarries enabled ‘very handsome’ mansions and churches to be erected.
Design styles, especially Gothic, brought forth distinctive individuality,
but the bluestone ensured unity in the mass of structures erected.
The stylistic language of Gothic Revivalism diffused from church struc-
tures across the landscape. With underpinnings in Presbyterianism, the
language first appeared in managers’ and workmen’s cottages before being
applied in mansion design from the mid-1860s until 1900. The language
drew inspiration from plates and philosophies in Dictionnaire Raisonnée de
L’Architecture Française (1854–1863) for direction, or from contemporary
traditions of the Renaissance in Classicism, resulting in structures such as
the unusual steep-roofed Gothic Turkish bath house (c.1866) on
304 D. S. Jones
The design at the entrance and balcony is made to harmonise with the features
of the verandah and has a fine bold effect, the principal opening being a wide
semi-circular arch, having on either side smaller arches so as to bring up the
required height gradually …
[by contractors, but] the stack was found to be hollow’, enabling only a
further hipped roof section to be added to the homestead.
Of these austere shelters, nothing could compare with the two-storey
42-room bluestone Romanesque ‘Barwon Park’, erected in 1869 during
the 1868–1871 recession. It set the precedent for third period homesteads
which would only be eclipsed by the two-storey 60-room Italian
Renaissance mansion with tower at ‘Werribee Park’ in 1876.
From the recession, a decade of massive homestead construction
ensued. In 1870, the third ‘Minjah’ homestead, a two-storey bluestone
stucco rendered Classical mansion, with unusual cast iron verandah and
pattern book motifs in the render was erected, and up the valley the
single-storey square basalt Classical homestead of ‘Wurroit’ with plain
timber double-columned verandah was also being erected. Nearby, the
bluestone ‘Injemira’ homestead on an escarp of the Merri was also under
construction. In 1871, ‘Ripple Vale’ and ‘Titanga’ were built. The former
involved a single-storey Victorian Italianate red brick homestead, with
French Romanesque details reflecting nineteenth-century pattern book
architecture, and the latter was a chaste single-storey bluestone Classical
homestead without the designed verandah.
In 1873, the boom was in full flow with ‘Narrapumelap’, ‘Coragulac
House’, ‘Glenisla’, ‘Gringegalgona’, ‘Eurack’, and ‘Mooramong’, under
construction and with additions at ‘Gala’, ‘Bleak House’, and ‘Mount
Hesse’ in progress.
The folly of ‘Narrapumelap’, an imposing asymmetrical single-storey
bluestone French Gothic Revival mansion with central projecting gabled
wing, ornamental Waurn Ponds limestone dressings, monogrammed stain
glass highlights and fanlights, cast rampant lions for the entry terrace,
18.2 m high French Gothic ‘look-out tower’, bow and bay windows, and
cast iron verandah, could only be summarised as ‘picturesque, characteris-
tic and complete’. Others were lesser castles: ‘Coragulac House’ comprised
a single-storey bluestone Victorian Classical homestead with two cone-
topped slate towers; ‘Glenisla’ comprised a single-storey Grampians sand-
stone Gothic homestead with encircling finely detailed Gothic timber
verandah and radiating service wings enclosing a flagged courtyard;
‘Gringegalgona’ was constructed of Dundas Range freestone and Coleraine
sandstone in a two-storey symmetrical Italianate design with returning
306 D. S. Jones
* * *
* * *
A distinguishing feature of the landscape in this time period was the evo-
lution of townships of domesticity, deity, artifice, and knowledge. These
centres shed their ‘wooden erections painted white … [or] brownish’ and
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 311
* * *
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 313
* * *
In the second half of the century, the landscape was being strategically
replanted according to visions of pastoral improvement and stature.
Experimentation with grass species and works necessary to drain and
enhance pastures continued. Forested edges of the plains became scenes of
clearing activities and shelterbelt plantations were sown as if memorial
walls to past timber culling and burning errors. Newly planted soft niches
of Gardenesque and utilitarian styles protected homesteads from the harsh
‘wilderness’. The greater ‘wilderness’ had succumbed to exotic grasses, fenc-
ing, slower soil porosity levels, erratic burning routines, changes in soil fer-
tility, which all caused losses in indigenous vegetation densities and species.
After generations of incremental change, the landscape was engulfed in
a massive reorganisation of its vegetative threads. As a consequence, the
landscape was slowly finding stability and a balance in this time period.
Human roles, and relationships, sought a new mandate with the vegeta-
tion that would be carried into and through the new century—the seeds
of these signatures were sown with dreams of aristocratic estates.
The grassland mosaic dominated by Kangaroo Grass, in a semi-open
woodland of River Red Gum, Silver Banksia, Drooping Sheoak, Cherry
Ballart, Blackwood and Manna Gum shifted between 1860 and 1900,
found refuge in islands under threat by a tide of sheep and exotic grasses.
The grassland was perceived as a rich fodder base for over a century, but
the associated lightly spread upper and middle storeys were even more
quickly subsumed in the passage of change.
314 D. S. Jones
This section considers this change. The survey includes new directions
in pasture improvement, shelterbelts, homestead enrichment to protect
the structure from microclimatic impacts, and an overview of vegetation
lost from the original landscape. The ‘wand of the squatter sorcerer’ recast
the ‘primeval waste’ into a utilitarian landscape of pastoral downs and
prairie grasslands. The ‘prophetic eye’ had come into fruition. ‘But Fate
held her secrets closely then as now. Only the vast eucalyptus forest,
stretching unbroken to the horizon, waved its sombre banner before’ as a
remaining vestige of hegemony over the landscape.
* * *
Our track winds along the uplands on the north bank of the Wannon. Far as
the eye can reach extends the open country of rolling downs. The river’s course is
traced by the dark fringe of timber in the valley beneath us. There are as lovely
glens here as in the [Scottish] Highlands, which, in many respects, the country
much resembles.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 315
Around Hexham and Caramut, the open plains had lost most of the
‘honeysuckle’ to firewood and fencing timber. Clumps and lines of young
Monterey Pines, cypresses, and Blue Gums marked a landscape that still
harboured native grasses in sheep pastures. Only isolated eucalypts
marked the plains, but stands of Swamp and Manna Gums thrived in the
serpentine Muston’s Creek and Hopkins River.
On the plains of ‘Wooriwyrite’, the open woodland of banksia, Manna
Gum and Blackwood had been extensively thinned. Pastures had been
fenced and sown with rye grass and clover, and only youthful clumps or
plantations of pine, cypress, and Blue Gum greenery at ‘Wooriwyrite’,
‘Stony Point’, ‘Eddington’, ‘The Gums’ and ‘West Cloven Hills’ marked
the scene. Some swamp drainage and stream channel construction had
been undertaken but the eucalypt-lined Mt Emu Creek still wound through
the landscape questioning the now barren Mt Meningoort and Mt Koang.
By the 1880s, Mt Noorat had been heavily thinned, and young planta-
tions of pines, elms, and oaks adorned its flanks. The landscape now
depicted an open park-like appearance with numerous ageing River Red
and Manna Gums. Deciduous and exotic lines, avenues, and clumps had
also been introduced to colour the scene, creating the ‘most English look-
ing place in the colonies’, reminiscent of Oxfordshire or Wiltshire.
In the ‘garden’ around Camperdown and ‘Purrumbete’, ‘all around are
the rich pastures of the Manifold estate, clover and rye grass paddocks,
dotted with lightwood, on which oxen and sheep by the thousand fatten
and make wool’. Paddocks of rye grass, clover, and lucerne were separated
by youthful cypress plantations, patches of thistles waved in the breezes,
a light cover of Manna Gum and Blackwood graced grassy slopes on Mt
Leura, and dense islands of greenery identified ‘Purrumbete’, ‘Talindert’,
Basin Banks and other homesteads. Watercourses and depressions had
been drained and only limited clearing of remnant trees and shrubs was
in progress.
On the open plains, centred upon Cressy, the ‘bright verdure of exotic
vegetation … [against] the more sombre tints of the eucalyptus or the
blackwood’ indicated lonely homesteads isolated in a sea of extensive
Kangaroo and Wallaby grassed paddocks. Destitute elderly sheoak or
banksia fought with the wind, newly planted cypress hedges struggled in
the gales, and Prickly Moses trembled on rocky knobs and rises.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 317
Around ‘Larra’, ‘Gala’, and ‘Titanga’, the open woodland had vanished
into a patchwork of extensive Blue Gum and cypress plantations. Only a
scattered remnant of River Red Gums, Blackwoods and sheoaks rocked
in a sea of native and introduced pasture grasses. The ‘swagman’s light-
house’, Mt Elephant, was still covered in Blackwoods and Drooping
Sheoaks that could provide for bonfires, while native Everlasting Daisies
found refuge in plantation strips. Along the sheltered watercourses of
Brown’s Waterholes, Mundy’s Gully, Mt Emu Creek, Gnarkeet Chain of
Ponds and around the edges of Lakes Tooliorook, Logan, and Gnarpurt
elderly Blackwood or ‘lightwood’, Drooping Sheoak, Silver Banksia,
Cherry Ballart, Sweet Bursaria, Late Black Wattle, and River Red Gum
found refuge from changes occurring on the grasslands.
From ‘Baangal’ northwards to ‘Challicum’, the landscape shifted from
extensive Blue Gum and cypress plantations to rolling open downs of
Wallaby and Kangaroo Grasses. The northern areas had been extensively
cleared of River Red Gum, banksias, Cherry Ballart, and Drooping
Sheoak, and only new islands of homestead gardens or linear strips of
‘sorrowful‘ eucalypts fringed Fiery, Broken, and Mt Emu Creeks and
occasional lakes. Some swamps had been drained, and around home-
steads and paddocks at such as ‘Carranballac’, ‘St Enochs’, ‘Eurambeen’,
‘Yalla-y-poora’, ‘Banongil’, ‘Baangil’, ‘Borriyalloak’, and ‘Mount Emu’,
enriched gardens were growing.
Below Gariwerd, the ‘sparsely-wooded, pastoral country’ was graced by
‘stately red-gum trees … [with] magnificent trunks and gnarled and
spreading branches’.
* * *
The desire for pasture improvement continued in this time period. Land
clearance practices shifted to exotic grass experimentation to increase pas-
ture qualities. It also involved further drainage of swamps to increase
pasture coverage. Native grasses were still familiar fodder in many areas
before the major application of fertilisers and exotic annual weedy grass
and herb seeds, but intensive grazing disturbance had ensured their
demise. There were still further landscape manipulations and re-sowings
to achieve a shift in vegetation focus towards the monocultural support
of sheep.
318 D. S. Jones
Large tracts of native grasses were still popular browsing fodder before
1900. Dominated by Kangaroo, Tussock, Spear, and Wallaby grasses,
these tracts had only been partially affected by changes from intensive
defoliation, trampling, and manuring of vegetation and soil by sheep and
cattle. The enclosure of paddocks concentrated sheep browsing and ‘drift’
into fodder resource areas and movement routes, leading to a greater
impact upon vegetation and soils than that experienced previously in
open sheep walks. Thick Kangaroo Grass was still extant around Colac,
and on ‘Mount Hesse’ ‘wallaby grass, a little kangaroo grass and large
areas of “blue devil” or chalicum’ commanded most pastures, especially
in the ‘tiger country’ of the stony rises. ‘St Enochs’ was also dominated by
rich native grasses.
Tall Summer growing perennial native grasses were still the primary
fodder but their primacy was beginning to be eroded by introduced exotic
grasses, shorter Winter growing perennial native grasses and herbs, and
cereal crops. By 1882, 400 ha of ‘Eurack’ was under lucerne, on ‘Mount
Hesse’ paddocks of English grasses had been sown before 1882, and pas-
tures of rye grass with oats on ‘Barunah Plains’ continued to flourish.
Paspalum with rye grass was experimented with on ‘Berry Bank’, and by
1872, regular harvests of lucerne produced more than adequate ensilage
enabling sales of seeds by the bushel. Lucerne was also regularly harvested
on ‘Golf Hill’ and ‘Mount Noorat‘ by the 1870s, and White Clover was
gaining a hold on the pastures of ‘The Sisters’ and ‘Glenormiston’. At
‘Murndal’, cocksfoot, rye grass, Yorkshire Fog, cow grass, and rib grass
seeds were ordered from seed merchants in Melbourne in 1885.
The breadth of experimentation with wheat strains was illustrated on
‘Barunah Plains’ and ‘Mount Hesse’. The latter, in 1878, was sowing
Fenton, Square Head, Scotch Wheat, Mt Gambier, and Purple Straw seeds.
On newly reclaimed swamps at Bessiebelle ‘many excellent harvests’ of
barley, oats, and wheat were being reaped. Oaten hay, oats, barley, and
other crops were successfully harvested on ‘Golf Hill’ and ‘Mount Noorat’
in the 1870s, and along the Grange Burn in the 1880s excellent crops of
wheat, oats and other cereal crops were harvested on stations such as
‘Hamilton Downs’ and ‘Langford’. At ‘The Hill’, fields of potatoes,
lucerne, barley, rape, oats, turnips, ‘corn newly cut … stacked in sheaves’,
‘real hay, [and] real haycocks’, greeted a visitor in 1885.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 319
Planting cycles started in early winter when oaten hay and oats were
sown; in late winter, wheat and barley were sown. Summer was when the
harvest was gathered, hay stacks built, and sheep set loose on the crop
stubble. Ploughing and harrowing were used to encourage seed germina-
tion and cereal crop rotation. Ploughing with bullocks in single furrows
progressively gave way to horse ploughing that furrowed chain [20.11 m]
wide belts and gave the opportunity to sow entire paddocks of grasses and
cereal crops. Improved plough machinery also permitted the easier drain-
ing and harrowing of drainage depressions and swamps.
Drainage of swamps, begun in the 1840s around Kolora and Killarney,
became a major activity between 1870 and 1885. In 1867, brick tunnel
drains nearly 40 m long were cut under architectural supervision to drain
a 485 ha swamp on ‘Barunah Plains’, demonstrating the technical knowl-
edge and expense involved in early exercises. In the 1870s, an ‘unhealthy
swamp, … a hotbed of diseases’ in tea-tree was drained in the Mortlake
township, a long square slab tunnel was constructed to drain swamps on
‘St Enochs’, dynamiting of channels through the stony rises started on
‘Dunmore’, and a major programme of swamp drainage began in 1883
on ‘Mount Hesse’.
The 1880s witnessed major swamp drainage and vegetation clearance
indenture schemes around Bessiebelle and Condah Swamp localities, cre-
ating ‘Glengleeson’, ‘Moyne Falls’, and ‘Stonefield’ stations. By 1890,
almost £10,000 and £6000 had been expended on the Lower Eumeralla
and Condah Swamps to reclaim over 1220 ha and 526 ha respectively.
Drainage works continued on ‘Dunmore’ in the 1890s by ‘burning the
high thick tussock growth‘ and then furrowing channels to drain excess
water. These areas subsequently proved valuable in the cultivation of bar-
ley, oats, and wheat, without fertilisers. Drainage works also affected the
downstream capacities of larger swamps or lakes, such as Lakes Learmonth,
Corangamite, Burrumbeet, Modeware, and Lough Calvert, thereby
increasing their levels and potential for flooding adjacent farmlands.
Clearing and ringbarking of trees and scrub continued in the District
but was restricted to heathlands, scrub woodlands, tracts in the stony
rises, or with swamp reclamation works. Lands in the Timboon, Mt
Napier, and Curdies River Valley localities were heavily selected and
cleared in the late 1870s, and extensive clearing and swamp drainage
320 D. S. Jones
* * *
radiated out from the homestead site and paralleled the main driveways.
Imported Blue Gum and Wannon Valley River Red Gum seedlings were
also successfully planted in 1895 along ‘Murndal’s’ entry drive and in
‘The Regiment’. In contrast to the plains of Lismore, these plantings were
linked to a greater vision to create an aesthetic Gardenesque landscape
rather than to reduce wind and heat stress for sheep.
* * *
Another signature of the landscape was the dense green islands estab-
lished around homesteads. As campsites acquired a sense of permanency,
bush timber shelters gave way to bluestone structures that were sur-
rounded by gardens. Like Aboriginal practices of campsite enrichment,
these enclavés nurtured species recalling English and Scottish manor gar-
dens. Plantings were made to both limit micro-climatic impacts, and to
complement newly erected ‘manor houses’ or mansions. Homestead gar-
dens became soft Arcadian refuges from the plains, symbolic of its token
defeat. Only fragments of this Arcadian agenda were planted in township
streets.
The verandah, a trait of homesteads, provided the pivotal orientation
for garden and landscape plantings. Verandahs at ‘Purrumbete’, ‘Renny
Hill’, ‘Monivae’, ‘Gringegalgona’, ‘Baroona’, ‘Langi Willi’, and ‘Merino
Downs’ figure as enchanting places framed in Running Postman, Purple
Coral Pea, English Ivy, vines, Passion-flowers, Jessamines, and magnolias
from where one could gaze out and survey the landscape beyond. The
transitional middle ground was filled with specimen deciduous and ever-
green trees, shrubs and hedges of numerous plant varieties, flowers, fruit
trees, and gracious clover-grassed lawns, all framing green spaces within
and ‘windows’ out into the landscape. The journey sequence to the home-
stead became an expression of the picturesque ideal with sweeping drive-
ways, controlled and enframed vistas, ornamental gates, and tree-lined
avenues. The previously important utilitarian orchards and vegetable gar-
dens were banished from these Arcadian settings to spaces behind the
homestead. An Arcadian image was constructed out of green foliage to
shut out the realities of the landscape, and symbolically to ornament per-
sonal domains.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 323
provided protection from the sun and the wind. In these, enclosure
gained primacy over the aesthetics of sweeping drives or direct views
commonly selected. Upper storey species, as well as palms, encircled
sweeping lawns fringed by commonly selected sheltered beds of flowering
shrubs as well as wall-flowers, pink lilies, hawthorn and South African
Boxthorn hedges, English Box, hot-houses full of Amaryllis Lilies, bego-
nias, grapes, gloxinias, and tree ferns. Fruit orchards of apples, pears, and
the ubiquitous kitchen and rose gardens, often with prized melons, were
positioned on more sheltered sides of the homestead. The garden at ‘The
Hill’, with distant views over Lake Colac, surrounding a ‘pleasant coun-
try house’ was planted with English Oak, Monkey Puzzle Tree, palm,
Monterey Pine, poplar, Norfolk Island Pine, and Blue Gum to shelter
numerous flowering shrubs, ‘the green springy turf of the broad lawns’,
the flower beds, and the apple and pear orchards.
On the open plains, from Lismore across to Penshurst, shelter from the
winds was the primary criteria in garden establishment, although original
homestead positions in sheltered valleys provided some relief. Around
Lismore extensive Blue and Sugar Gum plantations dispersed winds,
fringed paddocks, and lined curvilinear driveways. Plantations also shel-
tered homesteads at ‘Larra’, ‘Gala’, ‘Blythvale’, ‘Stony Point’, ‘Titanga’,
‘Banongill’, ‘Eurambeen’, ‘Mount Elephant’, and ‘Ercildoune’. Valley
sites also sheltered homesteads at ‘Narrapumelap’, ‘Yalla-y-poora’,
‘Mawallok’, ‘Challicum’, ‘Merrang’, ‘Langi Willi’, ‘Trawalla’, and ‘St
Enochs’, enhancing sweeping driveways as captured in Yalla-y-Poora
Homestead (1864). Within a protective shell of commonly selected trees
included Pittosporum spp., birch, ash, maple, wattle, Melaleuca spp., pine,
and palms sheltered English lawns full of commonly selected trees as well
as English Box, hawthorn hedges, and flower beds of Buddleia spp., blue-
bells, jonquils, daffodils, espaliered fruit trees, grapes, Grevillea spp., per-
simmons, lilacs, crab apples, laurustinus, and Osage Oranges.
In the homestead gardens of ‘Glenormiston’, ‘Marida Yallock’, ‘Mount
Noorat’, ‘The Bend’, ‘Eeyeuk’, and ‘Dalvui’, around Mt Noorat, topo-
graphical conditions reduced the ravages of winds so designs sought to
exploit vistas or to create ‘windows’ into the landscape. Siting, or the
potential to re-site and take advantage of the landscape, by new home-
steads, was an integral criterion in garden location and arrangement: this
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 325
in a saucer-shaped hollow about two acres [0.8 ha] in extent, and the soil is
excellently suited for the purpose … Almost all kinds of trees and flowers thrive
luxuriantly, the growth of most of the plantations having been exceptionally
rapid. The plantations, & c., round the house are about 35 acres [14.2 ha] in
extent, and they are varied in character. As is very often the case in Victoria, the
Pinus insignis has been very largely used to form the main body of the planta-
tions, but there are deciduous trees in abundance as well … The walks are nearly
all bordered with English primroses, which grow in the utmost luxuriance.
River Red Gums and Manna Gums were retained in the gardens around
Mt Noorat. New species were also added, including the commonly
selected species, cedars, palms, Lilly-pillies, magnolias, conservatories full
of ferns, palms, orchids, grapes, and numerous herbaceous plants such as
Lily-of-the-Valley, irises, Acanthus, Cape Plumbago, the ever-popular
climbing and shrub roses, and English Box bordered flower beds.
In the sheltered Wannon Valley and the ‘Red Gum Country’ the crite-
ria for homestead landscape were towards aesthetic and scientific direc-
tions rather than considerations of winds and heat minimisation. River
Red Gums, an important species, were entwined in homestead gardens at
‘Inverary’, ‘Warrock’, ‘Koolomurt’, ‘Wando Vale’, ‘Prestonholme’,
‘Warrock’, ‘Langford’, ‘Monivae’, ‘Vasey’, ‘Murndal’, and ‘Gringegalgona’.
Apart from the last two, these gardens were more formal and traditional
with an upper storey of commonly selected species cypresses, River Red
Gums, conifers, banksias, cedars, Norfolk Island Hibiscus, gleditsias,
Angels’ Trumpets, orchards of apples and pears, and shrubs and climbers
such as viburnums, Beauty-bush, and Euonymus.
While ‘Murndal’ is not typical of District homestead gardens, the pro-
files of gardens in the Camperdown and Mt Noorat areas, and at
‘Gringegalgona’ and ‘Cororooke House’ were. Here were surreal enclo-
sures in a state of partial completion, ‘of neatness about the paths, and of
close-shorn trimness about the plots and lawns’ that were retreats from
the harshness of the pastoral landscape. Representations of English or
326 D. S. Jones
* * *
* * *
as all sheoak, Cherry Ballart, and banksia species were spread randomly
across the landscape. There are numerous reports of their ‘stunted’ or
shapely forms in the District between 1836 and c.1850, implying their
common occurrence. The trees appear to have disappeared rapidly
between 1840 and 1870 by felling for firewood, fence posts, hut walls
and roofing bark, or by over-grazed by sheep, bullocks and cattle.
Manuring and soil compaction by tramping probably also contributed to
their disappearance. Lack of seeding and regeneration also denied their
continued existence except in lonely unmade Government Road reserves,
stream reserves, railroad reserves, or plantation strips.
Associated with this pattern was the absence of young River Red Gum
saplings due to the same threats of overgrazing, disruption of fire regimes,
firewood, timber burning and culling, and lack of ‘unconquered’ growing
spaces. Thus, only mature specimens thrived in 1900, and minimal
encouragement was given to their continued random open woodland
style of growth. They were only permitted to regenerate in controlled
environments such as homestead gardens and plantation strips.
* * *
* * *
At the turn of the century, the new federation celebrated the emu and
kangaroo as symbols on its coat of arms. By immortalising these
330 D. S. Jones
corporeal animals, it forgot the wasteland of animal loss left in the colo-
nial wake. While the species of fauna and avifauna can be readily identi-
fied, it was the circumstances of their extinction or decline that has not
readily been reconciled in the District. It was not simply that they were
senescent, rather it was the massive damage wrought to their habitats, the
sharp destabilisation of an equilibrium in their hunting and foraging rela-
tionships, increased competition for food sources with introduced spe-
cies, and that like Aboriginals, they were simply cast off their territory,
often in a distant field of murder (1990).
Four aspects are addressed in this section. First, the nature and affects
of specialisation in animal ‘management’ with the introduction of, espe-
cially, sheep. Second, the crisis caused by the introduced rabbit to animal
husbandry practices. Third, a survey of the fauna and avifauna potentially
removed from this landscape between 1800 and 1900. And fourth, the
range of fauna and avifauna that survived the onslaught often in dis-
placed, enhanced or created habitats. The purpose of this section is to
qualify the impact of change upon fauna and avifauna that inhabited the
plains between 1800 and 1900 over this time period, noting habitat rela-
tionships, and the influence these changes may have had in shaping the
landscape’s character.
* * *
The imprint of the sheep wrought the greatest changes on the symbolic
and environmental composition of the Western District landscape. A key
impact was the near extinction of the savannah grassland ecosystem. The
fundamental weaknesses of sheep were their failure to replenish the earth’s
fertility, the substitution of a vibrant ecosystem for one of monoculture,
and the changes to the biological structure and surface of the landscape
to enhance their production needs.
The two time periods of European occupancy relatively correlate with
two periods of sheep expansion. The first time period witnessed broad-
scale and large hectarage squatting with minimal fence delineation; the
second involved small, defined enclosures, and a more concentrated and
intensive regime around experimentation and specialisation in quality
sheep breeding.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 331
Merino sheep were first landed at Portland in 1834 and remained the
predominant imported breed although Southdown’s, Cotswold’s, Border
Leicester’s, Lincoln’s, Romney Marsh’s, and the American ‘Vermont’
strain followed between 1841 and 1880s. British bred sheep were sought
because they were ‘not so dainty as to what they eat as the merinoes, they
yield a larger quantity of wool … and fetch higher prices when fattened
up for sale’. The Merino was purposely bred in Tasmania and on the
Macarthur Plains for Australian conditions, to achieve super fine long
wool to capture British markets. The results of selectively bred wool in
this time period produced the most sought after fleeces in English and
Scottish wool-halls particularly from stations including ‘Carngham’,
‘Carranballac’, ‘Larra’, ‘Wooriwyrite’, ‘Clyde’, and ‘Mount Noorat’.
Crossbreds and Comebacks resulted in the Polwarth flocks from Lincoln-
Merino cross ewes and Merino rams, and Corriedale’s originated from
Lincoln ewes and Merino rams and successive progeny inbreeding. It was
also a time (1860s–1870s) when Shorthorn [Durham] breeding for beef
and dairy cattle was highly fashionable.
The two time periods witnessed a new human cyclical relationship.
The landscape became subservient to the seasonal rituals of lambing,
shearing, crutching, and pasture rotation of sheep.
The District’s native grassland and soil, originally dominated by the
Summer growing and deep-rooted perennial Kangaroo Grass with associ-
ated Wallaby and Spear Grasses, were only accustomed to light and inter-
mittent non-hoofed marsupial browsing activities. Heavier and
continuous grazing by hoofed mammals stressed tussock densities, and
suppressed seedling regeneration, creating bare habitats suitable for other
native shorter Winter growing or exotic grasses. In this chain, defoliation
of trees to promote grass and herbage, soil compaction and decreased
porosity caused by trampling, high soil nitrate levels from concentrated
manuring in sheep folds and walks, and prevention of frequent burning
regimes, were factors that collectively contributed to the decline of this
ecosystem. Introduced pasture species—notably Subterranean Clover—
and the deliberate application of fertilisers that suppressed short Stipa
and Danthonia species completed this near extinction after 1900, while
at the same time raising sheep and cattle carrying capacities.
332 D. S. Jones
herbaceous plants and grasses give way for the silk grass and the little annuals
[which] … die in our deep clay soil with a few hot days in spring, and nothing
returns to supply their place until later in winter following. The consequence is
that the long deep-rooted grasses that held our strong clay hill together have died
out; the ground is now exposed to the sun, and it has cracked in all directions;
also the sides of precipitous creeks—long slips, taking trees and all with them.
When I first came here [in 1840], I knew of but two landslips … now there
are hundreds.
* * *
Barwon Park was renowned for its Rabbits. It is recorded that 12,608 were
killed there in 1865, and 11,277 from January to August in 1866. They were
the product of 12 does and 6 bucks liberated seven years earlier—18,000
Rabbits from one doe! They were killed within a mile of the place where they
were first liberated.
The rabbit, from 1865 onwards, became a symbolic and a hated spec-
tre on the Australian landscape. By 1870, it had spread extensively
throughout the District: to the grazier, it was a pest, to the selector a
financial nightmare, yet to the poor, it was a cheap meal. The implica-
tions of its invasion upon the landscape were readily grasped but actions
to control it were hampered by fencing forms, rabbiting stratagems, and
a prevalent public anti-science attitude. By 1890, they ‘were scudding
across the hills like flocks of sheep’. Success at rabbit control was only
achieved in the 1950s.
Rabbits proved adept colonisers by changing their dietary regimes to
feast on native and exotic grass shoots and tree seedlings and to strip bark
from young saplings. Because sheep specialisation was important in this
time period, the competing close browsing by rabbits left its mark by
placing a ceiling upon and often reducing sheep carrying capacities to the
detriment of the grazier. The selector, however, was threatened with crop
loss—his main source of income. Ironically, rabbit meat provided a cheap
and palatable alternative to lamb or beef for poorer residents of the
District, if not the shillings gained from skin and carcass sales. A compel-
ling legal principle also evolved, of ‘landholder onus’: the freeholder or
leaseholder was responsible for rabbit destruction; a principle enshrined
in subsequent rabbit and noxious weed control legislation in Victoria.
334 D. S. Jones
* * *
In considering loss of fauna and avifauna four factors are evident. These
include the role of direct killing, habitat modification or destruction,
introduced species impacts, and the sharp destabilisation of traditional
human-animal relationships. Of these, habitat loss was the most influen-
tial as it directly impinged upon nesting, food, shelter and breeding
requirements of fauna and avifauna, so it is valuable to summarise these
habitat changes before considering impacts upon actual species.
There are four habitats in the District and each has experienced varied
modifications. Animal communities tend to correlate with these homo-
geneous habitats, although some animals and plants are widespread
throughout the District.
In the Manna and River Red Gum dominated grassy open woodlands,
on both the volcanic plains and the stony rises, extinction correlates with
clearing. This woodland habitat was clearly very extensive before 1830,
fragmentary on the plains but denser on the stony rises. Aboriginals min-
imised tree removal through fire-stick farming, colonials extensively cut
timber for housing, shelter, fencing, firewood and to assist cropping and
grazing, but loss of woodlands was more pronounced in this time period.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 335
vegetation that provided shelter, hollows, and breeding nests for these
animals as well as for mammals and reptiles, that was more detrimental.
Water bodies within rivers, streams, fresh and saline lakes, were also
modified although the degree of disturbance cannot be assessed. While
Aboriginals impeded water flows through their fish traps, colonials con-
structed impoundments, de-snagged watercourses, diverted water flows,
drained water bodies, increased saline and saltation levels, and thereby
decreased eutrophication processes. The degree of impact upon fish, eels,
riparian and aquatic vegetation, and zooplankton is conjecture, but cer-
tainly stocking of waters with introduced fish species would have aided
modifications.
The impact of these habitat changes on avifauna is difficult to assess,
and the degree of impact, other than measuring habitat loss, is conjec-
ture. Long-billed Corellas, previously dependent upon Murnong, shifted
to Onion Grass as their primary staple but found competition with rab-
bits for summer cereal grains and Onion Grass corms. For other fauna,
the collective spread of scattered woodland remnants on rail and road
reserves, uncleared farmland, watercourse edges and in plantations, may
not be ecologically viable but they still provided shelter, roosts, protec-
tion, and nesting sites for permanent and migratory species. Seasonal and
numerical changes in species, influenced by climate, wetlands availability,
dietary insects and nectar availability, and duck shootings, would also
have affected these patterns.
Freshwater wetland-reliant species and species that use this habitat
specifically for breeding would have been most affected. Species reliant
upon conditions such as fish availability, freshwater meadows, shallow
freshwater marshes, deep freshwater marshes, permanent saline wet-
lands, presence of Cane Grass, Lignum spp., or reeds, salinity less than
60 ppt, greater than 60 ppt or hypersaline lakes, benthic organisms,
pollen and nectar, small aquatic animals, submerged plants and mol-
luscs, would have been constrained by loss of these habitats. Of these,
the Plains Wanderer and Brolga were originally prolific in the grass-
lands and wetlands but are now rare, and ‘the extensive changes to this
lake region since colonial settlement have reduced most of the water-
bird populations’.
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 337
* * *
While there were substantial losses of faunal and avian species between
1800 and 1900, some indigenous species adapted and thrived in both
time periods, and some introduced species became dominant in the ani-
mal biota of the District. Chief among the latter were sheep, horses, cat-
tle, and rabbits.
Native species that benefitted from landscape changes in both time
periods are limited. Only the Brush-tailed Possum adapted well to habi-
tat changes and may have increased in population since colonial settle-
ment, moving to Sugar, River Red, and Manna Gum plantations and
roadside reserves—a favourite habitat for bats—as well as the roofs of
structures and houses. Eastern Grey Kangaroo populations escalated in
the two time periods, from the lack of regular Aboriginal and dingo hunt-
ing, but severe hunting and culling practices by the colonials in this time
period drastically reduced its numbers.
A number of birds revelled in the new open pastures and endowment of
seeds. A small flock of a hundred Galahs, Long-billed Corellas, or Sulphur-
crested Cockatoos ‘might remove 10 to 14 hundredweight of seed a year;
a flock of 5,000 birds might consume 25 to 30 tons of seed a year’.
Similarly, Jacky Winters, White-fronted Chats, Yellow-rumped Thornbills,
Richard’s Pipits, White-backed Magpies, Australian Magpie-larks, and
some native Quails enjoyed the newly up-ploughed bulbous roots, pasture
seeds and insects, aquatic loving invertebrates in farm dams and impound-
ments, foraging in tussocky grasslands, wet grasslands, pastures, or shallow
waters around dam edges. They also found new roosts, usually in River
Red or Manna Gum hollows along streams, on poles, in homestead and
ancillary structure roofs, or in tussock depressions. Frogs were also benefi-
ciaries of the expansion of farm dams and water impoundments.
In contrast, it was many of the introduced mammals, avifauna, and
fish, by deliberate acclimatisation efforts, that thrived in the District’s
environment. Song birds were acclimated to counter the perceived
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 339
‘savage silence’ of the landscape and to recapture the bird life and sounds
of English and Scottish ‘home’ pastures. Common Blackbirds, Song
Thrushes, Common Starlings, European Goldfinches, European
Greenfinches, Domestic Pigeons, and the ‘most destructive’ House
Sparrows, were introduced by early colonials (mainly during 1861–1865)
and they readily spread into pastures, and roosted around homesteads
and in townships. Skylarks, Tree Sparrows, Linnets, and the ‘indefatiga-
ble grub and grasshopper destroyers’, Indian Minahs, were also released
but were less successful in acclimatising. Game birds to cater for shooting
pleasure, such as Pheasants, Partridges, Californian Quail, and Grouse,
were introduced but suffered by eating poisoned baits and strychnine laid
for rabbits, or from the depredations of Quolls and Foxes. Many of these
species were released in Geelong and Ballarat and at ‘Ercildoune’, Tower
Hill, and ‘Barwon Park’.
‘Ercildoune’ also provided important hatching and breeding ponds for
fish. Brown and Salmon Trout were dietary favourites. The former was
successfully released into Mt Emu and Merri Creeks, Hopkins River and
Lakes Purrumbete and Bullenmerri in the late 1860s–1870s. Redfin and
Rainbow Trout also thrived in freshwater lakes and some watercourses;
Mosquito Fish, Goldfish, Crucian Carp, and Tench escaped or were
introduced, the latter two in Lake Colac.
Brown Hares and Foxes readily acclimatised in the 1860s. Hares readily
adopted the new grasses, and Foxes found new prey in small native mam-
mals, such as the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, despite the ravages of Quolls,
Eagles, Hawks, and Falcons. Hares also ‘did not become well established
until after the initial plague of rabbits had decreased in the early 1900s‘.
Red Deer was introduced at ‘Carngham’, ‘Ercildoune’, ‘Langi Willi’, and
‘Longerenong’, with the latter comprising the base stock in Gariwerd.
Feral dogs and cats thrived around settlement precincts upon small native
mammals, including Eastern Barred Bandicoots, and House Mice that
lived ‘around and within houses, sheds and haystacks, as well as in open
paddocks‘, or competed with Quolls for food resources.
* * *
340 D. S. Jones
* * *
The locus classicus of the colonial attitude to the landscape during this
time period was invented in Marcus Clarke’s ‘Preface’ to Sea Spray and
Smoke Drift (1876). A seductive treatise of rhetoric, reconstructed from
his critiques on Photographs of the Pictures in the National Gallery,
Melbourne (1874), it purportedly voiced literary feelings and perceptions
felt in the period, expressing ‘the dominant note of Australian scenery’.
The romanticism in the ‘purple passage’, however, was belated to devel-
opments in painting, gardening, and architecture that were already
exploring the en plein air tradition in Golden Summers, a ‘natural’ design
style, and provincial architecture through Gothicism. The ‘oppression’ of
the landscape became naught to the children of ‘Sere woodlands and sad
wildernesses’: wide horizons, ‘sublimity’ of natural light, and intimacy
with its patterns permitted them to ‘enter into the view’ of the landscape.
Figures 6.7 and 6.8 depict the painting locations and places mentioned
in this section.
This section examines the changes in the landscape imagery in this
time period through artistic and literary canvases, and the use of vocabu-
laries, in expressing this ‘dominant note’ about the tangible and sensory
character of this landscape.
* * *
6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’
The ‘squatter sorcerer’ cast a wand across the plains in this time period
imposing ‘all the hostile emblems of agricultural settlement’. This time
period witnessed an acceptance of the fulfilment of this vision through its
expression in structures of bluestone, and canvases of emerald green and
azure blue, that recast its earthy riches. A shadow of ‘weird melancholia’
however, overhung the comprehension of the landscape as it held a strong
position in translating the moods and rhythms of the landscape. Literary
expressions of ‘melancholy’, ‘grotesqueness’, and the ‘haunting solitude of
silence’, used by visitors or city-based travellers, were replaced by an inti-
macy that permitted the noun ‘weirdness’ to be attached to ‘melancholy’.
Long-standing residents and artists of this landscape had advanced
further and sought a kinship with the place to better detail its qualities
and cater for its moods.
To the attuned resident, the landscape told of deeper patterns and held
out refreshing tints to ‘clear eyes’. ‘Corrugated iron-roofing glistening in
the light’ was symptomatic of the spread of structures cloaked in sharp
sheens and deep, mysterious, dark blue, carved from the bowels of the
plains. Silver tussocks, tinted with yellow-greens, waved on the plains;
their forlorn reddened cousins sought refuge in unploughed reserves.
Summer mists floated on hills, spreading lays of peace, while descriptive
metaphors, colours, and ecological details in colonial literature and art
moved to open their eyes to the sensory qualities of the plains. Such an
insight read the skies and gum trees more objectively, capturing the poetics of
the ‘skyline’s blue burnish’d resistance’.
Quickened by emotion … [they were] left to descry the colours in the apparent
colourlessness … the upturned earth that showed red, white, puce, gamboge; the
blue in the grey of the new leafage; the geranium red of young scrub; the purple-
blue depths of the shadows. To know, too, … a rank nostalgia for the scent of
the aromatic foliage; for the honey fragrance of the wattle; the perfume that rises
hot and heavy as steam from vast paddocks of sweet, flowering lucerne—even
for the sting and tang of countless miles of bush ablaze.
One recognised the hidden scents of wattles and enjoyed the witchery
in impetuous mocking cries of native birds. Gloomy adjectives lost their
questioning power, one sat back,
344 D. S. Jones
too lazy to speak, almost to think. The beautiful flower-garden which lay before
us … looked rather brown and sere, after the hot winds, although the orange-
trees were still green enough, and vast cluster of purple grapes were ripening
rapidly among the yellowing vine-leaves.
* * *
accessories of the scene are subordinated to the prevailing sense of quiet. All is
hot, silent, still, and dreamy … The air is heavy with the intense hush of the
last instant of a dying Australian summer’s day, and the old gum trees stand
alone with motionless branches and folded leaves beside the solitary pool.
While emerald grasses may have been exaggerated, the breadth of the
horizon’s skies and vegetation were perceptively descried, as also in Mount
Fyans Homestead (1869). A freehand trait in Mount Fyans (1872) caught
bending, wind-blown trees, echoing the direction of streaming
346 D. S. Jones
We would, therefore, seriously advise the settler here who has the welfare of the colony
at heart, as well as the health and prosperity of himself and dependents, to set out at
once to work … and plant the scrubby lands (particularly well adapted for European
and American trees), and the sunny and shaded slopes, valleys, river margins, moun-
tain tops, spreading plains, sandy wastes and golden gullies, with trees and shrubs,
which grow and flourish while men sleep, adding wealth and beauty to a country
already rich in precious metals and foreign luxuries of every description, but poor
indeed in that spirit and enterprise which has made other countries great—viz. the
giving the mass of people a vested interest in the soil they tread, encouraging them to
improve it, and bring forth the wealth and blessings of which it is capable, when
aided by their united labour, which would in a short time not only make Victoria a
self-supporting colony, but go far towards checking the migratory and unsettled char-
348 D. S. Jones
acter of its inhabitants, by inducing them to dot the country with homesteads of their
own, as well as improving their condition both morally and socially.
I look upon it as the crowning folly of my life. I was swept into building it as
the strong man is drawn into the stream he cannot resist. I regard it as a burden
that may encumber my son’s life.
homesteads at ‘Titanga’ and ‘Larra’, the Scots Border County style stables
at ‘Larra’, or the lavish ‘Narrapumelap’ complete with 21 m bluestone tower.
The trend was to emulate and to assert wealth and position over the
landscape, by homestead and garden. While jealousy was one motive,
others were romanticism with personal heritage, the desire to entertain
visitors in style, ‘homestead creation’ itself, visual manifestations of the
dominance of Presbyterianism in the District, or a long term vision of
position, as evidenced at ‘Chatsworth’, ‘Mount Noorat’ and ‘Ercildoune’.
Trollope observed in Australia and New Zealand (1873):
As were country houses and country life then in England, plentiful, proud,
prejudiced, given to hospitality, impatient of contradiction, not highly lettered,
healthy, industrious, careful of the main chance, thoughtful of the future, and
above all, conscious—perhaps a little too conscious—of their own importance,
so now is the house and so is the life of the country gentleman in Australia.
The general belief is that the next generation of squatters, or rather the sons of the
present squatters will be very much more liberal minded than their fathers, as the
great majority of them have been poor men and so haven’t received the best education.
So of course if their families are well educated their tastes will demean something
‘nobby’ (excuse slang) and then there will be more hope for architects.
* * *
the painters who first saw the Australian landscape as it really was’. While
artists did read the landscape with clearer eyes, only some writers and
graziers were more attuned and possessed the agility to put sensory images
on paper. The difficulty was the act of reading, untinted by European
notions, irrespective of being a writer, painter, or designer.
Inherent in the epitaph is an Australia versus Europe landscape com-
parison, and the drawing of value judgements about fauna, flora, and
seasons, compared to those familiar on English shores. These values often
tinted an ability to read the distinctive and inherent beauty in the land-
scape. Lines in Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) tested this insensitivity and por-
trayed a new clarity of perception and intensity of feeling. Clarke
advanced this insight further in ‘purple ink’ adding a flavour to the rec-
ognised aspect of melancholy—the adjective ‘weird’. The pronounce-
ment confirmed an awakening attitude of the emotional significance of
the landscape: ‘his version of Australia is a fantasy in which the normal
order of things is reversed’. Contrasting conflict and romantic associa-
tions were the order, an ambivalence to repelling and attracting symbols
the means, and an attempt to awaken a consciousness in ‘that wild dream-
land called the Bush’ was the objective.
Such an expression of love appears poignantly in Richard Mahony’s
(1929) eyes in Ultima Thule (c.1878–1880) where:
Now, fresh from foreign travel, from a wider knowledge of the beauties of the
old world, he felt doubly alien; and, with his eyes still full of greenery and lush-
ness, he could see less beauty than ever in its dun and arid landscape.
* * *
* * *
relationship with the landscape. The contradictions within, and not the
comparisons from without, underpinned thoughts. Elements within the
landscape were familiar, indelibly woven into the sense of colonial chil-
dren. The obsessive preoccupation of poetry and art in the second time
period, to comprehend and document the physical environment with all
its umbrageous, gnarl’d scenery under vivid blue skies, was disregarded by
a need to explore and encapsulate the qualities and tints of light, the
subtlety of its trees, and the deep personality in its meanings.
To the resident of the new landscape, the imagination of the mind,
inherent in descriptive picture-making, had found ‘clear Australian eyes’.
Permanence inspired new myths and stories to explain landscape potency
and presence, replacing those of long distant clans, where:
It was wholly alien to the constitution of the wild hunter and warriors who had
been wont to traverse pathless woods, to fish in the depths of sunless forest
streams, to chase the game of their native land through the lone untrampled
mead, or the hoar primeval forest.
One layer of ‘voices of the terrible deep’ was replaced by another layer
of dreams, visions, and myths underpinned by fragmented ‘old world’
traditions and mental structures. The ‘nooks and corners of our everyday
scenery’ were investigated, but the mystic and deep meanings remained
as only rumblings in the landscape’s bowels, dark shadows upon rippling
waters of holes, and curious natural features that questioned the spirit of
an alternate other resident within the landscape. The patina of rust fore-
shortened the longingness and marked a growing awareness to the land-
scape’s spirit.
* * *
For Imagery, traits evident are: this phase witnessed a growing search
for allegiance to this landscape, and its exploration through art, literature,
architecture, and garden design to draw out its inner qualities and tex-
tures; colonials sought to read and interpret the landscape through clear
eyes; artistic images sought to explore and express the environment’s
tonal qualities in cultivated landscape scenes; literature sought to shrug
off allegiance to ‘weird melancholy’ by exploring the sensory nuances of
senses; garden design sought to accommodate aesthetic notions in a more
naturalistic design style receptive to the landscape’s patterns and qualities;
and architecture sought to adapt microclimatic issues and the region’s
stone to fashionable European design styles.
* * *
(1985: 120, 123, 124–125, 126), Logan (1966: 154–170, 1968: 133,
134–135), Loudon (1838: 162, 166), MacDonald (1982: 18, 22, 23,
118–119), Mack (1988: 61, 63, 82, 84, 104, 116–117, 123, 133),
Magazanik (1992), Mahoney (1982: 15–36), Maiden (1975: 511–514),
Main (1993: 25), Manifold (1984: 118, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134–135,
137, 161, 178, 179, 184, 188, 189, 193, 203–209, 210, 211), Mansergh
(1983: 109, 110, 116, 117–118), Marriott (1992: 4), Massola (1966:
136, 1968: 318, 1969: 55, 60, 1970a: 98–99, 1970b: 300, 304–305),
McAlpine (1963: 4–5, 6–12, 34, 39–40, 81, 95, 143), McConville and
Moloney (1987: 4–8), McGregor and Oaten (1985: 1, 7, 8, 11–12, 14,
15–16, 25, 26, 29–30, 35, 37, 91, 93, 94), McLaren (1987: 29, 40),
McLellan (1989: 28–29, 30), Mellick (1983: 72–73), Menkhorst and
Beardsell (1982: 228–230, 234, 235, 236, 237–238, 239, 240, 241),
MHSBC (1985: 19, 26, 33, 34–35, 38, 39, 40–41, 45, 47, 55, 142,
149–150, 154–155, 158, 164–165), Miller (1972: 8–27, 37), Moore
(1959: 500–513, 1962: 170–171, 174, 175, 177–178, 180–181),
Murdoch (1921: 94–100), Neale (1988: 46–52), Notman (1989: 7, 19,
40–41, 66–68, 76, 94, 96–98), Oman and Lang (1980: 10, 11, 12,
13–14, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36–37, 46–49, 50–51),
Opie (1986: 11, 12, 17, 23), Palmer (1960: 76), Parsons (1976: 49–52,
68–70, 84–87, 200–204, 232–235, 235–238, 238–243, 257–260),
Patton (1930: 160–161, 177, 183–184, 185–186, 1936: 172–190),
Pearce (1983: 24), Peel (1965: 154–173, 1971: 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82–83,
1974: 11, 29, 81, 99, 107, 108–109, 112–113, 114–115, 119–120),
Pierce (1987: 214), Pizzey (1993: 11), Poulston (1984: 25–26, 27, 28,
31, 33, 37–41, 42, 51, 52–53, 55, 58, 61, 78, 83), Powell (1967: 116,
1968: 346–347, 1971: 36–43, 1973: 134–139), Ramson (1966: 77–90,
1991: 5–19), Richardson (1946: 887, 888, 928), Robb (1962: 115, 116),
Robertson (1985: 1–25), Rolls (1969: 26, 37), Ronald (1978: 52–53),
‘Rusticus’ (1855: 6, 10, 32, 38), Sagazio (1989: 20–22, 1992: 91–95,
116–117, 118), Sawer (1962: 241–258), Sayers (1972: 2, 12, 13–14, 16,
19), Scarlett (1969: 292–294, 1988: 146–149), Seaton (1988: 197),
Seebeck (1979: 255–264), Shaw (1969: 24–25, 32–33, 38, 71–73, 80,
82, 95–96, 121, 133, 140–141, 145–146, 157–158, 164, 174–175, 184,
185, 191–192, 194, 196, 199, fn 7 on 185, plate 27), Smith (1971: 62,
1975: 132–140), Sowden (1972: 164–167, 171, 188–191), Spicer (1988:
358 D. S. Jones
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6 1860–1900: ‘Sunlit Afternoon’ 363
7.1 Introduction
This chapter draws on the qualitative information from the preceding
four chapters and charts an assessment of writings that have occurred for
this landscape since 1993, towards understanding the values that influ-
ence human sensibilities inside this landscape, thus, the nuances that
shape and determine human interpretations of and responses to this place.
For the former, using the theoretical framework of Domains, Pathways,
Gathering Places, Shelters, Plants, Animals, Imagery, and Rhythms is
qualitatively summarised and thereupon quantitatively evaluated as to
their weight of influence upon our human landscape sensibilities and
values, and the activities as human we have partaken of as a consequence.
For the latter, a post-1993 literature mapping has been undertaken using
the same theoretical framework categories to quantitatively measure the
spatial location patterns and framework concentrations of narratives
published about the landscape to assess any patterns and trends.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 371
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_7
372 D. S. Jones
focus for animal habitats and roaming catchments determining daily and
migratory movement patterns; (6) Aboriginal ideology invested religious
responsibilities in individuals and clans through animals ensuring the
perpetuation of species associated with particular beings in anticipation
of the return of Dreaming ancestors; and (7) incremental and continuous
Aboriginal landscape activities, albeit tangibly small, had cumulative and
important manipulative effects upon controlling faunal and avifaunal
populations and habitats in the landscape.
During the contact phase, under Animals, five traits are evident. These
include: (1) the sheep imperative influenced attitudes to land and ele-
vated the animal to mytho-totemic status as squatters sought to breed
them, protect them from prey and Aboriginals, expand their pastures,
and efficiently shear their fleece; (2) native animal communities were
subject to severe destabilisation through rampant colonial hunting activi-
ties, competition with introduced species, and the destruction of nesting
and browsing habitats; (3) colonials used some native animals to supple-
ment their menus, and also to create symbols out of their skins and furs;
(4) exotic animals were introduced to ‘improve’ the sensory environment
of the landscape, for the joys of hunting and fishing, to assist the opera-
tion of their run, and to diversify the homesteads’ dietary resources; and
(5) the scale of loss of animals is unclear whereby through the actions of
hunting and tree destruction, it appears that small to medium herbivores
were more susceptible in contrast kangaroo populations appear to have
increased forcing mass culls.
Post-colonisation, under Animals, five traits are evident. These include:
(1) the hunting ethos to native animals continued but came to be directed
more towards rabbits; (2) while rabbits were introduced for game, their
adaptation to the landscape and population explosion resulted in exten-
sive pasture competition with sheep and their designation as a pest; (3)
sheep were elevated to mythic status, with most grazier activities seeking
to improve their pasturage and fleece through breeding, flock specialisa-
tion, pasture improvement and enclosure, non-pasture habitat destruc-
tion, and any means to reduce prey and competition for pastures; (4)
native fauna populations declined through hunting activities and the
substantive destruction or severe modification of their natural habitats;
and (5) increased sheep browsing resulted in declining native vegetation
380 D. S. Jones
that sought to adapt microclimatic issues and the region’s stone to fash-
ionable European design styles.
Under Rhythms, nine traits are evident. These include: (1) stories,
myths, and cultural belief constructs structured the activities and rituals
of successive human generations in creating a distinctive culturally modi-
fied landscape in this savannah grassland and woodland; (2) animals,
often elevated to symbolic status, were and are strongly linked to natural
features in myths and stories about this landscape; (3) more powerful
myths or stories incorporated and explained unusual natural features in
the landscape; (4) seasonal changes can be discerned by signals in plant
and animal flowering, fruiting, reproduction and migratory patterns; (5)
cyclical patterns in plant and animal systems strongly determine human
activities and relationships with the landscape; (6) the strong horizontal-
ity of the landscape forced humans to be more acutely aware of subtle
sensory qualities and changes in the environment, especially to relieve the
sense of climatic monotony; (7) the landscape’s horizontality pushed
human focus upwards to be more conscious and watchful of changing
patterns and signs in day and night skies; (8) the sky radiated a remark-
able sense of energy, manifest especially in its light intensity, and in the
features of the sun and stars; and (9) bushfires created a singular aura of
fear and energy about their intensity and presence.
Tables 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 provide summative quantitative weighted
assessments and evaluations as to the nuances that shape and determine
Table 7.5 (continued)
Table 7.5 (continued)
these narratives that acted as a foil for the fusion of time and space into
geographical repositories of meaning. Features in the landscape were and
are symbolic of Country’s, constituting rules for ways of living, and
engendering a continuum of moral character and culture according to
the metacommunicative messages in myths and stories. Places were and
are formed and created by Dreaming ancestors through their daily camp-
ing, hunting, and fighting activities: hills were shaped, waterholes were
diffused, fire was passed about. Central in Aboriginal ‘oral literature’ is
the re-enactment of these events and passages by song, story, and dance
at actual sites in the myth to explain landscape creation and identifica-
tion: the ‘act’ re-awakes the ‘act’ of dreaming of that place and nurtures
into existence the spirit of that place, causing the place to come into
being again (Dawson 1881, 60).
The Western District landscape possesses all these Aboriginal values
and meanings, per Country, but also a new post-1800 colonised layer of
meanings and interpretations. The qualitative discussions in Chaps. 3–6
evidence many of these values and human relationships, and the synthesis
mapping of these in Tables 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 translates these meanings
and relationships into more tangible measurable attributes.
What is clear from this longitudinal temporal cross-cultural analysis of
place is that the traits of Domains, Imagery, and Rhythms undeniably
hold the ingredients of the ‘sense of place’ of the Western District land-
scape. Take these three out of any analysis of this place, and your appraisal,
assessment, human relationships and engagements, and an understand-
ing of values, and thereupon this place falls to pieces.
Thus, there is a triangular relationship in human consciousness and
unconsciousness between these three traits that characterise the sense of
this place, irrespective of culture.
The cross-cultural narrative of this place predominately starts with
characterising a wide expansive landscape possessing an infinity of sight-
line occasionally indispersed with strange eminences but hosting a por-
tent cloak of stories and meanings both tangible and intangible to the
human eye and mind.
390 D. S. Jones
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402 D. S. Jones
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 403
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7_8
404 D. S. Jones
* * *
In the last week, I have spent time out on-Country with Wadawurrung
People experiencing the intimacy of their Country (Powell et al. 2019;
Unearthed Heritage Australia 2021; WTOAC 2020). We have journeyed
and immersed, pondered and chatted, discussed 30,000 years as if it were
yesterday, talked of the seasonality of the Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnan-
tha) flowerings, over-turned quartz and silcrete flakes and shards, watched
the flight of pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus) overhead, touched the lerps
of Blackwood trees (Acacia melanoxylon), watched bull ants (Myrmecia
spp.) emerge industriously, heard the wind in our hair whilst listening to
bird song, and looked out upon intangible visual connectivities of past
ancestral exploits and journeys now implicit in the physicality of place. It
has not been about genius loci. Nor has it been about the ‘art’ of designing.
It has been about ‘reading’ and appreciating what needs to be respected
from the ravages of Western land use activities (Benterrak et al. 1996).
Such is different from the inquiry framework in Chaps. 3–5, within
this book, that thematically unpacked the narratives of the Western
District landscape of Victoria. The framework offered and tested in these
chapters provides a recipe in understanding the key weft threads of this
landscape. It is not a substitute for Country and Aboriginal land ethic
(Rose 1988, 1996), but both hold interesting parallels and comparabili-
ties in the way that human values are recognised. Analogous themes
reside in both, but they are cast in different modes of self and cultural
baggage.
Genius loci is thus a concept; a realm impossible for us to consciously
design and create. Its antecedents and flavours hold the collision of
human thought and action within nature and the legacy of temporality.
For me, to talk of the meaning of a place as possessing 30,000 years of
history, and that such is still in its continuum, is a ‘foreign country’
8 Sense of Place Mappings 405
The material nature we inhabit and the ideal nature we carry in our heads
exist always in complex relationship with each other, and we will mis-
understand both ourselves and the world if we fail to explore that relation-
ship in all its rich and contradictory complexity.
* * *
tively reading every detail. Wary, I monitored her progress from a deep leather
settee, while trying to engross myself in the adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and
The Magic Pudding (Lindsay 1924). Occasionally she broke her reading and
transcribed paragraphs and statistics into leather-bound notebooks, wandered
up to and studied the map over the fireplace, or looked out into the distant
sunlit paddocks.
In the evenings she would sit out on the verandah with grandfather sipping
sherry and profusely scribbling notes from his utterances. They would talk about
his old friends, the landscape he remembered, the buildings and gardens that he
built and planted, his recollections of Scotland, and the stories he recalled of the
plains. The latter I would always lap up as pleasurable distractions to my bois-
terous pet magpie or the proddings of my grandmother to have another biscuit.
Grandfather eventually confided to me that the ‘intruder’ was writing a book
about the pioneers and history of the District but that he doubted it would be
published because he perceived there was no history here on the plains.
* * *
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8 Sense of Place Mappings 407
Plants
A.
‘Acacia Hedge’ Acacia paradoxa
Acacia spp.
Acanthus Acanthus mollis
Aleppo Pine Pinus halepensis
Allocasuarina spp.
‘Anchistiria’ Themeda triandra
Angel’s Trumpet Datura arborea
Apple Tree Malus sylvestris
Ash Fraxinus spp.
Atlas Cedar Cedrus atlantica
Austral Bluebell Wahlenbergia gracilis
Austral Bracken Pteridium esculentum
Austral Hollyhock Lavatera plebeia
Austral Seablite Suaeda australis
Austral Stork’s Bill Pelargonium australe
Austrian Pine Pinus austriaca
B.
Barley Hordeum spp.
Bathurst Burr Xanthium spinosum
(continued)
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 409
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7
410 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
(continued)
(continued)
Gray Copperburr Sclerolaena diacantha
Greenhood Orchids Pterostylis spp.
Grevillea spp.
H.
Hakea spp.
Hawthorns Crataegus spp.
Hedge Wattle Acacia paradoxa
Helichrysum spp. Helichrysum or Ozothamnus spp.
Himalayan Spruce Picea smithiana
Holm Oak Quercus ilex
‘Honeysuckle’ Banksia marginata
Hoop Pine Araucaria cunninghamii
Hyacinths Hyacinth spp.
I.
‘Inland Noonflower’ Carpobrotus modestus
Inland Pigface Carpobrotus modestus
Irish Yew Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’
Italian Cypress Cupressus sempervirens
J.
Jessamines Cestrum spp.
Jonquils Narcissus spp.
K.
Kangaroo Apple Solanum laciniatum
Kangaroo Grass Themeda triandra
‘Kangaroo Thorn’ Acacia paradoxa
Kurrajong Brachychiton populneus
L.
Late Black Wattle Acacia mearnsii
Laurustinus Viburnum tinus
Lawson Cypress Chamaecyparis lawsoniana
Lightwood Acacia implexa
‘Lightwood’ Acacia melanoxylon
Lilly-Pilly Acmena smithii
Lily-of-the-Valley Pieris spp.
Lucerne Medicago spp.
M.
Magenta Stork’s-Bill Pelargonium rodneyanum
Magnolia Magnolia spp.
Manna Gum Eucalyptus viminalis
Maple Acer spp.
Maritime Pine Pinus pinaster
(continued)
Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary 413
(continued)
(continued)
(continued)
Spiky Blue Devil Eryngium ovinum
Spiny-Headed Mat-rush Lomandra longifolia
Squirrel-Tailed Fescue Vulpia bromiodes
Stone Pine Pinus pinea
Subterranean Clover Trifolium subterraneum
Sugar Gum Eucalyptus cladocalyx
Sugar Pine Pinus lambertina
Swamp Gum Eucalyptus ovata
Swamp Lily Ottelia ovalifolia
Swamp Wallaby Grass Amphibromus spp.
Sweet Briar Rosa rubiginosa
Sweet Bursaria Bursaria spinosa
Sword-Sedge Lepidosperma spp.
T.
Tall Saw-Sedge Gahnia clarkei
Tangled Lignum Muehlenbeckia sphacelata
Tarata Pittosporum eugenioides
Thyme Thymus vulgaris
Tree Everlasting Ozothamnus ferrugineus
Tree of Heaven Ailanthus altissima
Tree Violet Hymenathera dentata
‘Trefoil Burr’ Lotus spp.
Tufted Bluebell Wahlenbergia communis
Tussock Grass Poa labillardieri
Tussock Grasses Poa spp.
V.
Variable Groundsel Senecio lautus
Variegated Thistle Carduus marianus
Velvet Tussock Grass Poa morrisii
Verbena Stachytarpheta mutabilis
Viburnum Viburnum spp.
W.
Wall-Flower Cheiranthus spp.
Wallaby Grass Danthonia penicillata
Wallaby Grasses Danthonia spp.
Walnut Tree Juglans spp.
Water-Mats Lepilaena spp.
Water-Milfoils Myriophyllum spp.
Water-Ribbon Triglochin procera
Weeping Grass Microlaena stipoides
Weeping Willow Salix babylonica
Wellingtonia Sequoiadendron giganteum
Western Yellow Pine Pinus ponderosa
(continued)
416 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
Animals
Invertebrates
Cicadas
Crickets
Mosquitos
Sickle-Clawed Yabby Engeanus sp.
Spiny Crayfish Eustacus bispinosus
Witchetty Grubs
Fish
(continued)
Reptiles
Birds
A.
Australasian Brown Bittern Botaurus poiciloptilus
Australian Bustard Ardeotis australis
Australian Coot Fulica atra
Australian Kestrel Falco cenchroides
Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen
Australian Magpie-Lark Grallina cyanoleuca
Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus
‘Australian’ Pipit Anthus novaeseelandiae
Australian Raven Corvus coronoides
Australian Shelduck Tadorna tadornoides
Australian Skylark Mirafra javanica
Australian Snipe Gallinago hardwickii
(continued)
418 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
B.
Banded Stilt Cladorhynchus leucocephalus
‘Banksian Cockatoo’ Calyptorhynchus magnificus
Barn Owl Tyto alba
Bell Miner Manorina melanophrys
Blackbird Turdus merula
‘Black Cockatoo’ Calyptorhynchus magnificus
Black Duck Anas superciliosa
Black Fan-Tailed Flycatcher Rhipidura rufifrons
Black Jay Corcorax melanorhamphus
Black Swan Cygnus atratus
Black-Winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus
‘Blue Bill’ Oxyura australis
‘Blue Crane’ Grus rubicundus
‘Blue Crane’ Ardea novaehollandiae
Blue Mountain Parrot Trichoglossus haematodus
Blue-Billed Duck Oxyura australis
Blue-Headed Wren Malurus cyaneus
Boobook Owl Ninox novaeseelandiae
Brolga Grus rubicundus
Bronzewing Phaps chalcoptera
‘Brown Bittern’ Botaurus poiciloptilus
Brown Quail Coturnix ypsilophorus
‘Bushman’s Clock’ Dacelo gigas
Bustard Ardeotis australis
C.
California Quail Lophortyx californicus
Cape Barron Geese Cereopsis novaehollandiae
Chestnut Teal Anas castanea
‘Chinese Quail’ Coturnix chinensis
Collared Sparrowhawk Accipiter cirrhocephalus
Common Blackbird Turdus mercula
Common Bronzewing Phaps chalcoptera
Common Myna Acridotheres tristis
Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus
Common Skylark Alauda arvensis
Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris
Coot Fulica atra
Corella Cacatua tenuirostris
Cormorant Phalacrocorax spp.
Crakes Pozana spp.
Crow Corvus coronoides
Curlew Sandpiper Calidris ferruginea
(continued)
Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary 419
(continued)
D.
Domestic Pigeon Columba livia
Double-Banded Dotterel Charadrius bicinctus
Dusky Moorhen Gallinula tenebrosa
E.
‘Eagle-Hawk’ Aquila audax
Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis
Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae
English Blackbird Turdus merula
English Skylark Alauda arvensis
Eurasian Coot Fulica atra
Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis
European Greenfinch Carduelis chloris
European House Sparrow Passer domesticus
European Thrush Turdus philomelos
F.
‘Farmers’ Friend’ Threskiornis spinicollis
Fork-Tailed Swift Apus pacificus
Freckled Duck Stictonetta naevosa
G.
Galah Cacatua roseicapilla
Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus
Great Egret Egretta alba
Green Parroquet Glossopsitta porphyrocephala
Greenshank Tringa nebularia
H.
Hardhead Aytha australis
Herons Ardea spp.
Hoary-Headed Grebe Poliocephalus poliocephalus
House Sparrow Passer domesticus
I.
Ibis Threskiornis spp.
Indian Dove Streptopelia chinensis
‘Indian Minah’ Acridotheres tristis
Indian Myna Acridotheres tristis
Indian Peacock Pavo cristatus
J.
Jacky Winter Microeca leucophaea
Japanese Snipe Gallinago hardwickii
(continued)
420 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
K.
Kestrel Falco cenchroides
King Quail Coturnix chinensis
Kookaburra Dacelo gigas
L.
‘Latham’s Snipe’ Gallinago hardwickii
‘Laughing Jackass’ Dacelo gigas
Laughing Kookaburra Dacelo gigas
Little Cormorant Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
‘Linnet’ Lichenostomus flavicollis
Long-Billed Corella Cacatua tenuirostris
M.
Marsh Harrier Circus aeruginosus
Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles
Masked Plover Vanellus miles
Miner Bird Manorina melanocephala
Mopoke Ninox novaeseelandiae
‘Mopoke’ Podargus strigoides
‘Morepork’ Ninox novaeseelandiae
Mountain Duck Tadorna tadornoides
Mute Swan Cygnus olor
N.
Nankeen Kestrel Falco cenchroides
‘Native Companion’ Grus rubicundus
‘Native Turkey’ Ardeotis australis
Noisy Miner Manorina melanocephala
P.
Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa
Painted Snipe Rostratula benghalensis
Pallid Cuckoo Cuculus pallidus
Peacock Pavo cristatus
Pectoral Sandpiper Calidris melanotos
Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
Plains Turkey Ardeotis australis
Plains Wanderer Pedionomus torquatus
Powerful Owl Ninox strenua
Purple Swamphen Porhyrio porphyrio
Q.
‘Quail Hawk’ Circus aeruginosus
Quails Coturnix spp.
(continued)
Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary 421
(continued)
R.
Rails Rallus spp.
Rainbow Lorikeet Trichoglossus haematodus
Raven Corvus coronoides
‘Red-crest’ Cacatua roseicapilla
Red-Necked Stint Calidris ruficollis
Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo Calyptorhynchus magnificus
Richard’s Pipit Anthus novaeseelandiae
Ring-Necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus
‘Rosella’ Platycercus eximius
S.
Sacred White Ibis Threskiornis aethiopica
Seagull Larus novaehollandiae
Sharp-Tailed Sandpiper Calidris acuminata
‘Shepherd’s Companion’ Rhipidura leucophrys
Silver Gull Larus novaehollandiae
Singing Bushlark Mirafra javanica
Singing Honeyeater Lichenostomus virescens
Skylark Alaudus arvensis
‘Soldier Bird’ Manorina melanocephala
Song Thrush Turdus philomelos
‘Sparrow-Hamk’ Accipiter cirrhocephalus
‘Speckled Duck’ Stictonetta naevosa
Spine-Tailed Swift Hirundapus caudacutus
Spoonbills Phalatea spp.
Spotted Turtledove Streptopelia chinenesis
‘Spur-Winged Plover’ Charadrius bicinctus
Straw-necked Ibis Threskiornis spinicollis
Stubble Quail Coturnix pectoralis
Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo Cacatua galerita
Superb Blue Wren Malurus cyaneus
Swamp Hen Porphyrio porphyrio
Swamp Quail Coturnix ypsilophorus
Swamp Hawk Circus aeruginosus
T.
Tawny Frogmouth Podargus strigoides
Tawny-Crowned Honeyeater Phylidonyris melanops
‘Turkey-Quail’ Pedionumus torquatus
W.
‘Weather-Bird’ Cuculus pallidus
Wedge-Tailed Eagle Aquila audax
Whiskered Tern Chlidonias hybrida
Whistling Kite Haliastur sphenurus
(continued)
422 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
Mammals
A.
Australian Fur Seal Arctocephalus pusillus
B.
Bilby Thlacomys lagotis
Bridled Nailtail Onychogalea fraenata
Brown Bandicoot Isoodon obesulus
Brown Hare Lepus capensis
Brush-Tailed Phascogale Phascogale tapoatafa
Brushtail Possum Trichosurus vulpecula
C.
Cattle Bos taurus
D.
‘Dasyure’ Dasyurus maculatus & D. viverrinus
Dingo Canis familiaris dingo
Dog Canis familiaris
Dunnarts Sminthopsis spp.
(continued)
Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary 423
(continued)
E.
Eastern Barred Bandicoot Perameles gunnii
Eastern Grey Kangaroo Macropus giganteus
Eastern Quoll Dasyurus viverrinus
Echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus
European Rabbit Orcyctolagus cuniculus
F.
Fat-Tailed Dunnart Sminthopsis crassicaudata
Feathertail Glider Acrobates pygmaeus
Flying Mouse Acrobates pygmaeus
‘Flying Squirrel’ Phascogale tapoatafa
Fox Vulpes vulpes
G.
‘Grey Kangaroo’ Macropus giganteus
H.
Horse Equus caballus
House Mouse Mus musculus
K.
Kangaroo Rat Rattus fuscipes
Koala Phascolarctos cinereus
L.
Long-Nosed Bandicoot Perameles nasuta
N.
‘Native Bear’ Phascolarctos cinereus
‘Native Cat’ Dasyurus viverrinus
P.
Platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus
‘Porcupine’ Tachyglossus aculeatus
R.
Rabbit-Eared Tree-rat Conilurus albipes
Red Deer Cervus elaphus
Red Kangaroo Macropus rufus
Red-Bellied Pademelon Thylogale billardierii
Red-Necked Wallaby Macropus rufogriseus
Ring-Tailed Bettong Bettongiua penicillata
Ring-Tailed Possum Pseudocheirus peregrinus
S.
Sheep Ovies aries
‘Spotted Quoll’ Dasyurus maculatus
(continued)
424 Plant and Animal Nomenclature Glossary
(continued)
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 425
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
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References 471
A Barigar, 84
Adelaide, 181, 189, 225, 235, 294 Barng, 137, 138
Allansford, 312 Barnk, 137, 138
Ararat, 181, 190, 227, 281, 286, 291 Baronga, 85, 89, 91, 100
Arrandoovong Creek, 123 Barrabool Hills, 226, 278
Australia Felix, 10, 50–56, 155, 170, Barrh, 85
172, 178, 181, 183, 383 Basin Banks, 198, 199, 245, 301,
Avebury, 60, 136 316, 323
Beaufort, 312
Beeac, 285
B Belfast, 167, 181, 184, 281
Baangal Parish, 219, 227, 317, 321 Bessiebelle, 99, 217, 315, 318–320
Bainenong, 123 Billawin, 92
Ballaarat, 188, 191 Billimin, 84
Ballangeich, 229 Billimina, 92
Ballarat, 244, 292, 339 Birregurra Parish, 162, 167
Balmoral, 167, 300 Birregurra, 162, 167
Banyenong, 85 The Black Range, 92, 130
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 477
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7
478 Place Names Index
Black Swamp, 75, 78, 89, 119, 205 The Camp of the Emu’s Foot, 92
Black’s Hill, 230 Cape Otway, 85
Blackwood Creek, 315 Caramut Parish, 297
Boloke, 75, 85, 89, 95, 98, 117, 121, Caramut, 89, 119, 165, 189, 195,
122, 136 209, 211, 218, 297, 316
Boomerang Ridge, 180 Carngham Parish, 166, 168, 184,
Booruc, 85, 116 309, 331, 339
Boram Boram, 196 Casterton, 184, 190, 280, 291,
Borriyalloak Parish, 317 296, 298
Branxholme, 280 The Cave of the Serpents, 92, 115,
Broken Creek, 317 133, 134, 136
Brown’s Waterholes, 292, 317, 328 Ceres, 91
Bryan’s Creek, 194 Challicum Creek, 134, 219
Buckinghamshire, 61 Challicum, 202, 203, 219,
Buckley’s Swamp, 95 317, 324
Buffalo Ranges, 287 Chatham’s Lines, 90
Bukkar whuurong, 78 Cobrico, 197
Bullen meri, 78 Colac Botanic Gardens, 301
Bullen Merri, 198, 323 Colac forest, 273
Buninyong, 181 Colac, 162, 174, 226, 230, 278,
Bunjil’s Cave, 92, 115, 133 281, 295, 312, 318,
Buntingdale, 192, 203, 204 324, 339
Burrong, 92 Coleraine, 190, 280, 291, 295,
Burrumbeep Parish, 80, 220 298, 305, 311, 315, 328,
Burumbeep, 80 345, 349
Burumbolak, 85 Condah Parish, 162
Bush Creek, 298, 328, 345 Condah Swamp, 89, 205, 319
Byaduk Parish, 312 Condah, 182, 311, 319
Byaduk, 312 Connewarren Lagoon, 86
Convincing Ground, 194
Cor.ramut, 89, 90, 119, 123
C Coraing, 122, 128
Calvert Lough, 230 The Craigs, 92, 135
Campaspe River, 182 Cressy, 180, 191, 292, 299, 316
Camperdown Botanic Gardens, 323 Cro.cup.per ije, 84, 85, 89, 90, 95,
Camperdown, 181, 188, 196, 218, 117, 122, 126, 127
245, 278, 297, 299, 301, 316, Croajingolong, 184
323, 325 Curdies River valley, 230, 319
Place Names Index 479
H Koang, 293
Hamilton botanic gardens, 298 Kolora swamp, 224, 319
Hamilton, 167, 180, 189, 190, 278, Kolora, 175, 283, 312
282, 286, 291, 292, 294, 297, Konda, 89, 138
298, 312, 315, 320 Konong Wootong Creek, 194
Haunted Gully, 196 Konong Wootong Parish, 194
Hawkesdale, 162, 190, 298 Koort-koort-nong Parish, 212,
Henty Creek, 300 226, 323
Hexham, 167, 189, 195, 209, 218, Koroit, 78, 190, 194, 291, 301
278, 292, 297, 316 Koroite Creek, 190
Heytesbury forest, 280 Koroite valley, 98
Heywood, 167 Kuruc-a-ruc Creek, 308
Hochkirch, 280 Kuurnkolak, 122, 127
Homerton, 122
Hopkins River Falls, 122, 198, 301
Hopkins River, 85, 86, 91, 100, 122, L
162, 189, 286, 295, 316, Lady Julia Percy Island, 135
327, 339 Lake Albacutya, 134
Hotspur, 167 Lake Bolac, 89, 98, 117, 136, 161,
162, 181, 183, 190, 191, 299
Lake Boloke, 75, 85, 89, 95, 98, 117,
I 121, 122, 136
Italy, 30, 242, 247 Lake Bullen Merri, 198, 323
Lake Buloke, 85, 123
Lake Buninjon, 83, 84, 138
J Lake Burrumbeet, 319
Jallukar, 91 Lake Colac, 162, 174, 226, 230,
Janang-en-yawiwe, 92 295, 324, 339
Lake Colongulac, 122, 196, 235
Lake Condah Mission, 80
K Lake Condah Station, 193
Kangatong Parish, 190, 217, 315 Lake Condah, 63, 89, 99, 109, 117,
Karngun Parish, 167 138, 193, 326
Keilambete, 89, 91, 192, 195, 202, Lake Connewarren, 86
209, 224, 226, 235, 326 Lake Corangamite, 122, 162,
Kiewa Valley, 184 230, 319
Killarney, 319 Lake Gnarpurt, 235, 317
Kilnoorat, 161, 189, 311 Lake Gnotuk, 196, 198
Knorart, 222 Lake Gorrie, 99, 205
Place Names Index 481
R
Red Gum Country, 182, 280, 325 T
Redruth, 167, 196 Taap heear, 78, 137
Robe, 85 Tabor, 280
Robertson’s Forest, 321 Tæ rak, 63, 89, 90, 99, 109, 117,
The Rocks, 54, 57, 96, 98, 125, 130, 118, 122, 126, 127
132–134, 179, 181, 182, 195, Tahara Parish, 312
206, 247 Tappoc, 98, 100, 107
Rokewood, 96, 213, 321, 323 Tar.rong, 128
Rose’s Gap, 84 Tarn wirring, 135
Rutledge Survey, 160, 225 Tarn wirrink, 135
Tarnpirr, 76, 85, 137, 138
Tarrayoukyan, 312
S Tarrington, 280
Salt Creek, 75, 89, 98, 121, 126, Taylor’s River, 164, 172, 191, 286
181, 327 Teerinyillum, 77
Scottish Borders, 50, 310 Terang, 128, 167, 173, 223, 291, 312
Scottish Lowlands, 168, 207, 348 Terang Parish, 312
484 Place Names Index
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 485
D. S. Jones, Exploring Place in the Australian Landscape,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3213-7
486 Run and Station Names Index
S V
St Enoch, 317–319, 324 Vasey, 325
Sandford, 190, 204, 211, 312
The Sisters, 228, 230, 318
Skene, 174, 278 W
South Challicum, 92, 134, 138 Wando Dale, 306
Springbyrne, 168 Wando Vale, 165, 166, 202, 203,
Spring Creek, 59, 190, 236, 237 223, 224, 226, 228, 229, 231,
Squattlesea Mere, 165, 184, 188, 249, 283, 325, 332, 334
202, 203, 217, 249 Wannon, 77, 138, 181, 196, 198,
Stonefield, 319, 320 235, 237, 281, 286, 295, 298,
Stony Point, 306, 316, 321, 324 300, 314, 344
Swinton, 287 Watch Hill, 212
Weerangourt, 173, 217
Werribee Park, 278, 305, 329
T West Cloven Hills, 196, 299, 316
Tahara, 198, 311, 312 Wickham Park, 327
Talindert, 306, 316, 323, 346, 347 Willaroo, 347
Tandarook, 165, 204, 208, 285, 327 Wiridgil, 283
Tarndwarncoort, 165, 169, 207, Woolongoon, 346
208, 306, 321, 323 Wooloomanata, 278
Tarrone, 126 Wooriwyrite, 164, 193, 196, 210,
Terrinallum, 166, 283, 295, 308, 212, 218, 223, 226, 230, 283,
309, 321, 345 300, 306, 307, 309, 316, 321,
Titanga, 180, 227, 304, 305, 307, 323, 331, 334
308, 317, 320, 321, 324, Wurroit, 305
347, 349 Wurrook, 208, 304, 307
Trawalla, 111, 122, 124, 187, 188,
202, 203, 209, 211, 220, 225,
227, 236, 241, 324, 346 Y
Yalla-y-poora, 165, 209, 219, 309,
317, 324
U Yambuk, 135, 195, 205
The Union, 190, 222, 315 Yarima, 208, 304
Uondo, 323 Yeo, 306