Untitled [ceremonial dance], c. 1880s, William Barak
Brown ochre and charcoal on cardboard. © Digital reproduction copyright of State Library Victoria
Aboriginal people first appeared in Victoria some 60,000 years ago. The local clan, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, lived in the area that now includes Nillumbik Shire, and at the time of European contact, probably numbered around forty adults and twenty or more children. The arrival of the first Europeans in Victoria had a dramatic and cataclysmic effect on the First Nations peoples. In little over a generation, their population was decimated, from approximately 10,000 to less than 2000 people in the state.
William Barak was a respected Wurundjeri leader and the last chief of the Wurundjeri tribe. “When the wattles bloom, this is when I will leave this land” (Barak, 1903).
Last year Allwood House put on a community-led play called The Bridge, about the history of Hurstbridge. It opened with this projection of artwork by William Barak. The sound of clap sticks was added in cultural consultation with local Elders Aunty Julieanne Axford and Aunty Gail Smith from the Wurundjeri Council. The heartbeat acknowledges Wurundjeri people as the first inhabitants and ongoing custodians of the land we know as Hurstbridge.
John Green was a Scottish Presbyterian preacher who commenced work as a ‘bush missionary’ to Europeans in the goldfields. He preached at Allwood House and other stations during the early 1860s gold rush era. In 1862, he helped Simon Wonga and William Barak set up a reserve mission at Coranderkk near Healesville. This was the first of 6 similar reserve missions set up in Victoria. The 300 Aboriginal people that gained refuge in these missions are the direct forbears of some 30,000 Victorian Aboriginal peoples today. Rev. John Green and his wife Mary are remembered as loyal friends of the nation.
“We want a man whom God chose to lay the foundations of Coranderkk station, and that’s Mr Green. For if it were not for him, we all dead, and that’s all we require just now, and may the Lord bless you sir and give you good knowledge. I remain your kind friend, William Barak”
(Words taken from a petition to have Rev Green reinstated to management of Coranderkk, 1875. His Petition was unsuccessful.)
Mr. Frederick George Hurst (brother of Henry) was only 14 years old when he moved to Allwood Station in Hurstbridge in 1859. The district at the time of the Hurst family’s arrival was heavily timbered and very wild, bullocks, riding and driving being the chief means of transport. Wurundjeri people were numerous, according to Fred, and used to hold corroborees on the ground where Hurstbridge railway station now stands.
(Source: The Advertiser DEATH OF MR. F. G. HURST, 10th June 1927 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57754954)
Recommended Reading:
When the Wattles Bloom Again: The Life and Times of William Barak, Last Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe, by Shirley Wiencke.
Other general books about Aboriginal history are available in our Allwood library.
Mick Woiwod was a local historian and the founder of the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group. He wrote, Kangaroo Ground Dreaming and Barak vs The Black Hats of Melbourne: The untold story of how the Black Hats destroyed Coranderrk.
David Kerrigan, Allwood’s Historian, paid his respects to Mick Woiwod at the Kangaroo Ground Cemetery in 2024, after first visiting the Moor-rul viewing platform in Kangaroo Ground, which Mick was very energised in setting up.
“Of the 16 information panels on view, only 4 are directly related to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, the others relating to the Scottish farmers and World War I memorials. I don’t think this is keeping in the spirit of what this viewing platform was established for, definitely not in the vision of Mick Woiwod whose wish was for a memorial to our First Nations people. The site is more than large enough to accommodate the settlers, the pioneers and the war veterans but can we not have a single uninterrupted site to commemorate the First Nations people whose sacred hill was stolen and who were massacred so that Henry Arthur could graze his sheep uninterrupted by their 60,000 year existence?
2035 will be a big year for Victoria, marking as it does, 200 years since John Batman disembarked on Aboriginal land and would go on to decimate First Nations populations.
There are 10 years to make a difference.”
(David Kerrigan, member of Nillumbik Reconcilliation Group)
Ref: John Batman, he had already participated in the decimation of the indigenous people of Tasmania during the frontier wars and black line massacres of the 1820s – 1830s.