Wominjeka fellow travellers, welcome again to FNF and thank you for traveling with me on the road to treaty and reconciliation as we explore a tiny fraction of the histories and lore of the world’s longest existing continuous cultures, that of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders.
This week we travel to Derrimut, one of the newer suburbs growing up in the Western district of Melbourne. Few of us here in Nillumbik are familiar with this suburb and fewer still know that it is named after a Boonwurrung headsman, or Arweet who witnessed the arrival of both Batman and Fawkner to Port Phillip in the winter of 1835.
Batman and Fawkner’s parties had received a Welcome to Country by the closely aligned Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung clans, but other tribes of the Kulin Nation were not so overjoyed at the arrival of these colonialists from across Bass Strait and were making arrangements to attack the infant town and dispose of it before it could become a threat.
Derrimut felt he had a duty of care to the Europeans as was part of the notion of ‘Welcome to Country’ as was practiced by First Nation peoples for millennia. Through the translation skills of William Buckley, he warned the group of the impending danger.
A Welcome to Country by its nature assumes responsibility for your guests while they are on your country. Their every need of food, sustenance, protection and shelter must be met. This story shows how Derrimut selflessly going against natural instinct, which would more likely to have been to dispose of the invaders, to fulfill an oath, a promise, to welcome unreservedly these newcomers to country.
Disillusioned and having witnessed the near extinction of his beloved Boonwurrung people, Derrimut died on the 28th May 1864 aged 54 years in the Benevolent Asylum in Melbourne. Because of his warning, the attack on the Europeans by the Wathawurrung and Daungwurrung never eventuated and the role played by Derrimut in its evasion is marked on his gravestone in Melbourne’s general cemetery.
“This stone was erected by a few colonists to commemorate the noble act of the native chief Derrimut who by timely information given October 1835 to the first colonists Messes Fawkner, Lancey, Evans, Henry Batman and their dependants saved them from massacre, planned by some of the up-country tribes of Aborigines”
Till next week Triganin – see you soon.
References: Aboriginal Victoria: A History since 1800, by Richard Broome
Image: Derrimut of the Boon-oor-ong , an oil painting by Benjamin Duterreau. Collection: Dixon Galleries, State Library of Victoria, 1864
