First Contact Part 1 - A Craving for European Possessions - Clothing

Professor Richard Broome offers his interpretation of what it may have been like when Aboriginal people first spied the earliest European visitors to the Victorian coast (Broome R, Aboriginal Victorians , Allen& Unwin 2005, p3-4):

“Aboriginal people initially experienced the European adventure in…Victoria…like puzzling fragments of a drama played out behind a screen. The Gunai probably spied the sails of Lt James Cook’s Endeavour in April 1770, as he coasted off Gippsland north of Point Hicks, and were bemused by their novelty. The next generation of Gunai secretly watched the shipwrecked crew of the Sydney Cove struggling overland from Ninety Mile Beach to Sydney in 1797. The Gunai also watched George Bass’s whaleboat coast Gippsland as far west as Western Port in 1798. Sealing and whaling ships wallowed past, occasionally to land and refresh.”

No direct contact between the hidden natives and the strange new visitors occurred on these occasions. However as time went on, First Contact finally did occur in Victoria. Prof Bloom continues,

“In 1800 the Lady Nelson traversed Bass Strait, the first known European ship to do so. Two more explorations by this vessel found Lt Murray and his crew surfing the rip into Port Phillip Bay in February 1801. Boonwurrung men, leaving their women and children hidden, met five crewmen on the sands near Sorrento – white faced ghosts with strange cloaks – spirit men perhaps. The warriors were wary, but exchanged spears, an axe and a basket for shirts, mirrors and a steel axe.”

So up until this stage both the sides were wary, but at the same time curious, of the other and finally their common humanity kicked-in and they exchanged exotic gifts. However, then,

“Dancing followed but tensions ran high, as the British sought water, and the Aborigines queried the strangers’ intent. Armed warriors hidden in nearby bushes alarmed the British. Panicked warnings led to spears flying and firing from muskets and the ship’s cannon, wounding several Boonwurrung as they fled, the English shirts flapping on their backs.”

Now reading historical records, no matter how accurate, can be somewhat dry and not that useful in conveying what it really felt like as a party in a ‘First Contact’ situation between two, vastly different peoples. How did the Aborigines, coming from a society where they thought they were alone in the world react to meeting other humans in the form of British soldiers, and later on, the settlers, for the first time?

A method we are exploring at Dark Emu Exposed to help in our understanding of what it really may have been like to have been there, that day on the beach at Sorrento in 1801, is to use film footage of similar cases of First Contacts from more recent times.

For example , the film clip below from about 2008 is actual footage of the First Contact between an Amazonian tribe (a proxy for the Aborigines) and Brazilian Anthropologists (a proxy for the British) and settled Brazilians farmers (a proxy for Australian frontier settlers). As you watch this clip put yourself in the shoes of each of the participants for an appreciation of how each thinks differently and understands, or indeed misunderstands, the other parties. The results can lead to confusion and conflict, but also to reconciliation and some integration.

The desirability of European clothing by the Amazonian tribe, and its hidden dangers in spreading infectious disease was also observed within the Australian context.

Aranda boy wearing cast-off clothing at Alice Springs Station 1901

The anthropologist Baldwin Spencer recorded in in his book with Francis Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, that although Aranda children were usually naked, ‘even in mid-winter’ any child who owned a discarded garment of a European child was greatly envied by the other children.' He described how boys, proud of these clothes, ingeniously managed to preserve and wear even the remnants of clothing; and noted that the boy pictured here even wound together old shreds to make an armlet. Once on, no garment was ever removed, day or night, until the fragments could hang on no longer and it fell off, bit by bit.'

‘Spencer was aware that the practice of adopting European clothes was not only a sign of the increasing influence of European culture affecting the Central Australian Aborigines, but was also in many cases a direct danger to the wearer’s health. He decried the ‘kindness’ of Europeans who give odd articles of clothing to Aborigines, who wear them and then, according to their custom, share them with others of their tribe. The natural result is that, no sooner do the natives come into contact with white men, than phthisis and other diseases soon make their appearance…’

Spencer discusses clothing further, “In their ordinary condition the natives are almost completely naked, which is all the more strange as kangaroo and wallaby are not by any means scarce, and one would think that their fur would be of no little use and comfort in the winter time, when, under the perfectly clear sky, which often remains cloudless for weeks together, the radiation is so great that at night-time the temperature falls several degrees below freezing point. The idea of making any kind of clothing as a protection against cold does not appear to have entered the native mind, though he is keen enough upon securing the Government blanket when he can get one, or, in fact, any stray cast-off clothing of the white man. The latter is however worn as much from motives of vanity as from a desire for warmth; a lubra with nothing on except an ancient straw hat and an old pair of boots is perfectly happy…If you give a black fellow, say a woollen shirt, he will perhaps wear it for a day or two, after that his wife will be adorned with it, and then, in return for perhaps a little food, it will be passed on to a friend.”