Professor Pascoe cites the Journals of William Thomas - but has he really read them?

Professor Pascoe, tells us that when deciding to write his book Dark Emu, he,

‘would have to begin from the sources upon which Australia’s idea of history is based: the journals and diaries of explorers and colonists. These journals revealed a much more complicated Aboriginal economy than the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle we had been told was the simple lot of Australia’s First People.

Hunter-gatherer societies forage and hunt for food, and do not employ agricultural methods or build permanent dwellings; they are nomadic. But as I read these early journals, I came across repeated references to people building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seed; preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape — none of which fitted the definition of a huntergatherer.

Could it be that the accepted view of Indigenous Australians simply wandering from plant to plant, kangaroo to kangaroo, in a hapless opportunism, was incorrect?’

- (from Dark Emu, 2018 Reprint. p2)-[our emphasis]

Professor Pascoe also tells us that he is a Bunurong Aboriginal man (Go to Chapter 1 of ABC Education Unit here and his publisher here).

Fig 1 - Professor Pascoe’s ancestral [sic] Boonwurrung lands SE of Port Phillip- Source - Internet

William Thomas Assistant Protector of Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1838 – 1849 (as he looked ca 1838 when he arrived in NSW)

William Thomas Assistant Protector of Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1838 – 1849 (ca 1860 State Library Vic) Aust. Dictionary of Biography

LaTrobe Uni academic, Denise Gaughwin, co-author with archaeologist Hilary Sullivan ABORIGINAL BOUNDARIES AND MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN PORT, VICTORIA - ABORIGINAL HISTORY, 1984 8:1, p80-98. - (Ref. 6)

So it occurred to us here at Dark Emu Exposed that maybe a good place to look for the ‘real history’ of Aboriginal people would be in the early ‘journals and diaries’ of someone who travelled, or lived with Professor Pascoe’s own tribe, the Bunurong (Boonwurrung) at the time of First Contact, when Professor Pascoe’s own ancestors were still living their traditional way of life away in large parts of the country around the south-east side of Port Phillip.

Fortunately, there was indeed someone who travelled and lived with the Bunurong in the early years of Port Phillip’s settlement, who kept a daily journal for the whole of his working life and, more importantly, someone Professor Pascoe also uses as a credible source several times in his book, Dark Emu.

That person was William Thomas, who took up his duties as the Assistant Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip in 1839. He left a wealth of both official and personal papers, including his daily journal and a draft of a detailed book entitled, ‘The language and customs of the Australian Aborigines.’

From 1838 to 1843 Thomas spent a great deal of time with the Aborigines, setting up stations for their protection at Arthurs Seat (1839-1841), on the Mornington Peninsula, and later at Narre Narre Warren (1841) on the Dandenong Plains.

Although many of William Thomas’s papers have not been fully published [Note 2], we are fortunate to have the results of the scholarship of two researchers who have published excerpts of his papers on exactly the topic we, and Professor Pascoe, are interested in, namely the economic and material lifestyle of the Bunurong at the time of First Contact.

Denise Gaughwin, co-authored with Hilary Sullivan a paper titled, ABORIGINAL BOUNDARIES AND MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN PORT, VICTORIA in the journal, ABORIGINAL HISTORY, (1984 8:1, p80-9), which includes extensive excerpts from Thomas’s records of the Bunurong.

So here we would seem to have the perfect opportunity to cross-check and verify Professor Pascoe’s theories, given that,

• the case study is Professor Pascoe’s own tribe, the Bunurong, whose stories and oral traditions the Professor says he has learnt from his meetings with his Elders;

• we have in William Thomas an early ‘explorer’ whose journals meet Professor Pascoe’s definition of, ‘an early explorer whose journals Australians trust’, and which Professor Pascoe uses as a credible source several times himself in his book, Dark Emu;

• William Thomas spoke the language of the Bunurong, and

• we have an independent third-party in Gaughwin & Sullivan who, 30 years prior to the publication of Dark Emu (and hence are un-influenced by its conclusions), have assessed the primary sources to give us their understanding of the economic and material lifestyle of the Bunurong at the time of First Contact.

We can even imagine Professor Pascoe rubbing his hands in anticipation that finally here would be a valid and independent cross-check of his theories, which would convince critics like us, that Dark Emu is indeed, a ‘truer history’.

What could possibly go wrong ?

Lots, as we shall see.

1.The Myth of Professor Pascoe’s Settled Aboriginal Farmers

Professor Pascoe asks us to re-evaluate our,

‘accepted view of Indigenous Australians [as] simply wandering from plant to plant, kangaroo to kangaroo, in a hapless opportunism’.

[our emphasis]

Are we Australians ‘incorrect’ in thinking this?

Let’s see what William Thomas recorded after observing, travelling, living, and talking in their own language with the Bunurong, who were still living their traditional life-style in many parts of their country in the years around 1840.

Fig 2 - ‘Assistant Protector of Aborigines William Thomas as sketched by George H Haydon in 1842’, in the time he was recording the lives of the Bunurong. Source - Ref. 3, p89

Fig 3 - ‘Aborigines at the coast catching fish while the tide is out. They wait for hours without turning a hair, holding their spear ready to attack their victims. Area around St Kilda, near Melbourne’ - Probably modelled on the Bunurong. No sign of any of Prof. Pascoe’s ‘aquaculture’ here - Source - Imagined and Drawn by G Mutzel based on William Blandowski sketch ca1855 (Ref 5)

Fig 4 - Depiction of an ingenious method for digging out wombat based on an incident recorded by Blandowski (1855) from near Seymour, central Victoria. Probably, similar methods may have been used by the Bunurong. Source - Ref 5, p82

Fig 5 - Catching and preparing possum skins to sew them into cloaks. An example of where Prof. Pascoe is correct - ‘Aboriginal people did sew’ although they did not develop ‘textile weaving for clothing’. Source - Ref 5, p83.

Denise Gaughwin and Hilary Sullivan tell us in their paper that,

- ‘Thomas believed that the availability of kangaroos was the main consideration when selecting campsites, or in causing people to shift camp, noting that when no kangaroos were available near a camp,’

‘they are compelled to go thro’ the range of their country perpetually, perpetually shifting’ - (ibid., p91);

- ‘Thomas provided some interesting statistics on movement [of the Bunurong]. Kangaroos again are seen to initiate this, as,

‘on entering their New Encampment and often while pitching my tent and the blacks their miams hut had kangaroos running amongst us as th’ unconscious of our intrusions, after three days stay, have been out with them not seen a kangaroo within their daily range, thus their migratory moves…’ - (ibid., p93); [our emphasis : both the above excerpts sound like a description of, ‘wandering’ from ‘kangaroo to kangaroo’, to us]

-‘When travelling, Thomas found that a group of Aborigines rarely moved more than eight or nine miles (12-14 kilometres) a day,

‘having their food to procure as well as to journey’. - (ibid., p93);

-‘In another account, he elaborated on the logistical details:

‘they generally averaged 2 and a half miles in an hours good walking through the bush and dedect [sic] a quarter for going round and over dead logs which reduced travelling time thro’ the day to less than 2 miles the hour, this may seem strange but such was the case in 1838, 39 and regularly understood by white bush travellers’. (ibid., p93)';

-‘He also found that they seldom camped more than three nights in one place and often only one night. However, on the trip to Western Port noted above, the group were encamped ten days at Tuerong before they began the journey and for eight days at Kunnung and four at Tobinerk, although at the seven other camping places their stay was for three nights or less’. - (ibid., p93);

-‘It seems that while travelling the people were busy but the day was not long:

‘all are employed; children in getting gum, knocking down birds etc; women in digging up roots, killing bandicoots, getting grubs etc; the men in hunting kangaroos, etc, scaling trees for opossums etc. They mostly are at the encampment about an hour before sundown — the women first, who get fire and water, etc by the time their spouses arrive . . .

In warm weather, while on tramp, they seldom make a miam [hut] — they use merely a few boughs to keep off the wind, in wet weather a few sheets of bark make a comfortable house. In one half hour I have seen 1 neat village begun and finished’.

-(ibid., p93) [our emphasis : the above four examples are classic, nomadic hunter-gathering] [Note that in the original Thomas manuscript starts the paragraph with,

’In their migratory moves all are employed;…’ (Reference 2)

-‘He describes these huts and the numbers of people involved, in some detail:

‘Their habitation is frail but answers well their purpose, a few slabs of bark cut in a few minutes and erected is their habitation, these slabs of bark are about 6 ’ long oblique raised to the angle of about 90 degrees windward, every alternate sheet is reversed so that no rain can enter, the sides are filled up with short pieces of bark and brush and a sheet of bark at the top . . . A good Miam [a hut] will hold 2 adults and 3 children — they are not permanent are knocked down or burn: on breaking up the Encampment — they consist of one apartment only. In a large encampment they are divided into hamlets — some influential black taking charge of six or eight Miams, and so on say 5 Hamlets. These hamlets are 50 yds or more from each other, while miams in a single hamlet is [sic] not more than 3 or 4 yds apart merely sufficient to avoid danger from each others fires.’

‘Taking his figures for the large encampment it is possible to see that each ‘hamlet’ under the leadership of one man would have had from 30 to 40 people in it while the total numbers of people in these camps would have been between 150 and 200…While encamped in one location, the Aborigines exploited a range of approximately ten kilometre radius around the camp. Thomas, when discussing kangaroo hunting, describes:

‘a body of Natives dividing themselves into portions of 5 or 7 leaving an Encampment in the morning diverging (according to the direction of their chief) in various directions scouring their bounds for 5 or 6 miles around the Encampment.’

- (Gaughwin, D. and Sullivan, H. Aboriginal Boundaries and Movements in Western Port, Victoria, Aboriginal History 1984 8:1 p80-98) - [our emphasis]

In all these descriptions by Thomas, we do not see one example of what one might describe as Aboriginal ‘farming’ or ‘agriculture’, just classic, nomadic hunter gathering with no permanent ‘villages’, ‘towns’, ‘fields of crops’ or ‘irrigation schemes.’

Professor Pascoe claims in Dark Emu that,

‘Aboriginal Protector William Thomas saw many aquaculture systems, but reported that most were destroyed by Europeans in the first days after their arrival. One such system belonged to a particularly large village near Port Fairy, which had more than thirty houses capable of accommodating around 200 to 250 people. The whole village was burnt, and the sluice gates of its fishery destroyed’ - Dark Emu, pdf version, p80.

But we can not verify this claim of Professor Pascoe’s, as the only reference he gives is, ‘Thomas, W., unpublished transcription of his papers by the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation of Languages, 2013’, which has not been possible for us to verify.

Other sources do hint at some ingenious aspects of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle such as co-ordinated and high-energy efforts to dig out wombats (‘Engineering’ in Pascoe-speak) and skinning, drying and sewing together of possum skins to make cloaks (not their ‘clothes’, which as we understand the word to mean, ‘separate fitted garments’) as Professor Pascoe claims. These colonial artists do in fact go out of their way to depict the ingenuity of the Aboriginal people where they find it, but they do not just ‘make stuff up’ in an effort to paint a picture of an ‘agricultural settled’ Aboriginal society that just wasn’t present.

2. The Bunurong as ‘Hapless Opportunists’?

However, it was definitely not, as Professor Pascoe says ‘hapless opportunism.’ Two of the most disrespectful aspects of Professor Pascoe’s Dark Emu theory are his implications that nomadic hunting and gathering is somehow ‘less worthy’ than ‘agriculture’ and even something to be ashamed of, and that the Colonials and non-Aboriginal Australians of today just dismiss Aboriginal society as being akin to hapless opportunism. The Professor is just putting words in our mouths to score some anti-Colonial, political points.

Most people who have lived in, or studied a traditional Aboriginal hunter gatherer society have nothing but admiration for their ability to survive in this most inhospitable of continents. Anyone of us who tried to ‘live off the land’ in Australia would probably be dead within a week or two. Invariably, the survival rate of Australians lost in the bush for more than 72 hours is very low.

Gaughwin and Sullivan, quoting Thomas, inform us that the nomadism of the Bunurong was anything but ‘hapless opportunism,’

‘Aboriginal movements over the land appear well organised, with the activities of each group known to other members of the Bunurong. Thomas noted they were a socially cohesive group,

‘I have been out journeying with perhaps not 1/3 of the tribe for it is seldom that more than that number can keep together . . . asked them where the rest of their tribe is when they commenced and told me not less than 12 parts of the country and some may be 80 or 90 miles off. The Aborigines may be called truly a social compact community, they know too when each will return’.

This indicates the regular patterns of use of the Western Port area in contact times as well as the social networks of the foraging groups. That people knew where other bands were likely to be located further reinforces the idea that they usually resided within well known areas’.

-(ibid. p92) [our emphasis]

But these ‘well organised’ activities are still part of a classic, nomadic hunting and gathering economy, albeit a very smart, well-adapted one.

Fig 6 - Map of Bunurong lands indicating Aboriginal pathways and Thomas’s trips with the Bunurong as they moved around their lands in search of food - Source - Ref. 6, p90.

Fig 7 - Bunurong native well at Ricketts Point on Port Philip Bay - Source Ref 3, p66.

Gaughwin and Sullivan continue,

‘Throughout the area paths were observed apparently well-used. Near Tooradin, Hovell noted that native paths made travel through low-lying areas much easier and quicker…As areas of continual or regular use might be thought to develop into paths, this further supports the notion that movements were methodical. - (ibid. p92).

Wandering, hapless opportunists would not be expected to have a network of paths.

‘Similarly, Gellibrand commented on tracks along the Port Phillip coast which made travel easier and led to a ‘native well’ on the beach. - (ibid. p92).

Historian and archaeologist Gary Presland describes the ‘organised’ nomadism of the Boon wurrung [Bunurong] in his book, First People (Ref.3),

‘After a few days of being at the same site the women might find that it is becoming harder to collect sufficient shellfish, or the men find that game was becoming harder to snare. To move to a new site, which might be as much as ten kilometres away, everyone had to gather together their portable belongings. The location of the new camp was always agreed upon beforehand, because the party would split up for the day’s foraging on the way to the new site.’

‘The women moved directly towards their new site, although they would collect plant foods and capture small animals that crossed their path. Their route might have taken them along a well-worn track, made from repeated trips through the same piece of land. This Boon wurrung band headed north into an area where there were freshwater streams. By keeping to this track, the women would have passed a number of places where they could collect fresh water.

There was a particular track that ran along the margin of the bay, close to the beach. In the Black Rock/Beaumaris area it passed a number of natural freshwater wells in the sandstone. The wells provided access to the underground water table, but because they were covered by high tide twice daily they had to be cleaned out before use. In a short time, however, a good quantity of fresh water seeped into the hole from the water table . This natural feature still exists, close to the Beaumaris Yacht Club.’ - (Ref. 3 p61-62).

A native well (see Fig 7) can also still be found at Ricketts Point in suburban Bayside Melbourne.

Gaughwin and Sullivan provide further evidence that Aboriginal people were not just wandering ‘hapless opportunists’ but planned their hunting and gathering in a more co-ordinated way,

‘…the normal size of a food-gathering party appears to have ranged from small fishing groups of a few women and children up to groups of 20 or 30 people. However larger groups would congregate at favourable locations for short periods. These camps were not, however, comprised entirely of Bunurong-bulluk, the land-owning group, but included other Bunurong and some Woiworung.

In February 1840, for example, 101 people were encamped near the waterholes at Tubberrubabel for 14 days. They moved a few miles northeast to another waterhole at Tuerong where they stopped for 10 days:,

‘beginning to find some difficulty in procuring food for so many they held a council which ended in an understanding to separate. 44 were to remain and divide themselves into 6 parties traversing the country from Mt Martha to Cape Schank. 57 were in one body to cross the country to Western Port’. - (Thomas)

‘This demonstrates the gregarious nature of these people as after twenty four days together they were unwilling to separate. It further serves to indicate the patterns of movement onto the Mornington Peninsula in one direction and out across the Western Port plains in the other’. - (ibid. p92).

So there you have it. William Thomas, who is conversing, travelling and living with Professor Pascoe’s tribe, the Bunurong, only a few years after Colonial settlement around Melbourne, describes the Bunurong living a classic, nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. No mention of the Bunurong spending time tilling the soil or cultivating crops with their ‘Bogan picks’, building dams, or building and living in permanent stone houses. If Thomas had witnessed any sign of ‘agriculture’ or ‘farming’ amongst the Bunurong he would most certainly have mentioned it and Gaughwin and Sullivan would have commented on it given that their paper is to ‘ascertain how they [the Bunurong] used their local area and the kinds of movements made both within and beyond these areas.’

3. The Myth of Professor Pascoe’s Aboriginal Peace for the Bunurong

In his book, Dark Emu, Professor Pascoe tells us that,

‘Aboriginal people did construct a pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity’.

Fig. 8 - Illustration of a ‘typical’ large scale Aboriginal conflict Source - Reference 1, p52.

Once again, we find that the real history recorded by William Thomas, who was ‘on-the-ground’ there with the Bunurong in the early years, does not support Professor Pascoe’s fanciful and wishful claim at all.

The following are just two amongst many quotes from William Thomas suggesting that the Bunurong were living anything but a ‘peaceful’ life.

‘All the tribes beyond the district of their friends are termed wild blackfellows, and when found within the district are immediately killed.’ - Thomas, W. (Ref. 2, p401)

‘The crime of murder is of rare occurrence among them, a Chief has stated to me ‘that he never knew one killing another of his own tribe’. They are taught to kill any unknown black who enters their district unattended or not introduced by messengers of a friendly tribe’. - Thomas to La Trobe, 1 June 1844, Public Records Office, Melbourne (Coutts 1981: 241) quoted in Ref. 1, p54.

Gaughwin & Sullivan tell us that,

‘Warfare between the Western Port Aborigines and those inhabiting the area to the east seems to have greatly affected population numbers. In 1840 Thomas indicates that the population,

“have suffered severely from the Two Fold Bay Blacks is evident, some of their songs. . . upon their sufferings about four years back seventeen were killed not nine miles from Melbourne. About nine years back two were killed where we was (sic) encamped by Western Port and about 28 or 20 years back nearly half the tribe were killed between Kangerong and Arthurs Seat.”

The latter fight is likely to be the same one described to Haydon by an elderly man who said:

“Look at my people, said he, where are all my brothers? do you see any old men? I talk with the young men. My old companions sleep at Monip.”

Twofold Bay is the name of the bay in New South Wales near Eden….However, it is possible that ‘Two Fold Blacks’ was a general name given to all Gippsland Aborigines as the term Gippsland was not then used and the nearest substantial European settlement was Twofold Bay. Another raid was said to have occurred in 1833 or 1834 by the Gippsland people ‘who stole at night upon the Western Port or Coast tribe and killed 60 or 70 of them’. All the writers of the time stress the long standing enmity between these two groups’.

- (Gaughwin, D. and Sullivan, H. Aboriginal Boundaries and Movements in Western Port, Victoria, Aboriginal History 1984 8:1 p83) - [our emphasis]

Fig. 9 - Bruce Pascoe honouring his ancestors with his #Yuin people. South Coast of NSW. - Source Twitter 7:26 PM · Jan 28, 2020

Fig. 10 - ‘When a fight ends in severe injuries or death, friends quickly take sides and general combat breaks out…women stand in the background with new bundles of spears in order to re-arm their men folk…Matrons and children remain well back from the fighting lines so that they cannot be hit by flying spears…seldom but not impossible are cases where an entire party is killed; ruthlessly and arbitrarily, every member of the opposing party is killed.’ Source - Ref 5, p129

This inter-tribal violence does not sound very ‘peaceful’ to us, and is doubly problematic for Professor Pascoe’s thesis given that the accused, the murderous Two Fold Bay blacks are possibly the Yuin tribe from the Two Fold Bay area of southern NSW, a tribe who Professor Pascoe claims to be descended from as well.

This must surely play havoc with one’s mind, knowing that one branch of your family may have been responsible for massacring another branch of your own family.

But the violence was not all one-way between the tribes. On the occassions that the Bunurong decided to make a stand against their neighbours, they could be just as deadly and crafty as the next tribe.

As Gaughwin & Sullivan write,

‘…they [the Bunurong] tended to camp closest to their home territory. The only example we have noted of movement to the east was related to warfare. The Kurnai called the Bunurong, Thurung or ‘tiger snakes’ because ‘they come sneaking about to kill us’.

In 1839 a group of Bunurong women, children, and old men were left at the station of Samuel Rawson and Robert Jamieson at Yallock for a period of five weeks. When the able-bodied men returned they told the settler that they were responsible for many deaths in Gippsland. This hostility would appear to have been longstanding. If this is the case it might be expected that some demographic effects would have been manifest’.

- (Gaughwin, D. and Sullivan, H. Aboriginal Boundaries and Movements in Western Port, Victoria, Aboriginal History 1984 8:1 p96) - [our emphasis]

- Massacre of the Bunurong by the ‘Gippsland Blacks’

Fig. 11 - Landcox Park, Brighton in Melbourne - site of the Warrowen Massacre of 77 Bunurong by the Two Fold Bay Blacks (Kurnai/Yuin?). One of the many inter-tribal massacres recorded by Thomas - Source - Wikipedia

Thomas also tells us of one of the largest, inter-tribal massacres in Australian recorded history at Warrowen, the ‘place of sorrow’ in modern day Brighton (Melbourne), where nearly,

‘a quarter of the Western Port Blacks (Bunurong) were massacred by the Gippsland blacks who stole up on them before dawn of day’. (Wikipedia)

4. The Aboriginal ‘Fields of War’ in the Port Philip District

Professor Blainey describes inter-tribal killings of Port Philip Aborigines in his book, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia, (Ref 4)

Tim Flannery’s edition of The Life and Adventures of William Buckley describes inter-tribal killings of Port Philip Aborigines.

Professor Pascoe claims he consulted ‘the journals and diaries of explorers and colonists’ which provide ‘the sources upon which Australia’s idea of history is based’ when he wrote his book, Dark Emu. Professor Pascoe cites the escaped convict William Buckley in Dark Emu so presumably he, like many Victorians interested in local history, has read the account of Buckley’s 32 years spent living on the other, western side of Port Philip Bay with the Wathaurung Aboriginal people (See Fig. 1 above and any one of a number of editions of John Morgan’s, The Life and Times of William Buckley, 1852.)

From his reading of Buckley’s life amongst the Port Philip Aborigines, historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey tells us that,

‘The Briton who had the greatest opportunity to observe the warfare among traditional Aborigines in southernmost Australia was William Buckley…one of the strongest impressions of his memoirs is the bloodshed. In one fight with a neighbouring group a man was speared in the thigh and a woman fatally speared under the arm. In successive fights two boys were killed and three women. Buckley witnessed these killings. In another contrast [sic - contest?], men and women were so streaked with blood that the scene, to his mind, was ‘much more frightful’ than anything he had seen in the battles fought with powder and shot in the Netherlands [during the French Revolutionary Wars] in 1799. After two women in Buckley’s group were killed, the enemy was successfully ambushed while asleep. Several of its women, severely wounded, were beaten to death, said Buckley, and their legs and arms amputated with sharp shells, flints and stone axes.’ (Reference 4, p110-111).

Professor Blainey puts the death toll in raids described by Buckley at ‘a total of at least thirty-seven, of whom ten were women and twelve were children.’ (ibid., p111).

Scientist and writer Tim Flannery similarly writes in his introduction to an edition of The Life and Adventures of William Buckley (Text Publishing, 2002) that William Buckley,

‘recorded fourteen conflicts involving the violent death of a tribe member over the thirty-two years that he lived with the Wallarranga [Wathaurung].

Flannery calculates the death toll as 23 members of Buckley’s group (9 women, 7 children and 7 men) and that 10 enemies were killed in revenge attacks (2 of whom were children) for a total death count of 33.

To put this level of tribal violence into perspective, this means that for every year that Buckley spent with his Aboriginal group he observed or described, on average, one Aboriginal death per year as a direct result of inter-tribal violence or revenge.

Professor Blainey, writes that,

‘The probable [Aboriginal] population of [Buckley’s group’s] region was 280 to 420 people. If we go on to accept a very cautious estimate of the number of fighting deaths, the death rate was probably not exceeded in a similar period in any European nation in the last three centuries.’ (ibid., p111-112).

In other words, the Aboriginal casualty rate in ‘Buckley’s field of war’ was probably more than that incurred during one of Europe’s most violent periods.

We can also provide an interesting comparison to our own times by observing that the similar estimates by Flannery and Blainey, of about one violent Aboriginal death for each year of Buckley’s time with the say, 350 strong Wallarranga, equates to an annual violence death rate of 1 per 350 of population.

Using this same annual death rate of 1 per 350 of population gives a comparison to our own times of 14,285 suburban Melbournians ‘killed’ each year in violence, wars and revenge attacks by members of their neighbouring suburbs! (1/350 times Greater Port Philip’s (Melbourne) population of 5 million)

This makes a mockery of Professor Pascoe’s claim of an, ‘Aboriginal…pan-continental government that generated peace…’

5. Did Aborigines Undertake Wars for Land and Resources?

During a recent 2020 interview with former ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien, Professor Pascoe makes the claim (listen here from 58:05),

‘There was a law that bound people for 120,000 years and we know that law did bind people because people stayed where the law told them to stay, there wasn't Imperial war…Aboriginal people…we fight each other…because we're human…but there was no land war. There was no war for land [O’Brien appears to try interject here, but Pascoe carries on with a small qualifier]…now I know that there are people who challenge that too and point to the Northern Territory when 300 kilometres of the coastline there disappeared underwater and then there was enormous pressure on people then for land… but largely, people stayed on the land that their ancestors gave them and didn't invade other people's lands even when they could. And I think that is an incredible moment in human history and we should examine…[and] study it, this idea that people could live in harmony together without going to war…a philosophical law that means that everybody gets a feed and everyone gets a house and everyone's looked after and people stay on the land that they've been given that's a mighty philosophical principle’.

Now, Professor Pascoe is correct in that, as far as the recent historical records show, Aboriginal people, ‘largely stayed on the land that their ancestors gave them’. However, we suspect that his conclusion might be more a reflection of the fact that Aboriginal people did not keep written records, rather than that they adhered strictly to some Commandment of their Law - ‘Thou Shall Not Invade the Land of Another.’

Professor Pascoe does concede that there may have been some ‘Land Wars’ during periods of stress such as when sea levels rose, with a consequential loss of land, say 10-18,000 years ago. However, he implies that in ‘normal’ times Aborigines stayed put and did not invade the lands of their neighbours, but lived in ‘harmony’ with them. But without written, or archaeological, records proving who lived where 1,000, 5,000 or 50,000 years ago, how on earth can Professor Pascoe make the blanket claim that where we find certain Aboriginal people today is exactly where they have always been over their whole 50,000 year history on the continent?

In our opinion Professor Pascoe is just offering some ‘New Age’ communal fantasy of what pre-Colonial, Aboriginal life was really like. Like many of Australia’s ‘intellectuals’ and public commentators of today he is pushing the narrative that Aboriginal people could do no harm and that they, and their culture, were the perfect ‘custodians’ for our continent. These ‘intellectuals’ will not easily criticise, or condemn, those aspects of Aboriginal history or culture which clearly to our modern eyes are wanting. They will only agree to accept some shortcomings in Aboriginal society or culture such as violence against women, inter-tribal massacres or ‘land wars’, if the circumstances can be blamed on some other third party such as ‘rising sea-levels’, colonialism or enslaving sealers (see below).

As evidence that perhaps Aboriginal people did, from time to time, embark on ‘wars’ to acquire land and resources from their neighbouring tribes consider the following documented cases.

- Massacre and Extinction of the Yowengerre clan of the Bunurong

Fig. 12 - Inter-tribal massacre and extinction of the Yowengerre clan of the Bunurong tribe left their land around Tarwin River, Yanakie and Wammum (Wilsons Prom.) abandoned in 1844 . Map source - Reference 7, p10

Fig. 13 - New tribal land boundaries as recorded after 1844 showing the new ‘owners’ to be groups of Brataulung from the Gunai/Kurnai (‘Gippsland Blacks’) people occupying land up to the Tarwin River as well as Wilsons Promontory, renamed Yiruk. Map source - Reference 7, p11

Another recorded inter-tribal massacre is that of the eastern-most clan of the Bunurong, the Yowengerre.

Historian, Marie Fels tells us that in 1844,

‘a party of five Europeans including the Chief Aboriginal Protector George Robinson, Sergeant Windredge of the Native Police, George Henry Haydon, another policeman named Keef, plus six Native Police including Munmunginna, were pushing into Gippsland in an attempt to open up a road for commerce.

As they struggled through the country inland from Cape Liptrap, Robinson recorded that it belonged to the Yowengerre section of the Boongerong [Bunurong] now extinct, extirpated by the Boro Boro Willum or Gippsland blacks.

‘The chief or mor mun of the Yowengerre was Pur. Rine, native place Warmun, is dead. This tribe once powerful are defunct and the country in consequence is unburnt having no native inhabitants. This is the reason why the country is so scrubby. The natives of Gippsland visit the inlet at Pubin.borro and other inlets in the snowing season. There must have been an awful massacre of these natives. Mun mun jin ind’s father was a Yowengerre; Mun mun jin ind gave me an account of the natives of the country and also gave me the names. The natives of Gippsland have killed 70 of the Boongerong at Brighton’ (Robinson)

- Marie Fels, ‘I Succeeded Once’: The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839–1840 (2011) p255.

Another researcher, Isabel Ellender, from the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies Monash University, (Churchill, Gippsland) wrote a paper in 2002 (Reference 7) in which,

‘A re-appraisal of the ethnographies of south Gippsland has revealed evidence for traditional mechanisms of land succession where a lineage was dying out. This is an alternative explanation for the change of ownership of the Yowenjerre [Yowengerre] country to one that attributed conquest of one belligerent Aboriginal group by another…’

Ellender provides two maps, one of which, Figure 12 (left), shows the land around the Tarwin River, and including Wilsons Promontory, is within the ownership of the Yowenjerre clan of the Bunurong for the time period before 1844. Her second map, Figure 13 shows what ethnographers believe the new tribal boundaries were after 1844 showing clans, such as the Joto warra warra of the Gunai Kurnai (Gippsland Blacks) now occupying those same districts after the massacre and extinction of the Yowenjerre. Ellender states,

‘…the replacement of the Yowenjerre occurred just before and at the time of the first white settlement of Gippsland, and by the 1840s Joto warra warra people occupied the land east of the Tarwin. Joto warra warra was probably the Ganai name for the Borro borro willun group (a Bunwurung name) who settled in their 'new' country’. (Ref 7, p13).

She does provide a detailed analysis in her paper (pages 9-18 here) of the historical evidence for the ‘land war’ and ‘land grab’ against the Bunurong, which is commonly accepted to have occurred.

But Ellender does raise other, quite logical reasons, in addition to ‘conquest’ as to why one Aboriginal group might re-locate to occupy the land of another, un-related Aboriginal group. These reasons include, the natural and

‘inevitable dying out of some family and clan lines, especially when land-owning groups might only consist of 25-50 persons’; and

‘a social process by which certain people shift into a vacant estate… due to population increase beyond a critical mass, demographic restructuring, or resource deterioration.’ (Ref. 7 p14).

Ellender, then continues,

‘The events associated with the disappearance of the Yowenjerre and the re-occupation of their land now seem clearer. The serious disruption of Bunurung society by whalers and sealers (Gaughwin and Sullivan 1984: p82) and the long-standing feud with the Gunai/Kurnai in the decades before 1844 probably combined to deplete the Yowenjerre to the point of being unable to sustain their hold on their country…For the Yowenjerre, the effects of subsequent white colonisation were the last straw, and their land was left without its owners, its caretakers.’ (Ref 7., p14).

Now maybe Ellender is correct in her reasoning, but to us here at Dark Emu Exposed there is a possible hint of some ‘Post-modern Revisionism’ [see Note 1] going on; an unwillingness by Ellender to just accept that fact that sometimes one Aboriginal group launched a genocidal massacre against one of their neighbours that left a country, as she says, an ‘unburned heath [that] had grown to an impenetrable thicket.’ (Ref 7, p14)

Over time, other neighbouring Aboriginal groups, perhaps with a connection by kinship and marriages could move in and occupy the country and life would go on. Just like the story of mankind in all the other parts of the world.

In our view, contrary to the theories of Professor Pascoe and the efforts of writers such as Ellender, there is no ‘Aboriginal Exceptionalism’ in being able to totally avoid the violence and aggression that leads to massacres and wars of conquest for resources, women and, in some cases, land.

The point we are observing here is that, contrary to the claim of Professor Pascoe that pre-colonial Aboriginal society was ‘peaceful’ there is plenty of contemporary evidence that Aboriginal society was particularly violent and deadly on a very frequent basis.

There is also evidence here that this may have been part of a ‘land war’ between the Bunurong (Yowengerre) and the neighbouring tribe, the ‘Gippsland Blacks’.

---

 References :

Reference 1 : Frankel, D., & Major, J., (ed) Victorian Aboriginal life and customs through early European eyes, Latrobe University 2017.

Reference 2 : Thomas, W, Brief Account of the Aborigines of Australia Felix, in Bride, T.F., Letters from Victorian Pioneers, 1898 (1969 Ed.) Publ. Lloyd O’Neil PtyLtd , p399.

Reference 3 : Presland, G., First People - The Eastern Kulin of Melbourne, Port Philip & Central Victoria, Museum Victoria, 2017.

Reference 4 : Blainey, G., The Story of Australia’s People - The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia, Viking/Penguin, 2015, p110

Reference 5 : Allen, H., (Ed), Australia - William Blandowski’s Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal studies Press, 2011 Reprint, p57

Reference 6 : Gaughwin, D. and Sullivan, H. Aboriginal Boundaries and Movements in Western Port, Victoria, Aboriginal History 1984 8:1, p80-98.

Reference 7 : Ellender, I., The Artefact 2002 - Volume 25, Number I, pp 9-1 8

---

Further Reading

Note 1 - ‘Post-modern Revisionism’ by Isabel Ellender?

The 2002 paper, ‘The Yowenjerre of South Gippsland: traditional groups, social boundaries and land succession’, written by Isabel Ellender from the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University, provides some enlightenment on how we, at Dark Emu Exposed, think our Australian history is being manipulated to progress the political agenda that Colonial Australians and their society was invariably bad, exploitative and oppressive and that Aboriginal people were always victims and their culture was always good, caring and sustainable.

We identified a few clues in Ellender’s paper that make us wary that her conclusions might be more influenced by a desire for a certain historical and political outcome, rather than an unbiased assessment of the historical facts which she then uses to support her ideas with valid argument and evidence.

a) The Re-Appraisal

Ellender calls her paper, in the Abstract, ‘A re-appraisal of the ethnographies…’

Whenever we see the word ‘re-appraisal’ we are reminded of Professor Pascoe, who alone amongst the hundreds of Australian history researchers before him, was able, by his ‘re-appraisal’ of the journals of the explorers and settlers, to find supposedly indisputable evidence that Aboriginal people were farmers, lived in houses and villages of 1000 people and constructed a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and posterity for 120,000 years.

‘Re-appraisal in ‘Pascospeak’ generally means, ‘to rework Australian historical literature in such a way to make up a new story that shows Colonials and their society were bad and Aborigines and their society were good.

It might be that Ellender wanted to make her name as a dedicated foot soldier to the History Revisionism cause by ‘proving’ that the Yowengerre were not, as we were taught, in fact massacred by the Gippsland Blacks who then occupied their land. This fact is rather ‘problematic’ to say the least if one wants to portray Aboriginal people as gentle, caring custodians living a sustainable life in harmony with nature, who never undertook wars of conquest or ‘land grabs.’ Rather, it would be much better to be able to show that the extirpation of the Yowegerre was the fault in some way of the invading white settlers. One needs to remember that the big political game being played here is to relentlessly push the narrative that the British colonised Australia illegally, stole the land from the Aborigines who they then enslaved. Thus, the only way to right such grievous wrongs is for any modern-day Australian who claims Aboriginal heritage to be accepted as a victim of these historical wrongs and compensated by Recognition, A Voice to Parliament, with monetary and preferred employment compensations.

b) Blame the Whalers and Sealers (again)

Ellender seems to adhere to that school of thought that one can only condemn unacceptable aspects of Aboriginal society if they can somehow be blamed on the white settlers, and not as things unacceptable in themselves.

She realises all the evidence is pointing to the fact that the Yowenjerre suffered a genocidal massacre by the neighbouring Gunai/Kurnai Aborigines so she attempts bring in bring in the whalers and sealers as being complicit and downplays the war between the Yowenjerre and the Gunai/Kurnai by labelling it just a ‘feud’, She writes,

‘The events associated with the disappearance of the Yowenjerre and the re-occupation of their land now seem clearer. The serious disruption of Bunurong society by whalers and sealers (Gaughwin and Sullivan 1 1984, p82) and the long-standing feud with the Gunai/Kurnai in the decades before 1844 probably combined to deplete the Yowenjerre to the point of being unable to sustain their hold on their country.

But let’s look at what Gaughwin and Sullivan actually wrote on the page 82 of the reference cited by Ellender,

‘Western Port was visited by the crews of many ships on their way to and from London or engaged in exploratory trips to Tasmania and Bass Strait between 1797 and 1803. These visits were generally short and had little impact on Aborigines in the area, although on two occasions altercations took place between Aborigines and Europeans. Following the reports by the explorers Bass and Flinders of large seal colonies in Bass Strait, Western Port appears to have been frequented by sealers. The earliest record of their presence in the area dates to 1812 although it is likely that they had been coming to Western Port since the turn of the century. By 1826 sealers were living year-round on Phillip Island exploiting the fur seal colony at Seal Rocks. It has been argued for Tasmania that the presence of sealers had a disruptive effect on the local tribes due to their practice of removing the young Aboriginal women by barter or force. Competition over resources and warfare between the two cultures appears to have resulted from the presence of the sealers. In Western Port there are suggestions that relations were not always amicable. No Aborigines were ever seen on Phillip Island by Europeans. In 1826, d’Urville thought that this was due to the presence of the sealers. In addition, there is a report of one Aboriginal, a man, who returned to Western Port after many years. He had been taken by sealers to an island in Bass Strait.’ - (See Reference 7 for full paper) [our emphasis]

Ellender cites Gaughwin and Sullivan to claim that there was a, ‘…serious disruption of Bunurong society by whalers and sealers..’ , when in fact Gaughwin and Sullivan do not even mention ‘whalers’ in their paper. Gaughwin and Sullivan also do not claim that the whole of Burunong society, which stretched from the west of Melbourne all the way down to Wilsons Promontory and then inland ( See Fig. 1) suffered ‘serious disruption’ from the sealers activities. They only speak about the seal colonies at Western Port on Phillip Island, on which apparently no Aborigines lived, and which is just one small part of Bunurong country.

Ellender instead has done the usual Pascoesque trick of selectively quoting from Gaughwin and Sullivan’s comment, ‘It has been argued for Tasmania that the presence of sealers had a disruptive effect on the local tribes’ , and applied those words to cover the Aborigines not in Tasmania, but actually living across Bass Strait in Yowegerre country.

Tut tut. The tricks the History Revisionists will go to, to push their anti-Colonial narratives. Shameful.

Note 2 - Assistant Aboriginal Protector William Thomas’s Writings

Some of Thomas’s writings have been published in the Historical Records of Victoria, Aborigine and Protectors 1838-1839 , Volume 2B, Vic. Govt, Printing Office , 1983

---

Larger Images

One of Thomas’s hand-drawn maps

Map of some of Thomas’s routes