He lived on the nation of his ancestors, the Liwura gunditj (clan) of the Gjargud Wurrung individuals. His clan’s identify can nonetheless be heard within the anglicised identify of the volcanic hill that sits above Camperdown: Mount Leura.

And greater than 140 years earlier than Australia started speaking about granting indigenous Australia a Voice within the nationwide parliament, Wombeetch Puyuun had his personal voice.

When he used that voice within the Justice of the Peace’s courtroom, the reporter from the Hampden Guardian took notice.

In response to McArthur’s suggestion he transfer to Framlingham, “the outdated fellow merely shook his head,” the unnamed reporter wrote.

“And, remarking that this was ‘his nation’, [Wombeetch] supplied to take sixpence as an instalment of the hire due by the white fellows, and the Justice of the Peace particularly.”

Loading

I’m reflecting on these phrases as a result of they go to the center of a dialog I’m having on the Dunkeld Writers Pageant this weekend with an indigenous chief of my acquaintance, Denise Lovett.

Lovett, a Gunditjmara girl, is aware of about nation and what it means.

She is a conventional proprietor of the volcanic stone and wetland nation in far south-west Victoria often known as Budj Bim, Australia’s most up-to-date UNESCO World Heritage web site.

Her household spent generations surviving on the Lake Condah Aboriginal Mission on this nation. Greater than a decade in the past, she witnessed the return of the outdated mission and the land round it to the Kerrup Jmara, the clan of the Gunditjmara who’re the normal homeowners of the world.

It could appear uncommon, then, that the topic of our dialog on the writers pageant was a white pastoralist by the identify of James Dawson.

Dawson, nevertheless, was a most unusual man of his time.

He gave friendship to hard-pressed Aboriginal individuals of Western Victoria through the nineteenth century, and took pains to review their tradition, beliefs and traditions. His daughter, Isabella Park Taylor, realized their languages.

Collectively, they wrote “Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of a number of tribes of aborigines within the western district of Victoria, Australia”.

First printed in 1881, the e-book stays a uncommon and priceless information to Aboriginal life and language in western Victoria earlier than and shortly after Europeans arrived.

Dawson insisted on counting on the knowledge he gleaned first-hand from Aboriginal individuals, together with Wombeetch Puyuun, who was born about 20 years earlier than white settlers arrived.

Loading

Dawson turned a long-time buddy of Wombeetch, and was infuriated on the therapy endured by the outdated man, who frequently earned the displeasure of Camperdown’s white residents by having fun with himself loudly in his personal nation.

In 1872, when Wombeetch was given a stretch in jail, Dawson was moved to put in writing an indignant letter to the Camperdown Chronicle – a paper at which I labored as a journalist 100 years later, blithely unaware of the historical past at my toes.

What frightful crime required that Camperdown George be given six months’ onerous labour in Geelong, demanded Dawson in his passionate letter, printed Could 27, 1872?

“Just because he’s black, will get drunk on spirits provided by his Christian [sic] white brethren, makes a noise in imitation of males who underneath related circumstance can be admonished by the Bench, and regarded wronged by 1 / 4 of George’s sentence, with out the onerous labour,” fumed Dawson.

Loading

Wombeetch Puyuun, alias Camperdown George, died of bronchitis on February 26, 1883, aged about 63.

Dawson was away within the UK, partly to protest to British authorities in regards to the bloodbath of Aboriginal individuals in Queensland.

When he returned, he found Wombeetch’s physique had been tossed right into a moist lavatory exterior the cemetery reserved for whites.

Dawson carried his outdated buddy’s physique into the cemetery, and laid him in his personal plot.

Disgusted on the refusal of fellow white landowners to assist present funds for a memorial stone, Dawson paid from his pocket to lift an awesome stone obelisk over Wombeetch’s grave.

It stands there at present, its inscription declaring: “In reminiscence of the Aborigines of this district. Right here lies the physique of the chief Wombeetch Puyuun, and final of the native tribes.”

In the meantime, Australians get labored up a few referendum to grant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a easy voice of their affairs throughout the parliament.