Australia

Front matter

ASA

THIRD EDITION

JOHN RICKARD

Contents

Cover

Back cover

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Preface

This book has itself had a history. I had been approached by Longman in 1981 about writing a short history of Australia, one of a series the English publisher was planning. I was probably flattered to be asked and gave the invitation some thought. There had been a procession of such introductory texts since the Second World War, and, seeking some new approach to distinguish my possible effort from its predecessors, I lighted on the idea of ‘a cultural history’. I worried at first whether this sounded pretentious — which is a comment on 1980s attitudes to our history — but I soon warmed to it, feeling that the cultural perspective would give me much more freedom to create a narrative that reflected my own interests. The result was Australia: A Cultural History which was published in 1988, though having no association with the bicentennial celebrations. It did well enough to merit a second edition; however, within a few years Longman was taken over and integrated into Addison Wesley Longman. Thankfully, my friends at Longman had survived the take-over and saw the Second Edition through in 1996. Alas, the cannibalism of the publishing world continued, and Addison Wesley Longman was in turn swallowed up by Pearson Education, who had little interest in the book, and it languished in the shadowy world of ‘print on demand’. Now Monash University Publishing has come to the rescue to give it a new, revised lease of life.

In the original Preface I assumed ‘a broad, anthropological understanding of culture’, telling ‘the story of Australia through an examination of its evolving values, beliefs, rites and customs’. In doing so I sought to distance myself from some of the standard clichés of Australian history:

Much Australian history has been preoccupied with the quest for national identity — a preoccupation which is itself revealing — and has, as a result, often concentrated on that which is seen as being distinctively ‘Australian’: so a self-fulfilling model of national growth is embraced which defines and limits the narrative. My assumption has been that a provincial culture is by definition derivative, and that it is necessary to keep in view the continuing relationship with the metropolitan culture. The paradox is that if one focuses on the derivative, one gains a new perception of what might ultimately be seen as ‘distinctive’. Thus, for example, the Californian bungalow was an architectural importation, yet in its local adaptation became a part of the culture of suburban Australia, along with the backyard, the garage down the side of the house, the corner shop and the picture theatre. It is from the arrangement of such elements that a distinctive suburban milieu emerges.

I went on to argue that what I called the ‘cultural accommodations’ achieved between dissonant forces in society could tell us a lot about ‘Australia’, indeed tell us much more than harping on some mythical entity called ‘the Australian way of life’. 1 summed up the book as ‘an historical inquiry into the ways in which Australians have related to their environment and each other’.

I stand by that credo and this edition retains the basic structure of the first. But it must be said that the last section, “The Culture Questioned’, which covers the period from 1939 to 2016, takes on a darker tone as the narrative edges towards the present day, focusing increasingly on the failure to achieve workable cultural accommodations on important issues. So, for example, it might seem that we have, since the 1988 Bicentenary, grown out of the racist provincialism of earlier years, but in fact our political processes have proved incapable of shedding a monarchy based in another country and achieving effective reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous peoples.

In the twenty years since the last edition there has been a remarkable surge of scholarship in the Australian field that has both broadened and deepened our understanding, finding new pathways into the past through studies such as transnational history and the history of the emotions. Much of this is very stimulating, but presents a considerable challenge to the general historian, and even more so when trying to draw on these insights in a condensed form such as the short history. One outcome, however, has been to replace the old chapter-by-chapter Bibliography with an extensive ‘Further reading’ section, which should be more useful for the reader wishing to pursue particular interests.

It is obviously important for a cultural history to integrate what we loosely refer to as ‘the arts’ into the narrative, but such coverage cannot be comprehensive. ‘This book, therefore, should not be regarded as a critical guide to the arts: rather, it seeks to place the arts in their social context, and to relate the concerns of writers, artists and intellectuals generally to shifts in the wider culture.

The Second Edition concluded with a ‘Coda’ covering the period between 1988 and 1996. That has now been dispensed with, though some material from it has found its way into the new concluding chapter, “The view from

—xli-

PREFACE the twenty-first century’. Shaping this sizeable slice of contemporary history has been no easy task, but the aim has been to maintain the thrust of the original themes of the book, and, once again, to allow some space for speculation about the uncertainties of the future.

Apart from my debt to the historians whose works I have drawn upon in this reappraisal, I have been helped and supported by many friends and colleagues, including Ian Britain, David Chandler, Graeme Davison, Susan Foley, Jim Hammerton, David Hilliard, Katie Holmes, Jim Mitchell, Chips Sowerwine, Peter Spearritt and Al Thomson. I am indebted to Nathan Hollier, Laura McNicol Smith and Les Thomas at Monash University Publishing for their interest in and contribution to the project.

Since 1981 this book has been part of my life. Indeed, it has embodied my commitment to the writing and teaching of Australian history. And now, this is a kind of farewell. Books, of course, have a life of their own. And in that spirit I wish Australia: A Cultural History well.

John Rickard Monash University

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NEW SOUTH WALES WESTERN AUSTRALIA E SOUTH Moreton Bay (1824)

Norfolk Island AUSTRALIA .

Nortolk Island .

Swan River (1829) Adelaide (1836)

Port Phillip (1835)

Hobart (1804)

Darwin (1869)

NORTHERN TERRITORY

NEW SOUTH WALES

WESTERN WESTERN AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA

SOUTH e{ Brisbane

AUSTRALIA Nortolk Island e NEW SOUTH WALES Sydney Sydney FEDERAL CAPITAL Melbourne TERRITORY

SOUTH

Brisbane

Norfolk Island e

VAN DIEMEN S LAND Hobart

Map 1 Colonial and state boundaries, with principal settlements.

Chapter 1

For the Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders the earth had always been there. It required no explanation. Myth interpreted the shape and appearance of the world they knew and inhabited. Rocks, trees, waterholes, animals, birds: such objects, intimately experienced, were integrated through myth and ritual into a spiritual universe of extraordinary richness.

There were — are — spirit beings which expressed themselves in creating or actually becoming the physical detail of the Aboriginal world. In doing so they gave meaning to the land and to life. These spirit beings had an independence and unpredictability which were also beyond explanation. So they might appear male or female or draw on the sexuality of both; and human might, at will, become animal; nor was their force diminished if they transformed themselves into the features of the landscape.

So the rainbow-serpent, which is found in most Aboriginal mythologies, is commonly depicted in its terrifying, animal form, with a kangaroolike head and crocodile teeth, ears or crown of feathers, long, spiked body and fish tail. Usually inhabiting waterholes, the serpent is also the arching rainbow in the sky. Thus the rainbow-serpent is a symbol of water and life; sometimes it is also an ancestral being. For the Gunwinggu it became Ngalyod, a woman, who, with her husband, Wuragog, travelled the country carrying her digging stick and net bag. When Wuragog sought to lie with her, Ngalyod was apt to return to her serpent form, but their union produced children who were the first Gunwinggu. For the Murinbata the rainbow-serpent became a man, Kunmanggur, who made the musical instrument, the didjeridu, from a bamboo stalk. He blew on it hard, and with the reverberation of its strange music several flying foxes flew out of its end. Kunmanggur decided to make people, and when he blew again a boy and girl emerged.

In some myths the spirit beings who created the familiar world of the Aboriginal people came across the sea from another place. So in the Djanggawul epic song cycle two sisters and a brother came from somewhere far away, but the journey celebrated is from Bralgu, the island of spirits. Reaching the mainland they continue their journey, making wells and trees, and through such acts investing the land with meaning. Then, following proper ritual preparations, children are removed from the wombs of the sisters. The world of the Yirrkala people had begun to take shape.

It is myths such as these which are the source of what the Aboriginal people call the Dreaming. The myths are not fables of ‘long ago’, for Aboriginal people have, in the European sense, no concept of history. The past does not so much precede the present, as lie contained within it. The Dreaming paths mapped out by the spirit beings continue to determine the pattern of Aboriginal life, for the Dreaming is a relationship between people and land which forms the basis of traditional society. The myths serve to unite the creativity of the source with the continuing reality of life. So a man can say of a particular site, with certainty rather than wonder: “This is a place where the dreaming comes up, right up from inside the ground.”

‘The frequent association in myth of origins with canoe journeys over sea is historically suggestive. Aboriginal people have been in Australia at least 40,000, and possibly as long as 65,000 years. Human evolution could not have taken place separately in Australia, for there is no evidence of the existence here of the ape-like predecessors of homo sapiens, therefore the first Aboriginal Australians must have come from elsewhere, most likely south-east Asia. Sea-levels were then much lower, and although the Australian continent was never joined to Asia, New Guinea was part of a mainland which was relatively close to the chains of islands pointing from Java and Borneo. Most islands were within sight of each other, and even over the last and longest gap it is likely that smoke from natural bushfires on the Australian continent would have been visible. Whatever the background to this migration, and whatever the precise route followed, the journey required a combination of technical skills and high motivation. Setting foot on the unknown land the first inhabitants had to learn to understand a new, though not totally unfamiliar, environment. Northern Australia shared some of the plant life of Indonesia, but its animals were strange and different. The newcomers, like their spirit beings, had to ‘make’ the country in their own image.

How long it took for Aboriginal people to spread out over the vast island continent is not known, though it might have been as long as 10,000 years. Preferring at first the kind of coastal terrain familiar to them, they were unlikely to have sought out less hospitable regions until forced to by

1 George Tinamin quoted in Phillip Toyne and Daniel Vachon, Growing Up the Country (Melbourne, 1984), p. 5.

circumstances. ‘Twenty-three thousand years ago another drop in sea-level united Tasmania to the mainland, and almost immediately, it seems, Aboriginal people ventured into what was then a harsh, cold environment, with glaciers paving its mountains and icebergs floating along its coast. Ten thousand years later the sea rose again, and the First Nations people in Tasmania were marooned, but in what was now a more congenial environment. As for the desert regions of central Australia, so often associated with the archetypal Aborigine, these were probably the last to be occupied: there is no evidence of habitation far inland older than 26,000 years. By 1788 it is thought that there might have been a total Aboriginal population of about 750,000.

Over many thousands of years, therefore, the pattern of Aboriginal settlement emerged. Eventually there came to be possibly between 500 and 600 dialects and languages. These might be spoken by as few as 100 people, or as many as 1,500: each such group was a society unto itself. The world was largely defined through a particular people’s relationship with its land. Myth did not need to explain the life and culture of other people, since they impinged only incidentally on this world. To travel beyond your country was to go outside your world — it was hazardous spiritually, as much as materially. Aboriginal culture is, then, many separate cultures. Even physically, Aboriginal peoples vary considerably: the Tasmanians, for example, were distinguished by woolly hair and reddish-brown skin colour. Although the similarities remain important, the diversity of Aboriginal experience is one born of thousands of years in a continent of great physical variety, from lush tropical rain forest and fertile, grassy plains to desert wastelands and wild mountains.

‘Tribe’ is an inappropriate word to describe an Aboriginal community. ‘There was no chieftain, and the community came together infrequently, and usually only for ceremonial purposes. Yet within each society relationships were governed by a complex web of structures. At the base was the family — aman, his wife or wives (for marriage was not necessarily monogamous) and their children. For purposes of daily hunting and foraging the family was part of a band, usually comprising no more than fifty people. But beyond the family a range of groupings was organised according to descent, relationship to the land and particular sites within it, and totemic association. The total community was usually divided into moieties which had important social and ritual functions. So all were aware of their position in society, and accordingly the nature of their relationship to other members. In some ways this was restrictive — marriage, for example, was governed by an elaborate hierarchy of rules — but it also made for ease and security. This did not mean that Aboriginal people were mere captives of custom: there was still much scope for negotiation, bargaining and making decisions. But the entire society was like a family in which the individual member had a clear knowledge of the obligations and responsibilities of social intercourse. So it was possible to live your whole life without meeting anyone who was, literally, a stranger.

A casual observer watching an Aboriginal band absorbed in its daily concerns could hardly guess at the complex social structure which conditioned it. Even the movements of the band from camp to camp reflected a pattern born of a long spiritual and material association with the land. To describe Aboriginal people as nomads is misleading if it suggests aimlessness, and indeed in the more fertile regions Aboriginal communities were much more settled. In the south-east there were even villages of stone dwellings, close to lakes and rivers where there was good fishing with elaborate systems of weirs, channels and nets. But even where, as in the arid zones, greater distances were crossed, the essence of these cyclical movements was to ‘look after’ the country, both in terms of husbanding its resources and caring for its religious sites. The gathering of food was a material and not unpleasant necessity, but it also kept Aboriginal peoples close to the spiritual source of their culture.

In the daily routine the men hunted, with much ingenuity, their game being kangaroos, wallabies, emus and a range of smaller marsupials; fishing, too, was often important. Women and children were primarily responsible for gathering vegetables, fruit, eggs, shellfish and honey; sometimes they hunted smaller game. Women of the Eora People on the east coast also fished, using hooks and lines which had been introduced at least 500 years ago. Women’s tasks too, demanded considerable skill in recognition and selection. Various foods required cooking or preparation: meat was lightly cooked, often in earth ovens, while some tubers and the fruit of the cycad palm, for example, required quite complicated processing. The diet was one of surprising variety, though this was naturally affected by the seasons. The seasonal availability of a particular food might provide the occasion of a gathering: so in the summer when clouds of small brown Bogong moths took shelter in the southern alps many Aboriginal people, some travelling great distances, pursued them there for a time of sociable feasting. Food generally was shared: the band was a cooperative unit.

Although accustomed to moving about the country, the Aboriginal people had a strong sense of their home in the camp. Dwellings, although

=b not universally used, were important citadels of shelter and rest, and even the humble bark hut featured as a motif in Aboriginal art. Widows and unmarried women gathered around one fire, bachelors around another, while each family usually had its own. Such an arrangement was more in the interest of order than privacy, and part of the vitality of camp life stemmed from its openness and communality. After the separate pursuits of the day the camp provided the focus for social and cultural sustenance.

So life went on, and somehow this society functioned with little evidence of overt government. Partly this was due to the interlocking network of social structures which set the rules for conduct. But partly it was due to the consensual mode of making day-to-day decisions, a mode encouraged by the realities of nomadic life. Respect was accorded older people, because their knowledge was greater, particularly in matters of ritual. Ritual, of course, was concerned with conditioning behaviour, so in this sense the old presided over the young. But their authority was not formalised, outside the context of ritual itself. When someone offended against recognised standards of conduct — say, in breaching a sacred tabu — the penalty was usually a customary one, though it might be carried out in a casual manner without ceremony. So a man who had offended might, when hunting in a group, suddenly be speared in the back by a companion: the nature of this act as punishment would be understood by all concerned.

In one sense men had more power and privilege than women. ‘They could take more than one wife, while a woman was not similarly able to acquire husbands. Moreover a husband exercised certain rights over the disposal of his wife’s sexuality. Men were more likely to exercise authority and to preside over ritual, and they assumed that hunting had more status and glamour than gathering. Yet women had their own ritual life, their own sacred knowledge; and their work as food gatherers was fundamental to the economy.

‘The relationship of woman to man was not, in practice, one of subservience. In one myth Minala, whose totem is the tortoise, is married to Wimu who is extremely possessive, and does not want to share him, somewhat to Minala’s chagrin. He goes to seek the magic which will turn her into a tortoise, and thus rid him of her, but the determined Wimu follows and observes him, and later profanes his magic, with the result that it is Minala who becomes a tortoise. Wimu is now overtaken by remorse and wants Minala turned back into a man, but she is told that there is no magic strong enough: the only solution is for her to become a tortoise. Such a tale might be interpreted as a warning to wilful wives, yet ultimately it is Minala who is the loser.

It is notable, however, that while many of the creative spirits of the Dreaming are female, the myths seemed to feel a need or, one should say, the tellers of the myths did — to explain a disparity between the status of woman as the source of life and her tribal situation. So in the Djanggawul cycle the brother steals the sisters’ sacred basket and emblems, and thus appropriates a particular ritual. The sisters appear neither resentful nor humiliated, for they still retain important roles, but the myth can be interpreted as validating male control of a female-derived ritual.

‘The subtleties of relations between the sexes is further revealed in the Aboriginal understanding of conception. Some accounts have misleadingly stressed Aboriginal people’s ignorance of the causal connection between coitus and pregnancy; in fact it was the general belief that there were both physical and spiritual aspects to conception. On the one hand sexual intercourse was necessary to place a foetus in the womb, though one act alone would be insufficient to ‘make’ the child. On the other hand the foetus could only be animated by a spirit child entering the woman’s body. ‘This could happen in various ways: it might be foreshadowed by a dream of the father’s, and would usually be identified by some particular symptom experienced by the mother. ‘The place where this happened — the nearness, for example, of any sacred site — would help determine the totemic affiliation of the child. The spirit-children were themselves part of the environment, often inhabiting the waterholes. So from the very beginning of life the integration of land and people was celebrated. While all Aboriginal peoples identified the physical and spiritual aspects of birth, different emphases can be detected. Among the Warlpiri, for example, older men tended to believe that the entry of the spirit-child into the woman was more important than copulation: women, on the other hand, perhaps influenced by the nature of their own experience, were certain that coitus was the primary factor. Men and women, while sharing a common religious heritage, might nevertheless have different perspectives on sexuality.

Of course in Aboriginal society it was hardly necessary for such theoretical differences to be resolved or even spelt out — they simply existed. Sexuality, in its day-to-day manifestations, was talked about openly, without shame or embarrassment. It was not something that children needed to be shielded from. Such discussion, gossip and banter were focused largely on heterosexual behaviour, homosexuality seems only to have played a minor role in Aboriginal society, and then largely as a transitional experience of puberty.

It was part of the balance of Aboriginal life that there was plenty of time for social activity. Except in times of drought, hunting and gathering did not take up many hours of the day, so that conversation, storytelling and ritual were easily accommodated. Ritual, however, had more than a social function, for it was vital to the maintenance of the community. Much care and time were taken in the preparation for and performance of rites. Some rites were dramatic re-enactments in song and dance of the deeds of the spirit-beings or heroes; some were concerned with replenishing the natural environment, and therefore were seen as fundamental to immediate survival; others were essentially rites of initiation or death. All were characterised by great energy and commitment; there was a real sense in which the community was revitalised by their performance.

Male initiation rites were complex, with many stages and practices; circumcision was widely performed, subincision to a lesser extent. Initiation often involved a symbolic death and rebirth. The boy would be taken away from the main camp, where the women would, for the time, remain, wailing in formal grief at their loss. In the distance elders swung bullroarers — a sacred, wooden object, common to most Aboriginal communities — the howling sound of which represented the voice of a spirit-being, perhaps the rainbow serpent, which would duly swallow the boy and then vomit him back into a new life. Women’s role in this male-centred rite (there were less complex puberty rites for girls) was nevertheless important. Initiation was a rite of communal significance, and from one perspective it could be seen as a structured dialogue between the sexes concerning the future of the community.

Music, dance, painting and culture were all essential to ritual. Indeed, ‘art’ was not something to be juxtaposed against ‘society’, in the sense that ‘leisure’ is often contrasted with ‘work’. Art was fully integrated with the social process: it always had a utilitarian purpose, whether in terms of immediate function (as with a spear or a dilly bag) or ritual significance (as with body painting and sacred objects). There were no professional artists, and little distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’. Certain skills were required of most people — in making implements, for example, and body painting — and if some gained particular reputations as artists, songmen or dancers, it was because of the opportunities their position in the community afforded them, rather than any special response to an artistic calling. To play the didjeridu called for the development of considerable technique to maintain a continuity of sound and produce, simultaneously, two pitches, but such a player, however important to his community, was in no sense a professional performer.

The importance of art was assumed: it needed no justification. Indeed, art was so important that there was a constant process of production rather than any sense of amassing artistic treasures. For communities on the move there was no point in objets dart, except for the few essential sacred objects. Bark paintings might simply be left to decay or, if used in rites, deliberately destroyed, though sometimes a sacred object would be hidden at a site for later use. Sand sculptures, made for mortuary and healing rites, were as ephemeral as the sound of the didjeridu itself.

‘There were, however, the great galleries of Aboriginal art in caves and on rock faces, which were often part of the Dreaming and had, in that sense, always been there. So Aboriginal people were certain that they themselves had not painted the extraordinary Wandjina figures, with their white faces and red haloes, found in the Kimberley. For in the Dreaming the Wandjina came from the north, making waterholes and shaping the landscape; each Wandjina then painted his own image on the walls of a cave before making his home in a nearby waterhole.

Similarly the mimi figures of Western Arnhem Land seem to represent an ancient artistic tradition, though Aboriginal people remained well acquainted with these curious spirits. The mimi were stick-like creatures, usually depicted in lively movement, running, dancing or hunting. They were so thin and light that they only hunted in still weather, for fear of being broken by the wind, but they possessed very keen sight and hearing. When an Aborigine came near they ran quickly to a rock and blew upon it; the rock obediently opened and closed behind them. Sometimes medicine-men claimed to have glimpsed the mimi; and in the past Aboriginal people were said to have acquired various skills from these spirits.

Ochres, pipeclay and charcoal were the main materials of Aboriginal art; sometimes blood was used. Hence the basic colours were red, white, yellow and black. Yet although the predominance of this colour range throughout the continent gave Aboriginal art a surface homogeneity, a variety of styles and techniques pointed to its essential diversity.

The Wandjina figures were so unusual that early European beholders imaginatively detected Egyptian influences. They were not only in a different mode from, say, stick figures such as the mimi, but seemed the product of different artistic concerns. Another distinctive tradition was that of ‘x-ray’ art, when the painting depicted the internal organs and structure of humans or animals. Some Aboriginal art made use of geometrical motifs and arrangements to such an extent that the effect was abstract.

1.1 This bark painting from Western Arnhem Land shows a hunter in the act of spearing a kangaroo, which is depicted in x-ray style. The artist told anthropologist Baldwin Spencer, who collected the painting in 1913, that the hunter came across the kangaroo when searching for sugarbag (the honey of the native bee), with which the dilly bag around his neck is filled.

X 19886: Hunter and black kangaroo, Gaagadju group, Gunbalanya (formerly Oenpelli), Western Arnhem Land, Australia, c. 1913: Paddy Cahill Collection. Courtesy Museum Victoria.

The meanings of Aboriginal paintings or sculptures were usually intricate. ‘The geometrical motifs might represent landscape features such as waterholes and rivers; they might also have other deeper symbolic meanings. To fully understand a particular work one would need to be a member of the particular group within the people from which it came. Although the graphic code language upon which artists drew might have some universal characteristics, precise meanings were localised in context. So a sacred object, the significance of which was located in ritual, might only be capable of full interpretation by a very few. It was not so much that knowledge was ‘secret’, in an elitist sense, but that an Aboriginal person’s expectations of ‘understanding’ a work of art were conditioned by circumstance.

Traditional Aboriginal society was imbued with a religious view of life, and ritual and art were harnessed to its expression. Particular people acquired ritual responsibilities, but just as there was no chieftain, so did religion lack secular organisation. So personalised by culture and experience was the Dreaming that there was no need for such organisation to maintain it. Nor were the spirit beings worshipped in a formal sense.

The nearest thing to a priest was, perhaps, the medicine-man (or ‘cleverman’). At one level the medicine-man was a doctor who by ordinary or magical means cured illness; he might also be a sorcerer capable of using magic to harm or punish others. But above all the medicine-man was respected because he had access to the spirit-beings and powers of the Dreaming. Sometimes the medicine-man gained his position, at least in part, by inheritance; sometimes he might be chosen by the elders, or more particularly the existing medicine-men; sometimes he might experience a call in a manner which marked him out for the role. However selected, the novice then underwent a complex ritual transformation. Just as in initiation there was a symbolic experience of death and rebirth, so too the making of a medicine-man often required a ritual death, sometimes achieved by the candidate having the ‘death bone’ pointed at him, sometimes by his being swallowed by the rainbow-serpent. Once ‘dead’ he was then ‘re-made’, limbs being removed, cleaned and replaced, and magical substances, such as quartz crystals, inserted. The body was restored to life: the medicine-man had been born. In the course of this ritual transformation he had come into contact with the spirit beings, even, in some cases, meeting them in the sky. So in some measure he now shared their powers: he was no longer constricted by time and space, and could do extraordinary things. Yet for all his singularity and the community’s respect for his powers, the medicine-man se was otherwise an ordinary member of the society, living out his life, in practical terms, in the same way as his neighbours.