Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic ...

Figure 3. A ‘bing bong’ house in Murrabit 2008. Photo by Tom Henty
4.3 Aboriginal settlement
The period of selection impacted significantly on Aboriginal residents of the Shire. Under the 1869
Aborigines Act, the Central Board Appointed to Watch Over the Interests of the Aborigines became the Board
for the Protection of the Aborigines and provided for the setting up of six Aboriginal reserves. The coercive
Act allowed the Governor to prescribe where and how Aborigines lived, and to take charge of orphaned and
neglected children. Local guardians appointed to districts ‘most frequented by Aborigines’ on pastoral stations
in northern Victoria in 1862 managed depots that supplied basic provisions. ‘Stores for the use of Aborigines’
consisted of flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, soap, rice, oatmeal, blankets, twill shirts, serge shirts, men’s trousers,
boys’ trousers, dresses, petticoats, boys’ jumpers, and chemises. Tomahawks proved a popular item under the
category of ‘miscellaneous’ stores. 67 In May 1869 it was estimated that sixty Aboriginal people lived in the
Boort-Loddon district, and eighty in the Gunbower and Terrick Terrick district. Mr Green, superintendent of
Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve near Healseville, recommended that all the children should be removed from
their ‘old haunts’, and recorded that only thirty Aborigines remained at Gunbower station. 68 By 1873, police
were involved in removing children from pastoral stations to reserves. 69 Some Aborigines sought refuge at the
67
"Seventh Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines of the Colony of Victoria". Victorian Parliamentary
Papers, vol. 3, no. 41, 1871, 24.
68
Ibid., 19. It is not possible to estimate the original number of Aboriginal people living in the Gannawarra Shire as both
Wamba Wamba and Barapa Barapa clan boundaries extended over the River Murray into New South Wales.
69
Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History since 1800 (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 134.
Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic Environmental History
Robyn Ballinger (History in the Making) December 2008
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