NOTES
- This paper was first delivered to the conference of the Art Association of Australia held at Melbourne in September 1989. A condensed version was published soon afterwards; see Candice Bruce & Anita Callaway, ‘Wild nights and savage festivities: White views of corroborees’, Art and Australia, summer 1989, pp. 269–275.
- Henry Reynolds, Aborigines and Settlers: The Australian Experience 1788–1939, Stanmore (NSW), 1972, p. ix.
- Recognition is due, however, to Geoffrey Dutton's book, White on Black (South Melbourne, 1974), and to the exhibition, The Australian Aborigine Portrayed in Art (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1974), associated with it.
- Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1768–1850, Oxford, 1960.
- This silence has been noted within other disciplines (‘fiction, poetry and film-making’) by Humphrey McQueen; see his ‘Racism and Australian literature’, in Racism: The Australian Experience: A Study of Race Prejudice in Australia, ed. F.S. Stevens, 2nd edn, Sydney, 1974, vol. 1, p. 248. Perhaps the tide is now turning. Since we first published part of this paper in 1989, there has been a substantial increase in the number of art historians writing on this subject; see, for example, Ian McLean, ‘Colonial kills artfully’, in Perspectives on Academic Art, ed. Paul Duro, Papers of the Art Association of Australia, vol. 3, 1991, pp. 56–71. Many, however, seem to concentrate on theory and textual records rather than on the images themselves.
- This can be equated with the even greater marginalization of Australian history in global terms. See David Denoon, ‘The isolation of Australian history’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 22, no. 87, October 1986, pp. 252–260; quoted by Bain Atwood, ‘Aborigines and academic historians: Some recent encounters’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 94, April 1990, pp. 123–135. We would argue that Australian art history has been marginalized even further.
- ‘Boomerang Tyres’ was the brand name of the Barnet Glass Rubber Company, its trademark being an Aboriginal warrior wielding a boomerang; see, for example, the full-page advertisement in the Bulletin, 30 August 1917, p. 27. The logo for ‘Abo Fertilizers’ could still be clearly seen in the late 1980s painted on the first-floor windows of building in George Street, Sydney.
- The ‘Mine Tinkit They Fit’ advertising campaign began early this century; see, for example, the series of print advertisements in which an Aborigine appeared successively in the garb of a rifleman (Bulletin, 23 August 1917, p. 34), an automobile driver (4 October 1917, p.36), an Oxbridge oarsman (18 October 1917, p. 36), a county cricketer (1 November 1917, p. 36), a yachtsman (15 November 1917, p. 36), a huntsman (29 November 1917, p. 42), a bather (13 December 1917, p. 42), Santa's helper (27 December 1917, p. 42), and the spirit of New Year (10 January 1918, p. 42); see also the same Aborigine in judge's wig and gown (‘Mine Gib It Verdict/Pelaco For White Australians’) in the Bulletin, 20 May 1924, p. 33. The same Aborigine, clad only in a Pelaco shirt, still appeared as the company's trademark in both press advertisements and cinema ‘talkie slides’ in the late 1950s/early 1960s.
- ‘Those ads were passed by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia so we felt we were fully entitled to display them… [so] who is going to pick up the bill for the scrapping of my ads?’ (Chuck Hahn, quoted Sun-Herald, 4 November 1990, p. 158).
- Phil Atkinson, partner and joint creative director of the BAM agency, quoted Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1990, p. 3.
- According to Hahn's public relations consultant, its purpose was ‘to show drinking beer is fun’ (John Savage, quoted Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1990, p. 3).
- Joel Vanderpuije, quoted Sun-Herald, 4 November 1990, p. 158. Vanderpuije went on to say: ‘Because I am black people take offence. That is racist. All I want is to work as model and now I am robbed of that’.
- See the exhibition 200 in the Shade, curated by David Swain (State Library of Victoria, March 1988, and The Tin Sheds, University of Sydney, April 1988), and the book which followed it: David Swain, 200 in the Shade: An Historical Selection of Cartoons about Aborigines, Sydney, 1988. As freelance art historians we researched the images for this exhibition, although we had no input to their final selection.
- Ann McGrath & Andrew Markus, ‘European views of Aborigines’, Australians: A Guide to Sources, ed. D.H. Borchardt (with assoc. ed. V. Crittenden), Sydney, 1987, p. 121.
- L.F. Fitzhardinge (ed.), Sydney's First Four Years [incorporating] the Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789) and a Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793) by Watkin Tench, Sydney, 1961, p. 291.
- See Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge (Mass.), 1970 (first published 1936), and Peter Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Berkeley (Calif.), rev. edn, 1989.
- W.H. Breton, Excursions in New South Wales, Western Australia and Van Diemen's Land, London, 1835, p. 196.
- See Henry Reynolds, ‘Racial thought in early colonial Australia’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.20, no.1, April 1974, pp. 45–53, and R.H.W. Reece, Aborigines and Colonists, Sydney, 1974.
- Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of the better-known evolutionary theorist, Charles Darwin) believed his ‘primeval promiscuity’ hypothesis to be corroborated by the ‘contemporary promiscuity’ supposedly observed in the antipodes: ‘Such a promiscuous intercourse of animals is said to exist at this day in New South Wales by Captain Hunter. And that not only amongst the quadrupeds and birds of different kinds, but even amongst the fish, and, as he believes, amongst the vegetables’ (E. Darwin, Zoonomia; quoted in Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd edn, 1989, p. 168).
- John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, London, 1793, p. 68. Hunter wrote: ‘It was wonderful to see what a vast variety of fish…partake of the shark’, thinking thus to explain some of the curiously-shaped species he saw as, for example, part shark, part mullet. We suggest that Hunter's observations of apparent interspecific sexual union, and Erasmus Darwin's later interpretation of them, are relevant to the interpretation of their attitude to the Aborigines.
- Anthony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield, Oxford, 1982, pp. 203–204. Although this was said by Katherine Mansfield about the writing of D.H. Lawrence, we think it can be applied just as readily to the writing of Hunter.
- Hunter, An Historical Journal, p. 191.
- ‘Courtship here, as in other countries, is generally promoted by this exercise, where every one tries to recommend himself to attention and applause. Dancing not only proves an incentive, but offers an opportunity in its intervals’ (Sydney's First Four Years… by Watkin Tench, p.290). Tench described a corroboree he had witnessed which was quite sexually explicit and, although he admitted not understanding it entirely, he readily recognized that its climax was ‘the sacrifice of [Araboo's] charms to her lover’ (p. 289).
- For example, ‘Ceremonie d'un mariage’, in G.L. Domeny de Rienzi's travel book, Oceanie; ou, Cinquieme Partie du Monde, Paris, 1836. Sketches in P.H.F. Phelps's album (Dixson Library PX58) include a similar ‘courtship’ scene with a long descriptive text, as well as the abhorrent ‘A present to one's friends’ (depicting a severed head) and a corroboree scene titled ‘State ball in Australia’.
- George Taplin, ‘The Narrinyeri: An account of the tribes South Australian Aborigines’, in J.D. Woods (ed.), The Native Tribes of South Australia, Adelaide, 1879, p. 38.
- Daniel Adye Fowles, ‘Diary of a Voyage to Australia’, 1836, Mitchell Library ms 3140.
- ‘The immense blaze that proceeds from the fire is so dazzling that all beyond its immediate neighbourhood is dark as Erebus; the savages who rush swiftly before the bonfire appear to rise from the earth’, (J.O. Balfour, A Sketch of New South Wales, London, n.d. [1845], pp. 15–16). In Greek mythology Erebus was the ‘darkness’ which the Shades had to traverse in their passage to Hades. The words ‘savages’, ‘natives’ and ‘blacks’ were used far more frequently in this period than ‘Aborigines’; the adjective ‘grotesque’ was constantly applied to corroborees.
- Hunter, An Historical Journal, p. 193.
- Olive Havard, ‘Lady Franklin's visit to New South Wales, 1839’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 29, no. 5, 1943, p. 295.
- Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Corroboree 1803, charcoal, 19.5 × 25 cm, Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre. Martin Terry believes that ‘this drawing is one of the rare instances where science gave way to a more interpretive romanticism’ (Martin Terry, catalogue entry no. 218, Terra Australia: The Furthest Shore, ed. William Eisler & Bernard Smith, Art Gallery of New South Wales catalogue, Sydney, 1988, p. 212). We would argue that while French images of Aborigines have been consistently read as being based on scientific observation (and hence regarded as somehow more authentic) they are still, of course, constructions. In this particular image, however, the dancers appear to be in random assembly rather than in the tight, militaristic formation usually depicted. It would seem therefore that most artists, whether consciously or not, have imposed the latter rigid structure on their images.
- John Lewin to Alexander Huey, letter 7 November 1812, Huey Papers, Public Record Office Northern Ireland; see Phyllis Mander-Jones & Elizabeth Imashev, ‘John William Lewin’, Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Engravers and Photographers to 1870, ed. Joan Kerr, in press (1992).
- Sydney Gazette, 19 January 1811.
- Lewin to Huey, op. cit.
- James Wallis Joseph Lycett, Corroboree at Newcastle c.1820, oil on wood panel, 71 × 122 cm., Dixson Galleries. The painting was originally attributed to Wallis, but was later reattributed by Bernard Smith to Lycett. The question of attribution is still unresolved: watercolour sketches signed by Wallis appeared at auction in the 1980s, confirming that Wallis painted more than was previously thought; and a related oil painting, Newcastle, New South Wales, Looking towards Prospect Hill, has been recently attributed to Wallis by John McPhee; see Topographical Pictures, Christie's catalogue, London, 22 October 1991, lot 93. For a full discussion see Jeanette Hoorn & Elizabeth Imashev, ‘Joseph Lycett’, and Elizabeth Imashev, ‘James Wallis’, in Dictionary of Australian Artists, in press.
- Although the (freshly cleaned!) painting was chosen for the touring Bicentennial exhibition Creating Australia in 1988, it apparently did not warrant discussion in the catalogue.
- Sydney's First Four Years… by Watkin Tench, p. 289.
- ‘Corrobborree; or, Dance of the Natives of New South Wales’, plate vi in James Wallis, An Historical Account of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements; in Illustration of Twelve Views, London, 1821.
- Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd edn, 1989, p. 236.
- ‘… because in a few years, perhaps even the corrobory will be no more’ (Barron Field, Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, London, 1825, p. 434).
- G.A. Robinson to J. Montague, letter 4 July 1836, in Sir George Arthur Papers, vol.28, Mitchell Library ms A2188; quoted in F. Crowley, Colonial Australia 1788–1840, Melbourne, 1980, p. 478.
- Mrs Campbell Praed, An Australian Girlhood, London, 1902, p. 92.
- John Hunter Kerr, Glimpses of Life in Victoria by a Resident, Edinburgh, 1872; quoted in Joan Kerr, Dictionary of Australian Artists, in press. The photograph of the corroboree used as the basis for the lithograph in J.H. Kerr's book was afterwards copied by Montagu Scott; a copy, annotated ‘Corroborie held at night. Fernyhurst, Australia Felix. J.H.K.’ and signed ‘Eugene Montagu Scott’, is in the collection of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. Kerr's photograph must have been taken before Scott moved to Sydney in 1865.
- These meetings have been documented in R.H.W. Reece, ‘Feasts and blankets: The history of some early attempts to establish relations with the Aborigines of New South Wales, 1814–1846’, Archeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 190–206. The meeting held in December 1826 was sketched by Augustus Earle; see his The Annual Meeting of Native Tribes at Parramatta New South Wales 1826, watercolour, National Library of Australia.
- The significance of Martha Berkeley's large watercolour as an early example of Australian history painting, especially in the light of Berkeley's verso comments that she had deliberately set out to record the event for posterity, was first noted by Joan Kerr; see her Dictionary of Australian Artists: Working Paper I: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers 1770–1870: A-H, Sydney, 1984, p. 69.
- Maria Gawler to Jane Cox, continuous letter commencing 1 November 1838, State Library of South Australia PRG 50/19; information from Joan Kerr.
- Havard, loc. cit.
- Text accompanying the sketch by P.H.F. Phelps, ‘State ball in Australia: Kangaroo dance’ c.1840s, in his Album: ‘Native Scenes, Snakes, Birds and Marine Life, Dixson Library PX58, f.3.
- The Wollaston diaries. Appendix II: Wollaston's account of the Western Australian natives’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 31, 1945, p. 367.
- Australian, 17 April 1835, p. 2.
- Quoted in Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788–1914, Sydney, 1985, p. 9.
- New South Wales Examiner, 11 May 1842, p. 3.
- Hobart Town Courier, 29 December 1847; quoted in Vanny Jackson, ‘Charles Edward Stanley, Dictionary of Australian Artists, ed. Joan Kerr, in press (1992).
- For example, Clement Hodgkinson's ‘Dance by the Yarrabandini of northern New South Wales’, in his Australia from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay (London, 1845), was described as ‘probably more a reflection of European anxieties than Aboriginal rituals, for the serried ranks evoke images of contemporary European military formations’; see Marian Aveling & Lyndall Ryan, ‘At the boundaries: Dispossession’, in Australians 1838, ed. Alan Atkinson & Marian Aveling, Sydney, 1987, p.40, caption to illustration.
- See, for example, fig. 4: ‘Our Christmas pantomimes: March of Amazons’, Australasian Sketcher, 23 January 1873, p. 161.
- Table Talk, 21 January 1887, p. 1.
- For an illustration of the event, see W. A. Cawthorne (engr. Samuel Calvert), ‘The Kuree dance, as witnessed by the Duke of Edinburgh in South Australia’, Illustrated Australian News, 26 November 1867, p.8. Viscount Newry, the Duke's travelling companion, also made a sketch of this corroboree (location unknown); see ‘Notes on Melbourne life, by Curtis Candler, together with his transcript copy of the diaries of Capt Frederick Charles Standish c. 1848–1877’, La Trobe Library ms 9502, p. 336.
- John Milner & Oswald W. Brierly, The Cruise of H.M.S. Galatea, London, 1869, p. 177.
- J.D. Woods, A Narrative of the Visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, KG., to South Australia, Adelaide, 1868, pp. 87–88.
- Taplin, op. cit.
- South Australian Advertiser, 14 November 1867, p. 3.
- Milner & Brierly, p.179.
- Empire, 11 March 1868, p. 2. The committee warned the general public ‘not to give the Blacks any money nor intoxicating drinks during their stay about Sydney for the next few days’ (Empire, 7 March 1868, p. 1).
- William Constable, Corroboree 1946, watercolour and gouache, 46 × 62.1 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales; information from Kay Vernon.
- Arts Council of Australia ballet season, souvenir programme, Empire Theatre, Sydney, 1950, p. 11; information from Leslie Callaway.
- Dean wrote: ‘only a thorough, first-hand knowledge that would come from a comprehensive research journey would give the background necessary to create a major work…I decided that the ballet would have to be based on as wide a variety of authentic aboriginal steps as possible… Eight months and 10,000 miles of travel took us to many widely separated tribal areas of the aborigines… [from the first rehearsal] we held lessons in aboriginal points of view, in their manner of thinking and resultant dance expression’ (Beth Dean, The Many Worlds of Dance, Sydney, n.d., pp. 11–13). The Royal Command Performance of Corroboree was held on 6 February 1954. William Constable designed the costumes as well as the sets for this production. For photographs of the costume designs, including that for The Initiate as danced by Beth Dean, see the Australian Women's Weekly, 10 February 1954, p. 17. For photographs of the performance itself, see Pix, 3 April 1954, pp. 33–35.
- Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1988, p. 32.
- The interview between ‘Billy Cokebottle’ and Monte Dwyer on location in Townsville appeared ‘live’ on the National Nine Network breakfast show, Today, on 17 September 1991 at approximately 8:35 a.m. The ‘joke’ was revealed by Stuart Littlemore in his Media Watch show, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, on 23 September.
- Australian, 23 August 1844, p. 603.
- The ball was held by the Mayor of Sydney at the Royal Victoria Theatre in August 1844. John Rae described Hamley as ‘enliven[ing] the audience vastly on one occasion, by bursting into the centre of a circle of waltzers, and giving a ludicrous facsimile of an Aboriginal dance’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 1844, p.2). William Nicholas made a sketch of this ball which was published as a lithograph by Edward Barlow in 1844 (Mitchell Library); much later Nicholas's original was reworked as a simple line drawing and used as the frontispiece to Rae's poem The first fancy ball in Australia’ (in his Gleanings from my Scrap-Book, 3rd series, Sydney, 1874). In his introduction Rae claimed that Nicholas's sketch represented the moment when: ‘An Australian Chief, with his blanket, vaults, With hop, step, and jump, to the midst of the waltz; And, armed with a wommera, waddy, and lance, Exults in a wild Aboriginal dance!’ (John Rae, p. viii).
- The ball was held at the Sydney Town Hall; for a description, see George A. Taylor, Those Were the Days: Being Reminiscences of Australian Artists and Writers, Sydney, 1918, pp. 77–82.
- Rusden is best known for his three-volume History of Australia (London, 1883) in which he acknowledged that Australia and its people had a history prior to European settlement. Using the pseudonym ‘Yittadairn’, however, he was also the author of the epic poem, Moyarra: An Australian Legend (Maitland, 1851; Melbourne, 1891), which sentimentalized the courtship of the Aboriginal maiden, Mytah, and the warrior, Moyarra.
- Visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh—The fancy dress ball in the Exhibition Building’, unsourced illustration in A.H. Tulk (comp.), A Record of the Visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, KG., K.T., P.C., Captain R.N., to Australia, Melbourne, 1868, vol. 2 (unpaged).
- Melbourne Herald, 26 December 1867; reprinted Empire, 1 January 1868, p. 2.
- Candler, p. 382.
- The original Will Wimble was a simple, good-natured and officious character in Joseph Addison's Spectator essays; Barron Field noted that the Aborigines at Sydney Cove were ‘the Will Wimbles of the Colony: the carriers of news and fish; the gossips of the town; the loungers on the quay, they know everybody; and understand the nature of everybody's business, although they have none of their own but this’ (Field, p. 435; quoted in J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, St Lucia, 2nd edn, 1989, p. 7). Jacky was the generic name given to the simple-minded and unwittingly sharp-tongued Aboriginal caricatures beloved by generations of white cartoonists; see Swain, op. cit. ‘Faithful Aboriginal retainers’ appeared as comic pantomime characters (played of course by white actors) throughout the second half of the nineteenth century; see, for example, the character Bulgarro in Garnet Walch's Trookulentos, the Tempter; or, Harlequin Cockatoo, the Demon of Discontent, the Good Fairy of Contentment, and the Four-Leaved Shamrock of Australia which was presented at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, at Christmas 1871.
- The breastplate was presented to Bungaree by Macquarie on 31 January 1815.
- ‘Bungaree, King of the Blacks’, All the Year Round, ed. Charles Dickens, 21 May 1859, pp. 77–78; this was quickly reprinted in Bell's Life in Sydney, 3 September 1859, p. 4.
- By contemporary visitors to Sydney, such as Captain Bellinghausen in 1820 and Robert Dawson in 1827 (both quoted in Healy, 1989, pp.8–9), as well by more recent scholars: ‘Firstly, he did not understand the intense symbolism to Europeans of the cast-off military clothes he was given… Secondly, his behaviour…as a “king” highlighted so clearly to Europeans the extreme difference, and unbridgeable gulf, between themselves and Aborigines’ (Richard Neville, ‘The many faces of Bungaree’, Australian Antique Collector, 42nd edn, 1991, p. 37.
- J.J. Healy, ‘Dimension and grandeur’, Hemisphere, vol.21, no. 6, 1977, p. 20.
- ‘Bungaree, King of the Blacks’, p. 79. Bungaree finished by saying to the commodore: “No, sa,… you not Brisbane. But you are very good man, I daresay. Never mind. I forgive you”.
- Healy (1977), p. 20.
- Neville, p. 37.
- Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, Melbourne, 1981, p. 43.
- Gideon S. Lang, Aborigines of Australia: In their Original Condition and in their Relations with the White Men, Melbourne, 1865, pp. 28–29.
- John Lort Stokes, Discoveries in Australia: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed during the Voyage of HMS Beagle, in the Years 1837–38-39-40-42-43, London, 1846, vol. 2, p. 413.
- ibid., p. 414
- ibid., pp. 414–415.