Making Public A Significant Frontier Period of Victorian History [20.12.2011]

The Trust has made a grant of $24,400 to the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL) to enable completion of the collation of significant historic Kulin Nation language material and an annotated transcription of a key journal documenting early Black-White contact in Victoria. (The Kulin nation comprised the Jajowrong tribe that lived in the western area north of Ballarat, the Wathaurung people from the Geelong district, the Woiworung tribe of the lower Yarra valley (including the Wurundjeri clan), the Taungurongs from the hilly district surrounding Seymour, and the Bunurong tribe of the coastal lands around Port Phillip Bay, Western Port Bay and Wilsons Promontory.)

William Thomas was Assistant Protector of Aborigines at Port Phillip and Victoria from 1839 to 1867. The 10,000 pages of the William Thomas Papers, held by the State Library of NSW, contain extensive language materials and a journal of 28 years recording almost daily contact with the Kulin people around Melbourne and adjacent districts. The journal is the most comprehensive daily record of Black-White contact in this frontier period of Victorian history, recording in incomparable detail, the lives of over 150 named Kulin men, women and children. Researcher Dr Marguerita Stephens has been painstakingly transcribing the journal over a number of years.

The journal and language materials, collected by VACL from the Thomas Papers over the past decade, will be published digitally and will provide new insights to the impact of colonial expansion on the Indigenous people of south-eastern Australia, detailing previously unrecognised aspects of Aboriginal culture, resistance, leadership and accommodation to the new. The project includes a comprehensive Kulin community consultation process.