No Speed Bumps

Aboriginals at Home

'King Charlie's Tribe', Boort Creek, Central Victoria, Australia (1863)

My paternal great-great grandfather arrived in Australia in 1852 from France via the Caribbean island of Martinique. And 'took up' land in Central Victoria, round 100 miles north of Melbourne.

My great-great grandmother's people settled in Boort in North-Eastern Victoria and, in the most charitable way of putting it, were occupying property there alongside 'King Charlie's' Loddon Tribe.

The tribe was photographed in 1863, having been 'set up' according to European artistic precepts of the time - a triangular disposition of the group, reflected fortuitously in the general form of their humpy or temporary dwelling. Aboriginals were nomadic within the scope of their land.

The original names of the individuals in the group were dispensed with for European ones with ranks of status where it was felt appropriate - 'King Charlie'.

Again putting the most positive though probably unreal spin on it, the following group of artifacts were 'given' to my family ...


It this distance in time and place I can (just) examine at them without big big guilt.

The boomerangs are made of a very heavy wood - good to knocking down kangaroos and the like.

And covered with incised patterns of lines ...


... some of which I suspect represent topographical features of the landscape (such as the waving crossing-over continuous lines down the center suggesting a creek) - and others the footprints of prey being hunted ...


There are two stone axes, perhaps used for skinning animals or cleaning their hides ...



As much as anything, I'd really like to know a lot more about these Loddon tribe people.

What were they like as individuals? What were the particular relationships between them? What was their socio-cultural belief system?

All the things you tend to know when subjects are not being treated from the anthropological point of view of the period.