I recently read P.D. Gardner’s book entitled “Through foreign eyes: European perceptions of the Kurnai tribe of Gippsland.
In the book, Gardner outlines some of the key figures in the history of Gippsland in the 1800s. These figures occupied a period of history when Europeans were entering a region that had been occupied by the indigenous population for millennia.
It was time of massive change and upheaval for the Aboriginies of Gippsland.
By coming to know a bit about some of these early European figures, we can can get a sense of the times.
The four I have selected to write about are a mixed bag.
One had hoped to become a pastoralist; one was a government functionary and two were religious figures.
Let us begin with Henry Meyrick. Gardner has called him “the failed squatter.”1
He was lost to the world at a young age. He drowned when he was just 24 years old.
He hailed form the south-west of England.
With his brother, he travelled to Port Phillip District.
They tried their luck on the Mornington Peninsula for a time, but they didn’t stay for long. They had to contend with economic depression and their sheep were struck down by scab.
So, they tried their luck further to the east, in Gippsland. Henry’s new run was isolated and snow affected the viability of the run.
He thought it a lawless region.
Henry recorded his thoughts through his writings.
From what he witnessed on the Peninsula, he thought that the “protectorate system” wasn’t worth its name.
On 30 April 1846 he wrote, “The blacks are quiet here now poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with. Some excuse might be found for shooting the men by those who are daily getting their cattle speared, but what they can urge in their excuse who shoot women and children I cannot conceive. I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging…For myself if I caught a black actually killing my sheep I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They will shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot but I am convinced that not less than 450 have been murdered all together. I remember the time when my blood would have run cold at the mention on these things but now I am become so familiarized with scenes of horror, from having murder made a topic of everyday conversation.”2
Gardner regards Meyrick’s account here as the most important primary source on Kurnai killings.
Gardner concludes by saying of Meyrick that he was “humane and moralistic.”3
By the mid-1840s, C.J. Tyers was acting as the Crown Lands Commissioner of Gippsland. As such, he was a public servant. He was part of the machinery of government in the colony.
And in Gippsland, government was very thin on the ground.
Gardner says that he was involved in a “punitive mission” against the Kurnai.4
Tyers had served in the Royal Navy.
Before his arrival in Gippsland, he had served as Crown Lands Commissioner in Portland District. This was one on the first regions of the colony to be settled. The land in there was viewed as prime agricultural land. Settlers and livestock spread quickly throughout the area.
The 1840s was a key period of conflict between the Kurnai and newly-arrived Europeans. Records from this early period are not voluminous. So Tyers’ reports and notes are significant. Tyers was meant to have his finger on the pulse of the region. He was not a pastoralist. He was the a government official, representing the state in various matters.
His role was varied. He had a role in adjudicating disputes over land. He compiled yearly reports on the Kurnai.
Tyers used the term “Warrigals” for the Kurnai. They were deemed separate from the peoples of Omeo and the Monaro plains.
The spearing of livestock by the Kurnai was a continual problem, as it was in most areas of Australia.
The Native Police were active in the area on occasion, as were the border police.
On one expedition in 1844, Tyers reports that a group of Aboriginies was shot upon and fled. They abandoned a large number of spears and tomahawks.5
Officially, settlers were to make every endeavour to get along with the native population and treat them with kindness. But there was often a gap between official policy and reality.
In 1844, Tyers estimated the number of Kurnai at 1,800 (not including the Krauatungalung) and by 1859 his estimate was 96.6
Among the causes, Tyers wrote “Perhaps 500 have been killed in the last years chiefly by neighbouring tribes.7
Tyers attributes much of this to conflict with the indigenous people to the west, which Tyers calls “the Melbourne Blacks”. He nominates specific incidents at near Corner Inlet and the Upper Melbourne Road.
Gardner suggests Tyers reasons for Kurnai population decline is “grossly exaggerated”.8
Tyers was a bit of an outlier. He was a government man in a place where the state was very thin on the ground.
His reports are valuable. Concerned with statistics as they are, they give more statistical detail than we get from other sources.
The next two individuals were missionaries.
Reverend F.A. Hagenauer served at the Ramahyuck mission, near the Avon River. He served there for around 30 years and passed away in 1909.
He came to Gippsland in 1862. Therefore, he arrived after the initial conflict between newcomers and the Kurnai.
6000 acres was originally set aside for the mission, but in the end it would only have fraction of that – 2356 acres. Another 1400 acres was shaved off in 1894 and the mission was finally closed in 1908.
This followed a general pattern in Victoria. Land in the colony was quickly taken over by pastoral runs and livestock. Aboriginal peoples were then concentrated onto missions. Mission land became smaller and smaller and there were amalgamations too.
At Ramahyuck, an attempt was made assimilate Aboriginal people into a Western mode of life – settling in one location, living in houses, farming the land and working for wages.
Hagenauer was not an admirer of traditional customs and he banned corroborees.
Gardner calls him a “mini-despot”9 and even “an epistle on the joy of death”.10
At times he would expel residents. To a people like the Kurnai, where family and relationships were so vital, this was a akin to a spiritual death.
Then there was the issue of mixed-race children. In time, the practice was to send these children away to be adopted into white families. This usually broke the connection between the child and their Aboriginal relatives and also instituted a break with their language and culture.
Gardner’s Hagenauer doesn’t come across as a sympathetic figure.
Another interesting individual in the area in the 1880s was Alfred Howitt. Explorer and anthropologist. Howitt was interested in Kurnai life and culture. He attempted to record it. At times, people living on the mission would temporarily leave in order to work for Howitt, picking hops.
Gardener sees Howitt and Hagenauer working at cross purposes to some extent, “Howitt was endeavouring to retrieve the detail of past laws and customs which Hagenauer had done his best to obliterate.”11
‘Half-caste’ legislation came into effect in 1886. This was no small issue at the mission. At Ramahyuck, around a quarter of the population was removed from the site.12
In 1888 there 63 individuals left at the station and in 1907, only 27.13
Another missionary was at Lake Tyers.
John Bulmer was the reverend there.
He had been an orphan.
He came to Australia in 1854, meaning that he arrived after the period of first contact and conflict between the Kurnai and European settlers.
Bulmer spent time teaching the Kurnai to read.
Attempts to change the Kurnai way of life from one of roaming to one of settlement was not very successful. The Kurnai had lived for millennia satisfying their requirements for food and shelter, and then spending the rest of their time in what we might today call recreation. But it was really time spent developing and reinforcing their culture. They told stories, shared information, and developed relationships and bonds.
The Kurnai were skilled at fishing at could bring vast hauls.
For the Kurnai, once on the mission, life seemed to lose a lot of its meaning. There was listlessness, despondency, and monotony.
It is not surprising that some turned to alcohol. It is a common past time when there is little else to do – when life seems to lose its purpose.
Fish were vital to the Kurnai and Bulmer understood this. This became an issue in the 1870s as Europeans eyed the surrounding waters. Bulmer made appeals to the authorities to ban fishing by the settlers. Nevertheless, Europeans were permitted to fish the waters. At first, it was for a limited amount of time. Later, all restrictions were removed. It was another example of creeping resource use. Fish numbers declined.
Bulmer kept working until the age of 74 and died in 1913.
Gardner’s Bulmer comes across much better than does Hagenauer.
“he emerges as an exception to the stereotype…He seems to have been motivated by a deep human concern to take up missionary work, rather than by notions of religious zeal”.14
For most of his time at the mission, Bulmer wasn’t ordained, with his ordination taking place only in 1904.
Gardener sees the departure of Bulmer and his wife as the end of an era. He sees a certain warmth in their administration of the mission and a more humane system than the one that followed. “The departure of Mrs. Bulmer drew to a close an era of loving, wise and considerate management of the remnants of the Kurnai of Gippsland. This was replaced by a colder, regimented system based on notions of efficiency, discipline and efficiency”.15
- P.D. Gardner, Through Foreign Eyes: European Perceptions of the Kurnai Tribe of Gippsland, Centre for Gippsland Studies, Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, 1988, Pazzazz Printing ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 18 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 21 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 23 ↩︎
- Ibid, pp. 24-25 ↩︎
- Ibid, pp. 28-29 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 29 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 30 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 54 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 56 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 60 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 61 ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 72 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 73 ↩︎
Australia and the World Past and Present 
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