The first squatters in the Goulburn Valley were Edward Khull of the 172,000 acre Tallygaroopna run, Gregor McGregor of the 80,000 acre Arcadia run and James Cowper of Ardpatrick run.
Greater Shepparton
Shepparton’s indigenous heritage The Bangerang Tribe
An Australian Aboriginal, with spear, shield and woomera. Photo: The Streets of Shepparton 1953.
NAIDOC CELEBRATIONS… from left Clinton Edwards and Dylan Kerr at the Bangarang Cultural Centre NAIDOC event “connecting culture with diversity”. Photo: Kelly Lucas.
AUSSIE SPIRIT… Pictured from left, Shepparton friends, Coombra Morgan, Timmy Atkinson, Raymond Ritchie, Kyle Matthews, Jamaine Baksh and Beau Jackson celebrating Australia Day in 2010. Photo: Kelly Lucas.
WHITE-occupancy of the Goulburn Murray district began in the early 1840s, seeing the indigenous Bangerang Tribe changed forever. The settlement drastically impacted the aborigines’ livelihoods, traditions and ancient culture, forcing them from their homeland, while bringing plagues of foreign European diseases that claimed countless lives. Consisting of Moirathban, Toolinyagan, Wolithiga, K a i lt h b a n, Ng a r r i mow r o, A ngo ot he r a b a n a nd P i k kol atpa n sub - t r ibes, t he B a nger a ng Nat ion occupied land between Shepparton, Katandra, Finley, Deniliquin and Echuca. With a popu lation of just 50 pr ior to wh ite settlement, the land area at Shepparton was occupied by Kailthban aboriginals, while the entire Bangerang Nation’s population is believed to have been 1,200. Each of the sub-tribes independently cared for land within its tribal borders, but united with other Bangerang tribes when threatened by other Koori nations. Bangerang territory included Murray, Goulburn, Campaspe, Edwards and Broken Rivers as well as the Broken Creek, which meant that the inhabitants based their lives around waterways. The Bangerangs’ diet consisted of native fruits, plant roots, emu, birds, kangaroo, possum, fish, grubs, snake, eggs, ducks, larvae of ants and wild fowl. Men used boomerangs, traps and spears to hunt the animals, and built canoes from the area’s gum trees and used animal skins for clothing. Animal fat was also used, which the Bangerang people rubbed on their skin for a protection against mosquitos and to insulate from the cold. T he Nation had its own laws that, i f broken warranted penalties decided by tribal elders. Communication and trade between tribes were led by a respected male member of each tribe who was able to speak other tribes’ native languages. Corresponding with the other tribes, the man would return news to his own tribe from across the district. Conflict developed with white man when squatters took to the land, displacing the Bangerang tribes to make way for their stock to graze and to plant crops. The tribes then retaliated by spearing sheep and cattle and stealing stores. When the First Fleet arrived in 1788 the aboriginal population was estimated at 300,000. By the late 1840s it had dropped to less than 50,000. Daniel Matthews bought land near Echuca which he named Mologa, around 1875 and encouraged the Bangerang people to live there with he and his wife. Matthews educated the Bangerang and other tribes at Mologa, while Mrs Matthews taught the aboriginal women household skills. Mologa later closed when Cummeragunja Mission, wh ich me a n s “ou r home” wa s est abl i shed by Government before the New South Wales Aboriginal act was introduced in 1909, allowing the Aboriginal Board to control the lives and movements of the Koori people living on and off the missions and reserves. New policies at that time allowed the forced removal of part Kooris. Aborigines at Cummeragunja went on strike in 1939 against poor living conditions and inadequate rations. Many of them moved near to Barmah, and then to ‘The Flats’ between Shepparton and Mooroopna, where
Page 6 – The Adviser – Shepparton’s 150 years of progress – September 2010
many lived in shacks and worked in the factories and fruit picking. By the late 1950s, the Victor ian Gover n ment established the Welfare Board, which began housing Koori people at Rumbalara Aboriginal Co-operative in Mooroopna, opened in 1958. Today, further projects and support organisations are in place for the Goulburn-Murray Aboriginal Community. Victoria’s largest proportion of Aboriginal people live in the Goulburn-Murray region; the 2006 Census recording four per cent of the Shepparton population being of indigenous origin. Tongala sheep run squatter, Edward Curr, one of the first squatters in the district wrote of his first experience witnessing a corroboree: “I was strongly impressed by the scene on that occasion. The extraordinary energy displayed by the dancers; their singular attitude, the quivering thigh; the poised spear, the whitened shield borne in the left hand, the peculiar thur!, thur!, thur!, which their lips emitted in unison with measured tramp of their feet. Their ghastly countenances, the sinister manner in which the apparition had noiselessly stolen from the surrounding darkness into the flaming foreground, and executed, now in open order, now in a compact body, to the sound of wild voices and the clash of the savage arms, their ‘can can diabolique’ made up a picture thrilling from its novelty its threatening character, and its entire strangeness. “Then, when the tumult grew hotter and heavier the tramp of native feet, and the voices of the women trembling with emotion, waxed shriller and shriller, those wild warriors worked up apparently to uncontrollable fury, with heaving chests and glaring eyes, their heads turned to their left shoulder, and their savage eyes fixed on my brother and myself, suddenly as one man they threw back their right arms and brought their right shoulders forward as if to plant in our breasts their spears which now converged on us, the display seemed to have passed from the theatrical to the real. “The idea that all was over with us, and an intense longing for my pistol flashed through my brain. But before I could attempt to move, the climax had been reached and the performers, dropping their spear points to the ground burst into one simultaneous yell, which made the old woods ring again, and then hurried at once out of sight, a laughing mob, into the forest’s gloom. “Was that yell, fancy suggested, a farewell cry to pleasant earth of a rabbles out of fiends hurrying back to subterranean prisons in obedience to some mysterious power?” Curr had earlier described his initial encounter with a member of the tribe in the area: “They were all muscular, active men, two out of three being about five feet nine inches in height. Their dress consisted of an opossum-skin cloak, which was fastened at the chest, passing over the left and under the right shoulder, so as to leave the right arm at liberty… What with their erect carriage, dignified bea r i ng, g r acef u l post u res, novel appea r a nce, and frank and courageous way in which they had entrusted themselves amongst armed strangers, I found myself considerably interested in these children of the woods.”