Samuel Furphy

‘Our civilisation has rolled over thee’: Edward M Curr and the Yorta Yorta native title case

This article explores the role of history in the Yorta Yorta native title case, with a particular focus on the nineteenth-century squatter Edward M Curr’s role in the outcome. It begins by describing the crucial importance of historical inquiry to native title proceedings. An account of Curr’s life follows, including details that have been lacking in the biographical record to date. The role of Curr’s testimony in the Yorta Yorta case is then explored, leading to some final comments about the relationship between law and history. The article concludes that the prominent status granted to Curr’s writings, at the expense of Yorta Yorta oral testimony, is symptomatic of a wider disjuncture between legal and historiographical approaches to knowing the past. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front

During the First World War more than 1,000 Aboriginal men served in the Australian Imperial Force, despite military regulations which prohibited volunteers who were “not substantially of European origin or descent.” The valuable contribution of these Aboriginal soldiers has increasingly been recognised by historians, and in public commemoration of the war, but less attention has been paid to the “home front” experiences of the vast majority of Aboriginal people who remained in Australia. This chapter provides a general overview of Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front, focusing on the themes of wartime employment, government Aboriginal policy, imperial loyalty, repatriation, and soldier settlement.

‘They formed a little family as it were’: The Board for the Protection of Aborigines

In October 1876, James MacBain rose in Victoria’s Legislative Assembly to explain why he had resigned from the Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA) after more than a decade’s service, including several years chairing its meetings. After an absence overseas, he had returned to the board in January to discover a radically altered policy towards Aboriginal administration, making his membership untenable: ‘During [my] absence in England,’ he said, ‘four new members of the board were appointed; they formed a little family as it were; and they appointed a gentleman as inspector ... for doing what [I do] not know’.1 This essay will examine the ‘little family’ to which MacBain objected, and explore the internal politics of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines at a crucial time in its history. By characterising the board as a contested space, the essay will attempt to understand the political dynamics that shaped debate on Aboriginal policy, thus integrating Aboriginal history and political history in fruitful ways. At the centre of the analysis will be a trio of new board members appointed in July 1875: Frederick Race Godfrey, Edward M Curr and Albert Le Souëf. These former pastoralists almost immediately pursued the closure of the Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve, near Healesville, sparking a sustained period of protest from Kulin people and their supporters in the settler community.

Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station: Redrawing Boundaries.

The Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station, situated on the bank of the Murray River in southern New South Wales, holds a prominent place in the Aboriginal history of southeastern Australia. Many famous n...