THE WATHAURUNGS

Louis N. Lane’s article “The Wathaurungs” from Investigator, Volume 23, No. 3 (September 1988) Pages 96 -109. Members can read the original from that month’s issue online.

You can now also listen to a reading of the article by clicking the following link:

This article was written nearly forty years ago, and some of the language choices may not resonate with the modern reader. Louis N. Lane was a respected authority on the Wadawurrung people and the impacts of European settlement on their ancestral lands. Her account offers a level of detail and insight that remains difficult to find elsewhere.

While some of her findings and assumptions may be reconsidered in light of more recent scholarship, such reflections only highlight her skill and sensitivity in seeking to understand the plight of the Wadawurrung as Europeans overwhelmed their homeland. This posting preserves the original language of the article, acknowledging both its historical context and its enduring contribution.

Michael O’Donnell, Web Manager

A Long History

It is an accepted theory that the brown-skinned Aborigines have been present in Victoria for at least 40,000 years. During this time the climate would have been affected by the last Pleistocene Glaciation which occurred 25,000–8,000 years B.P. It is safe to assume that many changes in the lifestyle of the Indigines must have taken place over such a long period of changing conditions. The humans evolved along with their environment and were at one with nature. There were no animal predators. Their population was small and their food was plentiful and their culture developed methods of settling disputes with a modicum of violence. In these very facts lay the seeds of their destruction.

In 1802, Matthew Flinders climbed the highest peak of the You Yangs monadnock the better to survey Port Phillip. He and three sailors hiked from Corio Bay. Their only discomfort was fatigue and thirst for they did not come across any water on their journey. The plain across which they travelled was savannah parkland—a sea of tall grasses with stands of sheoak and wattles. They did not see any Aborigines: but I would hazard a guess that some Aborigines watched them from concealment.

It is ironic that Flinders’ party must have passed by the rockwell which was a water-source the brown people maintained in the mountains—a natural hollow in a giant boulder had been enlarged over many years by having fires burned within it. This was an annual cleansing technique which also caused the granite to exfoliate inwards, gradually forming a spherical water-catchment. The well would have been lidded over with shards of rock and leafy branches to keep animals from the drinking water. This tank would have held in the vicinity of 200 gallons if filled to the brim after a good, wet winter and the supply would have outlasted most summer seasons except, perhaps, after several years of drought.

The best picture we can get of Aboriginal life in its pristine state is one which can be reconstructed from historical accounts and letters written in the period of early Aboriginal-European contact. Even this information is extremely hazy because the native people were not studied by professional ethnographers for over half a century after the invasion. By the time competent field workers were available—not until the end of the nineteenth century—there was very little of living Aboriginal culture to study in Victoria. In an archaeological situation, where one digs for clues, it is never possible to trace culture with any certainty by studying the living technology because the full range of cultural material is not present. On older sites, for instance, only stone artifacts remain. Articles made of wood, bone, shell, feathers, fur and string, etc, have long since perished.

A Lack of Expert Witnesses

So, in the case of our Wathaurung tribe nothing was left, for, to the best of our knowledge, the last member of the Wathaurung tribe died in 1885—and the second-last in 1870. Any reconstruction of Wathaurung lifestyle is based on reports of several nineteenth century observers in other districts and the writings of various pioneers who may or may not have had a grossly prejudiced view of the indigenes.

George Augustus Robinson

First we have Major Mitchell’s accounts of his exploratory journey through Australia Felix in 1836, during which he made many useful comments about the Aborigines he encountered, though these were very few. As I have already said, it is probable that his movements were spied upon by interested spectators. Mitchell’s journey did not impinge upon this district. Secondly, there was George Augustus Robinson (often called Black Robinson by the squatters). Robinson, of Van Diemen’s Land fame, was appointed Chief Protector of the Aboriginal People of Victoria in 1839.

Having enticed the Tasmanian indigines to take up residence in Government compounds where they were bribed with cheap handouts and civilised until they were all but extinct, he crossed the Strait and began to do the same with the original owners of Victoria. In all fairness it must be said that Robinson was alive to the dreadful plight of the dispossessed people and he recorded evidence that, when tales of violence were bandied about, the Aborigines were far more sinned against than sinning.

James Dawson of Kangatang

Then there was James Dawson, who settled at Kangatang, near Port Fairy, as early as 1844. Dawson learned the language and dialects of the natives. He came to respect the customs of the Aboriginal tribes-people in an area only marginal on the lands of our local “Barrabool tribe” as they came to be called. Dawson was later appointed Guardian of the Natives of Camperdown and District. He was critical of the injustice of Government policies for their treatment, more particularly for putting reserves under the direction of Christian missionaries who, in their zeal, denigrated the beliefs of the people of the blood and sternly forbade their rituals of corroboree which were expressions of an ancient religion. “To paint (and dance) was to pray.”

William Buckley’s recollections

We are fortunate in having records from the memory of William Buckley who, marooned in this district after absconding from the penal settlement at Sullivan’s Bay near the present Sorrento in 1803, lived among the Wathaurung for 32 years until the arrival of Batman at Indented Head in 1835. This book is, in all probability, the truest picture of the Bengali Clan of the Wathaurung, if, while you are reading it, you keep in mind that his biographer, Morgan, was a pamphleteer. Like many newspaper reporters, he tended to emphasise the scandalous or sensational aspects of the happenings in order to make his story sell. The work was produced long after Buckley left Victoria and after many interviews with a very old and ill man who was evidently a most reluctant witness. Some parts of Morgan’s account have been rounded out with information from other sources.

Joseph Tice Gellibrand

Joseph Tice Gellibrand employed Buckley at £50 per annum as an intermediary with the Aboriginal people and as an interpreter for the Port Phillip Association. He considered that Buckley might “work a great moral change upon the Aborigines”—whatever that may have meant.

This uninformed and ethnocentric observation he applied to the most disciplined and law-abiding, the most moral and deeply religious folk on the face of the earth. This assumption of superiority was nurtured in the minds of the white invaders by the mental climate of the day. The prejudices last: even among intelligent people. I remember being chidden by my headmistress as late as 1940 for wishing to buy a copy of the United Nations book on Aboriginal art for the school library. She would not hear of it—“Aborigines have no art!” was her expression.

Buckley’s Lack of Status

Gellibrand found some of Buckley’s early work useful though he complained that Buckley had a nervous and irritable disposition which he supposed could have been caused by the trauma that he must have experienced during and after three decades among the “savages”. No white man had an inkling that Buckley had no authority whatever, even among his own band. He was not an elder, nor a member of the Gerontocracy. He was regarded by the Bengali as a spectre. They believed he was Murrunghurk, a defunct clansman, returned from the dead. It is plain from Buckley’s biography that he spent a good deal of his time alone at Karaaf, near a well on the western bank of the outlet of Bream Creek. Buckley would not have understood the dialects of most of the people he was supposed to deal with and he may have been influenced by the dread of the Waiveroo, whose territory lay to the north of Wathaurung lands.

Tribal Characteristics

A tribe consists of a group of people who:

• 1. Speak the same language,
• 2. have the same beliefs and share the same religious festival,
• 3. inherit the same land by reason of their birth.

Working from ethnographic sources, linguists and others have detected 35 language-speaking tribes in Victoria. It has been variously estimated that there were between 5,000 and 19,000 indigines in Victoria on contact. Informed opinion now puts the figure at about 15,000. This would mean that each tribe consisted of about 425 persons who formed the tribal entity: each tribe owning a different territory. As a comprehensible example in today’s world—think of Europe, then consider the French, the Italians and the Spanish. Each group speaks a different language. All claim certain areas of the continental land. So it was with the tribal indigines.

Economically Independent Groups

Each tribe was divided into economic groups which lived in different districts of the whole tribal domain. They were independent groups, earning their own living in their own areas—but not entirely isolated because there were many opportunities to interact with other groups. It seems unlikely that the whole tribe ever foregathered because that would have thrown intolerable strain on the food supply surrounding such a meeting place. The Historical Society could be used as a modern example of this concept at work: We are all Geelongites—call that our tribe for the time being. Some are East Geelongites, or West Geelongites, or Corio-ites or Leopold-ites. We live in our own areas but meet once a month to exchange ideas.

Consanguinity Controlled

Moieties (which the tribespeople call Bulluk). In addition, each clan was subdivided again into two socio-political-religious halves. Each child, at birth, was classified into one or other section of his or her own clan. Bunjel (Eagle) and Waa (Crow) were the principal Moieties of the Wathaurung tribe though there were a few northern clans which differed in this respect. Perhaps there was a Bat Moiety, for, according to legend all humans descended from dreamtime heroes: and the Bat Deity, Balyang, was believed to have created all females. When a girl married, at puberty, she was obliged, by very strict tribal law, to marry, not only out of her own clan, but out of her own Moiety. She was usually affianced to a man of the right “skin” in her infancy. This custom was effective in preventing weddings between couples too closely related: one is only left to wonder what ancient wisdom formulated the law in this regard.

Official Messengers

One of the most respected members of any tribal clan division was the Bihar, who was the official messenger of the clan. He needed to be a linguist because each clan spoke a dialect of the tribal language. He needed to have great stamina because it was the custom to run the distance to the group his clan wished to invite to corroboree. He needed to be courageous because he would travel, by himself, unarmed into other domains, quite frequently across tribal borders into frankly enemy territory.

Message Sticks

The Bihar carried a decorated message-stick which was a memneskograph covered with signs to remind him what to say to the council of elders when he reached his destination. This lath of wood, engraved, coloured with ochre and decorated with tufts of bright feathers or festoons of coloured string, was his letter of introduction to any tribal group which he encountered on his journey and his token of safe passage outside his own country. Not that his journey was in any way surreptitious. He stopped periodically to kindle small fires which he fed with green leaves. These dense plumes of smoke clearly indicated his presence, allowing the sentries to monitor his approach in plenty of time to notify the Gerontocracy who would assemble to hear his message. When he approached the camp, he would courteously sit down within sight of the sentries and would remain seated until invited to approach the camp-fire.

Small Tribal Areas

Tribal domains all over Australia were usually five or six-sided, fitting together something like the cells of a honeycomb. Overall, tribal numbers were similar, tribes numbering less than 500 and hordes numbering 30 or 40. Tribal holdings were small in Victoria where the climate produced a plentitude of edibles, especially when compared with the inland tribes who, though they comprised the same number of people, had comparatively much larger areas of land over which they travelled to obtain their living.

Language Differences

Each tribe spoke a distinctly different language from all the other tribes which surrounded them, yet there were many occasions when the different peoples met across alien borders to exchange goods, brides and ideas. Most Aborigines were bilingual because their parents spoke different dialects, if not different languages. Many a man had a sister who had married into a neighbouring tribe or a mother who came from elsewhere and was therefore a foreigner. This sometimes provided him with hunting rights outside his own clan holdings.

Wathaurung territory impinged on at least five (see map) other tribal lands, with the people in which they were strangers and therefore traditional enemies, yet it was not uncommon for them to meet, from time to time, under truce. Most had blood relatives over the borders because of the exchange of brides. Diplomatic concerns prevented bloodshed during the period of the corroboree.

Wathaurung Neighbours

To the west – the Kolakngats based on Lake Colac and Lake Corangamite; the Kirae based on the lakes around Camperdown and north along Mount Emu Creek almost to Lake Bolac.
To the north-west – the Tjapwuron based on Ararat and the Hopkins River system.
To the north-east – the Jarae, who lived over the range. The town, Waubra, right on the summit of the Great Divide carries the name which means “the place where you turn back.” Contact between these two tribes may have been a seldom thing, for the Great Dividing Range could be considered to be the Wathaurung “back fence.”
To the east-by-north – the land of the Woiwerung (the Maribyrnong, Yarra and Goulburn Valley mob).

This differs from the name on the map because recently published research has classified the Kurung as a clan of the Wurunjeri instead of a language-group in their own right. This is partly corroborated by a statement made by Buckley to the effect that the Yawangi (which was his clan’s name for the Kurung) and the Woiwerung used to make concerted forays into Wathaurung territory for the express purpose of kidnapping nubile females. As well he made the insinuation that his home band was terrified of these raiders who lived to the north of Wathaurung territory.

If the boundary between Woiwerung and Wathaurung was on the Werribee, as is now thought, this would allow for the ceremonial stone circle near Little River to lie firmly within Wathaurung boundaries. I like to think that this ancient relic may have been visited at appropriate times by the local people.

The Bengali Clan

The southern boundary of Wathaurung Estate was Bass Strait. No wiley enemies in that direction—only the provident sea. The Bengali clan which occupied the Bellarine Peninsula must have been a most fortunate band with permanent sweet water at Balla-wein and the Barwon–Lake Connewarre complex upon their property. As Buckley said, they dwelt between the Barwon and the sea.

A Natural Garden of Eden

Victoria, two centuries ago, as it is today, was characterised by diverse environments from the harsh, desert conditions of the Mallee to the lush, green forests of Gippsland. The Western District, which includes the major portion of the tribal lands of the Wathaurung, provided its inhabitants with both a variety and an abundance of foods and other natural resources which they used for daily living. In effect, they lived in a natural garden of Eden.

The coastal areas, in particular, were rich in resources—fish, kelp, seals and shellfish and a variety of coastal vegetation. The main stream systems of the hinterland provided a range of freshwater fish and shellfish, including eels in almost unlimited quantities, aquatic birds and a diverse variety of plant foods. The grassy, volcanic plains were frequented by kangaroo and emu, bustards and brolgas and were colonised by a host of edible vegetables.

Hunter-Gatherers

Aboriginal hunter-gatherers moved about over the landscape of their own domains, often in accordance with the seasonal appearance of certain flora and fauna. In an example near home, those camped at Jerringot for the season of the migration of the jacksnipe watched for the blooming of the melaleuca, because then it was time to travel down Barwon to the seaside for the warmer months. Jerringot was the area of billabongs behind where Waurn Ponds Creek enters the Barwon River just downstream from the breakwater.

A Vegetable Based Diet

Aboriginal diet was predominantly vegetable based; the females garnering and preparing whatever plant food and small game was available within walking distance of their camping station. This mainly carbohydrate nutriment was supplemented from time to time by fast-game meat which was hunted by the males of the clan.

A Variety of Foods

There were three main categories of foodstuffs:
1. Perennial staples – shellfish, available in either marine or freshwater habitat.
2. Seasonal staples – such as mirnong (yam daisy roots), eels, lerp sugar, berries, seeds and grains, buds and shoots, and birds’ eggs. Some seeds, like those of the swamp gum, were stored for times of shortage; others, like wattle seeds, were eaten green or ground into meal and baked.
3. Supplementary foods – snakes, lizards, tortoises, kangaroo and smaller marsupials, grubs, chrysalids, and a wide variety of root foods including orchids, rushes and ferns.

There was also what we might call windfall nourishment which was enjoyed when a whale beached itself on the strand. There are two versions of what happened in these cases. Because there was so much rich food available, it is said that bihar were sent off in all directions to invite other groups to the feast. The other tale was (because of the stench) they didn’t have to.

Incidentally, there was a custom which demonstrates a true attempt to preserve protein in an edible state. Great chunks of kreng (or caches of mussels) were buried in very deep pits dug in the earth under the shade of thickets of vegetation in order to keep the food cool.

Material Culture

The items of the people’s material culture also fell into three categories:Artifacts used in hunting and gathering food, Personal ornaments and clothing Shelters and weapons of war.

Hunting and Storage Implements

A great deal of time and energy was devoted to the manufacture of implements and utensils used to obtain food. Delicately balanced hunting implements were prepared by the men with infinite patience because, on the accuracy of their flight depended the livelihood of each man’s family—remember, he procured the bulk of their protein-nutriment.
Elaborately woven creels were made of mat-rush, native flax and sword sedge. String bags were manufactured from fur and hair or bark and hair cordage. These were mainly women’s utensils along with the digging lever and her coolamons (bark vessels).

Fishing or bird-nets were made from paper-bark or stringy-bark. These were often of considerable size in contrast to the dip-nets for trapping tadpoles in ponds or fish fingerlings in rock pools by individual fishers—mainly women and children. Men liked to spear school-shoals in the surf or to garner eels by using spiked harpoons. Bone fish-hooks and polished wooden barbs for harpoons were fashioned along with a great variety of stone, planing, piercing and splitting tools as components of hafted implements used in wood-working.

Possum Skin Cloaks

Perhaps the most notable feature of Victorian Aboriginal culture was the manufacture of cloaks from the skins of possums and native cats or mantles of kangaroo or dingo skins. These involved considerable labour and the use of a number of different implements for flensing, trimming and stitching. The possum skin rugs also provided a medium for artistic expression. Each pelt was scored with a sharpened mussel-shell to make the skin more flexible so the finished garment would drape well. Each square was decorated with tribal, hordal or personal symbols which established the ownership of the garment. The skins were dressed with a mixture of ochre and fat to render the cape waterproof. This emphasised the designs on the hides. From the fragments which survive today, we can tell that there must have been a pride in workmanship and an appreciation of beauty.

Much use was made of feather ornaments, nose-styles, armbands, necklaces and headbands. These were fashioned from reeds, fur, feathers, bones, sinews and grasses.

Ceremonial Occasions

Buckley’s description of the clansfolk getting into their finery for a special occasion is vivid, although he did not appreciate their music, which he likened to the screeching of cats. On these ritual occasions, when groups met one another for corroboree, body decorations were elaborate. Pipe clay, ochre and manganese were applied to face, torso and limbs in complicated, individual patterns. These decorations, along with the keloidal scars carved into their skins, were symbols of each person’s tribal status.

Aboriginal Weapons

Finally, the diverse nature of Victorian material culture is manifest in the elaborately decorated personal weaponry—shields, clubs and death-spears. Mostly, they were engraved as well as being dressed with ochre and oil. Each weapon was made especially to match the strength and skill of the user (and, also, according to the expected, seasonal winds). The carving was carried out ritually, accompanied by prolonged chanting in the belief that this lent the implement some measure of magic power.

Highly Elaborate Ritual

Aboriginal people lived in groups of from 30 to 50 persons, as often as not all males inter-related, but there were certain times when two or more clans might congregate to exploit a super-abundance of food in a roughly-defined area of land. The social mechanisms which controlled these meetings always involved highly elaborate rituals. More especially when corroboree was promoted across tribal boundaries for initiation purposes; or to thrash out disputes by consultation instead of violence; or to call some miscreant to justice for a breach of the common law, the observance of terms of truce were a common element of these meetings. Behaviour, on these occasions, was regulated by traditions time-hallowed by generations of participants.

Rigid Division of Labour

This factor ill-prepared the tribal people for the invasion which began early in the nineteenth century with whalers and sealers who plied Bass Strait and, more seriously, from 1835 onwards, ousted the brown people from the places which had afforded all their wants over the millennia.

There was a rigid division of labour between the sexes in Aboriginal society. The men hunted fast game with spears and missile-sticks. They protected their families from human enemies. They performed sacred rituals. The females foraged (serving up the bulk of the food). They bore and brought up their children, teaching them all the arts of foraging. They carried all the family possessions whenever the clan moved from one living site to another. Father carried only a spear and a boomerang, so he could carry out his duties as a protector and provider as the clan moved along. (It has been reported that Aboriginal men were most amused by the habit of white men carrying burdens when there were womenfolk around to do so.)

Rule of Gerontocracy

There was no automatic, hereditary chieftainship in any tribe or any division of any tribe. Daily life was regulated by influential leaders—a council of elderly men (the Gerontocracy), who maintained their authority and status through the complicated social relationships which existed between independent groups (clans) or between tribes. This was consolidated by the extremely strict laws pertaining to marriage and the obligatory exchange of gifts whenever one group foregathered with another.

Important Local Resources

There was, however, lineage ownership of critical resources within clan-domain. Some examples are: The fish traps at Barrabool, the axe-stone quarries at Ceres, Dog Rocks and Sugarloaf in the You Yangs; certain stands of trees (an example of this was the ironbarks near Jan Juc which supplied superb wood for hafting); the pipeclay quarry at Drysdale; the quartzite quarry at Sutherlands Creek; the ochre-pots at Wingeel; the coloured clay cliffs at Portarlington—all these would have constituted the wealth of the clans which owned them. These raw materials provided the stuff for barter.

Wide Area of Trade

Dawson tells us that hafting-mastic from near Jillong was traded far and wide among Western District artificers. The Kirae called it “leel”. Hafting gum was made from kino (possibly from a particular species of eucalypt) mixed with a proportion of limey sand. This mixture was heated until liquid and was spun onto sticks where it solidified into cold lumps and could be stored to be used by the maker or traded at corroboree. Sadly, I have never been able to ascertain which kind of tree produced this superior gum. Perhaps it was a trade secret!

Ceremonial Trade Centres

Ceremonial exchange centres were well established for inter-hordal or inter-tribal congress. Periodically large groups of Aborigines tended to congregate at these places to perform ceremonial exchange rituals: perhaps for the initiation of youths at different stages of their education or the exchange of females in marriage ceremonies.

These activities took place only when there was a glut of food for concerted game drives or communal fishing. In times of drought, such meetings were not initiated—each clan made the best of food sources in their own domains.

Buckley describes a visit of the Bengali clan to Lake Corangamite in the season when waterfowl laid their eggs. He also mentions a journey to Lake Modewarre for the minnow. At such times guests were invited to share the plenty and there were certain routes along which it was lawful for strangers to travel to their destinations.

A Corroboree Ground at Drysdale

A corroboree ground has been documented in Drysdale in the vicinity of the main shopping centre. Nearby is the largest cooking mound I have ever seen. The area was called BALLA-WEIN by the clansfolk—this meant “the place where you rest upon your elbow by the fire.” “BALLA-WEIN” was also the origin of “Bellarine”, which was the earliest name for the white settlement near McLeod’s Holes. Another corroboree-ground was known by white pioneers at Jerringot on a rise of land alongside a large and productive swamp on Waurn Ponds Creek. King Jerry (Dan Dan Nook) was seen fishing eels there in the 1850s.

Please note Lou Lane’s article included two appendices that offer insights into Wathaurung identity and social structure. Appendix 1 traces the varied historical names used to describe the “Barrabool Tribe,” while Appendix 2 explains the tribe’s moiety system, Bunjil and Waa, which governed marriage, ceremony, and kinship. Members can find it here.