Tue - March 29, 2011
Uluru Handover Ceremony, 1985
This is the second account in the Desert
Star, of my attendance at the 1985 handover (or should that be hand-back) of
Uluru to its traditional owners. The accounts were written at different times,
the previous version being written closer to the actual event. There seemed to
be no point in having this version sitting in my computer unread. There is a
link to the photographs
I took on the day.
Posted at 10:45 AM
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Tue - April 28, 2009
Lake Mungo
Sometime in the late seventies or early eighties,
I saw a television program about the discovery of some human remains, revealed
by a relentless desert wind blowing over ancient sand dunes fringing a lake
which had last seen water some 15,000 years ago. These remains, dubbed 'Mungo
Man' (although it proved to be woman's bones), had been cremated some 30,000
years ago, and are claimed to be the most ancient ceremonial burial ever
discovered. The later discovery of a man's remains, coated in red ochre,
confirmed the importance of the region, which, with the whole string of lakes
stretching to the north, has now been designated a World Heritage Site. My first
visit was in 1991, and my second was just last week, in mid-April
2009.
Posted at 12:25 AM
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Thu - September 21, 2006
History of the Western Desert Art Movement
In 1971, a young school teacher named Geoff
Bardon arrived at a remote Government settlement north-west of Alice Springs,
called Papunya. Papunya was established to enable government agencies to provide
essential services to various language groups of Aboriginal people, increasingly
dispossessed by the incursion of white invasion, and struggling to maintain the
hunter-gatherer way of life they had pursued for some 50,000 years.
Posted at 04:22 PM
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Bush Tucker
Some writings I recently found of some early
experiences in the desert are contained in this entry. This was a memorable day
out in the bush with the Yuelamu mob.
Posted at 04:19 PM
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Uluru Handover
I recently came across these short esays written
soon after the hand over of Uluru in 1985. An interesting contrast to the
version I wrote recently,
read here in my Aboriginal Culture blog category.
Posted at 04:18 PM
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The Trial of Lindy Chamberlain
This essay was written in the 1980's, after Lindy
Chamberlain had been jailed for the murder of her infant daughter, Azaria, who
had been taken by a dingo at Uluru (Ayers Rock). It seeks to expose the
ridiculous logic which conspired to put an innocent mother in jail.
Posted at 04:17 PM
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Collet Barker
The Mount Barker township, region and mountain,
on the south eastern outskirts of the Mount Lofty ranges, was named by Captain
Charles Sturt, after Captain Collet Barker, of the 39th Regiment (Barker's
compatriot and friend Captain Charles Sturt was a fellow officer). Barker was
speared to death by three Ngarrindjerri men near the mouth of the Murray River
on 30th April, 1831.
Posted at 04:15 PM
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The Peramangk
The Peramangk were the mysterious dwellers of the
Mount Lofty Ranges prior to the white occupation of South Australia in 1836.
Twenty years after the Mount Barker region was settled, they had
disappeared.
Posted at 04:14 PM
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Terra Nullius: the lie of the land
Australia is fighting not only the most stupid
and manipulative war in history in Iraq, but has its own internal war going on,
known as the history war. In this war, eminent scholars who choose to face the
sordid past of white settlement in scholarship and books are attacked, lest the
displaced Aboriginal people receive some sympathy for their plight. The latest
effort seeks to tell me, who was told about
terra nullius
throughout my school years in the 50's and
60's, that it didn't happen, and that
terra
nullius was invented by radicals in the
1970's to further the fight for land rights. The strategy seems to be that old
reliable one of if you tell a lie, tell a big one and tell it often. Of course,
all of these rewrites of history have the old "I'm not a racist, but.........."
tone to them.
Posted at 04:13 PM
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Charles Sturt's Journey down the Murray
Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th Regiment based
in N.S.W. was the next officially sanctioned explorer to venture into the
unknown of Southern Australia. His party of soldiers and convicts, after setting
out from Sydney on 3rd November 1829 with a dray and horses to explore the
interior to the west, took to the major river, previously discovered, called the
Murrumbidgee.
Posted at 04:10 PM
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Uluru Handover Ceremony
In 1985, a decision was made by the Hawke Labor
Government to return Uluru, previously known as Ayers Rock, to the traditional
owners, the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people. I was fortunate enough to
be there on that day.
Posted at 04:08 PM
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