Address at the General Meeting on 13 July 2025
By Professor Richard Broome AM
Richard, who retired in 2012, is the author/co-author of some 20 books and many articles on Australian and Indigenous History. He was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities in 2006; of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (RHSV) in 2016; of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies in 2022 and invested as a member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2020.
At the meeting, Richard began with an explanation of Aboriginal custodianship from Deep Time to 1851 and the colonial sources from which evidence is drawn, including aboriginal voices in the colonial records, ongoing traditional practices, colonial observers at the time and ethnographers (researchers who study and describe the culture of a particular group or society by observing behaviours, beliefs and cultural norms).
He explained the legal, practical and moral attachment of Aboriginals ‘on country’ and how these differed from the early Port Phillip Pioneers who believed the government of the day had given permission to claim vacant land that the indigenous people weren’t using believing it to be waste land (terra nullius) whilst also believing the hunter/gatherer aboriginals had no religious attachment to the land.
Richard spoke of the common story of colonisation, the supplanting of societies through migration and the problems it created with new settlers bringing plants, animals, and pathogens from their homelands that were foreign to Australia, and the detrimental impact they had on the aboriginal people and country.
During this time there was a dynamic struggle for land. The aboriginals were ‘one with country,’ having an holistic view and communal links with the land despite being nomadic. Richard explained how aboriginal names were linked to an animal or a plant which invoked a responsibility by that individual to look after and nurture that species.
Richard also explained how aboriginal people were agents of change, that pre 1788 Australia was never a wilderness because the aboriginal people shaped the land by the use of fire management. They had ‘cool’ burns which resulted in large grassland areas for kangaroos to feed on, making it easier for hunting and enabling the eucalyptus trees to grow taller.
By the use and management of water aboriginals were able to create food security. They caught fish with ingenious fishing tools, ducks by causing them to fly into strategically placed nets and eels in man-made channels.
They used stone technology as a key implement in cutting wood, skins and fibres and created mortars and pestles.
Richard also spoke of the aspiration of the Europeans and the New World of plenty and how in early colonial times land was mismanaged by unsustainable industry, including the impact of the gold rush and the effects of the digging and sluicing on the native flora, fauna and land, and also how the sheep industry, whilst a huge source of income for the fledgling country, destroyed the natural grasses and food source (native yams) and left the land in a poor condition. He explained how the settlers initially had no link to the land as leases were only short-term, that most settlers had never been landowners, and how that all changed in the 1860’s when settlers purchased land from the government for more permanent ownership which led to them to becoming new custodians of the land.
In summary, Richard went on to say that through management and sustainability, aboriginals were custodians of the land in Deep Time, and how their oneness with country made their lifestyle sustainable and that culture, land use and nature were all linked to their lifestyle unlike the early Europeans who came to settle in the New World.
Contributed by: Dianne Wheeler PPPG Member No. 1505