WALLAGA LAKE/GULAGA ABORIGINAL COMMUNITY

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The meaning of land to Aboriginal people

Non-Indigenous people and land-owners usually consider land as something they own, a commodity to be bought and sold, an asset to make profit from, something to earn a living from, or they simply view it as 'home'. They 'develop' land, as if it was unfinished or raw.

To Aboriginal people, their relationship with land is quite different and much deeper.

Aboriginal people have a profound spiritual connection to land – but land, or ‘country’, is much more than just ‘place’. Every rock, tree, river, hill, animal, human is ‘country’ – because all were formed of the same substance by their Ancestors (who still live on land, in the water and the sky). So, country ‘owns’ Aboriginal people and Aboriginal people ‘own’ (in the broadest possible sense of the word, as well as in broad geographic terms) country. And every aspect of their life is connected to it; in effect, land is their mother, and it’s their culture, their law and their spirituality.

Because of this belief, Aboriginals feel they have a basic responsibility to care for it.

They also do not look on themselves as custodians or caretakers (and, quite clearly, did not see themselves as custodians or caretakers in-waiting for someone else to come and take the land away!). They believe they are the owners of the land…and the occupiers…and the custodians…and the caretakers…and that land also defines their identity and provides each of them with their sense of belonging.

So, when the Europeans arrived, with their very different view of land usage and land ownership, local Aboriginals were confronted with cataclysmic change.

The history of Biamanga and Gulaga Aboriginal communities

Aboriginal association with the Bermagui-Bega area dates back 20,000 years, perhaps even longer.

South Coast Aboriginals’ first significant contact with Europeans was with offshore whalers, sealers and with sailors travelling between Sydney and Van Dieman’s Land and Sydney Town in the late 1700s. In December 1797 George Bass sailed up the Bega River to Jellat Jellat where he encountered friendly and hospitable natives who supplied him with fish and fresh water.

From around 1826, the first pastoral stations in the area were established – the settlers, ironically, being guided down from the Monaro plateau by Aboriginals!

At this time there were a number distinct Aboriginal ‘clans’ on the NSW South Coast (today, six separate Aboriginal Land Councils, each representing a different geographically-based group of Aboriginals operate between the Victorian border and Batemans Bay). Interaction (including some intermarriage) between these and Aboriginal groups in surrounding areas (e.g. living on the Monaro) is well documented by local settlers and visitors to the area…as was considerable violent conflict between these same Aboriginal groups, which was to last into the 1850s.

Very rapidly, during 1820s and 1830s, much of the rich land around Mumbulla and Guluga Mountains was taken from the Aboriginals by European settlers.

Aboriginals then became employees on pastoral properties and in the whaling industry at Twofold Bay, where Aboriginals provided most of the labour required. By the 1840s, considerable numbers of Aboriginal men were working in the whaling industry during winter and early spring and were wattle barking or working on pastoral properties in late spring and early summer, herding cattle and sheep, keeping birds and animals from crops, and helping with harvesting and shearing. Aboriginal women were engaged as ‘farm servants’.

From the 1840s, European settlement (and its accompanying dispossession of Aboriginal land) on the Southern Highlands and the Murray River areas meant that (in 1846, for example) ‘the Murray blacks lately killed two Braidwood blacks, and drove the whole of them down to the sea coast, where they remain.’ This ultimately led, in 1872, to Mondalie (alias Jack Bond) and his son Alick making an official request that an Aboriginal reserve be gazetted in the Braidwood area: ‘We have come to you to intercede for us in getting the government to do something for us. Araluen Billy, our king, is old and cannot live long; my wife Kitty and self are old, too. I have assisted the police for many years (Aboriginals were often employed as trackers in the area), and we want to get some land which we can call our own in reality, where we can settle down and the old people can call their home. Everyone objects to our hunting on his land, and we think the blacks are entitled to live in their own country.’ (Their suggestion was rejected because it was considered the property they favoured was too close for safety to the property where Tommy Clarke, the bushrangers’ parents, lived. So Mondalie moved down to Moruya.)

From around this time there was pressure in New South Wales to establish and expand an Aboriginal reserve system to (as an 1882 report suggested) ‘enable them to form homesteads, to cultivate grain, vegetables, fruit, etc, for their own support and comfort’. (Between 1885 and 1894, the Aborigines Protection Board recommended that 85 reserves be established in NSW for the use of Aboriginals.)

In 1891 the Wallaga Lake Reserve (on the foothills of Gulaga Mountain, near Tilba) was established. As one researcher noted: ‘It was run by a state appointed manager instead of missionaries. God may not have been in control, but its residents (91 of them, of whom 26 were full-blood Aboriginals) were fenced in’ to an area of just 330 acres (and this was a large Aboriginal reserve compared to many others).

In 1890 (three years after a Wallaga Lake Aboriginal School was established) 22 local Aboriginal children were attending school and it appears about 27 were not. It seems life on the Reserve in those early years was miserable: Aboriginals who had moved to Wallaga from mission stations ’impressed those at Wallaga Lake that they would not get any return for their labour. This bred a spirit of dissatisfaction that cannot be dispelled…the aborigines will not work for shares of prospective profits; they are also too nomadic to stay and share such. The able bodied men are really the worst class to deal with. They will even desert a good paying employment after they have earned a little money, return to the settlement and gamble, then awaiting another job, will loiter about the place and eat the rations of others, old and young. Most of them can obtain employment at farm work…but no employer is sure of their services an hour together, for they will even leave off in the middle of haymaking, which a number of them take by contract…Improper use is made of the boats supplied by the Board. Europeans engage the aborigines to convey produce, heavy chests, timber, and such like in them, across the lake. They all know it is destruction to the boats, and the trifle they give for the conveyance barely pays wages for the work…If disease or rank immorality crops up, it is generally imported from the Mission at Lake Tyres (near Lakes Entrance), Victoria…Now and then there are signs of drink, but it is chiefly when the natives have just arrived from the nearest townships. Gambling is still rampant…they will neglect employment, cooking, the sick, all for the cards; yet the Superintendent is powerless to stop it. Another evil is the camp dog nuisance. Not a man, woman or child is without at least one of these mongrels of the most mangy description. They eat up whatever scrap of food is left, drink out of the vessels the family drink from, and sleep on the same blankets.’

The population in the Wallaga Lake Reserve varied considerably (between 1891 and 1904 it fluctuated from 86 to 177) and, during the times when the Wallaga Lake settlement was attracting people to the area, numerous immigrants with no connectedness to Wallaga Lake were arriving from quite distant places including Jervis Bay, the Shoalhaven, Yass, Cootamundra, Gundagai and Gippsland.

So, right from the time it was established, whatever tribal homogeneity may have originally existed at the Wallaga Lake settlement was under severe threat.

A ban on speaking Aboriginal languages within the Station and the discouragement of all Aboriginal traditional culture or practices simply exacerbated the situation. (The death of local elder Merriman (Umbarra) in the 1850s had previously led to a substantial loss of local interest in Aboriginal culture, and this had certainly not helped slow the loss of ‘Aboriginality’ in the local Aboriginal community in the years before the Wallaga Lake Station was established.)

Over the decades that followed, there are numerous reports of the continuing ever-moving nature of Wallaga Lake settlement’s population: able bodied men of mixed descent became unwelcome in the community (this actually reflected government policy, which followed the passing of the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act which required the Station Manager to ‘where possible restrain them from leaving the Station, frequenting public houses or otherwise spending their earnings’); some families adopted a seasonal habit of moving to Twofold Bay between in June-July and October-November to work in the whaling industry and then spending the off-season at Wallaga; others were in the habit of moving regularly between Eden, Wallaga Lake and Turlinjah (located between Bodalla and Moruya); opportunists ‘played the system’, moving to whichever Government reserve or station at any time offered the best rations and other resources, or had the least oppressive management, or provided the most stimulating employment opportunities…or simply was considered to offer the best entertainment or partners. As a result, many of the Government-assigned houses on the Wallaga Lake station were often left uninhabited for lengthy periods.

In 1913, Aboriginal people from Batemans Bay were moved to the station, creating a strain on existing accommodation and the settlement’s water supply. And in the 1960s, the station was even used to re-house widows, deserted wives and other women from as far away as Moree, Coonabarabran and Taree!

The Second World War had the effect of raising the level of Aboriginal employment in NSW from 64% to 96.2% and resulted in many Aboriginal stations becoming unstaffed reserves or being closed. In the 1960s Aboriginal children from station schools were gradually integrated into the public school system and station schools were closed (Wallaga Lake school was closed in 1964).

Simultaneously station managers became welfare workers with wider district responsibilities (Wallaga Lake’s station manager’s position ceased to exist in 1969, and the Aboriginal residents then ran the station themselves through a committee).

In 1967 Aboriginal people received Australian citizenship. This subsequently led to the emergence of a lands rights movement.

Guboo ‘Ted’ Thomas, who had been born at and grew up on Wallaga Lake Station, and was by this time a Yuin elder, began campaigning for Aboriginal land rights in the early 1970s. In June 1978 he wrote to then NSW Premier, Neville Wran, pointing out that ‘when white people first came to Australia, they took all the land, with dreadful consequences for our people…(and,) even though there was plenty of land for everyone, they took the lot.’ This was reflected locally: all of the land on which generations of Aboriginal people had lived had been taken from them, leaving them only the few acres of the Wallaga Lake Reserve, for which did not even have title. The result, he suggested, was that ‘we must always live in fear and insecurity, worrying if even the little we have will be taken away from us.’

Guboo ‘Ted’ illustrated his argument by highlighting a section of land that had once been a part of the Wallaga Lake Reserve (the area that is now Akolele) which, in 1949, 'was taken away from us and given to white people for their holiday homes. This bit of land was very important to us because it contains one of our sacred burial grounds.’

His call for the local Aboriginal community to be given title to the Wallaga Lake Reserve excluded this area (ironically!) 'as we do not wish to disturb these people', but he expressed concern that, with the white population increasing, Aboriginals could easily lose even more of their land in the future. His claim, therefore, asked that the title deeds to the remaining area of the reserve, as well as nearby Merriman Island and adjacent Crown Lands be handed over to the Yuin people in perpetuity.

His efforts succeeded. Title to the land was transferred to the Merrimans Local Aboriginal Council in 1984, with the Wallaga Lake community effectively becoming the first aboriginal community in New South Wales to receive title deeds to a small portion of their traditional lands.

Sources: ‘Biamanga and Gulaga: Aboriginal Cultural Association with Biamanga and Gulaga National Parks’, Brian Egloff, Nicholas Peterson and Sue Weston; creativespitits.info; ‘Wallaga Lake Aboriginal Station’, State Records Authority of New South Wales; ’We and the Land are One’, Bill Brown, ABC South East NSW; ’A Tale of Three Missions’, Amanda Midlam.

(A somewhat bleak, recent account of the Wallaga Lake Aboriginal community titled ‘The Dispossessed’ by ‘white-fella’ Bronwyn Adcock was published in the Griffith Review 32 in 2011. It is available at https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/the-dispossessed/)