Our Dreamtime

I have been visiting Musgrave Park in Brisbane for over 25 years. Have brought my children up in and around Musgrave, through their earlier years,  and now take my grandsons here,  just not for NAIDOC celebrations, but for a meeting place  to connect with their people. As an adopted child it was here in Musgrave that I meet immediate family, my father, my brothers and sisters, my uncles and aunties and their children. In 2008 I put together a reunion for the Hopkins family, held at Jagera Arts Hall which is situated within the grounds between the park and Brisbane State High School. It is a very significant place for me and my people. I am sure my ancestors who are of the Wakka Wakka country in the Burnett region, would of travelled south to Musgrave for ceremonies and a meeting place many thousand years ago. It is a beautiful and mystically feeling for me every time I walk through this country….here I share with you the significance of Musgrave Park to our people.

Tania Hopkins Founder and Editor of “Our Dream Time” Publications

 ……..From available records, it is possible to draw a picture of what  South Brisbane area was like before the British arrived in 1825. The area was rich in food sources, a lush sub tropical setting of rainforest, wetlands and open grasslands. It was home to a wide array of plant and animal life including whip-tailed wallabies, koalas, possums, emus, water rats, yams, fish, crayfish and ells.

The area was known as a meeting place for our people in the South East corner. A neutral place for holding of feasts, ceremonies and meetings. There where bora rings where Woolloongabba is today and another near Musgrave Park.

Our people were progressively forced out of the area as European occupation spread, and the land was cleared for farming and residential areas. The forced removal of our people to reserves and missions under the infamous Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the sale of Opium Act ( 1897) enabled the government to clear remaining fringe camps in and around Brisbane.  In 1848 boundaries were declared (Boundary Street in Spring Hill and West End) to keep Aboriginal people out of the city after 4.00pm each afternoon and all day Sunday. During World War 11 Aboriginal people and black American Service men were not allowed in the city at night.

Musgrave Park has become a symbol of Aboriginal peoples persistence, despite the worst and best intentions of governments enshrined in Legislation and regulation. Our people have survived the policies of removal of Aboriginal peoples from their traditional lands, the stolen children, the enforced collectivisation on church missions and government reserves, and the deliberate attempts at destruction of Aboriginal culture and language.

Today the Aboriginal community sees Musgrave Park as the last place in South Brisbane which is ‘theirs’, that it is a place for ceremonies: grieving: for celebration: for social and recreational events. And this perception is not limited to the local Aboriginal peoples from throughout Queensland and the rest of Australia.

It is said to often and too glibly that the colonisation process has destroyed Aboriginal culture. It hasn’t! Despite the clear intentions of church and state Aboriginal culture is alive and strong, in the bush, in the fringe camps outside country towns, and in the heart of the urban centres.

This is not to  deny, however, the damage and loss that over 200 years of colonisation have produced, the fragmentation of families and communities, the loss of language and ceremonies.

Story from Musgrave Park Cultural Centre Inc.

The only people you have seen and certainly ever known about, have the darkest of skin. Now close your eyes for one second and imagine this! One night while sitting around the campfire, through the scrub staggers a form of a man, bony and haggard from starvation and as pale and as white as the moon itself. It is no wonder the Aborigines thought the first white man were dead ancestors, our people would associate white skin with the dead, as we all turn white as skeletons after death. It was not long however, before they realized they were not ghosts.

Hostilities between the races were inevitable from the start. One naïve tribesman was shot because he was curious enough to pinch John Oxley’s hat and not return it. The luxury of having unusual and exotic crops growing out of your land for ‘easy picking’ was dealt with feudal aggression from both sides. (It should be made clear though that the Aborigines had very strict moral codes when it came to stealing).

Was it fear, or was it just plain ignorance and intolerance that created these first encounters of mistrust between both blacks and whites ?

The first convicts to be sent to the Moreton bay Penal settlement were treated appallingly. Many sought to escape and brave the elements, that not only included the unforgiving surroundings, but an almost certain death by the local people. The first white man to successfully live among the local tribes was John Sterry Barker. In January 1826, he escaped from the settlement. Wrenched and emancipated, fate was on his side when he happened upon a tribe roaming around the Lockyer Valley. One native woman “recognised” him as her dead son “Boraltchou”. Barker adopted the role immediately and took over all the dead son’s possessions. He lived an incredible fourteen years among that tribe, but turned himself in on August 4th 1840, after he heard the penal settlement in Morton Bay had closed.

John Graham escaped in 1827 from the penal settlement and was adopted by a Noosa tribe as a husband for one of the women. He lived among the people for six and a half years.He returned to the settlement when he thought his time was complete, however, he was incarcerated to make up for the lost years. It was an easy sentence in return for information on the bush and the ways of the Aborigines.

James Davis and John Downie were to flee from the settlement on March 30th 1829. Downie did not survive. He did not know the contents in a dilly bag contained ancestral human bones and he discarded them without a second thought. This was a desecration of custom and without regard, the Tribe thought it was a crime punishable by death. However Davis lived happily with the Gin Gin Burra people for fourteen years. They gave him the name “Duramboior” (kangaroo rat) because of his speed and agility. he spoke their tribal dialect fluently. He became totally tribalised and bore the scars of tribal initiations for the rest of his life, with a boomerang gash on his knee and a spear wound on his thigh. Davis could use a spear or throw a boomerang as well and as expertly as any member of the tribe.

These men, in my opinion, had exceptional tolerance and understanding. To fully embrace a different culture that had been untouched for over thousands of years, and live amongst it for such a long period of time, is just so incredibly  exciting. What previleged men indeed.

Story by Leeann Hogarth

Photography Tania Hopkins