Eyes can conceal many things – feelings from another time, trepidation of confronting something or the vision that a soul has when it embraces the things that spark life. As a child I could see things around me and I frequently could see things that I imagined, and then there were other times in which I confused both. Besides a recurring dream that I had, one of the first things that warranted a look into was the place I began my journey into my dreams.
Not knowing where to start I went to the library and did a general search on the area. The bits I remembered about Sale and Maffra were so vague, that they didn’t really serve any purpose except to evoke memories.
I wasn’t too happy with what I found. The search was limited by the size of the library - that was obvious, but I generally believe that things happen for a reason, and the fact that most of the books that I could find painted a picture of Gippsland’s past as bleak with a chance of gloom, was a sign that maybe I shouldn’t be delving too deep.
The history of the area with the Aboriginal’s clashing with the colonial settlers was not something I wanted to be associated with. I read about Lucy and Percy Pepper, and their struggle to survive under the rules of foreigners on their own land, and how they had to cow tow to the British invoked government just to be able to gain access to the land that they, and their ancestors had co-operated with for thousands of years.
That wasn’t the only book. Others told of Aboriginal slaughter and re-settlement for the purposes of cattle grazing. I’d heard enough. I know the area has beauty that wooed the Scots, but beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and right now I wanted to have nothing more of this memory that I held so close.
Maybe the garbage that my mind was collecting, awaiting disposal, had begun before Gippsland - I wondered if I was an Aboriginal in a previous life, and I lived in the very area that I so missed. Who knows, I had no memory of it, but I do know that I wasn’t happy about it, and either should any Australian be.
Patrick Morgan writes in Gippsland Settlers and the Kurnai Dead, Quadrant Magazine, that In 1846 Gippsland squatter Henry Meyrick wrote in a letter home to his relatives in England:
The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 500 have been murdered altogether.
Other historians tell of massacres, poisonings and brutality where ‘hundreds’ were killed. It is said that of the original indigenous nation that lived and survived in the area for at least 17,000 years there are only about 3000 alive today to carry on traditions.
Not knowing where to start I went to the library and did a general search on the area. The bits I remembered about Sale and Maffra were so vague, that they didn’t really serve any purpose except to evoke memories.
I wasn’t too happy with what I found. The search was limited by the size of the library - that was obvious, but I generally believe that things happen for a reason, and the fact that most of the books that I could find painted a picture of Gippsland’s past as bleak with a chance of gloom, was a sign that maybe I shouldn’t be delving too deep.
The history of the area with the Aboriginal’s clashing with the colonial settlers was not something I wanted to be associated with. I read about Lucy and Percy Pepper, and their struggle to survive under the rules of foreigners on their own land, and how they had to cow tow to the British invoked government just to be able to gain access to the land that they, and their ancestors had co-operated with for thousands of years.
That wasn’t the only book. Others told of Aboriginal slaughter and re-settlement for the purposes of cattle grazing. I’d heard enough. I know the area has beauty that wooed the Scots, but beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and right now I wanted to have nothing more of this memory that I held so close.
Maybe the garbage that my mind was collecting, awaiting disposal, had begun before Gippsland - I wondered if I was an Aboriginal in a previous life, and I lived in the very area that I so missed. Who knows, I had no memory of it, but I do know that I wasn’t happy about it, and either should any Australian be.
Patrick Morgan writes in Gippsland Settlers and the Kurnai Dead, Quadrant Magazine, that In 1846 Gippsland squatter Henry Meyrick wrote in a letter home to his relatives in England:
The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 500 have been murdered altogether.
Other historians tell of massacres, poisonings and brutality where ‘hundreds’ were killed. It is said that of the original indigenous nation that lived and survived in the area for at least 17,000 years there are only about 3000 alive today to carry on traditions.
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