SLOWLY BUT SURELY, William Buckley was transforming from an English bricklayer and soldier into someone conversant with Wadawurrung culture. A year on and he was picking up scraps of language. His family spent hours helping him to pronounce words and phrases, but it would be some time before he could speak clearly.
The more he absorbed the language, the better he could play his role in the tribe. It appears he cherished this highly: he was a kind of go-between who settled disputes and sought peace when other men confronted each other. As he was never treated as a combatant, this role was accepted by his fellow clansmen.
Buckley was learning the clan’s paths, their habits and their caring-for-country practices. He gradually became adept with a spear as a half-capable hunter. The country waxed in some parts and waned in others, and he grew accustomed to its cycle of renewal and return. It had always been this way.
But the language couldn’t have come easily to him. Experts say there’s no proof he ever became fully conversant in it, although anecdotal evidence suggests that his speech was eventually comprehended by all the Kulin tribes. Wadawurrung language expert Stephanie Skinner says that Buckley wouldn’t have had the same facility with the language as a child would have: ‘Adults tend to use declarative memory and similar memory pathways and storages for bilingual learning.’ Children can more easily overlap the Wernicke’s and Broca’s sections of the brain, which are dedicated to language learning, speech and comprehension. Buckley may also have struggled with the fact that the Wadawurrung language has a different sentence structure from English: the verb comes first, then the subject and the object. As Skinner explains, ‘Instead of saying in English “Lisa has a kangaroo”, it would be “Has Lisa a kangaroo”.’
The name ‘Wadawurrung’ literally translates as ‘no lip language’ – wada meaning ‘no’ and wurru meaning ‘lip/language’ – so Buckley would have found it difficult to pronounce. The language frequently involves a ‘velar’ approach: using the soft palate to pronounce sounds such as ‘k’ ‘n’ and ‘ng’. English has this too, but it is far more prominent in Wadawurrung and used in different ways. When the settler John Helder Wedge came to Port Phillip in the 1830s, his field book included a list of vocabulary from the region, which contained the following entry: ‘white man – amajaic’. This is the earliest recorded variant spelling of ngamadjidj. Many nineteenth-century European recorders of Kulin languages were unable to hear the ‘ng’ sound at the beginning of words; sometimes they substituted an ‘n’, but usually omitted it. According to Skinner, ‘Saying that Buckley would have found it difficult to speak Wadawurrung in a way that was understood does not mean that he didn’t learn it quickly – but it would have been a considerable time before he would be fully understood by Wadawurrung people.’
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THE BARRABOOL HILLS CLAN had the Barwon as their home river, and this wasn’t unusual for their people. All Kulin tribes based themselves along the river systems of Victoria. The River Murray from present-day Albury to the River Lindsay in the west was heavily populated; the Goulburn, Loddon, Avoca, Richardson, Glenelg and Wimmera rivers also gave refuge to many tribes. As the seasons changed and important food sources came into being, they all moved accordingly. Buckley described their semi-nomadic lifestyle; they made temporary shelters as they moved using ‘mere branches of trees thrown across each other with slips of tea-tree and with pieces of bark placed over as an additional shelter’. In half an hour a fully functioning campsite could be established.
Buckley gave the impression his clan was highly nomadic, but this wasn’t true of all clans. In some cases several clans lived in one area and may have moved only sporadically, as everything they needed was in one place. They often built solidly constructed villages that may have contained around twenty to thirty huts, each of which could hold ten to twelve people. On these sites, there were often extremely sophisticated dams, the net-fishing was prolific and the game plentiful.
In contrast, Buckley said his clan would wander far afield for whatever its people needed. They would hunt and gather as individual families in small numbers, giving them greater mobility and flexibility. Highly important was the local descent group, a kind of extended family that had its own stretches of territory, and curated local ceremonial and sacred sites. These groups were patrilineal – traced through the father’s line – which meant that married women went to live with their husbands’ families. When the clan was hunting for food, it wasn’t uncommon for a number of descent groups to band together as they ranged the country.
And so it was that Buckley’s band, which probably held between twenty to sixty people, would move across a well-defined territory, combining a nomadic existence with longer stays at more established camps. Buckley said he would journey with them to Lake Corangamite, the largest lake in the western district, where on Vaughan Island in spring they could reap a harvest of swans’ eggs. As Buckley described it, on those occasions his belly was so full he was practically on the verge of vomiting. They also journeyed to Lake Modewarre about fourteen miles from present-day Geelong. At other times they were in the Otway Ranges, where they swapped food with other tribes. But there was always a return to the Barwon and the environs of Geelong.
Buckley came to know the rocks, landmarks and vegetation as the clan knew them – stalwart friends that were always available and always had been. There was practically no creature that didn’t make a meal, and his people knew when and where to find them. Brushtail (walert) and ringtail (barnong) possums, koalas (ngaanbulmum), emus (kawir), kangaroos (goim), wallabies (goy-in), wombats (ngurrngurr) and grubs (verring) as well as fish and eels (buniya) were on the menu, as were large ants living in trees (Buckley called them kalkeeth) that were eaten with relish. He watched people beat the trees with tomahawks to determine the ants’ location based on hollowness. Once they were located, someone would cut a deep notch in the bark while another person reached into the tree to pull them out. They placed the insects in bark panniers and roasted them. They were seasonal as well – arrive too late to the feast, and these ants would have metamorphosed and flown away.
Buckley reported that his clan sent small boys and girls feet first down wombat holes. The wombat would naturally escape to the back of its burrow, which the child would locate by feeling its fur with his or her feet. ‘Having discovered the lair,’ Buckley explained, ‘they called out as loud as they can, beating the ground overhead, whilst those above are carefully listening, their ears being pressed close to the earth.’ When they had learnt the wombat’s location, the men above ground sliced the part of the earth that marked the extremity of the burrow, then dug back from the spot with sharp sticks until the hapless creature was found stuck between the child’s feet and the back of its home. ‘The poor things are easily killed, for they make no resistance to these intrusions on their haunts,’ Buckley wrote. ‘There is, however, a good deal of difficulty in making these holes, and in getting down so deep to them – so that it is a sort of hunting for food of which the natives are not very fond.’
There is a story told by a white settler to the region in the 1840s of how a Wadawurrung guide was able to find native honey, ‘. . . the native sticks a piece of feather or white down to it [a bee] with gum, and then letting it go, sets off after it as fast as he can: keeping his eye steadily fixed upon the insect, he rushes along like a mad-man, tumbling over trees and bushes that lie in his way, but rarely losing sight of his object, until conducted to its well-filled store, he is amply paid for all his trouble.’
The settler watched his Wadawurrung guide find the tree, but it had been marked: the tree had been claimed by another member of the clan. The guide told the white man he couldn’t extract the honey from this tree; he had not been given the right permissions.
The Kulin knew what would come with the seasons. At the end of November, came the karl-karl, locusts which would gather around the local box trees. The Wadawurrung clans called them yerring-yerring and would gather up the locust dung from the base of a tree and eat it with relish as a form of honey. William Thomas said he was able to gather a ‘quart’ of this substance from below one tree. It was said to be delicious.
As for hunting kangaroos, there was, Buckley said, ‘considerable dexterity used’. Sometimes fire would be used to ‘smoke’ them and smaller mammals out, or the hunters would place themselves at particular spots while herding the kangaroos into corners where they could be speared without difficulty. But finding them wasn’t always easy: goim were intelligent and sensitive, able to hear and smell the hunters coming from miles away. Their ears were attuned to danger, and they often crossed streams to avoid detection.
Stories were told to the early settlers of ‘grand battues’ (‘great beatings’ in French) which involved beating woods and bushes to flush out game. Large numbers of men from different tribes agreed at a certain time to form a giant ring, sometimes fifteen to twenty miles in diameter. They would then slowly march in on a central spot, beating the countryside and thereby enclosing kangaroos and emus in their giant human noose. One of the appointed places was said to be Mustons Creek, a few miles east from its junction with the River Hopkins. All the women, children and old people would be encamped there waiting for the human noose to close in on the hapless animals. Once surrounded, they could be easily slaughtered. A great corroboree and feast would ensue, with any remaining flesh equally apportioned among all the tribes involved.
The kangaroos and emus were the prize catches, but Buckley’s band also ate wild dog (warragul). When offered the leg of a dog, he turned up his nose and instead took the leg of a kangaroo – he couldn’t bring himself to eat a canine. His band seemed to find this extremely amusing: ‘No doubt they thought my having died and been made white had strangely altered my taste in such matters,’ he wrote. The Kulin were known to love their trained dogs, which were valued for their ability to sense outside danger, but dingoes in the wild were considered no different from other game.
Buckley would learn to skin animals with mussel shells, and to stretch and dry their hides in the sun. ‘I would prepare the sinews for sewing together for rugs and to trim them with pieces of flint,’ he wrote.
Buckley also took to possum hunting, working with his brother-in-law to fetch them from trees. To determine if a possum was up there, they would breathe hard on the bark to see if any hairs were still attached; if they were detected, it meant a possum was in residence. Buckley’s brother-in-law would cut a notch as a foothold and begin climbing, notching repeatedly as he ascended. The animal was dragged out of its hollow and thrown to the ground to be killed by Buckley waiting below. Buckley was no climber but became quite adept in his role as possum executor.
There was plenty of fishing as well, which Buckley explained would often be conducted at night. People would mesmerise the bream or salmon with a flaming torch that lured them to the surface where they were speared with ease. Eel fishing took place in the lakes west of the Barwon and at the place that would one day be named Buckley Falls, also on the Barwon just west of present-day Geelong. Here, according to Buckley, the eels were big, fat and succulent. As the water flowed through the many rocks and cracks in the slow-running falls, people eased the eels into conical nets. If this method didn’t yield enough, people would simply dip worms on a string to lure them in or pluck those wriggling beneath their feet.
The Wadawurrung were expert at constructing fish and eel traps. When more white men arrived decades later, they noted that on just about every stream there was some form of strong woven fish- or eel-catching net. Lake Bolac, south of the Grampians, was one of the most celebrated places for eels. The locals would wait for the autumn rains that forced the fish to travel down creeks and streams towards the sea. The various clans would each be allotted a portion of a stream on which to catch the eels, and in pivotal places they had constructed elaborate stone weirs that diverted the eels into waiting baskets. Other methods diverted smaller eels into spawning ponds, from which they were harvested when fully grown. The eels would be smoked, otherwise their natural oils quickly degenerated their flesh, and were one of the most important trading materials for the Wadawurrung.
In winter, Buckley’s clan would move away from the coast to take shelter from the winds that blew off the southern waters. Most of these winter camps were on higher ground, flood-free land that was sheltered from the weather. The clan constructed durable huts known as wuurn, and such camps could be occupied for months. Dome-like houses on solid wood frames were noted in the 1830s by white explorers. In the 1860s, a white squatter and experienced bushman G.S. Lang admired the proficiency of local hut-building after witnessing Wadawurrung men construct them with ease: ‘One of our overseers, a very ingenious man, singularly skilful in overcoming mechanical difficulties, I saw over and over again attempt the construction of a hut, native fashion, under the direction of the blacks, and with a blackfellow beside him building up another, as an example. But he never got his edifice to stand the weight of the turf, and it generally fell before he had the framework completed, of course to the intense amusement of the natives.’
Women gathering edible roots using digging sticks. Sketch by John Wedge, 1835. (Federation University Australia Historical Collection)
Near these dwellings were elaborate fisheries. John Batman, when he first came to this country in the mid-1830s, was amazed by the extensive use of weirs and fish traps, and noted the housing around them; these were, he understood, permanent villages with local food sources. There were also places, such as the McLeods Waterholes west of the town of Drysdale, that offered alternatives: lakeside plants and freshwater mussels.
But while animals were an important source of sustenance, the most vital staple for the Wadawurrung was the flora collected by the women. They gathered roots, plants, fruit and berries, along with a variety of tubers. The murnong, with their radish-shaped roots, were the most important of these; they’re seasonal – bitter in the winter, sweet in the summer – and can be eaten raw or baked in an earth oven. Another commonly eaten tuber was the finger-shaped water ribbon (palango warngare), which is very sweet when cooked. The small-leafed clematis – also known as the peppery yam or tarook – was used as a poultice to treat aching bones, and it was also administered for headaches by inhaling the vapour from its crushed leaves. The pink bindweed is another edible taproot that the Wadawurrung ate during the colder months, when the murnong was still too young and bitter to taste.
There were many more edible plants, including orchids, daisies, warrigal cabbage, native geranium, bulrush shoots and kangaroo apples. The latter could be used as a woman’s medicinal plant, perhaps to ease menstruation. There were native-named plants such as bol-kom-bop-ba, a small green plant with a leaf like a turnip, which when eaten, is said to act as an emetic. There was fruit from pigface and the native raspberry, and seasonal nuts and seeds. Acacia gum from the black wattle (warour re rup) was a common food that Buckley relished and was said to aid digestion, while the gum of the yellow wattle was used to cure stomach complaints and salve burns. Gum that came to be known as ‘blackfellas chewing gum’ was derived from a small to medium sized Eucalypt and either eaten or made into a flavoured drink.
The Kulin used everything they could. The acacia that produced gum was also the source of many wooden implements. The dried cones of the silver banksia (wurrak) were used as drinking-water strainers and also stuffed with coals for use as spot burners for firesticks, while the flowers were made into a cordial. The blackwood (burn-naa-look) was an essential tool tree: fashioned from its wood were boomerangs, clubs, spear-throwers and parrying shields. Its medicinal outer bark was used for joint pain, while its inner-bark fibres were made into fishing-net strings. She-oak wood was also used to make boomerangs, clubs and digging sticks, while the stringybark had its bark removed to create canoes or shelter, and its medicinal sap was used for burns. The yellow gum (bi-et-mai) was another tough timber used for digging sticks and parrying shields, and it was said to have magical properties. There was also the manna gum (larrap) with timber used for clubs and shields, and leaves made into a poultice to alleviate backache.
Animals, too, sometimes had two or three uses. The goim and wallaby were for eating, but their sinew and teeth were used for adornments, their rib-cage bones could be used as tools, and their smaller leg bones as sewing needles. Both kangaroo and possum pelts were made into ceremonial cloaks – a single cloak was composed of about sixty pelts – while possum fur was made into a type of football and its pelts also woven together into rugs. It’s no surprise that the echidna (mon ngarrk) was eaten as well, and its sharp quills became necklace adornments. The quills also had a role as natural lancets, when trying to remove infections from wounds. The Kulin would debride the wound with a quill, which would then be closed and covered with a layer of gum from a eucalyptus or acacia tree and placed over the sore as a salve. The elder man Barak of the Woiwurrung, who knew Buckley, was once unhappy with the treatment he received from a burn and requested what he called ‘the blood of the tree’. Burns were also treated with melted fat, after which a fine dust made of possum fur and red ochre known as wheerup was sprinkled over it.
Buckley too received medical attention. The Wadawurrung had no bandages, but after receiving a laceration to his head, the women bound the wound in possum skin tied with possum sinews. There was, indeed, a use for everything.
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SOME WHITE COMMENTATORS have said that Buckley regressed, that he fell from the advanced state of the agricultural and industrial revolutions into a more primitive hunting-and-gathering existence. But Buckley never mentioned this as being part of his cultural shock. The former farm boy from Cheshire was thriving as both a forager and a farmer in Wadawurrung country.
The Kulin nation had discovered myriad farming technologies that proved highly efficient. The local people had little need to store food, knowing the land would replenish itself. The European method of planting just a few types of seeds, plucking out weeds and watering the crops – as well as nurturing a few animals – was pointless to Indigenous people. In Wadawurrung country, a crop never failed: if one food source was lacking or scarce, the band of people would just move to another. And there was no need for livestock. The dingo was the only native mammal that could be domesticated, and it was highly valued as a hunter and a sentinel that could warn of the approach of evil spirits.
Buckley had entered a society that anthropologists now largely agree was among the most egalitarian the world has ever known. In Indigenous life pre-colonisation, there was no such thing as succession. Most serious disputes weren’t about ownership but encroachment. They hinged on the fair and equitable sharing of resources. Outsiders could not ‘invade’ other people’s lands – the idea of dispossessing a tribe of its land made no sense at all. Likewise the rights and obligations over a particular resource were always known – they had been fixed over time and delineated by a deep sense of spatial awareness.
The agricultural revolution in the northern hemisphere had given rise to the idea of private ownership, while in Indigenous culture ancient sharing laws forbade private property except for weapons and tools. A man had his spear, a women her cooking utensils and digging stick, and everyone had their own clothes.
When a band needed a specific food, they always understood which tribe controlled the land it came from. Taking an eel without permission was a transgression but not an usurpation. Buckley recounted an expedition made by members of his tribe deep in the north of the Otway Ranges, travelling hundreds of miles to exchange their eels for the other people’s roots. ‘We carried our fish in kangaroo skins, and reaching the place of rendezvous, we found about eighty men, women and children gathered together,’ he noted. The transaction was done with great formality and care, as two men crossed simultaneously from each tribe to the other carrying bark panniers filled with food. The negotiations were concluded only after the equivalent number of panniers had been exchanged. It was fair trade, Kulin style.
Perhaps the best example of exchanges was for axes – by far the most important working tool for Indigenous men. At the Mount William stone quarry, strangers were not allowed to enter and could not take stone until the fair exchange had been made. Those without rights to Mount William would have to negotiate a price for their needs with those who had the rights. Reed spears from the Goulburn River reed beds and possum rugs were recorded exchanges for Mount William’s much coveted green stone. The exchange rate was recorded by a settler as one possum rug for three pieces of stone.
This society wasn’t about taking, but giving – he who gave the most, was the most revered. There were no IOUs, no tit-for-tats, no special favours, only reciprocal obligations handed down by time, which everybody understood. If a person had a patrilineal right to access a particular resource, they could access it. If they did not, then access wasn’t possible or had to be bestowed by someone who did. People would go through protocols and procedures to access, for example, stonework for axes or a pond bursting with eels. You might be refused or allowed, but if you simply went and took it, that would be the crime. Under Judeo-Christian law, if a person is convicted of a crime they literally do the time, but among the Kulin a perpetrator’s uncle could be more severely punished than the perpetrator, who should have been taught the rules of reciprocity. In these societies, including the one in which Buckley was ensconced, the people of a particular line were meant to keep their people in check.
The Kulin were taught from childhood the immediate punishments both moral and physical that would result from a wrong action. Tribal law was in effect internalised as part of each child’s education, and the sanctions meted out meant there was no need for an elaborate set of laws or a judicial system. If matters became complicated, the male elders of each band (known as arweets among the Boonwurung or ngurungaeta among the Wadawurrung) would weigh in, and at larger tribal meetings these men – who could be religious leaders, song men or even great hunters – would judge crimes as well as make determinations. As many scholars have said, Indigenous governance was far more about education and learning than it was about empowering a government.
The Kulin had no need for maps, as they knew their country through songs and stories passed down for countless generations. They had names for every river, mountain and waterhole over thousands of square kilometres, and they believed many of their ancestors were alive in rock formations, billabongs, ghost gums and stars. In country, there was no such thing as wilderness. A person could never be alone or lost either literally or metaphysically, as their country was always with them.
However, if something was unknown or from outside the known limits of country – including anyone whom the locals described as being on the periphery – it was deemed by definition to be harmful and unwelcome, perhaps the product of sorcery. Foreign tribespeople were ascribed with morally reprehensible characteristics and behaviours, including cannibalism. The widespread use of words like mainmait (wild blackfellows) was acknowledged by white nineteenth-century observers, including squatters and protectorate officials. Deaths within a tribe, even natural ones, were often attributed to the influence of an exterior person or hostile being. The Kulin were always wary of payback or revenge. Distant tribes, those with whom there was no linguistic or spatial attachment, were considered the source of all evil. Someone had to be responsible, and retribution needed to be taken; Buckley recounted that this could take the form of revenge expeditions.
Joseph Parker, whose father was Assistant Protector responsible for the Loddon district of the Aboriginal Protectorate from 1839 until 1851, recalled that the Djadjawurrung believed in two forms of death: one natural and one superstitious: ‘They did not believe in death from natural causes, except in the two extremes of life – old age and infancy,’ he wrote. Any other form of death was always regarded as suspicious.
James Dawson was one of the first white observers to understand that deaths were often attributed to the malevolence of a distant tribe. Such foreign enemies were frequently blamed when a dying person believed they were the victim of an incantation. Dawson recounted one example: a corpse was suspended from a tree, and by watching the course of the first maggot that dropped on the ground from the body, the clan divined the source of the culprits. There was also a case in which a man was speared by another, and the dying man blamed a distant tribe of the north for directing the spear. The thrower of the spear was not deemed culpable.
Who would they blame? There were recorded cases when tribes decided to take a similar life to the one they had lost. So if a man died, the life of another man would be taken, and if that of a woman or child, a similar life would also be taken.
In the Morgan-Buckley account, intertribal warfare ranges in type and intensity. Some scholars think that the nature of the warfare depended on tribal propinquity. The Kulin people were an association of tribes, and this meant their customs, languages and personal relationships were often close. The bonds of kinship among neighbouring bands and clans meant such feuds rarely escalated into widespread warfare; the Kulin tribes tended to settle their differences with a fair fight between the disputing parties and little bloodshed. Neighbours may have been blamed for mishaps, but they were also often linked by blood and other types of respected traditional relationships. It is thought that in the remote past, the ancestors of the tribes now living in association were a single tribe, and that geography or separate interests may have contributed to their gradual division. Between Kulin tribes there were often what could be described as ‘goodwill sabbaticals’: a person from one tribe might live with another for a long time, learning their ways.
Buckley doesn’t distinguish between associations and non-associations, although he mentions tribes further afield as the natural enemies of the Wadawurrung. Of course he was saved from being a stranger due to his identification as ngamadjidj or kin – without this, many scholars believe, he wouldn’t have survived.
Buckley’s clan gave him ample breathing space, as they believed he had simply forgotten the old ways due to his time away. He was an ingénue who would always be forgiven – and often laughed at – for not knowing social and cultural ambits. All the same, he had to grapple with a tribal- and family-based network of rules and regulations. Everyone was to some degree interconnected. He assumed the former rights and obligations of the man he’d replaced, and he would have to learn about this man’s reciprocal relationships.
Buckley had been assigned the role of a lifetime – to take on the guise of someone he had never met, in a social network that differed vastly from anything he had ever known.