Keith Vincent Smith
As the museum’s conference, Nawi – exploring Australia’s indigenous watercraft nears, we will be turning your attention to the fascinating array of speakers who will be presenting on the 31 May and 1 June. Previously, I wrote about the story of Gnung-a Gnung-a, the first Aboriginal to sail across the seas to America. I enjoyed delving into part of the history of first contact and early European settlement, and Dr Keith Vincent Smith’s talk in the first session will be a welcome addition to what is shaping up to be a diverse program of events.
Keith is an independent historian and curator, whose expertise includes ethnology and the history of the Eora, the Indigenous clans of the Sydney coastal area. His talk will feature the first illustrations produced of Aboriginal watercraft at Botany Bay and cover some of the earliest moments of contact between the British and Aboriginal peoples, who had greeted the foreigners on board their nawi or stringy bark canoes.
Keith curated the exhibition, Mari Nawi – Aboriginal Odysseys 1790-1850, at the Mitchell Library in Sydney in 2010. He described this exhibition as a ‘journey across time, place and cultures.’ Already, preparations for the conference have achieved exactly that, with nawi building being undertaken on the shores of Sydney Harbour. Next week, on 30 May, past and present will come together and canoes will light up Darling Harbour marking the beginning of the conference, but more importantly, it will symbolise an Indigenous cultural tradition that began thousands of years ago.
Have a look at the program of events and register online today.
Nicole Cama
Curatorial assistant
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View of carpentaria from the water
Blue skies, crisp air and brilliant sunshine. The perfect May day.
A little red lightship bobs in the waves.
The Cape Bowling Green lighthouse reflects blinding white on North wharf.
Over on South Head another beacon stands, decked out in circus- worthy stripes.
This week I have had more than my share of time out on the harbour enjoying some amazing historic lighthouses.
First it was out one of the small fleet boats Arvor, cruising around the shores of the Museum to take some footage of the Commonwealth Lighthship 4, Carpentaria, with Elias and Eleanor from Curiousworks.
Elias filming from the water on our way out to where Carpentaria is stationed
On board Carpentaria
Usually Carpentaria is one of the vessels in our collection that can only be enjoyed from the comfort and safety of a wharf-side walkway but today we get a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with this flame-coloured beauty. It’s a little precarious climbing the narrow ladder up the side and over the top rails ( not to worry, we have our self-inflatable life-jackets on!) . Up top is spectacular though, and for the purpose of the film’s soundscape we get to unloose the bells. The deep ring echoes on and on and on, it’s almost like a clocktower’s midnight chime, smothering the chatter of seagulls and the beating whistle of the breeze. You can almost imagine the sounds of that fateful moment in 1944 when Carpentaria broke free of her moorings on Breakfree Spit during a cyclone. This warning bell was designed to toll with the motion of the ship, ringing out in case of poor visibility during foggy weather or a malfunction of the light.
The footage taken of Carpentaria will be used for one of a series of short films being made about our collection for the release of the anniversary publication One Hundred Stories, coming out later this year. It’s also the last we will see of this little lightship for a few weeks as Carpentaria is off to Garden Island for repairs.
View from Rosman Ferry Radar as we cruise around Sydney
The next day I’m back out on the harbour for our Shipwrecks cruise forum, held in partnership with WEA Sydney.
After an introduction to the science of the corrosion and conservation of shipwrecks led by some of the museums wonderful teacher guides we set out for Watsons Bay on board the Radar.
No shortage of beautiful weather and fresh breeze to enjoy and we have expert commentary courtesy of curator Nigel Erskine who has joined us for the day. Over at Watsons Bay our destination is the Hornby Lighthouse.
the view from the walking track up to Hornby lighthouse
We take a walking track past the soft sands of camp cove beach, said to be one of the first landing places for the fleet in 1788, past disused cannon and gun turrets and alongside the spectacular views of sparkling waters and sailboats. The walk is quick and easy. Before we know it we are turning the corner to encounter the sandstone lightkeepers cottage and then the petite but spectacular red and white striped lighthouse. There is something endearing and cheerful about Hornby lighthouse that belies the horrific tragedies that brought this beacon into being.
Hornby Lighthouse
Hornby Lighthouse
In 1857 the Dunbar crashed with the loss of 121 out of the c.122 lives on board. The Hornby Lighthouse was built in 1858 to make sure this never happened again. It was also just the third lighthouse built in NSW.
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Models are a great way to engage people about a subject and we used them to explore Indigenous watercraft at Alexandria Park Community School on Wednesday 23 May with about ten primary school children. It was mixed group, mostly Indigenous boys, and they were a bundle of energy. Judithe Hall and I went from the museum. Auntie Deb and Thea were there to keep an eye on things. We started quietly with just a strip of coloured paper each and two paper clips.
David Payne shows the students how to make canoe models from paper
A fold on the centreline and a clip at the first end held it secure. The corners of the other end are then folded in to the middle, then brought together as a fold on the centreline and clipped. After less than 5 minutes we had canoes, in fact more than 10 canoes! We had made miniature paper versions of the derrka or nardan featured in the well-known movie 10 Canoes. I then showed the group a drawing of the canoe, the geese they hunted using the canoe and then the famous Donald Thomson image from the late 1930s of the 10 canoes in the Arafura Swamp. So we lined up our canoes on two bits of green cardboard and recreated that scene as a little diorama, complete with coloured canoes!
Plasticine was next, and everyone was rolling out mangrove logs in a variety of colours so we could form two kalwa rafts from the Kimberley region. One was made in red, yellow and black Aboriginal colours. Kids raced outside to get twigs to make spears, and things started moving quickly. The rest of the plasticine was rolled together in a vibrant mixture of colours to form a tree trunk, and then passed around as each person hollowed a bit out until we had a dugout formed. Another twig became the mast, and a square of coloured paper became the sail, sticky-taped on.
Bark canoe models made by the students
Eager to do more, it was time to use natural materials. Small bits of stringy bark were used for the real nawi and soaked overnight to be more pliable. Deft fingers folded and squashed together ends, rubber bands secured them, then little twigs went in to hold the sides apart. String ties made from strips of bark were lashed around the ends to cover the rubber bands and another eight canoes were on the table!
Next- another raft- a walpo from Mornington Island and one boy took charge – arranging the twigs, using rubber bands to hold the ends and cutting paperbark for a seat.
David shows the students how to build an outrigger model
Time for the big one, a double outrigger form Torres Strait! I had pre-cut the hulls from cardboard tube and cross beams from dowel. Another boy could see the plan already and started to feed the dowels through the holes in the main hull as they were meant to go. The rest helped tape the outrigger hulls on and put feathers in the back for the decoration they carried. Then we were done!
The group proudly display their models at the end of the workshop
With a few minutes to go the proud kids posed with their models for photos. They wrote a short sentence or two about the fun they had that morning and then off to lunch.
“Today we made canoes and spears and I thought it was a good experience and my favourite canoe was the outrigger.”
“It was very fun but the most fun of all was when outrigger and we want to make paint..”
“We had fun and made spears and boats. We had fun making them.”
“Today we had to make a canoe and a raft. It was so fun.”
“I love making canoes. The one I liked the most is outrigger. I learnt that aboriginals made different kinds of canoes.”
“I like making canoes out of bark off the tree.”
This joyful collection of models will be on display during the Nawi- exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft conference next week.
David Payne
Curator, Register of Historic Vessels
Two students proudly display their model bark canoe
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On behalf of myself and all the crew of H.M.B Endeavour I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our voyage crew, volunteers, port authorities, project partners, sponsors and communities for an epic voyage of a life time around Australia.
It has been your patronage that has made this possible. There have been so many memorable experiences that I have been very humbled by and has made me proud to be part of this voyage. I hope that your involvement in our ambitious project fulfilled your expectations.
Until next time, fair winds.
Your aye Captain Ross Mattson
Please find the following statistics of our adventure:
- The ship has sailed 13,300 nautical miles
- 706 voyage crew have sailed with us with 20 different voyage legs
- 75,720 people visited the ship in 15 ports, including 18,446 school students
- 816 volunteers assisted with guiding and shipkeeping all over Australia
- 23,000 kms has been travelled by our shore Truck Over
- 800 media stories published making headlines around Australia
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![Reg #00000022 ANMM Collection 'The same Native presenting the fish he has caught to his wife / Native man of NS Wales with his mutton that the [sic] spear fish with'.](http://anmm.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/browne-00000022_1.jpg?w=300&h=225 "R Browne")
Reg #00000022 ANMM Collection ‘The same Native presenting the fish he has caught to his wife / Native man of NS Wales with his mutton that the [sic] spear fish with’.
In the late 1980s the Australian National Maritime Museum found itself in the process of acquiring two unusual paintings. The works dated to the 1820s and depicted Aborigines fishing: one portraying a couple in a canoe and the other a man presenting a catch of fish to his wife (shown above). At this point the ANMM was still just a construction site, but curators working to build the museum’s collection recognised the rarity of the items and their possible contribution to our knowledge of the history of Indigenous Australians and their long association with the sea.
However there were some issues to consider with the two paintings. For a time, confusion reigned over the identity of the artist. The images, quite stylised, appeared to be by the same hand as a number of other works that were all signed with the surname Browne or Brown, and a variety of initials; T, TR, IR, JR. A study by Niel Gunson on the artworks strongly suggested they were all by the one man, Richard Browne (1771-1824), an Irish convict.
Browne was born in Dublin in 1771 and sentenced to transportation in 1810, possibly for the crime of forgery. He arrived in Sydney in 1811 and within a few months had reoffended and was convicted a second time. This time Browne was sent north, to the secondary penal colony of Newcastle and it was here that he began producing artworks. Browne’s best known works from this time appear in the manuscript titled Select Specimens From Nature of the Birds and Animals of New South Wales. The commandant of Newcastle, Lieutenant Thomas Skottowe, had an interest in natural history and commissioned Browne to create the drawings for the manuscript which included many images of Aborigines, their tools and their activities as well as insects, birds and animals.
Of the later period of Browne’s life, 1817-1824, little is known. It appears that he was designated ‘free by servitude’ in 1817 and was based in Sydney, marrying, and fathering several children before dying on 11 January 1824.
Retrospectively, Browne’s artworks have received a wide variety of interpretations, praise and criticism. The elongated, angular style of his figures have been described as caricatures, aimed at amusing rather than informing. It is thought that many of his works were intended as souvenirs and conformed to an English colonist perspective rather than providing a realistic record. It is difficult to determine what Browne’s intentions were, however he most certainly painted many of the images from life and it has been argued in recent years that his works were created as, and are useful as, ethnographic records. Many of Browne’s paintings, now in the collections of the National Library of Australia and the State Library of NSW, contain details of Aboriginal tools, clothing and occupations.
Reg #00000021 ANMM Collection. ‘Niga, Fishing in the surf with his Mutton / Burgon. Celebrated Fisherman of New South Wales, in a canoe – the woman sitting down is supposed to be is [sic] wife’.
Most importantly for the Australian National Maritime Museum, this painting by Browne provides a rare image of Aboriginal watercraft, in this case a bark canoe, generally made from a single piece of bark lashed at both ends. As depicted in Browne’s artwork, men generally stood in canoes to fish and a fire was produced within the canoe for warmth and cooking. ANMM curator David Payne has recently been involved in
workshops to reproduce and build these types of lashed-bark canoes.
Browne’s painting, caught perhaps between a realistic interpretation and a fixed European perspective nevertheless contributes to the historical information available to us in relation to Aboriginal watercraft technologies.
Next week the museum will be hosting the first major conference on the watercraft of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples titled Nawi : Exploring Australia’s Indigenous Watercraft. This important conference will bring together a wide range of academics and experts and a great variety of sources to promote the study of this important topic. For information on the conference, or to register to attend, please visit our website.
Penny Hyde
Curatorial assistant
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