Australia's Legal History and Colonial Legacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-16
Author(s):  
Margaret Joan Beazley

I acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which we gather. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging and especially welcome Aboriginal people here with us today. On February 7, 1788, on a place called Camp Cove in Port Jackson—recognizable to our international visitors as the land mass around Circular Quay on the harbor's edge—a commission signed by the King of England, George III, appointing Captain Arthur Phillip captain-general and governor in chief in and over the territory of New South Wales was read out by the Judge Advocate, David Collins, before an assembled throng of just over 1000 people.

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
SJ Holdaway ◽  
PC Fanning ◽  
DC Witter

Recent erosion in arid regions of western NSW has exposed large areas that are scattered with stone artefacts manufactured by Aboriginal people in prehistory. These exposures offer an opportunity for archaeologists to study the artefacts abandoned by Aboriginal people through time and to compare those artefacts that accumulate in different parts of the landscape. To reconstruct the nature of prehistoric behaviour in the rangelands, two approaches are needed. First, the geomorphological context of the artefacts needs to be considered since exposure of the artefacts is a function of landscape history. Second, large areas (measured in thousands of square metres) and large numbers of artefacts need to be considered if patterns reflecting long-term abandonment behaviour by Aboriginal people are to be identified. This paper reports on the Western New South Wales Archaeological Program (WNSWAP) which was initiated in 1995 to study surface archaeology in the rangelands. Geomorphological studies are combined with artefact analysis using geographic information system software to investigate Aboriginal stone artefact scatters and associated features such as heat retainer hearths, in a landscape context. Results suggest that apparently random scatters of stone artefacts are in fact patterned in ways which inform on prehistoric Aboriginal settlement of the rangelands. Key words: Aboriginal stone artefacts; rangelands; landscape archaeology; geomorphology; GIs


1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-67
Author(s):  
Virginia Macleod

Warriewood is on Sydney's northern beaches, between Mona Vale and North Narrabeen, in the Pittwater local government area.This was once a 'wet' part of the coast. Lagoons and swamps were typical of the northern beaches and east coast of New South Wales. Narrabeen Creek flows through the middle of Warriewood, and Mullet Creek marks its southern boundary. Early nineteenth-century maps mark most of the land between the south-east corner of Pittwater across to Mona Vale Beach and south, including Warriewood Valley, as swamp. The local Guringai Aboriginal people would have found these swamps rich in food supplies – fish, birds, plants and naturally fresh water.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-48
Author(s):  
Laura Olcelli

Tuscan-born and Spanish-trained Alessandro Malaspina (1754-1810) captained the most significant scientific expedition ever launched by Spain in the years 1789-1794. After a survey of the Spanish colonies in America, he directed the course of the Descubierta towards the South Pacific and anchored at Port Jackson on 11 March 1793. In my essay I will scrutinize the New South Wales leg of Malaspina’s voyage account, comparing 'Viaje político-científico alrededor del mundo' (the original 1885 Spanish edition) and 'Journal of a Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina' (its 2001 English translation), and integrating them with the captain’s secret reports. The examination of Malaspina’s comments on the infant colony will simultaneously expose the Spanish attitude to early British colonialism in New South Wales, and help assess Malaspina’s complex role as the first explorer who reached Terra Australis from the Italian peninsula.


1978 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.W. Harris

It is uncertain when the last exclusion of children from a public school, merely for having some Aboriginal ancestry, actually occurred. In 1937, the Commonwealth and States’ conference on Aboriginal matters recommended assimilation as a general policy rather than protection, particularly with regard to the detribalized, part-caste Aboriginal people. In 1938, the New South Wales Public Service Board in its report on the Aborigines Protection Board, recommended the policy of assimilation be implemented in schools. In 1940, the Aborigines Protection Act was amended. The Aborigines Protection Board was renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board and restructured to include Aboriginal members. The complete responsibility for the education of all Aboriginal children was transferred to the New South Wales Department of Education. Almost overnight, the policy of segregation was changed to assimilation.


1985 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Wright

Lake Mungo, in New South Wales, is the home of the first known people in this country. Here, the oldest known evidence of Aboriginal people in Australia has been found. Because of its importance, it is a site which everyone should know about. To give us a feeling for Lake Mungo, Billy Reid, the illustrator of The Aboriginal Health Worker and The Aboriginal Child at School, came with me on a trip. We travelled west to the Darling River (whose Aboriginal name is Calewatta), and then south-east to Lake Mungo itself. Billy made wonderful drawings to represent the deeds and everyday life of those people. This can be reconstructed from the fossil evidence found at Lake Mungo. He has also drawn some scenes of life along the banks of the Calewatta - the river which is Billy’s own home. He hails from Bourke.


1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Charles Wescott

Australia possesses a distinctive national parks and conservation reserves system, in which it is the State Governments rather than the Federal Government which owns, plans, and manages, national parks and other conservation reserves.Most Australian States declared their first national parks in the latter quarter of last century, Australia's first national park being declared in New South Wales in March 1879. These critical declarations were followed by a slow accumulation of parks and reserves through to 1968. The pace of acquisition then quickened dramatically with an eight-fold expansion in the total area of national parks between 1968 and 1990, at an average rate of over 750,000 ha per annum. The present Australian system contains 530 national parks covering 20.18 million hectares or 2.6% of the land-mass. A further 28.3 million hectares is protected in other parks and conservation reserves. In terms of the percentage of their land-mass now in national parks, the leading States are Tasmania (12.8%) and Victoria (10.0%), with Western Australia (1.9%) and Queensland (2.1%) trailing far behind, and New South Wales (3.92%) and South Australia (3.1%) lying between.The Australian system is also compared with the Canadian and USA systems. All three are countries of widely comparable cultures that have national parks covering similar percentage areas, but Canada and the USA have far fewer national parks than Australia and they are in general of much greater size. In addition, Canada and the USA ‘resource’ these parks far better than the Australians do theirs. The paper concludes that Australia needs to rationalize its current system by introducing direct funding, by the Federal Government, of national park management, and duly examining the whole system of reserves from a national rather than States' viewpoint.


1991 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 19-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Freedman ◽  
Teresa Donaczy

Teresa Donaczy’s calm presence and quiet sense of humour cannot mask her pain. The memory of removal from her family at the age of five still haunts her. A re-union thirty-four years later, a happy marriage, nine children and thirteen grandchildren cannot erase the hurt. Born Teresa Kirby on an Aboriginal reserve in the New South Wales town of Balranald in 1936, Teresa recalls how the Aboriginal people hid their children in the bushes to avoid them being taken by New South Wales Government authorities.


Author(s):  
Michael N Dawson

Two reciprocally monophyletic mitochondrial clades of the commercially valuable jellyfish Catostylus mosaicus are endemic to south-eastern Australia. Here, medusae in the two clades are shown to differ also in colour and in the dimensions of their papillae, oral disk, and bell depth. They are referred to two varieties recognized in 1884 by von Lendenfeld. The clade occupying localities adjacent to Bass Strait is redescribed as subspecies C. mosaicus conservativus; the clade from New South Wales and southern Queensland spans the type locality (Port Jackson) of C. mosaicus and is designated C. mosaicus mosaicus. Their ecology and colour, in the context of von Lendenfeld's original descriptions, and the implications for fisheries are discussed.


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