A LIFE TOGETHER,
A LIFE APART
A LIFE TOGETHER,
A LIFE APART
A History of Relations between Europeans and Aborigines
Bain Attwood,
Winifred Burrage,
Alan Burrage
and
Elsie Stokie
Melbourne University Press
1994
First published 1994
Typeset by John Sandefur, Melbourne
Printed in Malaysia by
SRM Production Services Sdn Bhd for
Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria 3053
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Parts I and III Bain Attwood, Part II Winifred Burrage,
Alan Burrage and Elsie Stokie 1994
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
A life together, a life apart: a history of relations between
Europeans and Aborigines.
ISBN 0 522 84536 3.
1. Burrage, Charles. 2. Burrage, Elsie. 3. Burrage, Winifred. 4. Burrage, Alan. 5. Stokie, Elsie. [6.] Aborigines, AustralianNew South WalesReservesAdministration Biography. [7.] Aborigines, AustralianNew South Wales ReservesHistory. [8.] Aborigines, AustralianNew South WalesTreatmentHistory. [9.] Aborigines, Australian New South WalesGovernment relations. [10.] Aborigines, AustralianNew South WalesSocial conditions. I. Attwood, Bain.
994.40049915
In memory of Charles and Elsie Burrage
Contents
Illustrations
Charles Burrage as a boy
Charles Burrages Gembrook hut
Charles Burrage and Elsie Cox on their wedding day
The minister and his wife in their Tasmanian parish
Map showing the location of Aboriginal stations
The Cox family
Aboriginal children at Sevington
The Burrage family, 1918
Connors bullocks and the well
Amy Connors wedding
Elsie Burrage and her children, 1922
The Burrages house at Cummeragunja
Wally Nicholls and Alan Burrage on the Murray River
Boiling the billy on the Murray
Edgar Atkinson
Florrie Atkinson and Elsie Burrage
The Cummeragunja school
Schoolchildren at Cummeragunja
Aboriginal boys and Alan Burrage
Viney Cooper and Georgina Charles
Cummeragunja football team
The Briggs family
Theresa Clements and an Aboriginal house and garden
The procession at Cummeragunja
Inspector Robert Donaldson
Moonahcullah Station
Hubert and Muriel Days wedding
Bert and Ivy Sampson
Elsie Burrage teaching Aboriginal girls sewing
Granny Robertson
Aboriginal children as flower sellers
Aboriginal artefacts
Making a canoe
Alan Burrage canoeing
Charles Burrage presenting medals to Aboriginal children
Half-caste girl
The Burrage Family, c . 193940
The authors at Cummeragunja
All these photographs are in the possession of the Burrage family. The historical photographs were taken by Charles Burrage, except for the illustrations on pages 30, 177 and 186 and where otherwise stated.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the archivists of the New South Wales Archives Office; librarians of the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria and Monash University; Geoff Gray for his research; Venetia Nelson for her editorial advice; Phil Scamp of the Department of Geography, Monash University, for the map; Brian Carr and Rhonda Joyce of the Department of Geography, Monash University, for reproducing the photographs; the Arts Faculty, Monash University, for funding; and Natalee Dalgeish, Rosemary Johnstone and Carleen Marshall for their secretarial assistance. I benefited from the comments several of my colleagues made in a seminar in the Department of History, Monash University, when I delivered a version of Part III of the book, and from the comments offered by Andrew Markus and David Chandler, who read Parts I and III respectively. Most of all, I am indebted to Gillian Robinson, who not only read and criticised many drafts of the manuscript, but also discussed the book with me on countless occasions and provided me with much of the impetus I needed in order to complete it.
Bain Attwood
Preface
During the last decade the production of Aboriginal history
Yet while the second part of this book, which comprises the Burrages narrative, provides invaluable historical testimony regarding European Australians' thought and action in the early decades of this century, it also constitutes an important source concerning Aboriginal life on government reserves at this time. Simultaneously, the Burrages narrative is a history which challenges the picture conveyed by recent academic studies and Aboriginal life stories and autobiographies, some of which are considered in the initial section of the book where I also trace the historical background to the period. By and large these histories emphasise conflict between Aborigines and Europeans and the oppression of the colonised, and attribute responsibility to government officials and their fellow colonisers who are either characterised as doctrinaire or unsympathetic, or as cruel, even evil, men and women. By contrast, the Burrages story tells of accommodation between Aborigines and Europeansof the intimacy, albeit distant, which existed in the enclosed worlds of Aboriginal reserves, and the nature of the everyday life in which such relations were embeddedand represents their parents as superintendents who were intelligent, understanding, and benevolent.
Yet while the Burrages history questions other historical texts, it is not presented here as a master narrative which shows how things really happened in the past, and thus seeks to displace Others stories. As I discuss in my reflective essay, which constitutes the third part of this book, all stories told about the past are interpretative, and, therefore, necessarily partial and limited. The Burrages account and my essays are offered in this spirit.
Other Histories
I
Charles and Elsie Burrage managed or taught on three Aboriginal reserves in New South Wales between 1917 and 1940, a period which coincides with what has been called the protectionist era of government policy and practice in south-eastern Australia. Whereas in the nineteenth century Aborigines had been forcibly dispossessed of their country by European settlers, in the twentieth century they were to be controlled by the state and its agents through discriminatory legislation and intervention in their lives. Government policy and practice was underpinned by racial ideas which dominated European Australians thinking at this time; as Andrew Markus has written, most... saw Aborigines as a relic of the stone age, as a lower order of humanity, possibly even subhuman, and many believed that they would die out. Yet there also existed important variations in government policies and how these were implemented, and so it is necessary to discuss the particularity of New South Wales during the Burrages time.
