Readings in Australian History
The history you were never taught
An online study course of articles by local historian Dr Jim Poulter on
Australian Aboriginal history and heritage into the first contact and colonial period.
This page is best viewed using a non-mobile device.
Revised August 2024
Foreword by Woiwurrung Elder Uncle Bill Nicholson
Photo by Barbara Oehring Photography
I have known and worked closely with Jim Poulter for more than twenty years, but he knew my father before that, and Jim’s mother knew my Aunty Vicki. This indicates how the involvement of Jim’s family with the Aboriginal community has in fact been unbroken since 1840.
Jim had the good fortune to be brought up not only hearing the stories passed down his own family, but also those passed down the Aboriginal families they knew.
The series of articles before you, which has been organised into nine themes, is therefore a direct product of Jim’s own lived experience. It has been complemented by his academic research, but informed first and foremost by the knowledge and wisdom gained from the many Senior Elders and tribal people he has known over his lifetime.
I personally endorse this course of readings to you as an Aboriginal Elder, as well as a friend and colleague of Jim.
Jim is probably best known to the public for having in the early 1980’s proposed that Australian Rules football was derived from the tribal football game of Marngrook.
Jim and I have worked together for many years to promote the playing of Marngrook at schools, so that students can directly experience Aboriginal culture and the traditional behavioural norms associated with playing the game. Marngrook is one of the topics addressed in both Themes Eight and Nine of the course before you.
Over the last two decades, Jim and I have continued exploring traditional Aboriginal land management practices, which Jim has described as ‘Permaculture Farming’. More particularly we have sought to raise awareness of how ‘Songlines’, traditional Aboriginal travel routes, are still with us today as the meandering major roads and highways across Australia. These topics are all discussed within Theme One on Aboriginal Antiquity.
Themes Two and Three discuss Aboriginal thought systems and social structures, and whilst Jim and I have over the years had many discussions on these topics, his debt is more to others. This includes iconic Victorian Elders such as Uncles Reg Saunders, Banjo Clarke and Reg Blow, as well as Northern Australian tribal people like Donald Murrawilli and David Gulpilil.
In Theme Four, Jim discusses the eight traditional Aboriginal seasons in the Central Victorian area occupied by the five Kulin Nation tribes. Jim and I collaborated closely in reconstructing the fragmentary knowledge that existed on Aboriginal seasons, and I subsequently had the honour of launching his book on the subject in 2015, and it has since become a best seller.
In Theme Five, aptly titled ‘The Collision of Worlds’, the impacts of original colonisation in 1788 are discussed. Most particularly the mysterious smallpox plague of 1789. I remember vividly when Jim first began researching the smallpox issue more than fifteen years ago and I said to him ‘Surely it was deliberate?’ When Jim said he hadn’t found any proof, I urged him to keep digging. Fortunately, the First Fleet was probably the most documented event in human history, and Jim finally fitted all the jigsaw pieces together to exhume the buried truth.
It was subsequently a great pleasure for me to provide a Foreword to Jim’s 2016 book ‘The Dust of the Mindye’, because the Mindye was in fact a Kulin legend of the smallpox plague.
Jim and I have also collaborated closely on documenting the lives and backgrounds of Woiwurrung leaders from the early colonial period, such as Billibellary, Jagga-Jagga and Simon Wonga. This has been in order for us to successfully nominate these historic figures for induction into the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll.
It is a continuing mutual endeavour and the stories of these historic figures, as well as some of Jim’s own family stories, comprise the articles in Themes Six, Seven, Eight and Nine.
More specifically, Theme Six covers ‘First Contact in Port Phillip’ and in particular the roles of William Buckley and John Batman.
Theme Seven ‘The Interface of Cultures’ then covers the human impacts and interactions of this tumultuous period, and Jim again draws upon the rich oral history of his family to tell these stories.
Theme Eight, ‘Surviving Colonisation’ then shows the resilience of Aboriginal culture in meeting these enormous challenges, and in particular the leadership of iconic figures such as Simon Wonga and William Barak.
Theme Nine then concentrates on ‘Our Shared Australian Heritage’ and in particular on the Aboriginal heritage sites still in the area where Jim continues to live, in the present-day Melbourne municipality of Manningham.
I hope you enjoy the more then ninety articles before you, because it is essentially history from the inside.
The subtitle really says it all - "The history you were never taught".
Best Wishes
Uncle Bill Nicholson
Contents
Introduction to the Course
The readings before you have been produced by Jim Poulter over several years. During this time Jim has tutored U3A classes in Aboriginal Studies and continues to give innumerable talks to schools and community groups.
His aim has always been to enable ordinary Australians to better share and take pride in our rich Australian Aboriginal history and heritage.
Over the last decade, Jim has also written a popular monthly 800 word article, ‘Birrarung Stories’ for the Warrandyte Diary Community Newspaper. The majority of the articles in the course before you, come from this source.
A retired Social Worker, Jim’s close knowledge of our rich Aboriginal history and heritage does not come from abstract academic study, it comes from his own and his family’s lived experience.
Jim Poulter’s family first settled on the Yarra River at Templestowe in 1840, and immediately established close relationships with the local Aboriginal community. These relationships have endured through the generations since.
Jim has therefore been privy to the oral history both of his own family and Aboriginal families. He has known, worked with, and been On Country with many iconic Aboriginal Elders and tribal people, who have trusted him with their knowledge.
Many of Jim’s thirty books and articles on our Australian Aboriginal history and heritage, have therefore been in collaboration with or with the personal endorsement of Aboriginal Elders.
The ninety articles in this course have been grouped into nine themes, in order to sequentially guide your learning, about what has previously been a much neglected aspect of our Australian history.
To aid students in reflecting on the content and issues raised in each of the nine themes, questions will be posed for consideration and as a stimulus for discussion with others.