Djadjawurrung
The Djadjawurrung or Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Djaara or Jajowrong people and Loddon River tribe, are an Aboriginal Australian people who are the traditional owners of lands including the water catchment areas of the Loddon and Avoca rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They are part of the Kulin alliance of Aboriginal Victorian peoples. There are 16 clans, which adhere to a patrilineal system. Like other Kulin peoples, there are two moieties: Bunjil the eagle and Waa the crow.
Name
The Dja Dja Wurrung ethnonym is often analysed as a combination of a word for "yes" and "mouth". This is quite unusual, since many other languages of the region define their speakers in terms of the local word for "no". It had, broadly speaking, two main dialects, an eastern and western variety.Language
Dja Dja Wurrung is classified as one of the Kulin languages. Some 700 words were taken down by Joseph Parker in 1878, while R. H. Mathews produced an outline of its grammar, published in German in 1904.Country
According to Norman Tindale and Ian D. Clark, Their lands once extended over, embracing the Upper Loddon and Avoca rivers, running east, through Maldon and Bendigo to around Castlemaine and west as far as St. Arnaud. It takes in the area close to Lake Buloke. The northern reaches touch Boort and, northwest, Donald, while Creswick, Daylesford and Woodend marks its southern frontier, and to the southwest, Navarre Hill and Mount Avoca. Stuart Mill, Natte Yallock and Emu and the eastern headwaters of the Wimmera River all lie within Dja Dja Wurrung traditional land.History
The Dja Dja Wurrung are bound to their land by their spiritual belief system deriving from the Dreaming, when mythic beings had created the world, the people and their culture. They were part of established trade networks which allowed goods and information to flow over substantial distances. The Tachylite deposits near Spring Hill and the Coliban River may have been important trade goods as stone artefacts from this material have been found around Victoria.There is evidence that smallpox, perhaps introduced first from the north by Macassan traders, swept through the Djadja Wurrung in 1789 and 1825. According to a census undertaken in 1840, there were 282 Djadja wurrung, all that remained of the 900–1900 people estimated to be in Djadja wurrung territory in 1836 when the first white colonizer, Thomas Mitchell, passed through their territory. Mitchell reported finding large fertile plains. The settlement of the Goulburn and Loddon Districts began the following year by squatters eager to carve out a station and run. As to the epidemics, they were incorporated into Aboriginal mythology as a giant snake, the Mindye, sent by Bunjil, to blow magic dust over people to punish them for being bad.
Munangabum
was an influential clan head of the Liarga balug and spiritual Leader or neyerneyemeet of the Djadja wurrung who lived through two smallpox epidemics and shaped his people's response to European settlement in the 1830s and 1840s. On 7 February 1841, Munangabum was shot and wounded by settlers while his companion Gondiurmin died at Far Creek Station, west of Maryborough. Three settlers were later apprehended and tried on 18 May 1841 but were acquitted for want of evidence as aborigines could not give evidence in courts of law. He was murdered in 1846 by a rival clan-head from the south.Massacres
The European settlement of Western Victoria in the 1830s and 1840s was marked by resistance to the invasion, often by the driving off of sheep, which then resulted in conflict and sometimes a massacre of aboriginal people. The Dja Dja Wurrung peoples experienced two waves of settlement and dispossession: from the south from 1837 and from the north from 1845.Very few of these reports were acted upon to bring the settlers to court. On the few occasions when this did happen, the cases were dismissed as aborigines were denied the right to give evidence in courts of law. Neil Black, a squatter in Western Victoria writing on 9 December 1839, states the prevailing attitude of many settlers:
The best way is to go outside and take up a new run, provided the conscience of the party is sufficiently seared to enable him without remorse to slaughter natives right and left. It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of his place and property without having recourse to such means – sometimes by wholesale...
Table: reported killings in Dja Dja Wurrung territory to 1859
| Date | Location | Aborigines involved | Europeans involved | Aboriginal deaths reported |
| March–April 1838 | Unknown | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | two Europeans | Koonikoondeet and another man |
| Winter 1838 | Darlington Station, about 16 km from Lancefield | Dja Dja Wurrung or Taungurung | Captain Sylvester Brown's employees | 13 people |
| June 1838 | Waterloo Plains massacre | unknown | employees of WH Yaldwyn, CH Ebden, H Munro, and Dr W Bowman | 7 or 8-but probably many more people |
| February 1839 | Maiden Hills | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | John Davis and Abraham Braybrook, convict shepherds, and William Allan | Noorowurnin and another person |
| May 1839 | Campaspe Plains, see the Campaspe Plains massacre for detail | Taungurung, clan unknown | Charles Hutton and party of settlers | About 40 killed |
| June 1839 | Campaspe Plains, known as the Campaspe Plains massacre | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | Charles Hutton and party of mounted police | At least 6 people killed, many wounded |
| late 1839 or early 1840 | Middle Creek, known as the Blood Hole | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | Captain Dugald McLachlan and his employees | Unknown |
| August 1840 | unknown | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | one of Henry Dutton's assigned servants | Pandarragoondeet |
| 7 February 1841 | 14 Mile Creek, Glenmona Station west of Maryborough | Dja Dja Wurrung, Galgal gundidj clan | William Jenkins, William Martin, John Remington, Edward Collin, Robert Morrison | Gondiurmin, Munangabum wounded |
| 15 May 1844 | 100 km north of Pyrenee range | presumably Dja Dja Wurrung | Native Police Corps in the charge of Crown Commissioner FA Powlett and HEP Dana | Leelgoner |
| 28 June 1846 | Avoca River near Charlton | Dja Dja Wurrung, clan unknown | John Fox | one person |
Rape and frontier sexual interaction
An important source of frontier conflict was sexual relations between European settlers and aboriginal women. Historian Bain Attwood claims that aboriginal clans may have sought to incorporate whites into their kinship society through sexual relations with its principles and obligations of reciprocity and sharing; however, this would have been misconstrued by the settlers as prostitution, resulting in cultural misunderstanding and conflict. Abduction and rape of aboriginal women was also relatively common, often leading to violent interactions. While most squatters ignored such sexual interactions by their employees and even participated, there were a few, such as John Stuart Hepburn, who discouraged sexual interactions between his employees and the Dja Dja Wurrung.Edward Parker commented:
Were the settlers generally to follow the example of Mr Hepburn, much of the liberal intercourse between the labouring men and native women, and consequently the endangering of property, would be suppressed.
Parker expressed in 1842 the "firm conviction... that nine out of ten outrages committed by the blacks" derived either directly or indirectly from sexual relations. While he considered the "labouring classes" the worst offenders, he also indicated there were "individuals claiming the rank of gentleman and even aspiring to be administrators of the law" who abused Aboriginal women.
The widespread abuse of aboriginal women led directly to an epidemic of venereal disease, syphilis and gonorrhea, which had a major impact on reducing the fertility of Dja Dja Wurrung women and increased the mortality rate of infants.
Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford
was appointed in England by the Colonial Office as an Assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Aboriginal Protectorate established in the Port Philip district under George Robinson. He arrived in Melbourne in January 1839 with Robinson appointing Parker to the northwest or Loddon District in March. He did not start his protectorate until September 1839. The Protector's duties included to safeguard aborigines from "encroachments on their property, and from acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice" and a longer term goal of "civilising" the natives.Parker initially established his base at Jackson's Creek near Sunbury, which was not close enough to the aboriginal nations of his protectorate. Parker suggested to Robinson and to Governor Gipps that protectorate stations be established within each district to concentrate aboriginals in one area and provide for their needs and so reduce frontier conflict. The Governor of NSW, Sir George Gipps, agreed and stations or reserves for each protector were approved in 1840. Parker's original choice for a reserve in September 1840 was a site, known as Neereman by the Dja Dja Wurrung, on Bet Bet Creek a tributary of the Loddon River. However, the site proved unsuitable for agriculture and in January 1841 Parker selected a site on the northern side of Mount Franklin on Jim Crow Creek with permanent spring water. The site was chosen with the support of The Dja Dja Wurrung as well as Crown Lands Commissioner Frederick Powlett. Approval for the site was given in March, and a large number of Dja Dja Wurrung accompanied Parker there in June 1841 when the station was established on William Mollison's Coliban run, where an outstation hut already existed. This became known as the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford, and the area was known to the Dja Dja Wurrung as Larne-ne-barramul or the habitat of the emu. Nearby Mount Franklin was known as Lalgambook.
Franklinford provided a very important focus for the Dja Dja Wurrung during the 1840s where they received a measure of protection and rations, but they continued with their traditional cultural practices and semi-nomadic lifestyle as much as they could. Parker employed a medical officer, Dr W. Baylie, to treat the high incidence of disease.
Parker also attempted to prosecute those European settlers who had killed aborigines including Henry Monro and his employees for killings in January 1840 and William Jenkins, William Martin, John Remington, Edward Collins, Robert Morrison for the murder of Gondiurmin in February 1841. Both cases were thrown out of court due to the inadmissibility of aboriginal witness statements and evidence in Courts of Law. Aboriginals were regarded as heathens, unable to swear on the bible, and therefore unable to give evidence. This made prosecution of settlers for crimes against aborigines exceedingly difficult, while also making it very difficult for aborigines to offer legal defences when they were prosecuted for such crimes as sheep stealing.
The colonial Government severely curtailed funding to the protectorate from 1843. The protectorate ended on 31 December 1848, with about 20 or 30 Dja Dja Wurrung living at the station at that time. Parker and his family remained living at Franklinford. Six Dja Dja Wurrung men and their families settled at Franklinford, but all but one died from misadventure or respiratory disease. Tommy Farmer was the last survivor of this group who walked off the land in 1864 and eventually joined the Coranderrk reserve.
One Dja Dja Wurrung woman known as Ellen, under Parker's protection, crotcheted a collar, and wrote two congratulatory letters, as a gift the occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, Edward VII to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863. Queen Victoria responded with a thank you note.