‘Meetings’ of Intertexture & Inversion
‘Meetings’ of Intertexture & Inversion
as Goodwill Events or a Badwill Events
Frontier documents are a treasure trove of ‘pedestrian events’ that are made significant by considerations of the cross-cultural landscape. By looking at the forms of bridges made for culture-crossings, evaluations can be made as to whether they are in the spirit of Exclusion or Embrace. Significant events can be like cultural nights of singing in joy on first contact with Batman’s site party at Indented Head;[1] records of bush cooking with its link of gutsy 'cangaroo' cuisine the same as desert peoples today;[2] accounts of ‘signing’, even more remarkably, signature drawing;[3] or 100 lbs of flour made into a damper of windfall expectancy, of cargo-cultish hunger, lead to misunderstanding between storers and daily consumers of food. These show the fraught nature of contact meeting.
The ‘romance’ of these pictures is easy for the reader after the event, but a wild romance there is. In the joy, in the desire for the other, in the electric thrill, in the ‘playing with fire’ which is also great risk, as one overlander said; ‘We could all be killed.’[4] In the adaptation of each side, new foods, new codes, new speech, new laws; new ways of thinking, of believing, of seeing, of feeling; crossed and breached boundaries. Cultural intercourse was fraught with hate and violence as it was with love; with fear and suspicion as it was with faith and trust, with goodwill and badwill in its events.
Yet, out of this plasmic intercourse, in contact exchange, a germ, a protoplasm of hybrid identity in terms of being comes about. Adaption[5] is the outward sign of inner soul life as both cultures shift in becoming, especially of the so-slow nativity of people of European stock.
In Port Phillip, as in much of Australia, unlike traditional cross-cultural contact at less distant borders, the players were all transported from their old belonging. Whites, by their own rehabituation in the journey around the globe, in the trans-oceanic intrepidity of their more desperate choice. The Blacks, by the overwhelming geographic need to deal with the presence of the angel-devil ghost you knew rather than the one you did not. Yet, and also, the human need, in the desire for the stranger, is part of this equation; in maybe, more, or less unequal proportions of cultural exchange.
But the old belonging was still broken at the core. This led to a reformation of being, the shaping shift of identity, and often, the loss of any falsely grounded centre (of mores or values) where the identity was made, not grounded in the deep universals in one’s own tradition, but by identifying with the cultural peripherals. The Reformation Australia that is in process can only arrive at settlement by reconciling with the challenge of the stranger at our own frontier. Many, of both the whites and blacks, met (or more correctly, did not meet) that challenge in that inadequacy. But the frontier is a lode of many overlooked riches of proto-identity in exchange, of meeting with the other, the stranger.
Contacts contain ‘sites’ pregnant[6] with either proto-apartheid or proto-reconciliation that should be viewed as arising out of a fraught and dangerous, romantic and electric, arena of human choices in historical ‘playing’ with fire. And, brought to this ‘meeting’: on the one hand the significance of kinship and aboriginal cultural practices need to be seen for the richness of a whole mentality; just as the attitudes of faith, social contract and belief need to be seen to find causality in understanding the actions and mentality of Gellibrand, Batman Wedge, Buckley,[7] Robertson and Co.
Considerations of a frontier hermeneutic that is interculturally ahead of us works to understand, both the religious mindset as a cultural system, and the ontological cosmic reaches of aboriginal social constructs, as cultural systems of profound causality; are absolutely necessary in making deeper interpretative forays into our history in ways that might bring about a reconciled settlement of this wide Port Phillip district of our longings, of our formational past.
[1] The Five Males which followed him to the hut remained with us all night, during which time they behaved themselves very well - when Pigeon came home from Cangarooing they were highly pleased to see them and their joy was beyond anything when they saw them Corrobbering. There language is quite different from those we have seen before [Woiwurrung of Treaty meeting!] They were singing and dancing most of the evening for us & one of them sang a song - the same as the Sydney natives do. p 26 Andrew Todd’s Indented Head Journal Ed: P L Brown
[2] They caught one Cangaroo, which pleased the Natives much. Immediately after the Dogs had caught a Cangaroo, the Natives run to the spot, made a fire, cut it open, Drank the Blood, eat the guts- & Roasted the remainder & brought it back with them, on return they made a fire as signal for there Gins to come to them. Todd Ibid p 26
[3] One of them made signes for me to give them some paper & a Pencil. I did so. They then drew out a most extraordinary mark which filled up half a sheet of paper - which I have copied for your inspection.
[4] Randall J.O The Pastural Settlement of Northern Victoria. Vol 1 The Campaspe District
[5] Adaption and Adaptation: Note Appendix 2 ~ for a speculative listing of European adaptions.
[5] ~ Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures pp 96 - 97
[6] Liberman Ibid Where multicultural contacts occur, the cultural politics which ensue finds itself embedded in pregnant half-formulations, indeterminate senses and miscommunications whose ambiguities are only partly appreciated by the participants themselves, Understanding this indeterminacy - and what it is that parties do with it - is basic to knowing what is occurring in intercultural social interaction. p 171
[7] Buckley, a former bricklayer, made & laid the first bricks in Melbourne. This makes him its founder. p.128. Morgan includes verses written to catch Buckley’s mentality. ‘Hope on! Live on ! - Hope to the last. / Though cowards shrink before the blast, / The man whose heart is firmly cast / Hopes on. / Hope on ! - ‘Tis often in the darkest night, / When all is lost to human sight, / There comes the brightest flash of light. / Hope on. / Hope on ! - In the deepest pain or misery,- / However great thine agony, - / Whate’er may be thy destiny, - / Hope on.’ [p 122] Of Gellibrand, Buckley said ‘In Gellibrand I lost a good and kind friend; his humane considerations of me will never be forgotten;’ Morgan op cit p.138
as Goodwill Events or a Badwill Events
Frontier documents are a treasure trove of ‘pedestrian events’ that are made significant by considerations of the cross-cultural landscape. By looking at the forms of bridges made for culture-crossings, evaluations can be made as to whether they are in the spirit of Exclusion or Embrace. Significant events can be like cultural nights of singing in joy on first contact with Batman’s site party at Indented Head;[1] records of bush cooking with its link of gutsy 'cangaroo' cuisine the same as desert peoples today;[2] accounts of ‘signing’, even more remarkably, signature drawing;[3] or 100 lbs of flour made into a damper of windfall expectancy, of cargo-cultish hunger, lead to misunderstanding between storers and daily consumers of food. These show the fraught nature of contact meeting.
The ‘romance’ of these pictures is easy for the reader after the event, but a wild romance there is. In the joy, in the desire for the other, in the electric thrill, in the ‘playing with fire’ which is also great risk, as one overlander said; ‘We could all be killed.’[4] In the adaptation of each side, new foods, new codes, new speech, new laws; new ways of thinking, of believing, of seeing, of feeling; crossed and breached boundaries. Cultural intercourse was fraught with hate and violence as it was with love; with fear and suspicion as it was with faith and trust, with goodwill and badwill in its events.
Yet, out of this plasmic intercourse, in contact exchange, a germ, a protoplasm of hybrid identity in terms of being comes about. Adaption[5] is the outward sign of inner soul life as both cultures shift in becoming, especially of the so-slow nativity of people of European stock.
In Port Phillip, as in much of Australia, unlike traditional cross-cultural contact at less distant borders, the players were all transported from their old belonging. Whites, by their own rehabituation in the journey around the globe, in the trans-oceanic intrepidity of their more desperate choice. The Blacks, by the overwhelming geographic need to deal with the presence of the angel-devil ghost you knew rather than the one you did not. Yet, and also, the human need, in the desire for the stranger, is part of this equation; in maybe, more, or less unequal proportions of cultural exchange.
But the old belonging was still broken at the core. This led to a reformation of being, the shaping shift of identity, and often, the loss of any falsely grounded centre (of mores or values) where the identity was made, not grounded in the deep universals in one’s own tradition, but by identifying with the cultural peripherals. The Reformation Australia that is in process can only arrive at settlement by reconciling with the challenge of the stranger at our own frontier. Many, of both the whites and blacks, met (or more correctly, did not meet) that challenge in that inadequacy. But the frontier is a lode of many overlooked riches of proto-identity in exchange, of meeting with the other, the stranger.
Contacts contain ‘sites’ pregnant[6] with either proto-apartheid or proto-reconciliation that should be viewed as arising out of a fraught and dangerous, romantic and electric, arena of human choices in historical ‘playing’ with fire. And, brought to this ‘meeting’: on the one hand the significance of kinship and aboriginal cultural practices need to be seen for the richness of a whole mentality; just as the attitudes of faith, social contract and belief need to be seen to find causality in understanding the actions and mentality of Gellibrand, Batman Wedge, Buckley,[7] Robertson and Co.
Considerations of a frontier hermeneutic that is interculturally ahead of us works to understand, both the religious mindset as a cultural system, and the ontological cosmic reaches of aboriginal social constructs, as cultural systems of profound causality; are absolutely necessary in making deeper interpretative forays into our history in ways that might bring about a reconciled settlement of this wide Port Phillip district of our longings, of our formational past.
[1] The Five Males which followed him to the hut remained with us all night, during which time they behaved themselves very well - when Pigeon came home from Cangarooing they were highly pleased to see them and their joy was beyond anything when they saw them Corrobbering. There language is quite different from those we have seen before [Woiwurrung of Treaty meeting!] They were singing and dancing most of the evening for us & one of them sang a song - the same as the Sydney natives do. p 26 Andrew Todd’s Indented Head Journal Ed: P L Brown
[2] They caught one Cangaroo, which pleased the Natives much. Immediately after the Dogs had caught a Cangaroo, the Natives run to the spot, made a fire, cut it open, Drank the Blood, eat the guts- & Roasted the remainder & brought it back with them, on return they made a fire as signal for there Gins to come to them. Todd Ibid p 26
[3] One of them made signes for me to give them some paper & a Pencil. I did so. They then drew out a most extraordinary mark which filled up half a sheet of paper - which I have copied for your inspection.
[4] Randall J.O The Pastural Settlement of Northern Victoria. Vol 1 The Campaspe District
[5] Adaption and Adaptation: Note Appendix 2 ~ for a speculative listing of European adaptions.
[5] ~ Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures pp 96 - 97
[6] Liberman Ibid Where multicultural contacts occur, the cultural politics which ensue finds itself embedded in pregnant half-formulations, indeterminate senses and miscommunications whose ambiguities are only partly appreciated by the participants themselves, Understanding this indeterminacy - and what it is that parties do with it - is basic to knowing what is occurring in intercultural social interaction. p 171
[7] Buckley, a former bricklayer, made & laid the first bricks in Melbourne. This makes him its founder. p.128. Morgan includes verses written to catch Buckley’s mentality. ‘Hope on! Live on ! - Hope to the last. / Though cowards shrink before the blast, / The man whose heart is firmly cast / Hopes on. / Hope on ! - ‘Tis often in the darkest night, / When all is lost to human sight, / There comes the brightest flash of light. / Hope on. / Hope on ! - In the deepest pain or misery,- / However great thine agony, - / Whate’er may be thy destiny, - / Hope on.’ [p 122] Of Gellibrand, Buckley said ‘In Gellibrand I lost a good and kind friend; his humane considerations of me will never be forgotten;’ Morgan op cit p.138
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