Introduction: Robertson~Clemenceau: and not Robinson Crusoe !
Introduction: Robertson~Clemenceau: and not Robinson Crusoe !
‘Men pass, but principles remain. A question not settled justly is eternally open.’
Clemenceau, (1841-1929) [1] is appropriately quoted at the end of a profile of the Robertson’s of Colac. [2] This is significant, for the pastoral pioneer, William Robertson, is a key in the easily missed principles of the best-settling of Victoria, (mostly still unsettled), for at least four reasons.
a. He financed the half cost of John Batman’s intrepid ‘treaty trip’ to Port Phillip from Van Diemans Land in the Norval, when the treaties of Dutigalla and Geelong were made with the Aborigines of the Iramoo Plains; presumed Woiwurrung people.
b. Robertson was part of the 1836 exploration trips to Port Phillip, both one overland from Western Port, and one inland from Geelong and up the Barwon, with the leading light and lawman of the Dutigalla and Geelong Association, Joseph Tice Gellibrand. There, they together attempted to meet in goodwill with any Aborigines, to honour the obligations and tributes of that treaty, as they beat the bounds of their ‘treatied’ lands. Robertson was already a member of that association, later the Port Phillip Association (PPA) that attempted to found Victoria on principles that had their genesis in lessons learned from the unsatisfactory land-laws and the experience - in dealings and in problems of law - with the aborigines of Tasmania. This I will attempt to show, and go on to suggest that Gellibrand pioneered to his own grave cost, in great risk, in productive agency towards far-ramifying acts in law towards better new-settlement.
c. Robertson then became and remained a lifetime friend and supporter to the remarkable man who is arguably the most cross-cultural Westerner in human history, William Buckley, often called the Wild White Man. [He out-Crusoed Robinson (not quite Robertson, but the suggestion has a certain ongoing relevance and resonance!) with an even more remarkable story].[3] That Buckley as ‘Murrangurk’[4] lived for thirty two years totally outside European contact, most of that as a tribesman among the Wathawurrung in part of what is now Victoria, and then after re-contact, tried to be translator and go-between, to find himself caught in the violent potentiality of ignorance and misunderstanding that exists in contact on any cross-cultural frontier[5], and, much troubled, then went back to his first culture, though no longer really of his world (or maybe of this world!), should begin to illuminate for us the possible birth identification in an Australian gravitas - and the spiritual and ontological possibilities that meteor out of the seismic sign and cosmic extent of the crossings and changes, of the meetings with otherness towards an expanded, an ‘Australian’ nature. And shows the wider humanity and divinities in the cultural nexus that was the frontier.
Maybe Robertson showed by his commitment to Buckley, and to what was Buckley’s embrace of and by the Aborigines, where his first heart lay: for an Australia that begins to exist at the frontier, in the troubled romance of cross-cultural meeting, and in two-way adaptions and hybridisation that gives us our dimly recognised beginnings in the twin-parents of this - our rubric of either divided or united natures in what is at least a double-dimensioned heritage.
d. Robertson himself settled on Mount Korangamoorah at Colac, where he practised a frontier hospitality that was distinguished by being ‘of all classes and conditions of people’[6], ‘entered into heartily’ as part of an adaptive climate of a pre-aristocratic goodwill[7] (unfortunately short-lived[8]), marked by philanthropy, of an embrace done in ‘open hearted friendship’ where he flourished with his sons. From there he was later able to finance the writing and publication of John Morgan’s ghost-written life of William Buckley, with his kudos and support given for the remarkable cross-cultural record of life among the near pre-contact aborigines of his Western Victoria[9]. Colac was the place where J. T. Gellibrand’s disappearing tracks could last be seen. Likely, Gellibrand went that way with Robertson’s knowledge?
Gellibrand trod in Buckley’s footsteps up to the Kolakgnat-speaking country (Colac), and Gellibrand (along with G.B.L.Hesse) certainly threw down the coin of his life that paved the way for the bounty-hunting mistakes, misconclusions and misreading of most of the search parties that opened the way for squatters. So there, in a spirit of Buckley’s embrace, for long afterwards, Robertson may well have kept poetic vigil over Gellibrand’s spirit and memory, musing on the loss of his first principles of settlement, if not also over the will’o’wisp of his vanishment that was all that was left to trouble post-frontier minds.
[1] Royal Historical Society of Victoria Journal of Dec. 1983, Vol. 56 No. 41 pp 42
[2] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac, R.H.S.V. Journal Dec. 1983 Vol.56 No.41 p.39
[3] I refer to Barry Hill’s article ‘ Buckley, Our Imagination, Hope’ in William Buckley: Rediscovered
[4] Buckley became a Wathawurrong man of this name, skin, kinship. Morgan refers to Robinson Crusoe as a inferior parallel to William Buckley - John Morgan - The Life and Adventure of William Buckley.
[5] Mulvaney. D.J, 1989 Encounters in Place. ‘A mutual ignorance of behavioural rules and individual roles produced many unfortunate misunderstandings in stressful early inter-racial contact situations.’ p.1
[6] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.38
[7] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.38
[8] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.39
[9] John Morgan’s Preface of March 22, 1852, Hobart: The Life and Adventures of William Buckley
‘Men pass, but principles remain. A question not settled justly is eternally open.’
Clemenceau, (1841-1929) [1] is appropriately quoted at the end of a profile of the Robertson’s of Colac. [2] This is significant, for the pastoral pioneer, William Robertson, is a key in the easily missed principles of the best-settling of Victoria, (mostly still unsettled), for at least four reasons.
a. He financed the half cost of John Batman’s intrepid ‘treaty trip’ to Port Phillip from Van Diemans Land in the Norval, when the treaties of Dutigalla and Geelong were made with the Aborigines of the Iramoo Plains; presumed Woiwurrung people.
b. Robertson was part of the 1836 exploration trips to Port Phillip, both one overland from Western Port, and one inland from Geelong and up the Barwon, with the leading light and lawman of the Dutigalla and Geelong Association, Joseph Tice Gellibrand. There, they together attempted to meet in goodwill with any Aborigines, to honour the obligations and tributes of that treaty, as they beat the bounds of their ‘treatied’ lands. Robertson was already a member of that association, later the Port Phillip Association (PPA) that attempted to found Victoria on principles that had their genesis in lessons learned from the unsatisfactory land-laws and the experience - in dealings and in problems of law - with the aborigines of Tasmania. This I will attempt to show, and go on to suggest that Gellibrand pioneered to his own grave cost, in great risk, in productive agency towards far-ramifying acts in law towards better new-settlement.
c. Robertson then became and remained a lifetime friend and supporter to the remarkable man who is arguably the most cross-cultural Westerner in human history, William Buckley, often called the Wild White Man. [He out-Crusoed Robinson (not quite Robertson, but the suggestion has a certain ongoing relevance and resonance!) with an even more remarkable story].[3] That Buckley as ‘Murrangurk’[4] lived for thirty two years totally outside European contact, most of that as a tribesman among the Wathawurrung in part of what is now Victoria, and then after re-contact, tried to be translator and go-between, to find himself caught in the violent potentiality of ignorance and misunderstanding that exists in contact on any cross-cultural frontier[5], and, much troubled, then went back to his first culture, though no longer really of his world (or maybe of this world!), should begin to illuminate for us the possible birth identification in an Australian gravitas - and the spiritual and ontological possibilities that meteor out of the seismic sign and cosmic extent of the crossings and changes, of the meetings with otherness towards an expanded, an ‘Australian’ nature. And shows the wider humanity and divinities in the cultural nexus that was the frontier.
Maybe Robertson showed by his commitment to Buckley, and to what was Buckley’s embrace of and by the Aborigines, where his first heart lay: for an Australia that begins to exist at the frontier, in the troubled romance of cross-cultural meeting, and in two-way adaptions and hybridisation that gives us our dimly recognised beginnings in the twin-parents of this - our rubric of either divided or united natures in what is at least a double-dimensioned heritage.
d. Robertson himself settled on Mount Korangamoorah at Colac, where he practised a frontier hospitality that was distinguished by being ‘of all classes and conditions of people’[6], ‘entered into heartily’ as part of an adaptive climate of a pre-aristocratic goodwill[7] (unfortunately short-lived[8]), marked by philanthropy, of an embrace done in ‘open hearted friendship’ where he flourished with his sons. From there he was later able to finance the writing and publication of John Morgan’s ghost-written life of William Buckley, with his kudos and support given for the remarkable cross-cultural record of life among the near pre-contact aborigines of his Western Victoria[9]. Colac was the place where J. T. Gellibrand’s disappearing tracks could last be seen. Likely, Gellibrand went that way with Robertson’s knowledge?
Gellibrand trod in Buckley’s footsteps up to the Kolakgnat-speaking country (Colac), and Gellibrand (along with G.B.L.Hesse) certainly threw down the coin of his life that paved the way for the bounty-hunting mistakes, misconclusions and misreading of most of the search parties that opened the way for squatters. So there, in a spirit of Buckley’s embrace, for long afterwards, Robertson may well have kept poetic vigil over Gellibrand’s spirit and memory, musing on the loss of his first principles of settlement, if not also over the will’o’wisp of his vanishment that was all that was left to trouble post-frontier minds.
[1] Royal Historical Society of Victoria Journal of Dec. 1983, Vol. 56 No. 41 pp 42
[2] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac, R.H.S.V. Journal Dec. 1983 Vol.56 No.41 p.39
[3] I refer to Barry Hill’s article ‘ Buckley, Our Imagination, Hope’ in William Buckley: Rediscovered
[4] Buckley became a Wathawurrong man of this name, skin, kinship. Morgan refers to Robinson Crusoe as a inferior parallel to William Buckley - John Morgan - The Life and Adventure of William Buckley.
[5] Mulvaney. D.J, 1989 Encounters in Place. ‘A mutual ignorance of behavioural rules and individual roles produced many unfortunate misunderstandings in stressful early inter-racial contact situations.’ p.1
[6] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.38
[7] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.38
[8] Grace Craig ~ When The Robertsons Came to Colac. p.39
[9] John Morgan’s Preface of March 22, 1852, Hobart: The Life and Adventures of William Buckley
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