False testimony: the surveying career of Robert Hamilton Mathews

Abstract

The ethnographic recordings of Robert Hamilton Mathews in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries have preserved data about Aboriginal language, beliefs, customs, technology and social and family networks. This data has steadily gained increasing respect over more recent decades, and its quality is often attributed to Mathews’ previous career as a property surveyor. Nevertheless, detailed research in the records of the Lands Department of New South Wales held by State Archives of New South Wales reveals a different story—of a man driven to maximise his income using illegal and unethical methods. Official inquiries into Mathews’ conduct by experienced surveyors showed that he often flaunted professional guidelines and practices to such an extent that the influence of Mathew’s surveying career on his ethnographical work should be reconsidered.