A View from the Other Side of the Western Frontier: Or 'I Met a Man Who Wasn't There ...'

Abstract

Meetings between different Australian communities were, before the coming of Europeans, (and remain for Aboriginal Australians) highly structured affairs, with elements of ceremonial preparedness for conflict, formal peacemaking, reciprocal exchange of gifts, and sometimes actual conflict and resolution of conflict. The formal rules for the conduct of these public displays are structured by relationships between kin. Different age-grades have different roles, and male and female have different roles. Before strangers can approach each other, it is essential that each person knows where he or she stands relative to other individuals in these matters. The conduct of meetings between those who are not habitually in face to face contact seems to follow similar patterns all over Australia. It is part of a pan-Australian patterning, so that each party to an encounter knows what types of responses to expect, how to interpret them and the appropriate modes of reaction. The European intruders must have caused bewilderment and consternation by totally inappropriate actions and sequences of reactions. I propose to examine a number of encounters, and to view them, as far as possible in the light of Australian (i.e. Aboriginal) expectations, and examine the extent to which Europeans met or fell short of those expectations, or reacted in inexplicable ways that lay outside the appropriate public structures for conflict or accord. My examples will be drawn from the southwest of the continent during the years when Aborigines were becoming increasingly aware of more and more intrusive groups regularly moving through and into their territory. I begin with an account of an encounter between Aboriginal groups (although in the presence of European observers), which gives some of the dimensions of expectation. Although this meeting is from a different area and time, many elements of this fuller account are repeated in the more fragmentary accounts from the southwest, enabling us to fit those fragments into a wider synthesis.