George Coolbul: Imagining a Colonised Life

Abstract

The lives of George Coolbul and Henry Prinsep intersected briefly during the six years between 1866 and 1872, when Prinsep employed Coolbul as a stockman on his properties near Bunbury, 140 kilometres south of Perth. We know a great deal about Prinsep, a prominent citizen of the colony and a prolific artist who, between 1898 and 1907, was Western Australia's first Chief Protector of Aborigines and in this position the chief architect of the notorious Aborigines Act 1905. The Battye Library of Western Australian History holds a large collection of Prinsep's papers: diaries covering his colonial life from his arrival from England aged 22 in 1866 until his death in Busselton in 1922, letters from his wide circle of family and friends in England, other colonial posts and Western Australia, reminiscences and memoirs and over 1,000 photographs, sketches and drawings. Of Coolbul, by contrast, we know virtually nothing and what we do know is through the eyes of Prinsep in his various guises as pastoral employer, church-going humanitarian and artist. Their period of interaction was well before the systematic collection of intrusive government information - initiated by Prinsep and perfected by his successor AO Neville.