90 Second Narratives
Season 7: “Community”
Episode 6: “Taungurung Community in Australia”
Sky Michael Johnston:
Hello and welcome to 90 Second Narratives. I’m Sky Michael Johnston and Dr. Jennifer Jones is our storyteller today. Dr. Jones is an Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Archaeology and History at La Trobe University’s Albury-Wodonga Campus. Her story is entitled, “Taungurung Community in Australia.”
Jennifer Jones:
The Black Spur Drive in Australia’s scenic Yarra Ranges wends through ‘majestic Mountain Ash forests’ and past gurgling brooks, taking tourists to lush beauty spots. Some histories describe this road as the ‘Yarra Track’, prospectors trekked from Melbourne to new alluvial goldfields along this road in 1861. But miners didn’t ‘blaze’ this track, nor did the white pastoralists of the 1840s. This path was originally named the ‘Blacks’ Spur’, with a possessive apostrophe recognising the traditional owners of the land. The Taungurung people traversed this ancient route for trade and cultural purposes since time immemorial. But most histories only recall a single journey; when ‘the blacks’ were dispossessed, walking down to a new government reserve and into exile, in 1863. The Blacks’ Spur was a trail of tears and the Taungurung rendered ‘casualties of colonial dispossession’. Taungurung Elder Uncle Roy Patterson, however, claimed an unbroken connection to the Blacks’ Spur. His family resisted dispersal efforts, living in fringe settlements, and working in the forests close to their Country. They worked on ‘susso’ gangs during the Great Depression, re-routing the Blacks’ Spur with pick and shovel, in exchange for rations. They also re-forested the Blacks’ Spur after the devastating ‘Black Friday’ bushfires of 1939. In later years, Uncle Roy laboured here, building fire access roads. He proudly recalled, “I got a lot of history in that area, because of the Blacks’ spur”. This continuous history could be recognised; a small possessive apostrophe transforms the ‘Black Spur Drive’ into the ‘Blacks’ Spur’. Many roads and highways in Australia originally carried First Nations traffic and could tell similar stories of resilience and cultural survival. I wonder, do unacknowledged stories of Indigenous belonging lie beneath the roads of your daily life?
Sky Michael Johnston:
If you are interested in discovering more about Taungurung history, you will be pleased to learn that Dr. Jones’ new book, On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture, is available to you via open-access for free. It was published in 2020 by Australian National University Press and you can find a link to it in the episode description.
Thank you for joining me for today’s “little story with BIG historical significance.”