Field Report on the Melbourne Story, Museum of Victoria (Essay Sample)

Field Report: The Melbourne Story, Museum of Victoria
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January 9, 2017
Source: authentickangarooisland.com.au/our-kangaroo-island/history-and-heritage/
Kangaroo Island is Australia’s third largest Island after Tasmania and Melville Islands. It is located in the state of South Australia, 70 miles southwest of Adelaide. Snapper Point at Backstairs Passage is the island’s closest point to the mainland, 8.4 miles from the Fleurieu Peninsula. Before it got its current name, the island was originally inhabited by Australian Aborigines. It is believed that the island was once part of mainland Australia, but was separated by glaciation 10,000 years ago, isolating a small group of Aborigines, who disappeared between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago.
Kangaroo Island was discovered by Captain Mathew Flinders and his starving crew on 2 March 1802. Finding no inhabitants in the mostly rocky stretch of land, they discovered plenty of fresh food, the most abundant being kangaroos. In his journal, Flinders wrote:
The whole ship's company was employed this afternoon in the skinning and cleaning of kangaroos. After four months' privation they stewed half a hundredweight of heads, forequarters and tails down into soup for dinner, on this and the succeeding days, and as much steak given, moreover to both officers and men as they could consume by day and night. In gratitude for so seasonable a supply, I named this south land KANGAROO ISLAND (Flinders Ranges Research 2017)
After the departure of Captain Flinders and his crew from the island, the French Captain Nicolas Baudin landed there within a few months, mapped the island and named it L'Isle Decres, including many other locations. This explains the existence of a mixture of English and French names for many locations on the island’s rugged west coastlines. One year after Captain Baudin left, a group of American sealers under Captain Pemberton arrived on the island, settling on what is today known as American River. In subsequent years after they left, Kangaroo Island became a favorite camping and hunting site for sealer and whalers, who occupied it between 1806 and 1836. Visitors also included ship deserters, runaway convicts, farmers and settlers.
Historical and Cultural Significance of Kangaroo Island
Kangaroo Island has a rich human history and cultural significance to the people of Australia. The experiences of the people who settled on the island, and the living conditions they found there, symbolizes the suffering, endurance, courage, and bravery of Australians, right from the native Aborigines to later settlers. After the disappearance of Aborigines from the island, it became a sanctuary for escaped convicts from Tasmania and New South Wales, and Aboriginal women kidnaped from the mainland by sealers and whalers.
These experiences symbolize the cultural and historical heritage of Australia in terms of the circumstances that its first settlers experienced. The Island signifies Australia’s role as a safe haven for people running away from oppression and enslavement. It became a symbol of freedom for ship deserters and escaped convicts. This theme is highlighted in state museums, where there are exhibitions of war refugees escaping from their countries, and political exiled seeking asylum in Australia. The peace and safety that the Kangaroo Island gave to its first settlers, in this regard, symbolizes the role that Australia plays as a land where people go to seek safety and better opportunities after escaping atrocities in their original homes. In this regard, the history of Kangaroo Island has cultural and historical significance to Australia because it became a haven of safety for different classes of people- both legal settlers and escaping convicts, in the same way that continental Australia became a home to people from different cultural backgrounds. The diverse animal life of the island, and the different classes of the people who made Kangaroo Island their temporary home, mirrors the cultural diversity of the Australian society. It became home to people from different parts of the world, making it a melting cultural pot.
The experience of the first Aboriginals in the Island- such as forced settlement of kidnaped women depicts the cultural conflicts that existed between natives and settlers. The history of the Kangaroo Island is to a large extent, therefore, the history of Australia. It portrays the strenuous and hostile relationship between white settlers and native inhabitants. For instance, a 1819 report describes the native islanders as “'complete savages, living in bark huts, clothed in kangaroo skins and smelling like foxes” (Boyce 2010; 133). The description of the islanders as savages suggests the treatment of Aboriginals and the original settlers by Europeans who demonized them to justify the forceful eviction of natives from their lands, and the use of brutal force, such as killing those who resisted. This is especially emphasized by Major Lockyer who wrote in 1827 that “The lawless manner in which these sealing gangs are ranging about requires some immediate measures to control them. From what I have learnt and witnessed, they are a complete set of pirates going from island to island along the southern coast, making occasional descents on the mainland and carrying off by force females. The great scene of villainy is at Kangaroo Island, where, to use the terms of one of them, a great number of graves are to be seen, and where some desperate characters are, many of them runaways from Sydney and Van Dieman's Land” (Sullivan 2008).
Kangaroo Island, in this light, represents not only the history of Australia’s colonization by the first settlers, but also the uneasy and hostile coexistence of her people. The settlers colonized the natives and made them their slaves, which illustrates the history of exploitation and marginalization of Australia’s native inhabitants.
Nevertheless, the lasting coexistence of the oppressor and the oppressed, for example of the sealers and kidnaped Aboriginal women, shows the challenges that Australia’s inhabitants have experienced and overcome to establish a peaceful society. It is not only a society of people with diverse ethnic backgrounds, but also of groups with competing interests to the country’s natural resources. Yet, this diversity has become one Australia’s most important cultural heritage, symbolized by the different groups of the more than 4,500 people presently living in Kangaroo Island. They are connected to the island’s rich heritage as a sanctuary for explorers, ship deserters, and escaped convicts. It reflects what Australia has become today; the land of safety for people escaping from different kinds of calamities in their countries.
The Melbourne Story in the Museum of Victoria and Australian History
The Melbourne Story exhibited at the Museum of Melbourne is a visual narrative of the city’s past and present history, depicting the city’s iconic figures, heroes and villains. It portrays the transformation of the city...