"The time had come" The Green Man said "to speak of many things, mostly aboriginal"

And where better to do it than Camp Jungai. So it was that The Green Man abandoned the blog to the comment spammers for the weekend (490 comments over the two days) and headed off light of spirit to the said Camp Jungai. Along with the usual cultural activities that The Green Man indulges in, such as, eating far too much and reading the newspaper, there was a notable high point on the weekend which was a talk by the lovely Dr Jane Lydon on early photography of aboriginals, particularly at Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve.

Below is a photo entitled "The Yarra Tribe Starting For Acheron, 1862" by Charles Walter.

What makes this photo so interesting is that it is a set piece depicting a story. Photography was only about 20 years old at this stage and this style of photography did not become common until quite some years later. It is distinguished from the other photos in the collection by this characteristic and Dr Jane asserts that the reason for this is probably that it was orchestrated by the aboriginals themselves. She suggests that in exchange for posing for the more portrait style photographs that make up the rest of the collection the photographer, Charles Walter, agreed to take one whose composition was determined by the aboriginal group.

This photo gives us a glimpse of early aboriginals utilising a new media to represent a story in a similar manner to the approach that they used in their paintings on bark.

To the left is a drawing of two spirit people drawn in 1918 by an unknown aboriginal artist. It is easy to see the extension of this approach to depicting characters and stories to the photo they composed above.

On the left of the composition is Simon Wonga who is leading the expedition. Third from the left is a Mr Green who was the white overseer of the Coranderrk Reserve and was accorded a position of authority by Simon but he was not leading. A second row can just be seen behind the first which is a row of women who had their own line with their own hierarchy.

I will post more on this topic since I am greatly interested in it and so, naturally, all of you will be as well.