Invasion of Port Phillip: A Society Lost by Martin Davey

A point of view on the total destruction of a unique society – the “open wounds” remain

A theme of this book is that the Port Phillip invasion utterly destroyed an indigenous society, detailed herein, and left a legacy of open wounds on the Victorian countryside which have never been treated. The phrase ‘never been treated’ is used in three senses.

One, the open wounds are the sites of massacres where no proper burials occurred. Very few accounts mention the burial of native victims and none mention their concealment by covering with soil, by burning or by dumping in waterways. Burials have been with us for about a hundred millennia, it was the first feature of culture that set us apart – but not in Victoria, 1835-45.

The bones and skeletons are not openly visible today because they have been buried secretly on private property after being unearthed by ploughing or rabbits. However, that is not decent burial in proper graves, it is still concealment. Many were not buried at all, many are known to have been intentionally left out to bleach and rot. Furthermore, hundreds of victims still lie in the beds of waterways.

Two, another meaning of ‘never been treated’ is that the sites are not marked, no memorials have been erected with plaques detailing what is known to have happened, with any historical context.

The third sense of the phrase is the almost complete lack of treatment of these events in the local histories of where they happened. Very few local societies have treated the horrid history of the origins of their settlement. Two authors who treated the open wounds on their country are Don Garden on his Hamilton and E.R. Trangmar on his Coleraine, the site of the worst ever atrocities in the western district.

Specifications:

Publisher: Self-published

Year: 2018

Format: Paperback

Pages: 99pp

ISBN: N/A

$15.00

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