AustLit

'In July 1943, noted Victorian author and travel writer Eileen Finlay (1878- 1950) returned to the tourist resort town of Healesville to enjoy ‘a respite from her literary labours’ (Healesville Guardian 24/7/1943). Staying at Golf House, her respite did not prevent her from appearing at the Healesville Library to promote her publications and meet her fans. Eileen Finlay was born Mary Ellen Moroney in Maffra, Gippsland, in 1878, and lived for a time in Colac where her father was appointed shire engineer in 1882 (Barraclough 1995: 56). In 1889, two years after the death of her father, her family moved to Lilydale where her connection with Healesville commenced. In 1899 she married architect, Alexander Kennedy Smith Finlay, and settled in Melbourne. On 29th December 1921 her husband was one of three passengers who drowned when a launch capsized en route to Lake Tyers Aboriginal station. Many of the survivors, including Eileen Finlay and her son, owed their survival to two Aboriginal women from the Aboriginal settlement who rescued them in a rowing boat – once on shore, men and women from the settlement assisted them by lighting a fire to dry their clothes (The Argus 31/12/1921). Finlay’s pen names included Eileen Finlay, Mary Eileen Finlay, Mollie Eileen Moroney, Mary Eileen Fortescue, and Mrs. E.F. Boswarrick. At least 14 major works are attributed to her. Other than her most well-known novels, The Caravan Passes: a Family Saga (1941), Full Turn: a Family Saga (1942), Undefeated (1943), and The Hills of Home (1943), Finlay was known for the many articles she wrote for The Radiator, the official magazine of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria, and for newspapers such as the Lilydale Express, The Argus, and the Healesville Guardian (Thompson 2005). Her first travel article was published in The Radiator in May 1937. Her death notice (The Advertiser 13/6/1950) reported that she had only begun to write her first book some eight years earlier in her early 60s.'  (Introduction)

'It is common knowledge in historical linguistics that place names can conserve elements of languages that have vanished without leaving traces elsewhere. Thus, they can ‘permit historical inferences about languages and the people who spoke them’ (Campbell 2013: 436) for a given area. This strategy has been applied successfully in many cases, e.g. Scandinavian place names of England, which bear testimony to the existence of speakers of Old Norse, as their linguistic material can be related to Old Norse appellatives and place name elements (see Campbell 2013: 436-437 for a brief overview).'  (Introduction)

Languages do not spread in a vacuum. They are not self-contained linguistic events but contingent on the history or prehistory more broadly, as Heggarty (2015:600) describes it, the result of:

[p]rocesses in the real-world context – demographic growth or collapse, migrations, conquest, or more subtle socio-political and cultural changes – are the cause; they alone determine entirely the linguistic effects of divergence, diversity and convergence.'

 (Introduction)

'Across Aboriginal Australia there is a category of people, both men and women, who use a combination of medicinal plants, physical manipulation and energetic and psychic healing in providing ‘health care services’ to their community. They play an important social role, covering the domains of medical practitioner and psychologist, as well as spirit medium and exorcist. While the names for this category naturally vary across language groups (e.g. Wangkangurru minparu, Diyari kunki, Pitjantjatjara ngangkari), in English these people are consistently referred to as ‘doctors’ or ‘clever people’.'  (Introduction)

'In this paper, five Whip Snake stories are described, based on the author’s long term study of the language and culture of the Adnyamathanha people who lived in the northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Analysis of their content and linguistics enables a deeper understanding of the Aboriginal landscape of the Flinders Ranges, and builds on the work by Mountford (1937-1942) and Tunbridge (1988). These stories are presented in a generalised order from north to south as they appear in the landscape (see map).' (Introduction)

'Over the millennia that Australia and the South Pacific were settled by the original peoples of the region different but often related indigenous cultures developed in comparative isolation. The belief systems that developed owed a great deal to the prevalence of shamanism. In the years since Mircea Eliade’s ground breaking work on north Asian shamanism was published (Eliade 1964) much attention and recognition has been given to the regional shamanism that was to be found on all continents either as a current religion or as an underlay to that religion. Aboriginal shamanism and Oceanic shamanism had much in common despite having developed independently and it is useful to consider them together.'  (Introduction)

Beckett & Hercus (2009) present several ‘versions’ of a mura track narrative as told by five different senior Aboriginal people from the ‘Corner Country’ area where New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland come together. Mura track narratives, as Beckett & Hercus (2009: 2) explain, detail: ‘the travelling of ancestral beings also called mura – occasionally human but more often anthropomorphic animal – who form the country and name it as they go’, a concept similar to the Central Australian concept of the Dreaming (tjukurrpa in the Western Desert language). They show that the storytellers present individualised but nonetheless connected versions of these narratives that together produce a broader understanding of the story and demonstrate clear interconnections between the different but associated groups of people and their country.'  (Introduction)

'Luise Hercus has always had a keen interest in Australian Aboriginal songs and collaborated with musicologists both in the field and in her analysis. Her examination of lyrics and the relationship between songs and the people who sing them encompasses a vast area of Australia. Her work on songs from the ‘Corner Country’ reveal performance as a culmination of social exchange, and her examination of the lyrics reveal Aboriginal people’s detailed knowledge of country (Beckett & Hercus 2009). Her work in the Simpson Desert region documents songs with ancestral themes as well as contemporary events (Hercus & Koch 1996, 1999; Hercus 1994: 91–101; 1995). In many parts of Australia where knowledge of Aboriginal languages is scarce, Hercus’s work on songs provides vital clues to the history, language and culture of such regions (Hercus 1992, 1997). Her linguistic documentation of Wemba Wemba in Victoria (Hercus 1969) finds songs that relate to the gender based totems of this area. How songs reflect and reproduce the beliefs, cultural practices and experiences of the people who sing them is a theme of Luise Hercus’ work that is explored in this paper.' (Introduction)

'Long before bush balladeers such as Slim Dusty gave voice to a particular Australian rural experience, Aboriginal people from across Northern and Central Australia were using song to reflect on the rapid changes that came to their worlds in late the 19th and early 20th centuries. They captured major events and details of everyday life in their compositions, incorporating new themes into existing traditional song and dance styles. There were songs about the first and second world wars, about aeroplanes (Graham 1994), trains (Dixon & Koch 1996; Hercus 1994: 91-101) and buffaloes (Marett, Barwick, & Ford 2013). Other songs, many of which were recorded by Luise Hercus, commented on the new work regimes on pastoral properties. One example is the ‘Manager’ song, known widely across northern Queensland (Alpher & Keefe 2002). Even the less spectacular aspects of the newcomers’ lives did not escape the attention of these early bards who sang about station homesteads, ‘olden-time’ lamps and girls washing doors (Hercus & Koch 1999; Hercus 1994). In south-eastern Australia too Hercus recorded similar songs chronicling intercultural histories, like the Wemba Wemba song ‘Shearing on Tulla Station’ (1969: 95). Indigenous music provided ‘a site for creative and sustaining cultural responses’ to contact history (Donaldson 1995: 143) and it continues to be an important part of the intercultural dynamics of Australia (Ottosson 2012: 182).'  (Introduction)

'A frontier clash, one among many at the time, occurred on 23rd August 1846 at Piangil in the north west of the district of Port Phillip, resulting initially in the death of a young pastoralist Andrew Beveridge at the hands of a group of Aboriginal men. The colonial press predictably labelled the killing an outrage and numerous articles to that effect were written as subsequent events played out. Beveridge, as a young man 24 years old and holding a Master of Arts degree, was depicted as an educated and cultured gentleman, cut down by savages. Three Aboriginal men were soon apprehended, charged and lodged in Melbourne Jail, before being tried and executed. An interrogation of the official documents of the case can provide a broader understanding of such events. In this particular case though, there also exist the personal papers and journals of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, whose duties included visiting and supporting Aborigines imprisoned in Melbourne. The English language material in these papers questions, as we shall see, the official narrative of judicial response to the Beveridge killing, while the material in Aboriginal languages gives us a rare view of an intimacy between Europeans and Aborigines different from the usual frontier intimacies of sex and violence. Text and context are standard tropes of historical writing. Texts in Aboriginal languages can act to deepen our understanding of particular events such as the killing of Andrew Beveridge and the events around it, thereby extending historical understanding.'  (Introduction)

'In the 1970s and 1980s, Luise Hercus pioneered interdisciplinary approaches to Aboriginal history. Bringing her linguistic expertise to history, she presented Aboriginal histories in Aboriginal languages to an academic readership. Biḍa-ru ‘gana mayi aḷali baldi-lugu gadna-ru ‘they killed her, they ripped her open with a bullet’. Speaking in Wangkangurru, Ben Murray retold stories of the massacres of his forebears in the Simpson Desert in the pages of Aboriginal History (Hercus 1977: 56, 58, 61). Hercus conducted and recorded interviews in Wangkangurru and Arabana to hear Aboriginal perspectives on the wadjabala maḍimaḍi (‘white fellows with hair-string’), that is, the ‘Afghans’ and their travels across South Australia (Hercus 1981, 1985: 27, 39). Whereas others had tended to ignore or downplay the actual words Aboriginal people spoke and the language of their stories, she insisted on representing Aboriginal stories first in Aboriginal languages, and then in English (Austin, Hercus & Jones 1988: 116-117; Hercus & Sutton 1986:4). Of course, these histories come to us mediated by Hercus’ transcription, translation and interpretation – we are not with Ben Murray as he speaks – but Hercus brought her readers closer to Aboriginal people’s experience and memories through representing Aboriginal languages.'

'Over many years we have benefited from Luise Hercus’ insight, experience and generous sharing of her knowledge to enhance our own research. The three of us have often discussed the linguistic and cultural factors ingrained in language maintenance and documentation; often these discussions have led to treasured laughter due to our individual and personal experiences. However, the following discussion is based on research and analysis by the authors only, and any errors are ours.'  (Introduction)

'In the case of Kaurna, the original language of the Adelaide Plains, South Australia, the demographic profile and movements of people have great explanatory power for understanding the fortunes of a language. The Kaurna people were never a large group. Their country extends from around Crystal Brook and Clare in the north to Cape Jervis in the south, bounded by the hills in the east and Gulf St Vincent in the west. The Kaurna people were decimated by smallpox that had been introduced into New South Wales and Victoria by colonists. Smallpox spread down the river systems following trade routes and passed on at ceremonial gatherings. An epidemic struck the Kaurna population about a decade prior to colonisation (Teichelmann & Schürmann 1840: 34) and there is some suggestion that there might have been an even earlier epidemic soon after the establishment of the penal colony in Sydney. Many in the remaining population of perhaps 500 to 700 Aboriginal people at the time of colonisation bore the signs of smallpox.' (Introduction)

'Across the state of New South Wales (NSW) a number of language rebuilding (LRB) efforts are currently underway.2 We use the term LRB to refer to development of a communicative, spoken form of a language that is no longer used to any substantial extent, based on prior written and audio-recorded records. Several other terms are used for this process, including ‘language revival’ (Walsh 2005), ‘language reclamation’ (Leonard 2007; McCarty 2003) or, more imaginatively, ‘awakening sleeping languages’ (Hinton & Hale 2001). Whatever term is used, it only begins to direct our attention to the complex intergenerational task that underpins the revitalisation of Australia’s ancestral languages. One of the contentious issues addressed through the rebuilding process is that, to be representative of aspirations of Aboriginal communities, the resulting languages need to be both epistemologically true to their traditions and open to new concepts and realities beyond what was recorded, or conceived by traditional speakers.'  (Introduction)

'During a conference trip to Canberra in 2013, I reserved some precious time to pay a visit to Luise Hercus in her Australian National University (ANU) office. As usual she was as sharp as a tack, and shared a story of her retrieval work with the Ngarrindjeri language. This time she told me of a very busy episode spent at her home in Victoria many years ago with James Brooksie Kartinyeri. He had come to stay for the weekend, and made constant requests for cups of tea and punctual meals, as she struggled to cope with the equal demands of her small son Iain, while her husband Graham was away. So Luise proceeded to share the agony and ecstasy of recording the Ngarrindjeri language from her demanding guest, knowing his language was in a state of serious decline, and no longer being learnt by children of Iain’s age. But I got the distinct impression, as Luise shared this tale, that one of the lessons to be learnt was ‘Don’t panic!’ I am sure this was because Luise knew that whatever little she did manage to retrieve and record during that busy time was going to be of some value in the future.' (Introduction)

'The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel wrote that ‘the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’. For Hegel, philosophy arrives late on the scene: the world comes to be apprehended only after the fact, in retrospect. Events and historical processes outrun our ability to think them. In many ways, so-called salvage linguistic and anthropological studies in the south-east of Australia have been similarly backward-looking and caught behind the game. Many have struggled, perhaps none more so than Luise Hercus, to document fragmenting and fading languages and traditions in the face of the massive social disruption and change. This paper is an attempt to think the present by asking what can be done with the results of such studies in the context of Indigenous projects of cultural rejuvenation. The key question is: how does something new emerge? I describe how a group of Wirangu people translate a mythical narrative back into their language by drawing on archival materials and using Luise’s salvage grammar of Wirangu as a key. A third, crucial, ingredient is the everyday lived experience of the translators.'  (Introduction)