Day 5

A day spent researching the past of Bendigo. Tracing Aboriginal history was illuminating.The area was settled by 16 different tribes of Jaara Jaara-the only references in Google were to youth crime, hepatitis C and alcholism. The usual fate of displaced peoples.

I checked the Australian online databases at La Trobe library-one relevant entry. Here is a past that has been completely excised. At the Bendigo history display next to the tourist office was a timeline . It starts with 40,000 years of continuous occupation being labelled as Dreamtime followed by a sucession of squatters and diggers, Chinese and Cornish miners and goldrush wealth wiping the slate clean.

Fascinating too to read about the white Australia policy, the negative depictions of the Chinese immigration and the taxes imposed on them on landing, which meant many landed outside the territory and walked the 200 miles to the diggings! The official racial policy only ended in 1961 and since than there has been integration of Asians etc, and the landrights movement. Clearly the scars and distortions of that history remain- with boat people processed on an island offshore and immigration camps in the desert.

It will be interesting to reflect these different voices in the piece, so the task now is to make contact with the various groups.