| Historical notes: | Aboriginal People of the Wellington Area
At the time of European settlement, the Wellington area was occupied by a group of Wiradjuri speakers. Wiradjuri designates the people of the land of three rivers; the Wambool (now the Macquarie River), the Kalare (now the Lachlan River) and the Murrumbidjeri (Murrumbridgee River). Wiradjuri territorial lands are thought to have extended from the Great Dividing Range in the east and were bordered by the Macquarie, Lachlan and Murrunbidgee Rivers. Evidence of the occupation of the Wellington area by the Wiradjuri in pre-contact times survives in the form rock shelters with deposits, a carved tree, scarred trees, open camp sites, grinding grooves sites and bora (ceremonial) grounds.
European settlement in the Wellington area commenced with the establishment of a convict agricultural station in 1823. By 1839 most of the frontage of the Macquarie River was taken up by squatters, and the first land holders in the Wellington Valley area date from the 1830s. As European settlement in the Wellington area intensified, the Wiradjuri were increasingly driven off their traditional lands. The Wiradjuri moved to a series of missions and camps around Wellington including: The Wellington Valley Mission, Apsley Mission, Blake's Fall Mission (also known as Apsley Mission), Blacks Camp, Wellington Town Common Camp and Nanima Reserve.
Blacks Camp
Blacks Camp was a riverside Aboriginal camp that appears to have been a remnant part of Rev. William Watson's privately run mission known as the Blake's Fall Mission. Rev. Watson and his wife Ann arrived in Wellington Valley in 1832 as part of a mission team sent by the London based Church Missionary Society to bring Christianity to the Wiradjuri People. A mission was established at the site of the former convict agricultural station in Wellington Valley.
Rev. Watson's policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families led to bitter confrontations between the Rev. Watson and other missionaries at the Wellington Mission. In circa 1839 Watson was dismissed by the Church Missionary Society. Watson and his wife left the mission along with a small group of Wiradjuri People and established a private mission, known as Apsley Mission, just outside the boundary of the Wellington Valley Mission site.
Approximately eight years after establishing Apsley Mission, Rev. Watson, his wife Ann and their small Aboriginal community of about thirty individuals, moved to a new site on the bank of the Macquarie River (portion 97 and portion 303 of the Parish of Wellington). Rev. Watson call the new site Apsley Mission, but it was also known as the Blake's Fall Mission.
Blacks Camp was situated on approximately 21 acres of land adjacent to the site of Blake's Fall Mission. The camp, which was located approximately 1km north of the mission, is the earliest known Aboriginal camp in the Wellington district. The date the camp was established is not known but it is likely that Wiradjuri People were camping at the site during the period the mission was in operation. According to Wiradjuri elders, some of the residents at the camp came from outside the Wellington district, including women and children who survived a massacre in the Rylstone area. Blacks Camp continued to be used as an occupation site by the Wellington Aboriginal population after the mission site was sold to the Offner family and run as a dairy in circa 1866.
A profile of the camp's inhabitants in the early 20th Century can be obtained from the 1908 application by Aboriginal families for a school. At the time the application was submitted, the population of the camp was about ninety people in fourteen households. Of the ninety or so residents, sixty of these were children, forty of whom were aged between four to fifteen. A few years later (circa 1910) the camp was inspected by the local Council's Sanitary Inspector. The Inspector reported that Blacks Camp comprised eighteen huts sheltering around eighty persons. In one three-roomed hut the inspector noted that as many as thirteen people lived and slept in the hut and he stated that other huts in the camp accommodated similar numbers. The inspector also noted in his report that a number of the camp's occupants suffered from lung troubles and several of the camp's residents had died from consumption.
In 1910 residents at the camp were relocated to the newly established Nanima Reserve, although it appears that a residual population remained at the camp site until circa 1940s. Today there are no standing structures on the site but building materials and artefacts left behind by former residents are scattered across the former camp site.
Oral testimony from Wiradjuri elders states that Blacks Camp contains burial sites. There are no headstones remaining to indicate the location of the graves. The camp site is thought to contain fourteen grave sites relating to the Dawkins, Goolagoon, Gotch, Holland, King, May, Mickey, Nolan, Riley, Stanley, Stewart and Wighton families as well as other families of Wellington and surrounding districts. In addition to the grave sites, the former camp site also contains two traditional Aboriginal sites: a scarred tree (NPWS 36-4-0077); and a shell midden.
Comparative Analysis
As various areas in the State were settled by non-Aboriginal people, Aboriginal people were moved off their traditional lands. Displaced Aboriginal communities established camps on vacant land and reserves on the fringes of newly established settlements. Blacks Camp is one of two 19th Century Aboriginal camps known to have been established in the Wellington area.
(Sources: Blacks Camp Nomination Form by Lee Thurlow; Blacks' Camp to 1910 by Lee Thurlow; Archaeological Assessment of Wellington Valley Settlement Site by Anne Bickford; Aboriginal People at Wellington by Barbara Le Maistre; They Came to a Valley: Wellington NSW by D. McDonald;; "Binjang" or the Second Vale of Tempe: The Frontier at Wellington Valley, NSW 1817-1851 by David Roberts; Maynggu Ganai Historic Site by Griffin nrm Pty Ltd; Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment for Area known as 'Blacks Camp' Wellington Working Farm Project University of NSW; Wiradjuri Places: The Macquarie River Basin by Peter Kabaila; Draft Wellington Thematic History by Terry Kass; Oral Testmony from Wiradjuri elders Joyce Williams and Violet Carr 2011) |