Indigenous Sites and Mobilities: Connected Struggles in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In 1854, William Westgarth was sent by the Government of Victoria to investigate the causes of the Eureka Revolt, an armed rebellion by gold prospectors resisting governmental regulation and taxation. As he approached the goldfields along the Loddon Valley, Westgarth came across a community that he had not expected to encounter. Establishing camp one evening, he ‘met … with a man of [the Djadja Wurrung] tribe who spoke English well’. He ‘had been trained here [and] had afterwards settled in the neighbourhood … [he] had married a wife of his own people, built himself a hut… and lived somewhat like ourselves, by his daily labour’. This man demonstrated the resilience of Aboriginal people in th..