20. Corroborees at Rushworth
Aboriginal spirituality could be expressed in many ways, including musically and through ceremony. Corroborees were one very obvious way of doing this. There are tantalising snippets of information about corroborees being held in the area that is now the south end of High Street, Rushworth, close to Moora Road. The accounts relate to the time after the start of the gold rush, so it is possible that the Aboriginal people camped on the fringes of the new settlement of Rushworth may have conducted the corroborees as an entertainment for the miners. This often happened on the goldfields, providing a way for the Aboriginal people to earn some income, or get “rations” such as sugar, flour and tobacco.
There are no clues in the reports about who the Aboriginal people involved may have been. Perhaps they were the local Ngurai-illum Wurrung people, or they could have been another group displaced because of European colonisation in the preceding 15 years or so. No other details were provided in the reports, other than the fact that corroborees had taken place.
WITNESSING A CORROBOREE
About ten years before the corroborees mentioned above (i.e. in the early 1840s), the squatter Edward Curr witnessed a corroboree on his run north of present-day Tongala. This was probably a more realistic version of a traditional corroboree than the ones that might have taken place at Rushworth for the benefit of the miners. The corroboree took place on Bangerang land, but Curr explains that the Ngurai-illum Wurrung people participated, despite their language differences.
He mentions the attendees as including “Ngooraialum” (probably the Ngurai-illum balug clan) and “Pimpandoor…a tribe from the Campaspe, their immediate neighbours” (i.e. the clan we have referred to as the Benbedora balug, and part of the broader Ngurai-illum Wurrung people), who spoke the same language, as well as the Bangerang. The purpose of the meeting, which included the corroboree, was ostensibly for trade and the exchange of prospective wives.
PREPARATION
After dark, the men retired to an area away from the main camp, lit a couple of large fires, then prepared themselves. This involved painting their bodies with ochre (“a groundwork of rouge made from a sort of clay which is burnt for the purpose”) then overlaying that with designs in “pipe clay” (i.e. white clay). The source of the clay used for the bodily decoration is not mentioned by Curr, but it was a valuable commodity which was sometimes used for trading between different groups of Aboriginal people.
The men wore either a net over their hair, or a “narrow band of twisted opossum skin, which was tied behind, the ends of the strings hanging down between the shoulders; a plume of emu or cockatoo feathers being frequently inserted in it”. Performers also wore a waist band with possum skin thongs hanging down to their knees, green leaves bound around the ankles and rolls of fur around their biceps.
MUSIC AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN
The women’s role in proceedings included being spectators, but also the provision of most of the music. This came in the form of singing, but also drumming by hitting their rolled-up possum skin cloaks with open hands. The singing must have seemed quite alien to Curr, who described it as “wild and peculiar airs sung in chorus”.
Another accompaniment to the music provided by the women was the use of what we now call clapsticks. On this occasion, it was also provided by a man who Curr regarded as the master of ceremonies. He “struck together the two short sticks with which he marked the time” in a way that we are most familiar with these days.
Just before the corroboree was to begin, light fuel was thrown on the fires on each side of the “stage” to illuminate the area, the clapsticks started beating, and the women “burst into song” with their “shrill voices”. The stage was set for the performance to begin.
Reference: Curr, Edward M, Recollections of Squatting in Victoria pp 134-9
