AN ABORIGINAL baby born on Rimbanda Station in 1820 holds the key to Nundle’s missing Anaiwan history.
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Now, almost 200 years later, the lost Aboriginal families of Nundle and Hanging Rock are being uncovered with the efforts of a small team of volunteers.
A chance meeting between Nundle resident Victor Firmor and Sue Pickrell, who later became the Nundle District Memorial Group chair, sparked a conversation about the town’s murky past.
“There’s a whole layer of human habitation here that we’re not taking any notice of,” Ms Pickrell said.
“After 1899 and the bicentennial, we all became more interested in who we were and where we came from.
“There were a lot of statements in the media about how Aboriginal’s were treated and I just wanted to find out the truth.”
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A memorial unveiled on Saturday remembers the Aboriginal tribes who lived on the land since time immemorial, and those who served in WWI and WWII.
The Native Titles Office released a report in 2016, showing the range of Anaiwan families from New England – but there were some missing.
Those families were Quinn, Duval, Bartholomew, Fermor, Lesley, Clarke, Patridge, Ninnes and Brand, all descendants of the child born at Rimbanda Station – who moved to the Nundle district to find work two decades into the Gold Rush.
Ms Pickrell worked closely with Anaiwan elder Patricia Bartholomew, who still remembers the stories her mother and grandmother told her.
“Their family were hidden in the bush for a long time when the welfare were picking up mixed blood children and taking them away,” she said.
And, while many have been pleased with the work the group is doing, Ms Pickrell said she has had a certain amount of push back from Aboriginal people in the Nundle area.
“It was maybe a fear of, or a culmination of their own life experience – which would have been poor education to start with combined with their own prejudices, anxieties and the way they’ve been treated in the past,” she said.
“One man vividly remembers being taken out the front of class and made to recite English poetry, he was told he couldn’t speak his own language – we have a man now who’s lived that experience.”
Looking into the role missionaries played in destroying Aboriginal culture, Ms Pickrell said the stories were similar, or worse.
“Women were treated appallingly and in that context any children were really shut off from their culture,” she said.
“But we also found women and children who survived because of the missionaries – the white culture in the 1800s really resented the missionaries coming in and trying to better the tribal people’s lives because the men resented not having access to the women they wanted.”
The memorial has been a two year project for the group, who held a commemoration ceremony on Saturday attended by Anaiwan elder Steve Widders and Tamworth Regional Council deputy mayor Helen Tickle.
Traditionally, the Nundle area has been known as Kamilaroi land – but the discovery shows the transcience of Aboriginal tribes Ms Pickrell said.
Deliberately leaving a tribal name off the plaque, Ms Pickrell said she wanted to celebrate the area’s diverse Aboriginal history.
“There would have always been people from other tribes mixing with the Anaiwan,” she said.
“I personally don’t have any Aboriginal heritage, but I did it as a member of the public because I was interested.”