Australia in the Pitt Rivers Museum
Australia was one of the last places on earth to be found by Europeans, but of course people had been living there for many thousands of years before this. In the two hundred or so years since Captain Cook first landed in Australia many objects have been collected there and brought back to England for museum collections. Today, Aboriginal culture is an important part of Australian life and objects are still purchased there and brought here to show members of the public.
The history of collecting Australian objects mirrors the European view of Australian and Aboriginal culture. The first contacts between European and Aboriginal people were disastrous in terms of health and civil liberties and for many years the prevailing European view was of a dying Aboriginal culture. Today it is recognized that Aboriginal culture is a strong, vibrant and continuing thing and there is some recognition in Australian public life of the need to address old wrongs.
There are objects in the Museum from all parts of Australia and from one hundred and fifty years ago until very recently. The earliest collections seem to have been made in the 1820s but we also have a painting from Yuendumu in Central Australia painted as recently as 1994 by Judy Napangardi Watson.
Almost all aspects of traditional Aboriginal material culture can be found in the Museum from all of the Australian states, including Torres Straits. There are fewer objects that reflect the current lifestyles of most Aboriginal people but this is because, in general, the Museum has not collected or had donated so many objects since the Second World War.
Many of the Australian objects that the Museum owns are on display throughout the Museum and in the Annexe in the Balfour Building on Banbury Road. In the main museum, you can find some of these objects in:
The Court (ground floor) - baskets
In the case of baskets by audio tour sign 21 you will find lots of Australian baskets.
Two-cornered basket painted with a red zigzag design (1893.38.24).
This basket, made from lawyer cane, comes from Queensland in the south of Australia. It was donated by Dr. James Francis Turner, the Bishop of Grafton and Armidale, New South Wales (1869-92), shortly before his death. It was made at the latter end of the nineteenth century.
Lower Gallery (1st floor) - Aboriginal paintings
A bark painting by the artist Djilpa. (1988.36.2)
Dr. Howard Morphy who was a Lecturer/Curator in Australian and South Pacific cultures here at the Pitt Rivers Museum from 1986 to 1996 collected this painting in 1988. He bought the painting at the Ramangining Aboriginal Community.
This painting represents the coastal plain of Central Arnhem Land at Gariyak (in the Northern Territories of Australia) as created by the journey of the ancestral Djangkawu sisters. Wherever the sisters put their digging sticks they created water holes, and circles in the painting represent these. As they journeyed, the sisters named the various plant and animal species they saw around them; these included the gunbu shells in the lower part of the painting.
- Turn round and walk along two cases to your right.
A glass knife and sheath. (1900.55.225.1-.2)
R.F. Wilkins donated this knife with a blade of flaked, recycled glass and gum handle and its paper-bark sheath to the Museum in 1900. It was collected by Harry Stockdale during an expedition to the Port Essington and Alligator River regions in the Northern Territory in 1891. Stockdale was an artist who made extensive sketches of Aboriginal people, objects and kept detailed diaries of his journeys as well as writing a manuscript (unpublished) about Aboriginal people. His most thoroughly documented field trips were made to the northern region of Western Australia, the Kimberleys, in 1884-85 and 1885-86. His illustrated notebooks from these trips give meticulously detailed accounts of the flora and fauna, the weather and descriptions of Aboriginal people.
Upper gallery (2nd floor) - shields
- Go to the end of the shield cases
Parrying Shield (1900.55.164)
Shields in Australia are extremely interesting to look at as well as being functional. This particular shield, collected by Harry Stockdale (see above), comes from Northern Queensland. It came into the MuseumÕs collections in 1900, along with over two hundred other objects collected by Stockdale and donated by Wilkins.
- Walk back towards the staircase. Turn left and walk down the aisle. The last upright case on your left has spear throwers.
Musical instrument/Spear thrower (1898.75.25)
In 1898, the Museum purchased this object from Mr. E. Clement about whom we have little information. We do have a bit more information about this interesting piece from Western Australia in Nullagine. This is a musical rasp made on a spear-thrower that is broad and flat with a hook at one end and spinifex gum at the other. One surface is carved with grooves in batches. One edge of the other side has 35 notches along it to be scraped with a stick.
Other weapons and tools made of many materials and with many uses can be found throughout the Upper Gallery, although most of them are displayed along this aisle on the south side.
If you are interested in finding out more about the collectors or other Australian collections and objects, pick up Collectors: Collecting in the Pitt Rivers Museum, and Collectors 2, both edited by Alison Petch. Another book of interest might be Australia in Oxford, edited by Howard Morphy and Elizabeth Edwards. These books and other objects associated with Australia are available in the Pitt Rivers Museum shop.
Compiled by Meghan O'Brien, PhD student, and Alison Petch, Pitt Rivers Museum Registrar.
