Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00437:body:0:p15
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00437
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Character Range: 44216–47244

to have been a common occurrence.

 According to Tindale,2 the territories of the Ngunawal, Ngarigo and the Walgalu peoples coincide and meet in the Queanbeyan area. The AWM probably falls within the tribal boundaries of the Ngunawal people.

 References to the traditional Aboriginal inhabitants of the Canberra region are rare and often difficult to interpret.3 However, the consistent impression is one of rapid depopulation and a desperate disintegration of a traditional way of life over little more than 50 years from initial European contact.4 This process was probably accelerated by the impact of European diseases, which may have included the smallpox epidemic in 1830, influenza, and a severe measles epidemic by the 1860s.5

 By the 1850s the traditional Aboriginal economy had largely been replaced by an economy based on European commodities and supply points. Reduced population, isolation from the most productive grasslands, and the destruction of traditional social networks meant that the final decades of the region's semi-traditional Indigenous culture and economy was centered around European settlements and properties.6

 By 1856 the local 'Canberra Tribe', presumably members of the Ngunawal, were reported to number around 707 and by 1872 only five or six 'survivors' were recorded.8 In 1873, one so-called 'pure blood' member remained, known to the European community as Nelly Hamilton or 'Queen Nellie'.

 Combined with other ethnohistorical evidence, this lack of early accounts of Aboriginal people led Flood 9 to suggest that the Aboriginal population density in the Canberra region and Southern Uplands was generally quite low.

 Frequently, only so called 'pure blooded' individuals were considered 'Aboriginal' or 'tribal' by European observers. This consideration made possible the assertion of local tribal 'extinctions'. In reality, 'Koori' and tribal identity remained integral to the descendants of the nineteenth-century Ngunawal people, some of whom continue to live in the Canberra/Queanbeyan/Yass region.

    2.2   Origins and Establishment

 The origins of the AWM are integrally associated with CEW Bean, Australia's official war correspondent during World War I (refer to Figure 2.1). Bean envisioned a national war museum in Australia's new capital, Canberra, which would house the relics and trophies of battle. At the same time, Bean was actively working towards earning Australia the right to keep and maintain its own war

   records, following the success of Canada in this regard in 1916. In May 1917, Lieutenant John Treloar was appointed officer-in-charge of the Australian War Records Section, before serving as Director of the Memorial between 1920 and 1952 (refer to Figure 2.2).

   Figure 2.1 CEW Bean, war correspondent and historian who worked towards the founding of an Australian war museum, 1919. (Source: Australian War Memorial, ID number P04340.004)

  Figure 2.2 John Treloar, Officer-in-Charge of Australian War Records, and Director of the AWM for 32