Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408:front:0:p193
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 616049–619238

disturbed, covered, and/or destroyed.

        Figure 4.4 View of ground surface exposure looking east, Australian War Memorial Treloar A, Mitchell Precinct

  Figure 4.5 View looking west from eastern boundary of Australian War Memorial Treloar A, across visible ground surface, Mitchell Precinct

         5.   ABORIGINAL CONTEXT

          5.1  Tribal Boundaries and Ethnohistory

       Tribal boundaries within Australia are based largely on linguistic evidence and it is probable that boundaries, clan estates and band ranges were fluid and varied over time. Consequently 'tribal boundaries' as delineated today must be regarded as approximations only, and relative to the period of, or immediately before, European contact. Social interaction across these language boundaries appears to have been a common occurrence.

       According to Tindale (1940) the territories of the Ngunawal, Ngarigo and the Walgalu peoples coincide and meet in the Queanbeyan area. The Fairbairn Avenue study area probably falls within the tribal boundaries of the Ngunnawal people.

       References to the traditional Aboriginal inhabitants of the Canberra region are rare and often difficult to interpret (Flood 1980). The consistent impression however is one of rapid depopulation and a desperate disintegration of a traditional way of life over little more than fifty years from initial white contact (Officer 1989). The disappearance of the Aborigines from the tablelands 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 1860's (Flood 1980, Butlin 1983).

       By the 1850's the traditional Aboriginal economy had largely been replaced by an economy based on European commodities and supply points.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 centred around white settlements and properties (Officer 1989).

       By 1856 the local 'Canberra Tribe', presumably members of the Ngunnawal, were reported to number around seventy (Schumack 1967) and by 1872 recorded as only five or six 'survivors' (Goulburn Herald 9 Nov 1872). In 1873 one so-called 'pure blood' member remained, known to the white community as Nelly Hamilton or 'Queen Nellie'.

       Combined with other ethnohistoric evidence, this lack of early sightings of Aborigines led Flood (1980) to suggest that the Aboriginal population density in the Canberra region and Southern Uplands was generally quite low.

       Frequently, only '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 Ngunnawal people, some of whom continue to live in the Canberra-Queanbeyan-Yass region.

          5.2  Regional Background for the Campbell Precinct

       A number of archaeological studies have been carried out in areas east of