A Bend in the Yarra: A History of the Merri Creek Protectorate Station and Merri Creek Aboriginal School 1841-1851

Front Cover
Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004 - History - 90 pages
The Yarra Bend Park marks one of the most important post-contact places in the Melbourne metropolitan area, and is of great significance to Victorian Aboriginal people, particularly the Wurundjeri Aboriginal community. At this site was located the Merri Creek Aboriginal School, the Merri Creek Protectorate Station, the Native Police Corps Headquarters and associated Aboriginal burials. The confluence of Merri Creek and the Yarra River was a significant place to the geography of local Aboriginal people in the contact era, and was the focus of government and church policies toward Aboriginal people of the entire Port Phillip District of New South Wales. The site was a place for meetings, ceremonies, judicial proceedings, councils and debates for a range of Aboriginal clans, but was also a preferred place of residence. The location of this little settlement gave Aboriginal people from near and far access to the colonial economy and European cultures, at a time when pre-contact life
 

Contents

4
63
After the Protectorate
74
Notes
80

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About the author (2004)

Ian Clark is a senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Ballarat, and has a doctorate in Aboriginal historical geography from Monash University. Toby Heydon is a Melbourne-based historian with most of his energies directed towards the field of Victorian Aboriginal historical geography.

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