Aboriginal Land continued

William Barak Source - Museum Victoria; Indigenous Collections

Over the next twenty-five years, this site on Badger Creek was to come under tight bureaucratic control. As the Coranderrk residents had well demonstrated the agricultural potential of the land, pressure was exerted once again by settlers seeking the land. The Station had prospered and increased to 4850 acres. Neighbouring land had been taken up by settlers for farming and the township of Healesville was established. In 1875 John Green was sent to the Murray River to select a suitable location for a new Aboriginal station, but refused when he realised the intention of relocating Coranderrk residents to this station. He was dismissed as Inspector. With Robert Wandin and Tom Donnolly, Barak led the residents in a campaign of delegations, strikes, protests and letters to the press expressing their concerns to the Victorian Government and public. Barak expressed his concerns and feelings about his ancestral and spiritual relationships with the land to a journalist from the Leader,

The Yarra [is] my father's country. There's no mountains for me on the Murray. (February 1876)

Carrying children, Coranderrk Source - Museum Victoria; Indigenous Collections

A Royal Commission in 1877 and a Parliamentary Inquiry in 1881 opposed the sale of Coranderrk. However, the Aborigines Protection Act 1886, which required 'half-castes under the age of 35' to leave, meant that around 60 residents were ejected Coranderrk on the eve of the 1890s depression. This made Coranderrk a non-viable enterprise, as it left only around 15 able-bodied men to work the previously successful hop gardens. Almost half the land was resumed in 1893; and by 1924 orders came for its closure as an Aboriginal Station. Many people were relocated to Lake Tyers in Gippsland, and a few people refused to move. The police officer at Healesville was designated the Local Guardian of these last Coranderrk residents with responsibility mainly for issuing of rations to them. Coranderrk eventually became unoccupied, and in 1950 the land was handed over to the Soldier Settlement Scheme. A small section of 370 acres is contained within the bounds of Healesville Sanctuary.

Group portrait; Coranderrk Source - Museum Victoria; Indigenous Collections

But many Aboriginal families remained around the Upper Yarra and Healesville area. The cemetery at Coranderrk on half an acre of the original site has been cared for in recent years by an Aboriginal Committee of Management. In March 1998, the last freehold property (81 hectares ) remaining of the original station was purchased at auction by the Indigenous Land Corporation with funding from the Federal Government. This has ensured that the descendants of the Kulin, particularly the Woi wurrung and Taungerong people, can reclaim title to the last piece of their territory that Coranderrk residents fought so stridently for.

References for more information
Campbell, A.H., 1987, John Batman and the Aborigines. Kibble Books: Melbourne.

Fox, P., with Phipps, J., 1994, Sweet Damper and Gossip: Colonial Sightings from the Goulburn and North-East. Benalla: Benalla Art Gallery.

Wiencke, S.W., 1988, When the Wattles Bloom Again: The Life and Times of William Barak, The Last Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe. Globe Press: Melbourne. 1988