Abstract
This article examines theoretical as well as methodological issues provoked by different responses to three landmark trees marked by Europeans during the exploration of northern Australia. The first of these trees is an ironwood that was reportedly marked by Ludwig Leichhardt during his first expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington in 1844-45. The second tree is a coolibah marked by William Landsborough during his search for the missing Burke and Wills in 1862. The third is a boab tree marked by the explorer A. C. Gregory during the North Australia Exploring Expedition of 1855-56. Drawing on the results of fieldwork conducted at Borroloola, Burketown and Timber Creek since 2007, I highlight overlapping as well as divergent responses to these trees by local residents of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descent, pointing to continuing struggle over the meaning of exploration, and colonisation, in northern Australia.
Highlights
Like many first-‐time visitors to Borroloola, I went to the town’s small museum shortly after arriving to begin anthropological fieldwork in mid-‐2007
Amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the town’s colonial history—weathered saddles, rusted stirrups, dingo traps, broken spectacles, glass bottles, moth-‐eaten uniforms, reproduced photographs, scraps of text—is the trunk of an ironwood tree (Erythrophleum chlorostachys) that was reportedly blazed by Ludwig Leichhardt during his first expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington in 1844 to 1845.2 Originally situated on the edge of the Calvert River, the trunk was moved to the Borroloola museum in 1985.3 Rooted in iron rather than soil, its location in the museum draws attention to the politics of heritage and history in this small town
The divergent symbolic uses of the explorer trees of northern Australia might be cited as evidence of a broad contrast between Aboriginal and non-‐Aboriginal ways of thinking about the colonial past and the post-‐colonising present
Summary
Like many first-‐time visitors to Borroloola, I went to the town’s small museum shortly after arriving to begin anthropological fieldwork in mid-‐2007.
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