‘Save the people’: ES parker at the Loddon Aboriginal Station

Abstract

Edward Stone Parker was the Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Loddon district of the Port Phillip Protectorate from 1839 until the Loddon Station was disbanded on 1 March 1850 along with the Protectorate system. Many scholars have written about the Port Phillip Protectorate and some have also written about attempts to reconcile Christianity and humanitarianism towards Aboriginal people with the process of colonial land acquisition. However, the simple and very material question, 'Who got what?' seems worth asking. This article asks this question of Edward Parker and the Djadja Wurrung people who lived at the Loddon Aboriginal Station in the context of public and personal events throughout the period of the Protectorate and the following periods of gold rush and settlement.