A tale Nanna told

Writing at left, Paul Collits fears the “truth-telling” the Voice demands won’t be particularly, well, truthful. If the ABC’s recently aired series Southern Landscapes is any indication, expect all manner of myths and legends to be delivered in bulk and unquestioned.

The warning of what we can expect comes 20 minutes into episode 4, when host Rachel Griffiths is exploring Eugene Von Guérard’s 1855 painting of Tower Hill, near Warrnambool in Victoria’s coastal west. In order to get the Aboriginal perspective, she taps the ancestral memories of local Aborigine Brett Clark (above), who proceeds to tell an incredible tale of mass murder. Literally incredible.

His people, he says, were invited “for a feed” at an unnamed “mission to the west of here”, where they were given “poison porridge” that killed all but Mr Clarke’s ancestor, “Pop’s grandfather”, who declined the meal and escaped to tell the tale.

“And he probably wasn’t believed,” exclaims Ms Grifiths, whose ejaculated ‘Wow!’ suggests she harbours not a shred of doubt that men of the cloth ran a sideline operation massacring their native charges. If that aspect of the tale is hard to swallow, it gets worse.

The only Aboriginal mission “to the west of Tower Hill” was the Church of England station at Lake Condah, according to Victoria government archives, which provide a helpful map (below, with Lake Condah red-ringed).

This is where it gets very strange indeed. According to Newcastle University’s Massacre Map, there was a massacre in the Condah Swamp where

…they hid with their mother in the reeds until the fighting was over and then they headed off looking for somewhere safe. We were always told that Murderers Flat was where the fighting was. They were taken in and lived on the Condah Mission.

We can only assume the missionaries were of a schizophrenic disposition, knocking off Aborigines in one breath and caring for the survivors of others’ massacres with the next. Not that this has stopped the murderous missionaries story getting around. The local rag in Warnnambool has given it credence (paywalled) as has The Age.

How do such tall stories gain currency? For the answer, read Michael Connor on the so-called Convincing Ground massacre.  Had Ms Griffiths done so, she might have realised oral histories lacking evidential support aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on, and Southern Landscapes‘ viewers might have been spared that poignant, heart-struck ‘Wow!’

— roger franklin