Publication Details Hardcover, 64 pp, edition of 750. ISBN 9 780646 848488
Author and/or Editor name/s Fiona Foley
Author and/or Editor bio/s Dr Fiona Foley is a Maryborough-born Badtjala (Butchulla) artist, academic and writer whose work is held in many Australian state, national and university collections. Her new photographic series on this subject titled The Magna Carta Tree was received with significant interest and featured in a major retrospective exhibition at QUT Art Museum, 2021. Dr Foley was awarded, The Inaugural Monica Clare Research Fellowship 2020 from the State Library of Queensland towards a publication entitled, Bogimbah Creek Mission: The First Aboriginal Experiment released November 2021.
Year of publication 2021
Publisher Pirri Productions, Brisbane
Abstract There are few historical records or photographic archives pertaining to the 51 Badtjala people taken from Maryborough to Fraser Island by Archibald Meston. This group of people taken and relocated under The Aboriginals Protection and the Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 formed the basis of the first experiment. The publication is titled, Bogimbah Creek Mission: The First Aboriginal Experiment. It contains two essays The Work of Atonement and Exploding Time Past and Time Present. In the words of Raymond Evans he sums up the lack of research in this area of the Act, “in attempting to investigate the Bogimbah Creek Reserve on Fraser Island and the Aboriginal ‘inmates’ relocated, one is immediately struck by the almost total silence of Australian historians on this significant segregative experiment.” There is a need to bring this hidden history to the fore wether it is a publication or photographs. The Badtjala people are missing from this Queensland narrative.
You must be logged in to post a comment.