Colonial wilding: Cattle, Kangaroo and Gumbakuluk

About

In 1788, a small herd of cattle trafficked from the Cape Colony (South Africa) with the First Fleet escaped and was lost to the colony at Warrane/Sydney. Years later, they were rediscovered by colonists, now living in large wild herds in an area of Country that was then re-named ‘Cowpastures’, with the Indigenous owners of that Country then re-named the “Cowpastures Tribe”.

The story of escaping and proliferating wild cattle has been described by Grace Karskens as a ‘white legend’, its circulation tied to the naturalisation of a wild Australian pastoralism, which now spreads across more than half the continent. In this talk, Professor Fiona Probyn-Rapsey will discuss some of the counter-readings of this legend as analysed by Lynette Russell and her in their larger project on the cultural impacts of introduced animals. Their focus includes thinking about these cattle as gumbakuluk (a Dharuk/Gundungurra word for ‘horned cattle’), speculating on how Indigenous people encountered the cattle, taking their desire for escape seriously, and also thinking about what all this might tell us about the environmental legacies of colonial wilding on Country.

This will be an opportunity to discuss the accompanying documentary film both researchers intend to make about this project, and view a short snippet of it.

Professor Fiona Probyn-Rapsey is a Research Fellow in the School of Philosophy, History and Indigenous Studies at Monash University. She has held senior academic leadership roles as…