War is a big word. Just ask the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. For ever they’ve excluded the Australian Frontier Wars from any commemoration in their holy of holies. Yet one of the very first battles was actually a War in the full verbal and legal sense. For Sir Thomas Brisbane, Knight Commander of the Most Honorable Military Order of the Bath, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over His Majesty’s Territory of New South Wales and its Dependencies, &c. &c. &c had issued the following order:
“NOW THEREFORE, by Virtue of the Authority in me vested by His Majesty’s Royal Commission, I do declare, in Order to restore Tranquillity, MARTIAL LAW TO BE IN FORCE IN ALL THE COUNTRY WEST-WARD OF MOUNT YORK”.

And that was 200 years ago earlier this month, causing the good folk of Bathurst, centre of the ancient fighting and killing, to commemorate the event with a week of ‘Dhuluny’. As the town council’s website defines it: “Dhuluny is a Wiradyuri word for “truth”, “rightness”, or “gospel”, and means rectitude, that which is direct, straight, acting, living. ‘The Dhuluny Project’ is a series of events commemorating the 200-year anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law on 14 August 1824 and the ensuing frontier violence”.

Embracingly, it included theatre, film, a corroboree, a conference, an art market and an ongoing art exhibition in the Bathurst Regional Gallery. There, Wiradyuri (the preferred spelling in Bathurst) “respond to Martial Law, truth-telling about the Frontier Wars, and the on-going significance of the local events in Bathurst”. Artists involved include the living and the dead – Jonathon Jones (curator), Michael Riley, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, HJ Wedge, Kevin Gilbert, Karla Dickens, Jazz Money and Auntie Leanna Carr.

Interspersed between works of the Wiradyuri artists are the settler paintings of English-born artists John William Lewin and Augustus Earle. Lewin actually accompanied Lachlan Macquarie during his 1815 expedition to ‘invade’ what became the Bathurst Plains for agricultural and pastoral purposes, recording the journey in a series of 21 drawings. Among them is a portrait of ‘Saturday’, a Wiradyuri man encountered by Lewin while there. Today it’s believed he may have been Windradyne, the future leader of actions against the ‘invaders’.

Another, ‘The Plains, Bathurst’ features the grand colonial tent of Macquarie, flying a British ensign. Settler huts flank each side. The red military uniforms and muskets of the invading soldiers are visible too. In the foreground, this side of the Wambuul/Macquarie River, smoke rises from a campfire tended by a lone Wiradyuri figure, contrasting the shrinking Aboriginal presence against an encroaching colonial settlement.

In the exhibition’s catalogue essay, Auntie Jeanine Leane quotes Brisbane’s order: “’Bloodshed may be stopped by Use of Arms against the Natives in Order to restore Tranquillity’. Two hundred years after they were proclaimed, the words of colonial governor Thomas Brisbane still echo for Wiradyuri peoples of the Wambuul (Macquarie River). Brisbane ordered a tranquillity, a silence. A silencing”.

Leane also offers a poem:
After the silence there’s an echo.
An echo is the sound of the past
as it screams
down
through
time
through the barrel of a gun
at the end of a knife
from the thud of a stirrup iron.
An echo is resounding.

The exhibition, ‘Dhuluny : the war that never ended‘ continues until September 8th.

Missing from any of the events in Bathurst was Stan Grant, probably the most well-known Wiradjuri name (his spelling) in the country. As he explained in The Saturday Paper, “I have felt the pain of ancestors these past weeks as my Wiradjuri people have marked 200 years of what we call the homeland wars – gudyarra in our language. The Wiradjuri were placed outside the protection of the law.

“Brisbane’s edict was a final push to crush Wiradjuri resistance to the invasion and theft of land. A bounty was put on the head of Wiradjuri leader Windradyne. There are terrible stories of poisonings and shootings. The number of Wiradjuri killed has been estimated between the hundreds and the thousands”.

But the pain of remembering all that history was too much for Grant. Though he did add: “When Windradyne led his proud people over the Blue Mountains to Parramatta to meet Governor Brisbane, he was reported as wearing a hat with the word “peace” written on the brim. That’s his legacy. That’s the task Windradyne sets us. I remember him rightly. I remember the suffering of all my people. It is the essence of the Wiradjuri way of being – Yindyamarra, to live quietly with respect and love. If I remember that, I find a way to forget the unforgettable”.

Interestingly, the official local imprimature for Bathurst’s resident language group came about at the behest of the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation (WTOCWAC).

And it’s been in the news for much else recently. For, as claimed by The Australian, it’s just an 18-strong group of people that was taken seriously enough by Minister of the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, causing her to cancel plans for a gold mine tailing dam on their Country. Her action was taken under under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. For the proposed dam was to be sited on the headwaters of the Belubula River, just west of Bathurst. And it’s the headwaters and springs and the river itself that feature in the creation stories of the Wiradyuri people.

Miners, the Federal Opposition, the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council and, of course, The Australian newspaper are outraged. How could such a tiny, unrepresentative group be taken so seriously?

Well, I’ll let them tell you why:
“WTOCWAC is an Aboriginal Corporation made up of Traditional Elders who provide cultural education, mentoring and support and the protection of Ngurambang (Country).
“Our membership is made up predominantly of Aboriginal people, including Elders and Knowledge Holders with ties to Apical Ancestors who were involved in the Frontier War/Wiradyuri War of Resistance that occurred in the Bathurst area of Wiradyuri Country in the early 1800’s.
Key members include Dinawan Dyirribang Uncle Bill Allen Jr. Dinawan’s Apical Ancestor is Windradyne, well known Wiradyuri Lore Man and Head Warrior; Aunty Leanna Carr Wirribee’s Apical Ancestor is Willambirri who fought alongside Windradyne and Wurrimbirra; Yanhadarrambal Uncle Jade Flynn’s Apical Ancestor is Kitty Narrangie, whose son Warramundi was a resistance Warrior”.

Bathurst and Orange are, in fact, almost 60kms apart, so the acceptance of the mine by the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council seems curious. And, oddly, the previous Liberal Environment Minister, Sussan Ley, also took WTOCWAC seriously enough, using a section 10 declaration to cancel a proposed go-kart track at McPhillamy Park, not far from the mine that has the same name.

So it would seem that the combined, warlike efforts of the British (colonial) military, subsequent pastoralists and today’s miners have all failed to crush the cultural spirits of the Wiradjuri/Wiradyuri in mid-West NSW.