Victoria Middleton
Writer / Historical Researcher
Biography
A resident of Barmedman, Victoria is a Historical Researcher, Government Scribe and the Editor & Designer of The Mallee Stump,
a triannual journal of
Wyalong District Family History Group Inc.Victoria has traced her ancestors to 978 A.D.
when her 35th great-grandfather,
Fulbert Pelletier de Falaise of Normandie, France, was born—
the maternal grandfather of William the Conqueror.With a background in Fine Arts, Design, Marketing and Content Writing, Victoria is a prolific researcher of local and Australian history.Victoria is the author of 2 published fiction novels,
Gem: The Season of Prophecy
The Fractured Race.
The Wiradjuri and the White Man (1788-1900)
by Victoria Middleton
In 1788, it is estimated that of the 3000 Aborigines living in Wiradjuri lands, clans of at least 430 people lived in the Barmedman area.The clans were divided into small groups for the benefit of socialising and food-gathering. Each group held at least one extended family, such as an old man and his wives, his sons and their families.These families would move to a new campsite about six times a year, within a forty kilometre radius.
There were Aborigines on the Lachlan at the time of the first white explorers, and the clans took the European names for the towns. These regions where they lived dictate the borders of Wiradjuri country.In 1841, the pastoralists south of Barmedman won a bitter campaign against the Wiradjuri with atrocities decimating a great number of family groups, sometimes leaving only the women and children to fend for themselves. Disease would take them when they ventured near the towns and many clans were wiped out this way.
In 1870, after years of confrontation with the Wiradjuri from the law, missionaries and white do-gooders, the Church and State retreated for four decades, and the missions collapsed. 1840 to 1880 was the time of the great expansion of settlers and miners, and the Wiradjuri struck whatever bargains they could to maintain peace.Some Barmedman settlers would parley with the Wiradjuri to provide work for the women in the homestead or paddocks and use the men as trackers or sheep washers.
No sooner had the Wiradjuri adjusted to the new reality of the pastoral stations when, in 1874, the gold-diggers came to Barmedman. The Chinese labourers disrupted the tenuous relations, but the claims and holdings worked on by the hundreds who came to the area from that date, pushed the Wiradjuri away from town and not even the pastoral stations could give them casual work.There was not one Aboriginal name recorded on the shearing records after this time. After twenty years of grazing, the farms of the Barmedman District ensured that no Wiradjuri person could live independently of the whites and many Aborigines were close to starvation.
