Carol Altmann – The Terrier
I want to pass this on. This map is so confronting but so necessary to examine.
It is a map generated by The Guardian as part of a major project it launched today – The Killing Times – showing massacre sites from the colonisation of Australia until 1928.You can see that south-west Victoria, our home, was a bloodbath.
I learned nothing of this when I was at school. I had never heard of the mass killings of Aboriginal people at places like Crawford River, Murderers Flat, Connells Ford, Apsley, Tarrone, Eumerella, Lake Bolac, Wannon River…
The Guardian, in its forensic analysis of this history, wants to help change that.
It hopes this project will be part of a new way of looking at our past, to finally confront a truth that “has long been hiding in plain sight”, so that the healing of our nation’s heart can begin.
You can find the interactive map and links to the full project here:
And the local classic A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers, 1834-1848 Book by Jan Critchett, formerly of WIAE, published by Melbourne University Press. 1988.
I am reading that very book right now. Jan was so ahead of her time, in terms of recording our real local history.