When we first see the colours of rock art and bark paintings of the Aboriginal people of Australia we are automatically drawn to the earthly muted ochre tones of yellows oranges, reds and browns derived from organic and mineral sources that were used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for tens of thousands of years. Red ochre in particular has rich mythology across various Indigenous nations and protocols associated with its trade and use that perhaps make it one of the oldest commodities used by modern humans over the past 30 millenia.
It was only in in 1969 when Australian paleoanthropologists discovered that Mungo Lady was one of the world’s oldest known cremations and that what distinguished this burial as unique was the fact that the remains had deliberately been sprinkled with a red ochre that a serious appreciation of the history of Aboriginal occupation of Australia began in earnest. This consciously deliberate act of sprinkling ochre over the body of a deceased person was part of a ceremonial process that gives evidence to the significance of ceremony, ritual and Indigenous mortuary practices at a minimum of around 23 000 years before the origins of modern christianity.
http://www.sott.net/article/210515-Ancient-Australian-Rock-Art-Could-Be-40000-Years-Old
In the 1970's non Indigenous Australians began to realise the global implications of the fascinatingly rich cultural heritage and traditions of the peoples that had been dispossessed and displaced from lands that they had inhabited for millennia. Today fragments of this cultural legacy remain and are held in museums and private collections and an ever increasing appreciation of the histories and knowledges of a diverse and ancient culture are becoming widespread.
Today, tens of thousands of vibrant and aesthetically complex artworks produced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from over a hundred art centres across the Australia are only the latest in a long line of innovative artistic strategies used by a society that has remained unfathomable to the outside world since it was first contacted by the western world.
One particular fragment of the from the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney is a marker of the transition from ancient to modern. the museum holds a unique shield attributed to the greater Townsville region that was acquired sometime around 1888 by collector John Archibald Boyd. Boyd is thought to have acquired the shield at the same time as he visited the region known as Bulgaroo in January 1888. A label still attached to the shield in Boyd’s handwriting reads:
‘Shields of Bulgaroo Black, Townsville, Queensland’.
The region attributed as being Bulgaroo is known through several landmarks in existence today. Bulgaroo lies around 20 kilometers south of Ingham in far north queensland and the language group currently attributed to the Halifax Bay region which is closest to where the Bulgaroo landmarks are within the modern Aboriginal linguistic region of the Nyaagwi .
In 2002 the shield was broadly attributed as being in the Gugu badhir Aboriginal language region north of Townsville although the specific language region where this particular shield was acquired from in 1888 is even more difficult to determine. As is noted in Currs ‘The Australian Race’ (1886)
‘Robert Johnstone listed ‘about Halifax Bay there are six bara, or tribes, called Ikelbara, Dulenbara, Karrabara, Yauembara, mungalbara and Mandambara. They speak dialects of one language.’
The Bulgaroo region is south east of where J A Boys brother owned a plantation at Ripple Creek and is between Townsville and Ingham on the north Queensland Coast. Bulgaroo is also referred to as ‘Bulgaroo swamp’ and located at the start of Palm Creek, just south of the Herbert River where J A Boyd collected around 17 other ethnographic artefacts that are held in the Macleay Museum that are attributed as being from the Warakamai language group.
J. A. Boyd lived and worked on the Ripple Creek plantation owned by his brother in this region in the years 1882 — 1899, his work involved managing the Indentured South Sea Islander laborers and had experience through his having spent the years 1865 — 1882 previously living in Fiji. The majority of Boyd artefacts from Queensland in the Macleay collections are from the Herbert River region north of Townsville.
The front surface of the shield shows a significant amount of damage indicating that it was likely used by its maker/owner before being collected by Boyd. The shield is thought to have been painted with a mixture of natural brown and red ochre’s, black (usually sourced from charcoal) and what is thought to be the synthetically manufactured laundry material known as Reckitts Blue. The natural ochre’s have faded significantly leaving the still vibrant blue patterning on the shields surface.
Anthropologist Helen Brayshaw recorded that this particular shape of ‘club’ shield were found in the Mackay, Townsville and Rockhampton areas. This particular style of shield is of a different shape to the more common type of North Queensland shield from that is found in modern Museum collections whose predominant characteristic are that they are ‘kidney’ shaped, intricately decorated with patterns and designs as well as distinguished by a bump on the centre of the front face of the shield.
The painted patterning on the Macleay Museum shield ETH.1130 is also quite different to the more common Queensland rainforest shield that are often vividly decorated in variety of patterns, shapes and designs. These shields are also distinguished by the intricate patterning and decoration that quite often had personal meaning derived from kinship or totemic association for its creator through being produced and created in the process of initiation among teenage males.
In the 1930’s Ursula McConnell documented numerous patterns as depicted on the more common rainforests shield but the Macleay Museums shield with blue pigment is stylistically different to the patterns as recorded by both Roth and McConnell.
Tangible cultural artifacts specifically provenanced to Townsville are quite rare in Museum collections and of the 17 artifacts from north Queensland held in the Macleay Museum collections only this shield and a boomerang (ETH.1025) are thought to have come from northern Townsville region.
A word for the colour Blue existed in a vocabulary to the west of the lands of the Gugu Badhun peoples, Walter E. Roth, Chief Protector of Aboriginals in Queensland records in 1904,
“On the Tully River,… Any Blue colour is chibul-chibul,” .
In a series of detailed ethnographic accounts of the North Queensland Aboriginal culture by Walter E. Roth, Roth indicates that it may have been in use in several artefacts that he had seen that had been produced between prior to 1905.
“Blue is not met with as a pigment, etc., anywhere in North Queensland, though “washing blue” has been introduced here and there by trade and barter from natives employed at settlements.”
The dry powdery physical properties of Reckitt’s blue laundry ball are similar to the naturally occurring ochre that are recorded as being used across Australia for thousands of years by Aboriginal people. It is possible but speculative to think of Reckitt’s blues availability through Aboriginal women’s involvement in domestic services and its being given by Aboriginal women to Aboriginal men in post contact situations positions its use value as a unique ‘new’ colour of a traditional pigment material in a post contact Aboriginal social relations.
Ramen-spectra research undertaken in 2004 indicated similarities of naturally occurring Lazurite in some artifacts although this would seem exceedingly rare and would be incredibly unique if found to be traditionally used on Aboriginal artefacts. several examples of the use of a naturally occurring blue occur in records from other parts of the continent, a blue clay was used in the kimberley region and the evaporated remnants of soaking purple sea shells in freshwater were recorded as being used in the Torres Strait.
The first advertisements listing ‘Reckitts French ball blue’ start appearing in Australia in 1869 and The use of Reckitt’s blue as a pigment with binder on 19th century artefacts is evidenced in several artefacts held in Australian museum collections that are dated to not long after this time. Ancomparative example would be a shield from northern NSW held at the National Museum of Australia, a parrying shield with bold stripes along its surface that is provenanced to the upper Darling River region of NSW (1840 — 1900) and its front surface is painted with a similar ultramarine blue pigment.
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Sadly I can find no recorded evidence of artists who described their choice to use Blue pigment in their art. this is not uncommon, the majority of these artefacts were acquired in a purely ethnographic context where names and intentions of the makers were rarely recorded.
There is obviously an appeal of this particular medium, examples of the use of Reckitts blue on artefacts are few but glimpses of its use in other parts of the country and in the entirely different tradition of rock art paintings show an independent use of the pigment in rock art sites such as those in Kakadu national Park (on the opposite side of the country to where the shields were collected)
The ‘’Blue Paintings’’, so called because ‘’Reckitts Blue’’ was used in it, are of fairly recent origin and depict Spirit figures and a Barramundi in the so-called ‘’X-ray style’’ that shows the internal organs of the animals; near Nourlangie, Kakadu National Park.
For contemporary Aboriginal and torres Strait Islander community members translating traditional artistic and cultural practices of mark making, body painting, rock painting and engraving, decorative and ornamental design of tools as well as signature like designs used as personal and familial heraldry into modern art forms is a common method of cultural continuity and maintaining responsibilities and roles within the community that in many cases have been established
