aboriginal

: Annual sports days have been featured in Yarrabah in north Queensland since the Church of England established the mission in 1892. From at least 1917, sports have been held to commemorate the mission’s birthday and are tinged with religious associations. The foundation sports day competitions themselves include a mixture of footraces, quaint recreational activities, and traditional Aboriginal events such as fire lighting and spear throwing. Imposed on inmates of the mission as a colonial event, they are embraced by residents and celebrated as the ‘Pride of Yarrabah’. On 17 June 1892, Reverend John Brown Gribble established the Yarrabah Mission (initially called Bellenden Ker after a nearby mountain range) on behalf of the Church of England, 16 kilometers by sea and, today, 60 kilometers by road from Cairns in north Queensland. Sports days in Yarrabah, documented since 1895, have been central to foundation commemorations since at least 1917. These annual events have included myriad activities, as indicated in a church report (Northern Churchman, 1 August 1941, p. 16): There were races to suit every taste – long-distance, flat races for those who liked hard work, thread the needle, book races, boomerang and mirral [woomera] throwing, etc. for those who prefer testing their skill: a lemon race for those clean folk who are fond of washing their faces; for the adventurous ones, there was a greasy pole to be climbed. Aquatic events such as boat races have disappeared from the contemporary program, but foot races, traditional Aboriginal activities, and novelty competitions continue. Local Aboriginal man, Darren Miller, argued that the annual sports day represented more than just sports, but was ‘a day of existence’. Miller was referring not only to the celebration of Yarrabah’s founding, but also its continued existence as a proud, Aboriginal community. Source: espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_6e87ff4/Yarrabah_sports_...

Sophie, Mangelo, Alice, Unknown, Eliza. Based on named portraits in this album.

The children at the mission learned to read and write in Guugu Yimidhirr (which had been transcribed earlier by the missionaries), and the girls helped in the missionaries’ houses and in the garden. It was routine for the girls to be confined to a dormitory each night and to have limited access to their families. Initially, the missionary Wilhelm Poland supervised them closely at Elim while the senior missionary, Georg Heinrich Schwarz, attempted to establish a second station at Hope Valley. This arrangement was altered in 1890 after the older girls, including Mulun, secretly invited Guugu Yimidhirr boys into their dormitory at night. Thereafter the older girls were periodically sent to Hope Valley to stay with Schwarz. Source: ia.anu.edu.au/biography/mulun-magdalena-29712