australianhistory

Cambooya Cambooya, a rural town, is 20 km south-west of Toowoomba. The area was settled by Arthur Hodgson in 1840. Hodgson chose 65,000 acres of choice land on eastern Darling Downs, fertile slopes watered by the headwaters of the Condamine River (Hodgson and Emu Creeks). He named his pastoral run 'Eton Vale'. The ruins of Eton Vale homestead, New England Highway, are listed on the Queensland heritage register. In 1843 New South Wales Commissioner of Crown Lands, Christopher Rolleston, carried out a survey and reserved a site on Eton Vale for a township, lands administration facilities and a court house. He named it Cambooya, a rendering of the Aboriginal word 'yambuya', thought to refer to tubers growing in a water hole. Rolleston's township did not eventuate, however. Hodgson resisted the formation of a township and nearby Drayton instead emerged as the region's principal settlement. Cambooya did become a railway station in 1868, however, when the line was extended from Toowoomba to Warwick, and this development, along with a simultaneous closer-settlement subdivision of part of Eton Vale, overcame Hodgson's resistance to a township. Source: queenslandplaces.com.au/cambooya

Fashion is reversible. Ones Europeans tried to dress Aboriginal people, today Aboriginal traditional elements are wining the fashion look of Europeans.

Indigenous Australians have influenced modern Australian dress since first contact. From possum skin cloaks and booka kangaroo capes to shell necklaces in Tasmania, Europeans have been fascinated with Indigenous materials, skills and aesthetics. They have stolen, purchased, borrowed and worn them for more than 200 years. In turn, Indigenous Australians have at times enjoyed wearing soldiers’ red jackets as battle spoils and possibly mocked the Europeans by wearing their top hats cockily in the early streets of Sydney. Later, as First Australians were dispossessed from their lands and herded into reserves and missions, clothing was imposed on them, ranging from shapeless “mother Hubbard” dresses for women to shabby but respectable woolen two-piece suits for men. Traditional dress practices, along with the ceremony, language and music-making, were often banned by the colonisers. Missionaries often taught western-style leatherwork to men and needlecraft to women – yet powerful hybrids of the self-determined dress also emerged, expressing subversive gestures and quiet resistance. In the mid 20th century, missionary nuns in Far North Australia began to allow Indigenous women to craft their own textiles. Brightly coloured fabrics were the result, with unusual combinations of motifs. For some time, Indigenous Australian art was often seen as the future of a distinctively Australian design, as evident in the 1970s energy of Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, but on the whole, Indigenous design was not recognised in its own right. This is now changing - Indigenous fashion design today is being shaped by First Nations people at every level. Source: theconversation.com/how-indigenous-fashion-designers-are-...

The Indigenous Peoples of the Darling Downs For several thousand years, the Darling Downs was home to various clans of the Wakka Wakka language speakers: the Keinjan around Warwick, the Giabal around Toowoomba, the Barunggam to the west of Dalby, and the Jarowair around the Bunya mountains. To the south and west were the Bigambal and Kambuwal of the Kamilaroi speakers; to the east were the Jagara of the Turubul speakers. The Downs Indigenous peoples were also knows as the Gomaingguru, ‘men of the Condamine’, or Gooneburra, ‘fire blacks’ (from their habit of frequently firing the grasslands). They numbered perhaps 1500–2000. Source; www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/martens_standard.asp?na...