firstnation

A Salvation Army officer at Nanango, William Thompson, secured the severance of 7000 acres from the Barambah pastoral station in 1901. The allotment was gazetted as a mission station and known as the Barambah Industrial School. Its establishment predated the beginnings of Murgon township by three years. Thompson gathered local Aborigines onto the mission station and was superintendent until 1904. Conditions were rudimentary, worsened by drought and lack of finance. Control of Barambah passed to the state government in 1905, but the superintendent allowed Aboriginal residents to be forcibly hired out for casual labour in the rapidly growing local agricultural economy. Despite this, the settlement became substantially self-sufficient in food (goats, poultry, vegetables), a hospital was built and a sawmill opened in 1917. Improved housing was built with locally milled timber." Source:https://queenslandplaces.com.au/cherbourg-aboriginal-shire-council

Talking about The First Nation we can not escape historical facts and consequences of colonisation.

Vesna Verencevic At the State library we hold the Cherbourg Tindale genealogical [family history] collection. For more information please visit. www.slq.qld.gov.au/research-collections/family-history/ab... and more.

Cockatoos are an important animal in the Australian Indigenous people’s mythology, acknowledged for their important part in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth of plants in the landscape. For the Indigenous people and more broadly, Cockatoos represent illumination – the sentinel guard and guide through darkness; they speak of commitment to partnerships and to the importance of the safety of one’s group; and they represent comedic relief with the spark that mischief and curiosity bring to life! Source: worldbirds.com/cockatoo-symbolism/

The 'nose bone ceremony' marks an Aboriginal boy's transition to manhood. The ritual begins with the painting of sacred symbols on the body, followed by piercing the septum. The nose is pierced with the bone of an animal or bird associated with a tribe's Dreaming and the ancestral creator of their sacred site. These nose bones were originally worn by both men and woman, today they are usually only worn by the older generation on ceremonial occasions. Source: www.aboriginalartuk.com/post/sacred-places-marrapinti#:~:....

Pearl shells were in use from at least 1818. In 1818 Freycinet records the following in Shark Bay, Western Australia. “An old man painted with stripes of various colors and distinguished from the rest by a shell hanging from his girdle”. They are an original and unique form of Aboriginal Art. Source: www.aboriginal-bark-paintings.com/aboriginal-pearl-shell/

In Australia, scarring was practised widely, but is now restricted almost entirely to parts of Arnhem Land. Scarring is like a language inscribed on the body, where each deliberately placed scar tells a story of pain, endurance, identity, status, beauty, courage, sorrow or grief. Source: australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/body-art/abor...

Traditionally in Indigenous Australian culture, scarification was a signifier of a person's place in the community and an expression of identity, experience and beauty — almost a non-verbal language carved right onto the skin. "Once you became initiated, you'd get a scarring done, so that when you're out in the world people would know that you had gone through lore," Torres explains. Torres is an educator in the Broome Regional Aboriginal Medical Service (BRAMS), where he counsels prisoners to quit smoking. Source: www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-13/michael-jalaru-torres-expl...