In this episode of The Mariner's Mirror Podcast 'Aborigines and the Sea’, Dr Sam Willis and Mack Mcarthy discuss how important aboriginal rock art is as a historical record of their maritime world.
Indigenous perspectives are a crucial and immensely valuable part of the broad narrative of Australian maritime history. Aboriginal people witnessed the arrival of Macassan, Dutch, French, English and American vessels as these people explored, sought out trepang and harvested whales. Some of their vessels were wrecked and their survivors arrived as ‘strangers on the shore’, interacting in a variety of ways with Indigenous peoples. Trade, shipwrecks, travel, exploration, industry, colonisation and many other factors contributed to the many maritime encounters between aboriginal people and others. These important observations and experiences have been reflected in numerous rock art representations, some dating as far back as the seventeenth century. Rock art examples such as the depiction of the steam ship, the SS Xantho, reveal how rock art can be used to learn more about aboriginal maritime encounters. Indigenous perspectives are key in studying shipwrecks in colonial settings, particularly with the encounters between aboriginal people and shipwreck survivors. As Mack discusses, aboriginal legends are shown to generally corroborate other records of shipwreck and significant maritime events - which shows how extremely valuable they are to Australian maritime history.
Mack Mcarthy worked for many years as Inspector of Wrecks at the Australian Maritime Museum. He also headed the ‘Australian Contact Shipwrecks’ Program, an analysis of the interaction of Indigenous peoples with shipwreck survivors, and the study of Indigenous maritime depictions on the Western Australian coast.
To find out more, listen to The Mariner’s Mirror Podcast episode on ‘Aborigines and the Sea’ in its entirety here:
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