Lawrence Hargrave’s Spanish Sydney – new paper

I’ve just had a new short paper published in the December 2012 issue of Placenames Australia, which is the excellent quarterly newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey [ANPS] .  This organisation is supported by the different state and Commonwealth place name gazettal boards, to capture the history and meaning of the different toponyms around Australia.  These provide a rich landscape archaeology of successive occupations from indigenous people to the present.

The paper is ‘Lawrence Hargrave’s Spanish Sydney’, and it is about his belief that Lope de Vega landed in Sydney in c.1595, in the ship Santa Isabel [or Ysabel], after separating from the rest of Mendana’s expedition to the Solomons Islands [Gojak 2012].  Hargrave believed that place names around Sydney and Torres Strait supported his case.  According to him the Spanish named various parts of Sydney Harbour and the surrounding coast they explored, and these names were adopted by the Aborigines.  Later, after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, it was assumed that these were Aboriginal names.  Hargrave annotated about two dozen of these into his evolving text for his book on Lope de Vega, added them on maps and charts and in amongst his voluminous correspondence.  A further list of names was ready to hand, presumably ones for which he was still searching for an origin.

You’ll have to read the paper for the full list [download of all the ANPS Newsletters is free], but just one example shows Hargrave’s logic follow.

In 1900 heavy storm surges had eroded or stripped grassed dunes, leaving behind exposed dense beachside scatters of Aboriginal artefacts.  These were written up by Etheridge and Whitelegge [1907].  A few years, in 1914, later Australia was hosting the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and a variety of excursions were offered to the delegates.  One took in Kurnell, on Sydney’s southern outskirts, for a visit to Captain Cook’s landing place, and a side trip to Quibray Bay, on the Botany Bay side of the Kurnell Peninsula.  At Quibray Bay one of these desne artefact scatters had been exposed.  Hargrave’s copy of the conference handbook is annotated on the page describing the tour.  He notes ‘quibra’ is Spanish for ‘crack’, as in Quibray is ‘the flint cracking place’.  Seemingly unaware of the Etheridge and Whitelegge paper, he may have otherwise wqondered why this place was so named, when they record the same storms having exposed Aboriginal artefact scatters on many beaches all along the coastal area of Sydney, and Quibray was perhaps one of the more modest.  Quiebra acloser meaning is to break or fail, rather than crack.

Hargrave didn’t speak Spanish, but did get assistance from Captain Bertram Chambers of the Royal Australian Navy.  Its not clear how good Chambers’s Spanish was, but he seems to have been a speaker of the language rather than a writer or reader.

This was just another example of how Hargrave’s obsession with the inherent truth of his belief clouded his judgement, allowing him to selectively pick at different facts, and twist them until they matched his belief.

References

Etheridge, Robert and Thomas Whitelegge 1907
‘Aboriginal workshops on the coast of New South Wales, and their contents’, Records of the Australian Museum, vol. 6 [4], pp. 233-250.  Available here.

Gojak, Denis 2012
‘Lawrence Hargrave’s Spanish Sydney’, Placenames Australia: the newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey, December 2012, pp. 3, 6-8.  Available here.

Kariong – when were the glyphs found?

‘When were the Kariong engravings produced?’ has been the focus of nearly all the discussion about this site.  Another question that asks something slightly different is ‘When were the glyphs found?’.  Although it is most important to determine their actual date, we also need to know the date at which the glyphs were first brought to public attention.  In 1983-4 a National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger apprehended a man at the site with a chisel, and freshly carved engravings was observed by a rock art conservation specialist.  If we take that as the date of confirmed public discovery, when everyone in the pro- and con- camps agrees that they existed,  how much further back can we push knowledge of them?  This can lead to a better appreciation of when they were made and the way that dating evidence can be interpreted.

Kariong hieroglyphs – press release

I’ve limited my mentions of the Kariong hieroglyphs to date, mainly because its a big topic and because there are lots of other places on the Internet you can go to to see both sides at work.  So far I’ve mainly posted on Kariong clips on Youtube here and most recently here.  There are plans for a comprehensive treatment, but work has got in the way, so while there is a lot in draft, very little has actually appeared on this site.

A few days ago I got contacted about the Kariong glyphs by a Newcastle, NSW, journalist.  The main advocate for the authenticity of the engravings – Hans Dieter von Senff – had issued a press release to a host of news agencies about the site and some new discoveries he had made there.  Iwas asked to comment, and gave a fairly general answer about my overall studies rather than the claim, since I had not seen the press release as yet.

I thought it might be useful, while the news is still ‘hot’ to call your attention to it.

The Ploughed Ground – 2

For the historical context to this story please go back to The Ploughed Ground – Part 1.

The Ploughed Ground – 2

In 2007 I had the opportunity to examine the Ploughed Ground with Dr Roy Lawrie, then a soil scientist with the NSW Department of Agriculture.  Roy has worked closely with many archaeologists and I’ve known him since the dig of the First Government House site in Sydney in 1983.  I had called Roy up to discuss another site I was planning to work on a bit further south, but as we chatted I thought I’d ask him whether he had any idea of what this plough marking may be and I described Mason’s and others’ descriptions of it.  Without any hesitation he suggested ‘linear gilgai’, an unusual but by no means rare phenomenon that is found around the world.

Linear gilgai is a version of the more general landform gilgai, which refers to any sort of repetitive ditch and mound formed naturally within soils.  The name itself comes from the Wiradjuri language, which ties it nicely into the centre of NSW, and has been adopted around the world.  Its modern known distribution  is from the Hunter Valley, but mainly from northern NSW and southeastern Queensland [Beckmann et al 1973].  There has been much speculation among soil scientists on the precise factors that generate gilgai, but a substantial depth of igneous-derived soil on slopes seems to be necessary.  Blackburn [1974] noted that the known distribution proposed by Beckmann had to be extended further south.  He had come across Wells’s [1848] description of the Ploughed Ground and recognised it as a linear gilgai.  He further noted some of the landscape descriptions by Howitt which were possibly of linear or mounded gilgai in northern Victoria.

The Ploughed Ground – 1

One of the earliest speculations about unrecorded voyages to Australia comes from the memoirs of Joseph Mason, a convict who served his sentence in NSW in the 1830s.  Mason’s handwritten memoirs remained almost unknown, but were finally edited and published in 1996 [Kent and Townsend 1996] and are an important source for Australian convict history as seen from the inside.

Mason was transported for participation in unrest arising from the social dislocations accompanying industrialisation in Britain.  Perhaps because of his status as a political prisoner he reveals himself to be a thoughtful chronicler whose memoirs are quite different from the normal convict fare.  He was assigned as a convict servant to Hannibal Macarthur at his Vineyard estate near Parramatta in 1831.  Macarthur also had another grazing estate called Arthursleigh on the banks of the Wollondilly, south of Sydney, which had been established before official settlement was permitted within this area [Fletcher 2002].

In a section of his memoirs where he speculates about previous history of Australia, and whether the Aboriginal people were its sole former occupants, Mason says:

There is two spots of ground one about 30 miles to the south of any residence and the other on the bank of the Hunters River which I was informed by creditable witnesses as well as having seen the same in a book bear marks as if it had once undergone the operation of ploughing. The first of these lies in the road leading to the south of the colony and is always called the ploughed grounds. The blacks have been asked if they know what occasioned these spots [of] land to Assume their present shape but their are quite ignorant as to the cause Had any of their ancestors been acquainted with husbandry there certainly would have been more extensive marks of it remaining than these two spots of ground nor is it likely that the present race or rather generation should have been so retrograded from the path of industry as to possess not a single grain of corn an agricultural impliment, or the slightest notion of cultivating land.  [Kent and Townsend 1996: pp. 121-2]

Kariong hieroglyphs – the movies – Part 2

The video clips showing Kariong just keep coming.  The first part of the this post gave 14 clips that collectively ran for more than an hour and a half.  In the year or so since then another bunch of clips have emerged.  Some of these follow the same format of shaky close-ups on the glyphs, which don’t really add much to what you have seen before, and can make you seasick after a while.  But there’s a lot more too!.  We get the site’s all too brief stardom when it featured in the Tony Robinson’s Australia series.  Among other highlights are footage of Val Barrow channelling her spirit guide Alcheringa on the site, and Paul White, who wrote the first articles about the site, presenting part of his dcumentary series from 1993.  All together its an interesting mix of scepticism through to wholehearted acceptance as genuine, and its even longer – totalling just under two hours.

As before I present these for your information and enjoyment.  If you come across any others, please drop me a line.  Until then, take the phone off the hook, uncork that shiraz and enjoy!

The ‘Spanish Proclamation’ – additional information

The blog entry on the engraving site that Lawrence Hargrave called ‘The Spanish Proclamation’ at Meriverie, on the northern headland of Bondi, provides a detailed discussion about its authenticity and likely history of creation.  Since it was posted in April 2011 I have come across some additional information about the engraving which adds more to what we can say about it.

Who told Hargrave about the engravings?

The earliest I had tied Hargrave back to the Meriverie engravings was his tracing of 12 March 1910, with a short note a month later jotting down his possibly first inspiration of the symbolic textual message it contained.  However, some further work at the National Library at the end of last year adds more to this story.

Hargrave received a letter from [illegible] Kirk of ‘The Ravine’, Ormond Street, Bondi, who had read of Hargrave’s claims in the Sydney Morning Herald in late July-early August 1909.  He or she wrote:

After having a look at the Woollahra Pt carvings as a result of your interesting description in the ‘Herald’, I walked across to Meriverie to refresh my memory in regard to the carvings there which I have not seen for some years & with which doubtless you are acquainted.  I venture to remind you that they have all the characteristics of those at W. Pt and there can be no doubt were the work of the same people, if not of the same individuals.  And if as you surmise they were the work of Spanish adventurers, then those I refer to prove that those gentry travelled at least as far afield as Meriverie & made some stay there.  As at W. Pt there are outlines of men and fish, and a similar track of oval markings.  Also there are the hulls of two ships but although of antique looking, high pooped built they are in better drawing and probably of later date.  They were there however at least 30 years ago & were weatherworn then.  I am inclined to think however that some of the glyptic vandals who in late years have been carving initials & dates over the drawings have been adding finishing touches to the ships, touches which I don’t remember as existing when I formerly saw them. [NLA MS 352 ? Kirk to LH 5.8.1909]

Clearly Kirk’s main reference was to the Aboriginal engravings, but their comments on possible additions to the ships is interesting.  They push the date of the ships back to before c.1880, which does not challenge the claim made by Peck that they were done by two employees of the Dredge Department in c.1870 [Peck 1929].  Ot is possible that the unfamiliar touches left by the ‘glyptic vandals’ refers to the additional letters.

On this basis we can assume that Hargrave was made aware of the Meriverie site by the letter from Mr or Ms Kirk in August 1909.  If he visited it soon afterwards Hargrave would have had some basis for accepting the idea that there was a common hand at work – the Aboriginal engravings are much more abundant than those at Woollahra Point but essentially in the same Sydney engraving style.  It was probably before Hargrave obtained a copy of Campbell’s monograph and therefore likely that he formulated the idea of all of the engravings representing the work of Lope de Vega’s men.  As with other theories, once he came up with something and fleshed it out to his own satisfaction he was incredibly reluctant to change his mind, regardless of the contrary evidence.

Arthur J. Vogan – forgotten archaeologist – 3

Return to Part 1 or Part 2 of Arthur J. Vogan’s story.

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

Part 3

And yet amongst all of this there were little gems of insight that shone with great intensity.  Reading his field notes, you soon realise that where he really wanted to be was among his beloved Pacific islands, rather than in the succession of bedsits and lodging houses on Sydney’s north shore, shouting at the other loud and uncooperative houseguests.  Even at the age of 75 when he was carrying plaster across the rickety scaffold at Yasawa he had a discernable vibrancy, of wanting to explore, discover and explain, which I think any archaeologist would respond to when they read it.  Amid the reams of newspaper copy and aborted scholarly writing the best, most empathic prose was a short piece he wrote on the fringe dwellers living in bush camps on Sydney’s outskirts.  In it he conveyed something of his own lack of fit – these hermits were driven there ‘not by hardship or poverty, that destroys the mind, but incompatibility’ [Vogan Papers: Box 18, 'The Muddlers' manuscript].

Another factor that softened my view of him was that Vogan was also an early advocate for the conservation of rock art.  He became a gadfly to Woy Woy Shire Council in particular, constantly lobbying them to preserve the rock engravings in their area, particularly the ‘rabbits’.  Although this never eventuated, some protection was ultimately given to the more accessible Bulgandry site nearby.

Arthur J. Vogan – forgotten archaeologist – 2

Go back to Part 1 of Arthur J. Vogan’s story.

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

Part 2

The Yasawa inscriptions fulfilled two critical needs for Vogan.  Firstly they were the field credential he had always craved, that could legitimise him as an archaeologist.  Almost everything he had written about until then had been someone else’s discovery.  Here now was a real archaeological site, in an exotic location that he had found [although see Footnote 5] and adventurously overcame difficulties to record the evidence.  Secondly, the Yasawa inscriptions provided a link he could argue existed between the literate civilisations of Asia, specifically the Shang, and the Pacific.  While the resemblance between the angular Yasawa motifs and Chinese pictograms is coincidental at best, it looks superficially plausible.  The relative dating of this push by Asian peoples into the Pacific at around 1500 B.C. gave Vogan a chronological anchor point to develop further his theoretical connections with early civilisations.  Another factor that appealed to Vogan about the inscriptions was their abstraction.  Since the 1910s some of his writings had explored various then fashionable by-ways of psychology, symbolism and gnosticism.  While he rejected all isms, and was happy to declare himself all but atheistic, he nonetheless maintained an attraction to the essential idea that human psyche could be understood by exploring the earliest languages, religions, writings and other archaeological evidence as symbols reflecting underlying human constants.  His writings, particularly the endless newspaper columns often reverted to talking about the links between early religious symbols around the globe.  Vogan’s theories were certainly not the only outlandish ones doing the rounds at the same time.  If anything they were more reflective of the late 19th century than the between-wars period, but this was no great progress.  His belief in symbolism was of it as a fundamental early human psychological trait, rather than an adopted cultural element.  In this and other matters he largely disagreed with the claims of the diffusionists such as Perry and Elliott Smith.

The inscriptions were Vogan’s final achievement and the subject of his ‘scholarly’ papers, one in the French language Le Courrier Australien [1936] and the other in the Journal of the Polynesian Society [1937], although some more popular columns in the Fiji Times and Pacific Islands Monthly also set out his findings.  Neither is particularly academic, being essentially narrative and rambling at that.  His correspondence shows Vogan was wracked with anxiety when writing them and waiting for their publication.  In contrast he continued to produce voluminous newspaper copy with relative ease.  Vogan used journalism skilfully as a tool of self-promotion.  He was often referred to in newspaper copy, which he certainly would have written beforehand, as ‘the well-known archaeologist’, ‘the pioneer Pacific explorer’ and so on.  Most of his newspaper articles on a broad range of subjects appeared in fairly obscure publications.  While they ostensibly dealt with archaeology or history in their titles they very soon drifted into the spiritual and esoteric.  He claimed to anyone that would listen that the Jewish conspiracy had black-balled him from all the major newspapers but what he wrote was dense, wordy, meandering rubbish most of the time.  His letters to the editor, however, were usually pretty snappy, if somewhat snippish in tone, while his personal correspondence tended to continually restate a few things that he saw as establishing his status and credibility, such as knowing Sir John Lubbock, later Lord Avebury [1870s as a teenager], working for the Illustrated London News [1880s-90s], being the writer of the only Australian-published book that had ever gone into a third edition [as the Black Police did at the beginning of the century], being in the first ever St Johns Ambulance class [as a youth in London] and so on.

Working through a lifetime’s paper, with the carbons of countless letters, dozens of small notebooks filled with copytext notes on Sumerian- Indian-Chinese-Aztec mythology, boxes of clipped or torn newspaper items, the repetitions quickly became apparent and very hard to face.  By the end of the third day I was fantasising what I would say to AJV if I saw him at the Library cafe.  I knew his secrets – the girlfriend who said no to marriage and made him seek out the New Guinea expedition so he could die heroically, upsetting Margaret Collingridge’s family with so much anti-Catholic hatred that her mother called in the lawyers, refusing to discount his belief in the truth of the Protocols of the Elders Of Zioneven when trusted friends told him it was a forgery, approving of Hitler well into the war.  All these were bullets I could use on this tedious man, who moaned that it was everyone else’s fault except his own that he got nothing done on his research.  Vogan’s anti-Semitic racism runs throughout his correspondence from about 1914 onwards, but reached a peak in the mid-1930s, when he ceases to identify Jews as the cause of his, and the wider world’s, pains, and begins to use it as an epithet for anyone he does not like.  Those who wrote to him because they thought he was an expert in Pacific history sometimes received letters back that had a paragraph about the topic and then an extended rant about why he was in no position to help them because a conspiracy of the Jewish controlled press had barred him from journalistic work in Australia or because he withstood the wholesale Americanisation of Australian-British culture.  Vogan thought Australians wilfully ignorant and often repeated the story that an editor had spiked one of his discovery stories because ‘Australians only want to read about things they can put a bet on’.  While some objected to his racist assertions, there were many who clearly thought on the same lines.  Along with racism as an easy crutch for his failings with his theory, the lack of academic recognition for his theory led Vogan to see professional archaeology in universities and museums as inherently opposed to ideas that challenged the status quo.  To gain their support you needed to belong to the right club, or follow the party line.  Seeking to engage and receive support from the recognised experts he quickly became intemperate, accusing them of various ethical shortcomings and severing contact.  As a result the few people with whom he remained civil were promoted as the most enlightened scholars imaginable, such as ‘probably the best authority in Australasia, Dr C.A. Monticone, the New South Wales Government hermeneutics expert’ [Vogan 1937: p. 101] who was in reality the head of the NSW Court translation service.  Many other examples of both condemnation and praise can be found in his papers.

Arthur J. Vogan – forgotten archaeologist – 1

The Mitchell Library, Sydney, holds the unprocessed collection of Arthur J. Vogan’s personal papers [28 boxes stuffed full of paper].  Vogan is one of the forgotten early archaeologists of Australia, probably the first one to call himself an archaeologist as their primary vocation.  He is now forgotten in large part because his theories were so comprehensively wrong.  Despite that, he has lots of interest for secret visitor theories.  As well as his own efforts to frame a theory for Australian and Pacific settlement, he was a friend of George Collingridge, an enemy of Lawrence Hargrave and corresponded with many people who had any interest in Australian archaeology at the time.  Vogan was also a man of complex beliefs – staunchly committed to Aboriginal causes at the same time as being a virulent anti-Semite, Hitler admirer and hater of the ‘smart’ women he increasingly encountered in the early 20th century.  I managed to get in some solid time in the Mitchell Library in Sydney a few months back.  His papers have allowed me to fill in a gap in our knowledge of Australia’s early history of archaeology.