AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL –

Thirty-two years a wanderer amongst the Aborigines of the then unexplored country round Port Phillip, now the province of Victoria…

Account of escaped convict William Buckley’s thirty two years living in the Victorian bush; adoption by, and life among, Aboriginal tribe; descriptions of Aboriginal people, and their lives, customs, ceremonies, beliefs, culture, hunting, fishing and food gathering; technology, and inter-tribal relationships; descriptions of unexplored country.

At 2.00 PM on Sunday, 6 July 1835, a giant of aman shambled into the camp left by John Batman at Indented Head near Geelong… he was six foot five and seven-eighths inches tall (198 cm) in his bare feet. Though clearly a European, and “well proportioned… with an erect military gait” the visitor spoke not a word of English. Instead, he pointed to a tattoo on his arm, which bore the initials WB alongside crudely executed figures of the sun, moon and a possum-like creature. Then, when he was given a slice from a loaf, the word “bread” broke suddenly–almost involuntarily–from his lips. “Over the following weeks… fragments of this stranger’s history were revealed. His name, he said, was William Buckley, and he had been living with the Aborigines for so long he had lost track of time… What he told of his life in the wilds of Victoria so amazed those who heard him that he soon became celebrated as ‘the wild white man’. He was, according to his contemporary and biographer Jame Bonwick, one of the most ‘wonderful characters’ that Australian history has ever produced.”

• First published as The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Archibald MacDougall, Hobart.

• • xlvi, 200 p. : ill., map, port. ; 20 cm. (name on prelim.)
  • Out of print and now quite SCARCE.

• Bibliography: p. xlv-xlvi.
• #240126

• First Nations (AIATSIS) Subject:

  • Daily life
  • Feuds and warfare
  • Hunting, gathering and fishing
  • Technology
  • Cannibalism
  • Weapons
  • Death – Mortuary customs
  • Food – Preparation – Cooking
  • Wathawurrung / Wada wurrung / Wathaurong people (S29) (Vic SJ54-12)
  • Geelong / Bellarine Peninsula (Vic SJ55-09)
  • Victoria (Vic)

  Subject:

  • Buckley, William, 1780-1856
  • Explorers — Biography
  • Aboriginal Australians — Victoria — History
  • Aboriginal Australians — Social life and customs