The images above represent some ways Aborigines were represented by the first white settlers and later nineteenth-century non-indigenous artists (click to enlarge).

1.      A Phillip, ‘A Hut in New South Wales’ (1790)

2.      J Hunter, ‘Family in New South Wales’ (1793)

3.      J L Stokes, ‘Messrs. Fitzmaurice and Keys dancing for their lives’ (1846) 

4.      P E Warburton, ‘Facing the Enemy’ (1875)

Images 1 and 2 construct identifiable family groups of the indigenous people (father, mother, son and daughter?). The artist portrays peaceful scenes, the white man absent except as viewer. The Europeanized profiles of the Aborigines reflect the European artist’s struggle to capture identifiably Aboriginal features.

By contrast, the later drawings construct the indigenous tribes as warlike adversaries of the white settlers. In Image 3, the Aborigines have the advantages of number, height and weapons. In Image 4, the sole white man is foregrounded: his white clothing stands out against the dark tones of the tribe and the landscape; his gaze is focused, pointing steadily in the same line as his gun.

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What were the Aborigines’ views of the people who came to their land?

• For an indigenous writer’s view of how early settler’s perspectives skewed what they saw, check out this short video clip of Aboriginal song-writer Kevin Carmody looking at an early settler representation of the Australian landscape: click here.
  
  
• To see more images showing ways indigenous peoples were represented by early settlers click here.
  
  
• To get an impression on what is was like for indigenous people to first see Europeans, watch this clip about the experience of Western Australian aborigines in the1960s: click here. For a book about first contact, see here.

On to This Southern Land of Ours