The above is the wording of one of three plaques in the National Mutual Plaza, Collins Street, that complement the statues of John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, two of the key figures responsible for establishing the 'settlement' that became Melbourne.  Such memorials to white Australia are commonplace, heralding sites of historical and cultural 'significance' and commemorating explorers, soldiers, prominent figures and even bushrangers, inscribing the Australian landscape with history like a text, lest we forget. Memorials are just one contribution to that text.  Since Europeans arrived in Australia, they have seen, imagined, marked, mapped and named the landscape in ways that have validated their occupation of the land by denying the existence of any Aboriginal presence on it.  So powerful has been the effect of these practices on how we understand our place in the landscape, especially in areas of such 'complete development' as Melbourne, that to challenge their historicity may seem to defy common sense.  Previous public attempts to shift the historical status quo and recognize the existence in the landscape of an Aboriginal history have at times created "insecurity, paranoia, even hysteria"(1)  within sections of the white Australian community.  The potential for such reaction is implicit in the bottom two lines of the plaque transcribed above.  Indeed, such a dogmatic appeal to our historical recognition and understanding seems extreme to say the least, and is unnecessary for most monuments to white Australia.  The attention demanded by the monuments alone is usually enough to achieve this.  But it may be more expedient than it seems.  White Australia has been described at times as suffering from a "profound effect on the psyche" caused by constantly denying the existence of something we know to be actually there (2).   Is it possible, then, that the last two lines on the plaque are born out of a psychological blind spot that manifests in a continual need for white Australia to validate to ourselves our occupation of this land, and "PRESERVE IT", urgently, "HERE NOW"?

The existence of memorials in our landscape must be seen in an historical context.  The land that now houses the city of Melbourne, like any other in Australia, has a history of European textualisation, a process of both imagination and omission, that was vital to the colonisation process, and continues to influence the way we understand the urban spaces we move in today.  While monuments represent a contemporary form of European textualisation on the landscape, cartography provides us with tangible records of how landscape was imagined in order to validate early European occupation, development and pastoral expansion.  The vital role that cartography played in colonisation can be understood by reading maps as "a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon a particular set of social relations."(3)   The production of maps and what they show (and omit) cannot be separated from their social and cultural "constructedness".(4)  Through the process of mapping, early European explorers were able to create an image on paper of the Australian landscape as a tabula rasa that directly translated into a conceptualisation of the land itself as a terra nullius.  With a few deft pen strokes, Aboriginal people were physically and culturally erased from the landscape, and hence from history, legitimating the silent and violent process of colonisation.  This erasure still exists in the way landscape is marked today.

Alongside the entrance to the car park of the Queen Victoria Markets is another of Melbourne's memorials to John Batman.  This cenotaph, erected in1881, stands a good three metres in height.  The inscription on the head stone credits Batman with "founding" a "settlement" "on the site of Melbourne then unoccupied".  In 1992, the Melbourne City Council attached an unobtrusive plaque ­ maybe twenty centimetres wide ­ to the monument below the rest of the text.  This plaque informs us that

    When the monument was erected in 1881 the colony considered that the Aboriginal people did not
    occupy the land.  It is now clear that prior to the colonisation of Victoria, the land was inhabited
    and used by Aboriginal people.

This fine print does little to fill the historical void that monuments like the Batman memorial create.  No mention is made of the numerous important interactions that Batman had with Aboriginal people during his expedition, or of the Aboriginal knowledge and labour that assisted Batman's ends.  In attempting to address the inaccuracy of the original monument, the new 'politically correct' plaque actually confines Aboriginal people to a timeless pre-history that existed "prior to the colonisation of Victoria".  The very moment of colonisation, identified by the monument as the instant Batman "entered Port Phillip Heads", is magically transformed into a "nodal point" that segregates the land's history into two eras(5): Aboriginal 'Victoria', and Victoria since "29th May 1835".  But Batman's party, including five(6) Aboriginal men that he affectionately refers to as "my Sydney natives", did not find the land they traversed miraculously vacated to provide a clean slate for the writing of the new, European history.  The erasure of Aboriginal people from the landscape would involve some imagination and a degree of work on behalf of the new arrivals.
 

Following Mr Batman's track.

    I intend going ashore to-morrow morning to the camp of natives, and, if possible, shall establish a
    friendly intercourse with them, in order to effect a treaty for the purchase of a large portion of
    their fertile and hitherto useless territory.(7)

The intentions of John Batman and his party when they entered Port Phillip on May 29, 1835, are well known.  On behalf of the Port Phillip Association, a representative body of "substantial squatters and businessmen from Van Dieman's Land"(8), their aim was "that of secretly ascertaining the general character and capabilities of Port Phillip, as a grazing and agricultural district."(9)  Batman intended to 'purchase' a tract of land for such purposes from the Aborigines, which he allegedly did on June 6, 1835.  Important to Batman's claim on the land were two documents: a treaty 'signed'  by the Aboriginal chiefs and outlining the conditions of the transaction; and a map drawn by surveyor John Helder Wedge "immediately after Batman's return to Launceston"(10), showing the boundaries of the purchased tract of land (Appendix 1).  The map, apart from identifying the "part of the country … called Geelong by the Natives"(11), provides no record of a landscape owned or used by Aboriginal people.  This exclusion could not have been a product of ignorance.  The treaty itself, although of dubious authenticity, is evidence of Batman's awareness and recognition of Aboriginal ownership of land.  But such an acknowledgment appears to strike a chord of dissonance with Batman's ambitions for "a country capable of supporting a future nation".  Such was the "prophecy" that "futurity must develop"(12), and that an acknowledgment of an already existent nation would necessarily retard.

On arriving in Port Phillip, Batman made numerous overland sorties "for the purpose of taking … inspection of the country"(13) and "of carrying out our object with the aborigines"(14).  The paths he claims to have taken are clearly marked on Batman's map and labelled, complete with directional arrows, as "Mr Batman's track".  It is one of the most dominant features on the map, along with the boundaries of the 'purchased' tract of land, the north and east of which we are told correspond directly with Mr Batman's track.  The only other feature of the map that isn't part of the natural landscape is the square of land marked off to the east of what is now the Maribyrnong River, and dissected by the Yarra River.  South of the Yarra is land "Reserved for a Township and other Public purposes", while to the north is "Extensive Marsh reserved for a Public Common".

Omitted from the map are the "tracks of the natives" which Batman's party regularly followed(15), numerous "village[s] of huts or gunyahs" which they came across(16), and even more significantly, the site where the "most extraordinary sale and purchase took place by the side of a lovely stream of water, from whence my land commenced"(17).  Although not shown on the map, Batman did record the site of his 'transaction' on the actual landscape, by marking a tree "in four different ways, to define the corner boundaries"(18).  Only days before making the purchase, Batman had found on two occasions trees that had been marked in a similar fashion by Aboriginal people(19).  The morning after the treaty had been 'signed', Batman, "through the interpretation of my Sydney natives", also requested one of the Aboriginal 'chiefs' "to give the imprint of his mark.  After a few minutes' hesitation, he took a tomahawk and did as he was desired on the bark of a tree"(20).  Through appropriating an Aboriginal technique of marking the landscape, Batman believed he could legitimate his newly acquired 'ownership' of the land that he later mapped as socially and culturally empty.
 

To the eyes of the sheep farmer

Little did Batman realise that according to Aboriginal custom, "the tribes were merely custodians of the land and could not sell it"(21), making his treaty meaningless to the Aboriginal 'chiefs' who allegedly signed it.  While it is fair to expect that he may not have been aware of this aspect of Aboriginal law, we can see from the way Batman 'read' the landscape he traversed, how he could have imagined such a transaction to be feasible.

Batman observed numerous examples of not only how Aborigines used the land, but also controlled the landscape to their advantage.  While exploring the area surrounding "Geelong" and "Gellibrand" harbours, Batman comes across a creek, which he claims to have been dammed "by the natives for the purpose of catching fish during the summer months".  He describes the dams as being "excellently contrived" and claims to have "found at least a dozen of these dams or wears in different parts of the creek"(22).  A few days later, in which time Batman had reached, and named, "Gumm's corner", he recorded the following account of the landscape he had passed through:

    The whole of the land was of excellent warm hill and valley, with grass three feet high in places
    where it had not been burnt by the natives.  Where it had been burned by these people, the young
    blades are from ten to twelve inches high, affording fine feed for the kangaroos and other
    animals.(23)

Only days earlier, referring to a "vista" of land possibly similarly effected by burning, Batman claims: "It's general character presents that of cultivated pasture for centuries past"(24).  It would appear, however, that he was not able to believe his own eyes.

Batman's map "fail[s] to reflect the land"(25) by making no reference to these signs of indigenous use and occupation.  Instead, the landscape is mapped according to its quality and potential "for stock or tillage"(26), categorised according to water availability, soil quality, vegetation and undulation.  Thousands of years of Aboriginal land use and culture, encountered by the explorers, is effaced on the map by privileging the imagination and anticipation of traditional European methods of land use over the physically existent indigenous techniques.  By showing the land around Port Phillip as a "socially empty space"(27), Batman's map reflects, and hence serves the Port Phillip Association's pecuniary and pastoral interests(28).  Batman's motivations for exploring the Port Phillip district made it conceptually impossible for him to see the land as being meaningfully used by Aboriginal people, despite his numerous observations to the contrary.  His newly acquired tract of land was an area consisting of "softly undulating hills and plains, with … the richest grass and verdure, so delightful to the eyes of the sheep farmer"(29), no more, no less.

It was this "socially empty" land that Batman believed he had purchased by the signing of his treaty.  In exchange for the land, "about 600,000 acres, more or less", Batman parted with "blankets, knives, looking-glasses, tomahawks, beads, scissors, flour, &c., and I also further agreed to pay them a tribute or rent yearly"(30).  This "rent", which we can only assume was never payed(31), was to consist of amounts of similar items to those exchanged that day.  Only through his belief that the land was not being used by Aboriginal people could Batman have imagined the feasibility of this transaction.  If he had been able to conceptually link the evidence of land use that he had observed with not only a peoples' necessary means of subsistence but also a thriving culture, he may have been slightly surprised that the Aborigines "seemed much pleased at their share in the transaction"(32).  Such a reaction from the "principal chiefs" suggests that the exchange that took place on June 6, 1835 was one of mutual misunderstanding.
 

Upon receipt of these presents

On two occasions previous to the 'signing' of Batman's treaty, Batman had undertaken exchanges with Aboriginal people encountered in his exploration.  The first of these was with a large group of Aboriginal women and children.  After a "friendly footing" was established with the help of his "Sydney natives", Batman distributed amongst the women "8 pairs of blankets, 30 handkerchiefs, 1 tomahawk, 18 necklaces of beads, 6 pounds of sugar, 12 looking glasses, and a quantity of apples".  In exchange:

    The young woman, of whom I have written, gave me a very handsome basket, of her own making: some of
    the other women also presented me with two baskets and several spears; all of which I took on
    board.(33)

The second transaction took place early on the day that the treaty was 'signed'.  Batman's party, guided by "the smoke of whose fires we had seen yesterday", came across a small group of Aborigines, "consisting of one chief, his wife, and three children".  Again Batman distributed gifts:

    To this distinguished royal chieftain of the prairies I gave one pair of blankets, handkerchiefs,
    beads, and three pocket knives; upon the receipt of these presents he undertook the part of
    guide.(34)

Batman's new escort led him to the "chiefs" of the tribe whose marks allegedly appear on the treaty.  The day after the treaty was 'signed', and so by Batman's reckoning "after the purchase and payment" had occurred, two of the chiefs approached Batman, "begging [his] acceptance" of "their royal mantles".  These "princely vestments", placed around the neck and shoulders of Batman(35), may have borne more significance than he was able to conceive.  In keeping with the pattern established by Batman's previous encounters, the chiefs, unable to sell their land, had chosen to satisfy their half of an equitable exchange with these items, rather than being the recipients of unrequited gifts.
 

Like "baseless fabric"(36)

Four days later Batman had crossed Bass Strait and was back in Launceston, where, upon the immediate preparation of his map with the assistance of Wedge, he was finally able to possess, in hand, his newly acquired territory.  On the map we see that the land perceived by Batman as socially empty, a "blank sheet" with "no previous history"(37), had already begun to be filled through the process of naming.  Hardly inconspicuous are the mountains shown on the map, many of which Batman only saw from a distance, and which fall beyond the boundaries of his tract of land.  Mounts Bannister, Wedge, Sams, Robinson, Sinclair, Connolly, Bourke and Swanston, which span from the west to the north of Mr Batman's track, appear to be scattered like islands on an otherwise empty sea of land.  Much closer to Batman's track we see Mounts Collicott, Vilumanata, and Cotterell, Wedge's Range and Gellibrand Harbour.  Of all these designated geographical features, only two, Mounts Bourke and Vilumanata, were not named after members of the Port Phillip Association(38).  By the (re-)naming of spaces, Batman is able to name the history of the area, and also to create it.  These namings, most of which, if not all, occurred prior to Batman's 'transaction' with the local Aborigines, serve to legitimate the Port Phillip Association's claims to the land and portend their future occupation of it.  The act of "attaching names to landscapes legitimizes the ownership of the culturally dominant group that", quite literally in this instance, "'owns' the names"(39).

As it turns out, the Sydney government deemed in August 1836 that Batman's treaty was legally invalid on the basis that the Aborigines had not settled the land, so had no title to it.  The land immediately came under the jurisdiction of the Crown, hence the Port Phillip Association's claim to it was defunct.  The association eventually received seven thousand pounds compensation for "the expenses incurred … in the original formation of the settlement"(40).  The people of the Kulin Aboriginal nation, to this date, have received nothing.  There is some cruel irony, given Australia's recent "Native Title" history, in knowing that John Batman spent the last years of his life effectively fighting a land claim against the British and colonial Governments.  He died of syphilis on May 5, 1839(41).  The names of the members of the Port Phillip Association that Batman wrote onto the landscape have since been largely erased.
 

On the land or of the land

    A blank sheet, of course, intimates that there has been no previous history, but also constructs the
    future as a place/time for writing.(42)

The prevalence on our city landscape of monuments to early European pioneers, of which the Batman and Fawkner statues and the Batman memorial at the Queen Victoria Markets are just a few, can be seen as a physical manifestation of the "future" that such pioneers inscribed on the Australian landscape all those years ago.  It follows then, that these monuments play a vital role in perpetuating the inability of most Australians "to recognise the histories and attachment to land of Indigenous people"(43).  But in 1999, as in 1835, our landscape still bears marks of an Aboriginal presence and history.

Protruding out of the footpath in front of the National Mutual Plaza where the statues of Batman and Fawkner stand today are two wooden poles decorated with paintings of bones, red ribbons and traditional Aboriginal patterns.  Harder to see are the faint Aboriginal faces peering out of areas of black

background.  The poles recognise the displacement and 'civilising' attempts that Aboriginal people were experiencing "at the time that Batman and Fawkner were establishing themselves on the land that is now known as Melbourne"(44).  In more ways than one, the poles require a higher degree of effort in an interpretation of them as historical monuments than do the Batman and Fawkner statues nearby.  The command on the plaque to pay homage to the heritage of "OUR GARDEN STATE"(emphasis added) makes no attempt to 'invite' you to consider the poles, in what they represent, as being part of "YOUR" heritage.  While the poles are obviously designed to provide an iconographic dialogue between two versions of history, it is left up to us ­ white Australians ­ to make the connection and marry their presence with that of the other statues.  If this were not the case, then what would be the point?  In the eyes of many, they may simply be an unwelcome intrusion on the otherwise "relaxed and comfortable" landscape.
 

notes

(1) Tony Birch, "'Nothing Has Changed': The Making and Unmaking of Koori Culture", Meanjin, Vol.5, No.2, Winter 1992, p.234.  See also Tony Birch, "'A Land So Inviting and Still Without Inhabitants'.  Erasing Koori culture from (post-) colonial landscapes", in Kate Darian-Smith, Liz Gunner and Sarah Nuttall (eds), Text, Theory, Space, Land, Literature and History in South Africa and Australia, (Routledge, London and New York, 1996), pp.173-188, and Steve Mickler, "The Battle for Goonininup", Arena, 96, 1991, pp.69-75.
(2) San Roque, as quoted in Kathleen Mary Fallon, "A Close Look at Cloudstreet", Australian Book Review, October, 1999, p.27.
(3) J. B. Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power", in D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Landscape, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988), p.278.
(4) I borrowed this term from Simon Ryan, "Maps and their Cultural Constructedness", in The Cartographic Eye: How explorers saw Australia, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1997), pp.101-127.
(5) Chilla Bulbeck, "Aborigines, Memorials and the History of the Frontier", in J. Rickard and P. Spearritt
(eds), Packaging the Past ­ Public Histories, (Melbourne University Press, 1991), p.172.
(6) "and of natives five, Pigeon, Joe the marine, Bunjit, Bullet, and Old Bull", John Batman, The Settlement at Port Phillip 1835, (his journal from May 10 to June 11), June 9, p.53.
(7) Ibid., May 30, p.29.
(8) Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The City's History and Development, (the City of Melbourne, second edition, 1995), p.16.
(9) John Batman, May 10, p.7.
(10) J. S. Duncan, "The Port Phillip Association Maps", The Globe, No.32, 1989, p.39.
(11) John Helder Wedge, (map), Dutigalla, a Tract of Country ceded by the Native Chiefs of Southern Australia to John Batman 6th June 1835, commonly referred to as "the Batman map".
(12) John Batman, May 30, p.28.
(13) Ibid., May 30, p.27.
(14) Ibid., May 31, p.29.
(15) Ibid., May 29, p.25., May 31, p.30., and June 6, p.44.
(16) Ibid., May 29, pp.25-26., May 31, pp.29-30., June 1, p.37., and June 6, p.45.
(17) Ibid., June 6, p.46.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid., May 29, p.26, and June 4, p.41.
(20) Ibid., June 7, p.48.
(21) 'Another View' Walking Trail, brochure, (an initiative of the City of Melbourne), actual author of the passage is unknown, although thanks is given in the brochure "to Gary Presland, Jason Briggs, Professor Allan Shaw and Dr Chris McConville for their assistance with the text."
(22) John Batman, June 1, p.34.
(23) Ibid., June 4, p.41.
(24) Ibid, May 30, p.28.
(25) Simon Ryan, "Maps and their Cultural Constructedness", p.124.
(26) John Batman, June 6, p.46.
(27) J. B. Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power", p.303.
(28) Simon Ryan, "Maps and their Cultural Constructedness:, p.124.
(29) John Batman, May 29, p.25.
(30) Ibid., June 6, p.46.
(31) Just over a year after the signing of the treaty, the colonial Government, "holding that the land was not occupied by a settled people and was therefore terra nullius", passed an Act that "repudiated any purported treaties with the natives, such as that of Batman".  While this removed Batman's legal claim over the land and made it "a specific offence for any person to build a tent or hut or building on [the now] Crown lands", Governor Bourke accepted as a fait accompli the European occupation of the area and "sent down Captain William Lonsdale to act as police magistrate and commandant of the settlement".  This decision, in keeping with the general basis of Australia's colonisation, extinguished any Aboriginal rights to the land.  As a result, their rent was never payed.  Taken from Another View; Miles Lewis, Melbourne, pp.18-19, and J. S. Duncan, "The Port Phillip Association Maps", p.39.
(32) John Batman, June 7, p.47.
(33) Ibid., May 31, p.32.
(34) Ibid., June 6, p.44.
(35) Ibid., June 7, pp.47-48.
(36) Ibid., May 22, p. 18.  While crossing Bass Strait to Port Phillip, Batman describes a particularly portentous dream in the following terms: "An hour before midnight I turned in, and was soon in the "arms of Morpheus," dreaming softly and pleasantly of newly acquired territories in Port Phillip.  When we awoke, our fabulously-acquired wealth vanished like the "baseless fabric" which  Shakespeare represents as its peculiar character."
(37) Simon Ryan, "Maps and their Cultural Constructedness", p.125.
(38) A list of all the members of the Port Phillip Association can be found in Trespassers and Intruders: The Port Phillip Association and the Founding of Melbourne, Library Council of Victoria, 1982.
(39) Tony Birch, "Nothing Has Changed", p.234.
(40) Australian Geographic Society, The Australian Encyclopedia, vol. 6, p.2471.
(41) Miles Lewis, Melbourne, pp.18-19.
(42) Simon Ryan, "Maps and their Cultural Constructedness", p.125.
(43) Tony Birch, "Come see the Giant Koala", Meanjin, 3, 1999, p.63.
(44) 'Another View', "The traditional Aboriginal pattern work on the poles represents all the Aboriginal tribes.  The bones symbolise the effect of colonisation on the Aboriginal people and the ribbons the blood lines of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people."