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    Frank - Last Survivor of Ballarat Tribe, 1896, courtesy of Sovereign Hill Gold Museum.

Image

Title
Frank - Last Survivor of Ballarat Tribe
Description

The caption on this stark painting on scrap board reads ‘Frank – Last Survivor of Ballarat Tribe. Died 22 – 09 - 1896.’ Notably, the day after Frank’s death, another Watha Wurrung (or Wathaurong) man, William Wilson or ‘King Billy’, died at Ballarat Base Hospital having also been considered ‘the last of the Ballarat tribe’. In any case the portrait reflects a trend in the late nineteenth century towards capturing images of Indigenous Australians as souvenirs of a race that was thought to be on the verge of inevitable extinction.

Three years after Frank’s death, anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen wrote

the time in which it will be possible to investigate the Australian native tribes is rapidly drawing to a close, and though we know more of them than we do the lost Tasmanians, yet our knowledge is very incomplete, and unless some special effort is made, many tribes will practically die out without our gaining any knowledge of the details of their organisation or of their sacred customs and beliefs.

For the Wathaurong people, the gold rushes brought displacement and exposure to the devastating effects of introduced diseases. While some Indigenous peoples found pastoral employment or relocated to protectorate stations, others survived on the outskirts of Ballarat, trading with miners and settlers.

Date
1896
Physical description

Coloured painting of an Indigenous man on wood. Caption Reads: ‘Frank - Last survivor of Ballarat Tribe. Died 22 -09 -1896.’ 27.5cm x 19.8cm

Control
Collection Number: 403.79
Archival Source
Ballarat Historical Society Photograph Collection; Sovereign Hill Gold Museum. Details
Published Source
Batty, Philip, Lindy Allen and John Morton (eds), The photographs of Baldwin Spencer, The Miegunyah Press in Association with Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 2005. Details
Source
Jane Lydon, Eye contact: photographing Indigenous Australians London: Duke University Press, 2005.
Rights
Courtesy Sovereign Hill Gold Museum

Versions

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    Type
    Artwork

Concepts

Prepared by: Ben Mountford