A storyteller finding her way in Queensland (RADF)
Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) is a partnership between the Queensland Government and Moreton Bay Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.
Thank you for allowing a newcomer to start finding her way to the stories of Moreton Bay. When I arrived I discovered I actually lived in the Moreton Bay area, rather than Brisbane, which meant I was eligible for assistance from this fund. I was a successful with a grant application for concept development of a project.
One song then started ringing through my head, It is an old folk song called Moreton Bay, here is a link to Bernard Fanning singing it (from the Ned Kelly Movie)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqr9jfaQJ5E
Here is the text
Moreton Bay
One Sunday morning as I went walking
By Brisbane waters I chanced to stray
I heard a convict his fate bewailing
As on the sunny river bank I lay
I am a native from Erin's island
But banished now from my native shore
They stole me from my aged parents
And from the maiden I do adore
I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie
At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains
At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie
At all these settlements I've been in chains
But of all places of condemnation
And penal stations in New South Wales
To Moreton Bay I have found no equal
Excessive tyranny each day prevails
For three long years I was beastly treated
And heavy irons on my legs I wore
My back from flogging was lacerated
And oft times painted with my crimson gore
And many a man from downright starvation
Lies mouldering now underneath the clay
And Captain Logan he had us mangled
All at the triangles of Moreton Bay
Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews
We were oppressed under Logan's yoke
Till a native black lying there in ambush
Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke
My fellow prisoners be exhilarated
That all such monsters such a death may find
And when from bondage we are liberated
Our former sufferings will fade from mind
Grim stuff indeed.
Then I wondered who Moreton Bay was named after. I started to delve.
Captain James Cook named "Morton Bay" after the Scottish Earl of Morton on the 17th May 1770, it was later misspelled as 'Moreton Bay' in translations from his journals
James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton,(1702 – 12 October 1768) was a Scottish astronomer and representative peer who was president of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh from its foundation in 1737 until his death. He also became president of the Royal Society, and was a distinguished patron of science, and particularly of astronomy.
Lord Morton had been influential in obtaining a grant of £4,000 to finance the voyage. Cook had been instructed by the earl to regard the native populations of the places he might visit as "human creatures... "No European nation has the right to occupy any part of their country ... without their voluntary consent."
Cook had to be instructed that they were to treated as humans and white fellas had no right to occupy inhabitants country
This naming seemed so incongruous and had me off immediately searching for the first nations people of the region. Below was photographed at the Redcliffe Museum.
SO AS A NEWCOMCOMER I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE
GUBBI GUBBI / KABI KABI
TURRUBAL
YAGGARA / YAGGARPUL
PEOPLE.
So much to learn