Spear, King George’s Sound, Albany c.1821 British Museum Oc.961

This is one of a group of spears collected together which are the earliest ones known to survive in museum collections from Western Australia. It is made of spearwood mallee (Eucalyptus doratoyxlon). It has been finely crafted from one piece of wood. At one end of the shaft, a small wooden peg designed to hook into the end of a spear-thrower is attached with resin. Noongar Menang people used such spears for hunting game.

The spear was one of a group of Aboriginal artefacts that formed part of the extensive collections of George Annesley, Earl Mountnorris (1770-1844) of Arley Castle, Staffordshire. His collections included books, natural history, antiquities and objects made by diverse living peoples across the world. When his collection was auctioned in 1852, eight  years after his death, the sale took eleven days. Some of the objects were brought by Quaker Henry Christy (1810-1865) whose large collection was given to the British Museum. This spear was among those items in the Christy Collection. Mountnorris’s collection included Aboriginal objects from Port Jackson as well as King George Sound. As he never travelled to Australia, how were they obtained?

Mountnorris had a very extensive network of collectors. He even sent his gardener John Edgerley (1814-1849) to New Zealand to collect plants on his behalf. Mountnorris was the godfather to Frederick Bedwell (1796-1853), a midshipman on the voyages of Phillip Parker King. He is much less known than John Septimus Roe, another midshipman on those voyages who later resided in Western Australia and worked as government surveyor. Accounts from King’s voyages reveal that Bedwell was an active collector on those voyages. After returning to England with King, Bedwell migrated to Australia in 1827 and settled at Paterson in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.

When King’s ship anchored in King George Sound in 1821, there was a lively trade in buying objects from Menang on shore. The demand was so great that Menang people quickly made new items to exchange for desired goods on the ship. Some types of objects such as spear-throwers were more time consuming to make and they were thus harder for outside collectors to acquire.

Although the precise dates that Bedwell sent objects to Mountnorris are not recorded, the early date of this object is indicated by the words written in black in on its shaft ‘King George III Sound New Holland’. The name ‘New Holland’ ceased being the formal name for Australia used by the Admiralty after 1824 thus lending weight to the association of this spear being part of Bedwell’s collecting activities. A letter in the Linnean Society from Mountnorris dated 1821 notes he has a protégé collecting for him in Australia.  

There were no museums established in Australia before the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1827, hence it is not surprising that many of the earliest surviving items found in collections are in museums in England and in Europe. The link between Arley Castle, Mountnorris and Bedwell was only identified by research in the British Museum collections in about 2015, the task made easier by the increasing digitisation of archives in both countries.

The importance of these early Menang objects associated with Arley Castle was made clear in 2016 when following a request of the Albany Aboriginal Heritage Reference Group, and with the support of the British Museum and Western Australian Museum, a loan of fourteen historic items was made to the Albany branch of the Western Australian Museum. Co-curated by Menang curators, the exhibition was titled Yurlmun. Mokare Mia Boodja (Returning to Mokare's Home Country) was displayed in late 2016 until early 2017. The importance of returning these objects to country was signalled by the exhibition text which read:

For the first time since they were taken from country in the 1800s, thirteen Menang Noongar objects have come home. These objects connect us with our Ancestors. They are a significant reminder of the skills and knowledge of our old people. They reinforce our place in this country and remind us of the knowledge that we still carry.