Eliza Tree

From Invasion to Recognition.

Revisiting Indigenous Cultural Landscapes, before the gold rush.

Exploration & Invasion to Goldrush.

1835 – 1851.

Paintings, Maps & Text.

And New Audio Visual !

 

Exhibition : 10 – 18 March. 12 – 5 pm.

Launch Sat 10^th March. 6 – 7 pm.

Loft Gallery. 22 Exhibit.

22 Hargraves St Castlemaine.

 

In 1835 John Batman established an illegal settlement in Port Phillip Bay.

In 1836, Major T L Mitchell’s Expedition journeyed through Dja Dja Wurrung Country, the Castlemaine region  – describing it as the “Australia Felix”

-the happy & abundant Australia.

 

Home of the Dja Dja Wurrung Peoples, for many millennia,

Living rich Cultural and Spiritual lives,

in abundant cultural, cultivated and created Landscapes.

Within a diverse & extraordinary bio region.

 

It’s time to revisit this forgotten Chapter.

 

Exploration, Invasion, Land rush to Gold rush. 1836 – 1851.

 

It’s time to broaden the grand narrative of the colonial gold rushes,

to reveal Indigenous Cultural landscapes, enjoying a temperate climate within a well watered and abundant geological & ecological region;

Land Grab and Pastoral Invasion of an unprecedented scale; Dispossession & dislocation of Indigenous Peoples;

Before the wild and heroic Victorian Gold Rush(s).