French exploration voyages to Western Australia

BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW

Christine: Have you got shells around your place? Seashells can transport you back to where you found them; wandering along the beach somewhere in the world where it’s not so chilly perhaps and shells are the theme of the conversation on History Repeated.

Fountain of historical knowledge; Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library is back in the studio.

Hello Kate.

Dr Kate Gregory: Hi Christine.

Christine: And I have a special guest. Dr Shino Konishi, Historian from the University of WA and the Australian Catholic University. She is also a Yawuru woman from WA’s Kimberley.

Hello Shino.

Dr Shino Konishi: Hi Christine.

Christine: Thank you so much for coming in. And Freycinet. Is that how we say it?

KG: That’s how we say it.

Christine: Awwww what a relief. Good.

Tell us about this amazing collection. What does it include and how was it gathered Kate?

Kate: Yes, absolutely. So, I was talking to Shino earlier and I like to think of this collection as our own little slice of enlightenment history here in WA.

Christine: Enlightenment history? Enlighten me.

KG: Yes, ok I’ll try and enlighten you.

Christine: [Laughs]

KG: So this is...these are...this item that we’re talking about today...it’s a watercolour and ink drawing from the Freycinet Collection dating from 1820 and it really is a product. It’s a product of the age of enlightenment and we have this wonderful collection; the Freycinet Collection at the State Library. There is from Freycinet’s expeditions to the Western Australian coast in the early nineteenth century. There were two expeditions: one led by Baudin in 1801 to 1803 or thereabouts. He was the Captain Baudin. Freycinet was on that voyage and Baudin died on the way…on the return voyage, and Freycinet more or less sort of took over the reporting of, the scientific reporting for that voyage and actually published the final account. He was really important, therefore in the shaping of all of the French knowledge and the world knowledge ultimately about that expedition.

Christine: [Astonishment] Wow.

KG: And then there was another expedition that Freycinet himself led as a naval officer in 1818 with the ship the Uranie and that is something that some people, some of our listeners may have heard the story of Rose de Freycinet. Actually, Louis’ wife, Louis Freycinet’s wife who actually disguised herself as a man and accompanied...it’s an amazing story... accompanied Louis, her husband for this voyage and so we have the Freycinet Collection - 1818 items. There’s some charts and maps and drawings, some watercolours and as I’ve said, it’s a slice of the age of enlightenment.

Christine: Yeah, I’ve put one of these images up on Twitter at @steenslaytonatr and [laughs] look I wasn’t sure what it was so I did say “Feeling sluggish?” or staleish and it’s neither. It’s a mollusc isn’t it? Yep, you told me that during the song...so I’m glad [laughs].

KG: I have to confess to not being an expert on ...[Laughs]

Christine: [Laughs] And thankfully we’ve got Shino with us.

So tell us about these expeditions firstly. Where did they go? Maybe we should cover that off.

SK: So yes, the Baudin expedition, that was originally planned to be a voyage around the world and it...they started to include more and more scientific crew and it came to be France’s most expensive expedition ever so it was sponsored by Napoleon Bonaparte just after the French Revolution and so then they had to scale it back so it ended up only coming to first Mauritius as a stop off and then to Australia and Timor, but it amassed amazing collection of thousands and thousands of specimens just from around the Australian coastline and Timor.

Christine: Yes, so what do you have? Can you tell us about some of the items in the collection?

I know this is a hard thing to summarise, especially using radio as a medium because a lot of them are visual, but what did it give us?

SK: Well, the collection that I am sort of most familiar with is their collection of images of Aboriginal people, because my specialty and interest is in Aboriginal history. So they have the most beautiful watercolours and engravings of Aboriginal people from mainly from Tasmania and Sydney but also there are a few drawings of people in Western Australia and one portrait that we think might be from...of a man from the Kimberley area...

Christine: Really?

SK: But it’s not 100% clear and then the Freycinet Collection, as Kate said, there’s a lot of beautiful images of natural history specimens and also some really terrific drawings of Freycinet’s men meeting Aboriginal people in Shark Bay; probably Malgana people which is a really nice kind of image that sort of evokes how the French and Aboriginal people are sort of trying to work out how to engage with one another when they don’t have a common language or a common cultural understanding.

Christine: What’s seen in the picture? What kind of gestures are they making? What are they doing?

SK: Well, the...there’s a number of images. The campsite that Freycinet established at Shark Bay. So they have their tents, Rose had her own special tent and then Malgana ...well I’m assuming Malgana people visited the camp a couple of times so one of the images is when they came and you know to investigate who these strangers were...in their country and to ...and so they were trying to understand each other. So, the French started giving them gifts...so like buttons, bits of ribbon and you know they were trying to be friendly and so apparently the Aboriginal men would kind of look at them and then hand them back and so they weren’t really sure what to do with each other or how to interact and then one of the expedition artists, Jacques Arago, he pulled out some castanets. So then he started playing a tune with these castanets and so then the Aboriginal people were really interested and there was...sort of started dancing. So there’s just this really lovely kind of moment of not really being able to understand each other but then they had this moment of connecting through music...

Christine: Because it’s universal.

SK: Yes.

Christine: Yes, that’s brilliant.

Nearly twenty minutes past two.

If you’ve just tuned in, Dr Shino Konishi is a historian from UWA and the Australian Catholic University and we’ve got Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library here as well. The Freycinet Collection is what we’re talking about. I love that. I love that imagery and I wasn’t aware that this all happened at Shark Bay either.

SK: Yes, Shark Bay is the site of many, many rich encounters. Aboriginal people have been living in Shark Bay for at least 40,000 years according to archaeological records and I will say they’ve been collecting shells for at least 32,000 years because they found shell beads that have been drilled so that they could be....or holes cut into them so that they could be strung on a necklace.

Christine: What do the shells tell us? Let’s talk about that. I think it’s really interesting.

SK: Well there’s...I guess if you go to the area, it’s an amazing collection of shells. A lot of different specimens there and sort of easily seen on the beach and so Aboriginal people have been using the shells for as I’ve said thousands of years for food but also using as adornments, as trade items so archaeologists have found shells from coastal areas. They found them inland up to 25,000 years ago so ...which suggests there was a trade network and then shells, particularly pearl shells, were used for rituals as well. So they’re very important to Aboriginal people for thousands of years and then the European explorers visiting our shores, they were also really important. So William Dampier was the first to visit in the late seventeenth century so 1688 and he reported that there were just magnificent, beautiful shells in Shark Bay; the most beautiful he’d ever seen. And this is at a time when in Europe, the height of fashion was to collect shells to display in cabinets, or to adorn furniture, to show your taste in the types of shells you like...

Christine: Shall we talk about this watercolour here, the one that I’ve put up on Twitter. A stunning watercolour and ink drawing of a shell specimen....well with a creature inside, with a mollusc inside, what do we know about this piece?

SK: That is a shell that the French called a Volute Ethiopienne and we know it as a Baler shell. So it’s called a Baler shell because it’s the right size to help you bail water out of your boat. And that one would have been collected probably in the water, not on the beach because it’s got the live animal inside so most of the ones they found on the beach had ...the animal had gone or it was dead and they collected a number of these which they then preserved in alcohol, bottled to take back and indeed their collection of many molluscs with the animals was greatly celebrated by the French Academy of Science. They described it in the 1820s as probably the most valuable acquisition to the history of animals in the modern era and it meant that Freycinet was then granted to become a member of the French Academy of Science and this expedition also gave him the status that he could then create the French Geographical Society. So yes, it really helped him become an important and recognised figure of the sort of late enlightenment.

Christine: That’s significant, definitely.

So, Dr Kate Gregory, how important is this collection to the State Library’s researchers?

KG: Absolutely. This...I mean we know this collection, we acquired in 2002 so the State Library has had it here in WA for nearly 20 years and it is most definitely a treasure of the State Library, this material. It’s enormously important in terms of world knowledge, not only for Western Australians and State significance but the exciting thing for me is that new researchers I actually know coming along and applying a new lens of research towards these materials and all of a sudden, we just ...they garner this new meaning; they have new meaning and new understanding and new significance because of the research. So it’s really very exciting. We can say that these collections are as fresh as they ever were because of this new research.

Christine: That’s great. That is brilliant. So I suppose, what else do we know about the encounters between the French explorers and the Aboriginal people? You’ve looked extensively into this, haven’t you Shino?

SK: Yes, yes I’ve been long interested in encounters between French and British explorers and Dutch as well and Aboriginal people but I guess if we focus on Shark Bay, the encounters were really very interesting and the French were sort of very curious about Aboriginal people. They were hard to see at Gutharraguda or Shark Bay as we know it because of the sand dunes so Aboriginal people or the Malgana were always able to keep an advantage by remaining obscured behind the sand dunes and then they could come down and visit the camp when they were interested and so they were very curious. They on the second visit to the camp, they gave the French gifts of very important...or what we think of as important ritual objects...or not ritual, but celebrated objects and but they also seemed to indicate to the French that they wanted the French to leave and that this was their country and I think what’s so interesting about these early French encounters with Aboriginal people is it’s happening before British colonisation so we’re kind of getting a pre-colonial insight into West Australia’s history and what I find really fascinating about the encounters is that the French in general in Australia were very reluctant to ever use firearms and lots of varying interactions. They might have been a little bit tense at times. Many were friendly but they were rarely violent.

Christine: Combative.

SK: Yes.

Christine: It seems so much more respectful.

SK: Well I guess maybe that’s ...because part of their ethos was the scientific investigation and so they wanted to interview Aboriginal people to find out their knowledge about the natural history specimens and I guess probably also to think about Aboriginal people in terms of new theories about the idea of mankind or humanity so yes, I really find these encounters fascinating because you get to see Aboriginal agency at work much more so then in later colonial accounts.

Christine: Yes, it’s a very good point. We’ve got people listening from all over the State and some people might be really interested to see these images because it is a visual thing. So how can people access these Kate? What’s available?

KG: Absolutely. So people can hope onto the State Library website and if you click onto the ABC logo on the front page of the State Library, we’ll have this story up with some images [laughs]

Then the people can see the collection or people can just search ‘Freycinet’ in the State Library catalogue and it will bring up this collection. You’ll be able to scroll through it. It’s all fully digitised.

Christine: Ok, so it’s ‘Freycinet’.

KG: That’s correct.

Christine: Go brain, go.

Thank you so much for both coming in to explain this to us. I think it sounds like a fabulous collection. We’re lucky to have it and thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

Shino, nice to meet you.

SK: Oh, thank you. Thanks for having us

KG: Thanks Christine.

Christine: That was Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library of WA along with special guest, Dr Shino Konishi who is a historian from UWA and the Australian Catholic University, also a Yawuru woman from WA’s Kimberley.

END OF INTERVIEW