Shaking hands on the fringe : negotiating the Aboriginal world at King George's Sound

Abstract

In 1826 a British military garrison was set up on the edges of an Aboriginal world at King George's Sound on the south west corner of Western Australia. This history narrates four episodes which centre on the interactions that occurred between the British newcomers and the Aboriginal people who lived there. The garrison was designed to be a holding station, to deter the French from making a territorial claim on a large and hard to defend continent and thus the British presence at King George's Sound was not an overtly colonising one. This history studies a series of events that took place during the first few years of the British settlement at King George's Sound, from when it was established as a military garrison in 1826 until after its conversion to a free settlement within the colony of Western Australia. Four narrative episodes focus on the relationships between the Aborigines who lived beyond the shores of King George's Sound and the British newcomers who stepped ashore and stayed. Western Australian historiography has rendered this past as a 'friendly frontier' - a reflection of the few violent incidents between the Aboriginal people who lived in the area and the newcomers who set up their camps. This history attempts to leave behind such tropes as 'friendly' and 'peaceful' and look closely at the everyday experiences of individual people as well as the complexities in the developing relationships between particular British newcomers and Aboriginal individuals