PLANTING DREAMS
AUDIO GUIDE

Bruce Pascoe on von Guerard’s ‘Stoneleigh’

BRUCE PASCOE: This was painted in 1866.  Europeans had only been in this part of the world for 30 years and in this particular part of the world, around Ararat, even less.  And, yet, these park-like surroundings are assumed to have been the work of Europeans but this is what it always looked like.  

This is what Sir Thomas Mitchell saw, the first European to ride through those lands.  He saw it open.  He saw all the good land was devoted to vegetables - in this case murnong - and it’s an idyllic scene, but it was created by Aboriginal people, and those people are no longer on the land, even after such a recent time since Europeans arrived.  

The shepherd in the foreground is playing a flute to placate his flock.  It’s a perfectly idyllic rural scene but Aboriginal people had created it.  And it always strikes me with sadness that they are no longer on this scene. 

The assumption Europeans had when they saw these plains was that God had delivered them an earthly paradise but, in fact, it was Aboriginal people who manicured these plains and devoted them to the production of food.  It’s only 220 years later that we’ve begun to consider this as the natural realm of Aboriginal people.  

(ENDS)