Category: Western Australia – Coastal Exploration

Tommy King was Norngern, and Norn was Wandinyilmernong.

This is a modified version of a piece submitted to Vol. 33 of  the academic journal Studies in Western Australian History during 2019. The edition, called ‘Albany: an antipodean Arcadia‘ edited by Malcom Traille and Harry Freemantle, carries a range of works from writers in some way dedicated to Albany and Albany’s place in Western Australia’s history.

Being the first work submitted by The View under the strictures of  the university system, and coming from a medium designed for modern consumption via the internet, the piece was overly-lengthy and unweildy by comparison as it strived to meet the full breadth of the title under which it was submitted; ‘Aspects of European-Aboriginal Interaction in 19th Century Albany’. I took that to mean a 100 year history, which meant summarising everything these pages had compiled to date, and then some. The invitation came early in July, 2018, but the work wasn’t submitted until over 12 months later, so it wasn’t that The View was doing nothing that year, rather it was occupied elsewhere.

Having considered that submission it seems reasonable to revisit and modify, building in the charms available to an internet version. However, below is not the same piece. The very many references needed for an academic submission are not detailed here and elements of the text by way of order, cull, addition and modification are made without reference to the original. For the original (and much more on historical Albany), readers should invest in the journal itself, copies of which may be obtained here.

Warning:  The names of many deceased  Aboriginal persons are described below. The View From Mount Clarence is the work of an Irish/Australian  writer concerned with the history of racial integration across Western Australia’s South West. Although of interest and importance to the Indigenous community, the primary intention of this site is to inform non-indigenous West Australian’s of their shared history by exposing the actions of both groups via the stories that make-up our collective past. 

Norngern: King George Man

Above: Daisy Bates never met Norngern, but she knew who he was. To the Albany settlers Norngern (aka Wandinyilmernong) was known as Tommy King, one of the King George boys born into the new settler presence at his family’s antediluvian stamping ground. Norn grew up between the traditional world of his elders and the new one brought by the European invasion. Spending the vast majority of his life in the area of the town, he wrestled the change which took place, resisting it to greater effect than his best known contemporaries, all but one of whom he outlived. By old age Norn had become a curiosity or relic, last link to the past world of the South Coast Aborigine, while also a maligned figure of defiance and resilience, irksome reminder to the town of the great imposition it had leveled upon his people. Source: Southern Districts Photographs, Daisy Bates Archive, University of Adelaide.

Continue reading