Cirrus@Austlit

'A frontier clash, one among many at the time, occurred on 23rd August 1846 at Piangil in the north west of the district of Port Phillip, resulting initially in the death of a young pastoralist Andrew Beveridge at the hands of a group of Aboriginal men. The colonial press predictably labelled the killing an outrage and numerous articles to that effect were written as subsequent events played out. Beveridge, as a young man 24 years old and holding a Master of Arts degree, was depicted as an educated and cultured gentleman, cut down by savages. Three Aboriginal men were soon apprehended, charged and lodged in Melbourne Jail, before being tried and executed. An interrogation of the official documents of the case can provide a broader understanding of such events. In this particular case though, there also exist the personal papers and journals of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, whose duties included visiting and supporting Aborigines imprisoned in Melbourne. The English language material in these papers questions, as we shall see, the official narrative of judicial response to the Beveridge killing, while the material in Aboriginal languages gives us a rare view of an intimacy between Europeans and Aborigines different from the usual frontier intimacies of sex and violence. Text and context are standard tropes of historical writing. Texts in Aboriginal languages can act to deepen our understanding of particular events such as the killing of Andrew Beveridge and the events around it, thereby extending historical understanding.'  (Introduction)