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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 45 | June 2000


Recent rarities in retrospective Australiana
More lives made captive

At an auction late last year in London the Library was successful in acquiring another ‘first’ for Australia—a small broadside describing the display of indigenous inhabitants, including Australian Aboriginal people, in Berlin in the 1830s. There is no recorded copy of such an item in an Australian institution and only a very few recorded in German libraries.

German broadside

The phenomenon of displaying indigenous people as scientific curiosities or sideshow attractions in nineteenth-century Europe and America is graphically documented in the National Library’s exhibition ‘Captive Lives’. This exhibition is just finishing its record breaking three-year tour of Australia at the Warrnambool Art Gallery in south-western Victoria.

The German broadside described the Indigenous Australians as ‘Indian Bush people from New Holland’, comprising a man aged 43, a young woman of 27 and a two-year-old child. They were joined by a ‘young African woman of 21 years’. Nothing is known so far of the promoter of the display, Herr Heinrich Hill. A true salesman, he justifies the display on grounds of authenticity according to the racial theories of the period. Herr Hill promises his audiences entertainments such as dancing, war manoeuvres and ceremonies. The indigenous people were fed twice a day, which was considered of special interest to the viewers, when live fowls and coconuts were provided ‘to show how this group eats together’. The broadside is currently on display in the Library’s Visitor Centre, Ground Floor.

Richard Stone

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