Indigenous Settlements of Australia
Australia: State of the Environment Second Technical Paper Series (Human Settlements), Series 2
Dr Paul Memmott and Mark Moran
Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2001
ISBN 0 642 54790 4
The Indigenous Settlement Literature
The first definitive research study of post-colonial Australian Aboriginal settlements occurred in the late 1960s resulting in the appearance of Jeremy Long's book (1970), "Aboriginal Settlements, A Survey of Institutional Communities in Eastern Australia". This book was part of the ANU series 'Aborigines in Australian Society' sponsored by The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia2 In his seminal book, Long focused on institutional settlements, both mission and government types, and drew a broad distinction between the remote settlements of central and northern Australia and the rural settlements in more settled sheep farming and agricultural regions of the eastern states and the south-west of Western Australia. Long provided summary data on living conditions, employment and relief, community services and households and families for some 23 settlements in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
Since that time, the preoccupation of scholars in the fields of architecture and town planning has mainly been with Aboriginal housing as a sub-component of Aboriginal settlements rather than with settlements per se as a worthy unit of study in their own right. Published works on settlements have mainly comprised historical, anthropological and sociological analyses of conditions (and a few economic studies), rather than studies on spatial and physical forms, urban morphology or settlement types. However, the in-depth social science studies do provide a wealth of contextual, social and historical background to inform more physically oriented settlement planning studies.
There are now many histories of Mission Settlements in the Aboriginal historical and anthropological literature, eg. Hiatt (1965) on Maningrida, Evans (1972) on Marie Yamba, Tonkinson (1974) on Jigalong, Taylor (1979, 1984) on Pormpuraaw and Kowanyama, Beckett (1983) on the Torres Strait, Anderson (1984) on Wujal Wujal, Bloomfield and Hopevale, Trigger (1992) on Doomadgee, Brock (1993) on South Australian Missions Settlements, Stevens (1994) on Killalpaninna, and Attwood (2000) on Ramahyuck, as well as numerous histories by church groups and individual Missionaries. But only a small number of such studies are preoccupied with the physical design and spatial functioning of settlements eg. Freeman (1974) on Mowanjum, Walker (1976) on Gapuwiyak, and Memmott (1979) on Mornington Island.
A substantial body of writing on town camps and fringe settlements as components of towns and cities has accrued in recent years despite the destruction of most of these settlement types by local authorities in earlier decades eg. Reynolds 1978, Memmott 1996. Specific town camp studies are to be found on Alice Springs (Collmann 1979, 1987, Drakakis-Smith 1980, 1982, Heppell and Wigley 1981, Memmott 1994); Darwin (Sansom 1980); Pine Creek (Wolfe 1987), Halls Creek (Ross 1982, Rumley 1989); Carnarvon (Dagmar 1982); Goodooga (Smith 1996); Kalgoorlie (Christensen 1981); Katherine (Lea 1989); Tennant Creek (Lea 1989); Wilcannia (Savarton and George 1971, Memmott 1991A); North-west Queensland (Memmott1996). The more architecturally and environmentally oriented studies of Town Camps are those by Heppell and Wigley, Memmott and Smith.
The literature on pastoral settlements is particularly thin. An introductory guide comprises Savarton and George (1971) on Weilmoringle, Larbelestier (1979) on Roper River region, O'Connell (1979) on Sandover River region, Young (1981) on Willowra, Moore (1986) on the Queensland Gulf, and Lyon and Parsons (1989) on Alpurrurulam (formerly Lake Nash). Equally sparse is the literature on government settlements. Again, a good proportion of works has been produced by anthropologists and other social scientists eg Meggitt (1962) on Yuendumu, Hooker Creek and Phillip Creek, Barwick (1972) on Coranderrk and Cumeroogunga, Kolig (1975) on Fitzroy Crossing, Koepping (1977) on Cherbourg, Young (1981) on Yuendumu, Einfeld et al (1988) on Toomelah, and Wells (2000) on Kahlin Compound in Darwin.
The history of the outstation or homelands movement is relatively well documented (Gavranic 1977, Australian Museum 1977, W. Gray 1977, Brokensha and McGuigan 1977, Heppell and Wigley 1977, Coombs et al 1980, Cane and Stanley 1985), Central Land Council 1988, although in-depth case studies on individual outstations are rare, exceptions being Coombs and Stanner (1977) on the Warlpiri region and Altman (1987) on Arnhem Land. More specialized studies on outstation technology are also to be found eg. Heppell and Wigley 1977, Wigley 1992, Moran 1994 and Moran and Burgen 2000
The literature on metropolitan Aboriginal settlement is fairly limited being largely generated by a range of social scientists (sociologists, demographers, social workers) but usually not oriented to physical or spatial planning eg. Beasley (1970) and Burnley and Routh (1985) on Sydney, Brown, Hirshfield and Smith (1974) and Smith and Biddle (1975) on Brisbane, Gale (1972) on Adelaide, Young (1986), Gray (1989), Taylor (1990) on migration and demography, and Guthrie (1976) on urban attitudes. An exceptional architectural perspective is that of James and Jermyn (1973) on Redfern (recently supplemented by Anderson 2000).
'Independent Settlements' can be defined as free, self-sustaining, self-constructed settlements with minimal interference from outside authorities. Very few studies exist of such settlements due partly to their rare occurrence. Whilst outstations may fall into this category when they are first established, most become reliant on government grants for their infrastructure. A recent and fascinating first-hand historical account has recently been written on one example, 'Jackson's Track' in Gippsland (Tonkin and Landon 1999).
Settlement studies that take a town planning or (quasi-town planning) approach include Downing (1974) on Central Australia; Coutts (1979) and Kilah (1979) on Aurukun and Mornington Missions; Memmott (1990) on Wilcannia; Mapoon Community et al (1995), Port Stewart Lama Lama and Centre for Appropriate Technology (1997), and Moran (1999A) on Old Mapoon and Port Stewart, and Stanley (1989) and Josif (1994) who outline more holistic approaches to integrated development planning. There are many unpublished planning reports commissioned by government agencies (eg. ATSIC) or Indigenous agencies. The unpublished reports of consultant Julian Wigley are notable here, eg. on the Katherine Town Camps, Barkly Tableland and Aurukun outstations (Wigley, 1990, 1992).
Some studies emphasize health or more specifically environmental health eg. Kamien (1976) in Bourke, Pholeros et al (1993) in Pipalyatjara, and Moran (1999A, 2000B). Inter-Settlement mobility and migration is the subject of studies by Gale (1981), Young (1987, 1990) and Young and Doohan (1989). Local government, leadership cohesion and Aboriginal and State politics have been examined by Bern (1989) and Mowbray (1989) for some remote Northern Territory communities.
There are numerous unpublished consultancy reports on settlement planning, many of which are undoubtedly unknown to the current authors and gathering dust in government files. There is an urgent need to gather these together in a central archival location for preservation and future analysis. Some of the more informed reports would be by longstanding specialist practitioners in the Aboriginal housing and settlement sector such as Colin James, Geoff Barker, Julian and Barbara Wigley, Bruce Walker, and Paul Haar. Still other important research remains embedded in unpublished postgraduate theses eg Walker 1976, Memmott 1979, Smith 1996, Keys 1999, and Lawlor 1998.
Within this overall body of research, the majority of studies deal with discrete remote settlements. There is a serious lack of research on urban conditions, particularly in the metropolitan settlements.
This cursory overview of settlement literature has followed the popular categories of mission settlements, town camps, pastoral camps and outstations. This terminology is based largely on socio-economic factors; specifically on differing forms of power relations and social controls between the Aboriginal residents and the proximate white populations, which in turn are integral to the economic relationships between the two. For example in mission settlements, the missionaries often installed children and adolescent women in dormitories under strict control leaving the adults and adolescent men in a nearby camp in which domiciliary lifestyle was organized along traditional lines, albeit with polygyny forbidden and a dependence on the Mission economy instilled. The adults were used as a labour pool in exchange for western goods. On pastoral settlements there was even less control and interference in the camp lifestyle and moral codes, but a stronger reliance on the labour contribution of the Aboriginal adults to the pastoral economy. The other categories of settlements can be analyzed similarly.
However, such classification of settlements based on social and historical criteria requires an in-depth analysis of every settlement, which is not practical on a national scale. The current authors later offer a revised settlement taxonomy designed to be more useful for physical planning and based more on the criteria of the spatial character and the modes of physical servicing of settlements.