Wurundjeri Lineage
Click on the drop down menu "Kulin & Wurundjeri" above for more pages about Melbourne Aboriginal history & culture.
The following was directly transcribed from a series of interviews with Wurundjeri Elder, Ian Hunter, recorded in 2004-5. Images courtesy of Ian Hunter.
[This is a photograph of...] Borat [also known as Annie Barak] , my great- great grandmother, who was one-year-old when her father signed the Batman Treaty in 1835. So Borat was a fellow by the name of Bebejan's daughter.
Bebejan's sons were Keelbundoora, who was about fifteen when the first Europeans came to Melbourne. And the next son underneath him was William Barak, who was the infamous painter. He was about twelve when the first whites came to Melbourne. And Borat was still only a babe in arms. Her father Bebejan, or Jerum Jerum, he died in about twelve months of the treaty being signed.
Borat in later years had two marriages to traditional Aboriginal people, but had no surviving issue from there. But she actually was befriended by a European by the name of Adam Clarke and produced a child, who in the old days would've been called a half-caste. He was a fellow who was given the traditional name of Wandoon [pictured below as a young boy 1886].
So Wandoon became Wandin, Robert Wandin, and he was born in around 1875 [...] and he grew up and lived most of his life on the Aboriginal settlement in Healesville, Coranderrk. He actually became the leader of his people, after William Barak died.
Prior to William Barak dying he actually said that the situation of Ngurungaeta, meaning our leader, and person who would speak for our people, was Billibellary. [Then] Billibellary's son [Simon] Wonga, who was William Barak's cousin, and he was also Robert Wandin's uncle [...] when Wonga died, then William Barak issued the situation prior to his death that Robert Wandin, or Wandoon, would become Ngurungaeta, the leader of our people. So he lived most of his life at Coranderrk.
This is a photograph of him as an older person [pictured above on left] with the lady that he grew up with, Jemima Burns [right]. They were married and had thirteen children. They were both what was called half-cast people. Out of the thirteen children, twelve of those people survived and one of the young children that survived was my grandmother.
Jemima Burns was said to be found wandering the streets of Echuca in the 1850's or there abouts and she was then brought to Melbourne were she was sent to the refuge for Aboriginal kids, and so forth, and lived in the dormitories at the Aboriginal station at Healesville, where she grew up and met and married my great grandfather.
But it was not a traditional marriage, it was a church marriage, a Christian marriage, because the Aboriginal people were becoming Christians at this point in time. Even though she was either Wemba Wemba, or one of those tribes from up [...] on the Murray River she did marry into our family and took on all the traditions and was excepted within the tribe or our clan as a Woiwurrung woman.
All remaining Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung or Wurundjeri people are descendants from Jemima and Robert Wandin, there's no other issue of Woiwurrung or Wurundjeri people from our traditional country.
Granny Jemima, she didn't die until 1945, but Robert Wandin died [in] 1908, so he was a middle-aged man but she lived well into her 90's. I think mum actually said that she was in excess of 100 years old when she died, Granny Jemima. And mum spent a lot of her time as a child at the Coranderrk Aboriginal settlement.
So the issue of their family, one of their people was my grandmother, who was Martha Louisa Nevin [pictured above]. Prior to that she was a Wandin, issued from my great grandfather Robert Wandin.
Martha married Claude Nevin in about 1917, just after he came back from the First World War. From there she had seven children and one of the seven children born in 1921 became my mother Jessie, Jessie Hunter (pictured below on left), who married my father Collin Hunter (below on right) in 1939.
That photograph was taken about 1995. Both my parents now have passed on [...] they were married in 1939 and my father passed away in 2000 and my mother passed away in 2004 and they were married all that time, together. So that is my descendency [sic].
home :: contact
:: back to top »
Copyright
© Aliey Ball (freshwater.net.au) 2006
disclaimer