Great Ocean Road Aboriginal Connections
(David Turnbull)
The themes of the project as I see them are the ‘strings of connectedness’ (Keen, 1995) that constitute an aboriginal framework of understanding of the Great Ocean Road which runs from Barwon Heads where the freshwater meets the salt creating new knowledge (ganma), to Moyjil (Point Ritchie) on the Hopkins river which at 120 thousand years ago may be a site that transforms our knowledge of Aboriginal occupation of Australia.Though I think the broader aboriginal perspective should see the GOR as linking Kulin country (Presland, 1994) and Mt William (McBryde, 1984) in the east to Budj Bim and Lake Condah in the west.(Builth, 2014)
Those ‘strings of connectedness’, normally not apparent when driving along the Great Ocean Road, can be brought into visibility by learning about the ways in which aboriginal knowledge traditions of astronomy, meteorology, ecology and material culture are embedded in the dreaming tracks and trading paths, reflecting the long-term changes in the ecosystems of S.W. Victoria. Aborigines probably arrived in Victoria around 45 thousand years ago, in that time the landscape has been totally transformed by climate change and the end of the ice age, by volcanic activity, and by sea-level rise and the separation of Tasmania, as well as by Aboriginal shaping of their environment. How their knowledges were developed and transmitted, creating the aboriginal worlds of S.W, Victoria over such immense changes of the environment provide fundamental insights into how the Great Ocean Road and its ecosystems can be managed and sustained in the face of contemporary development and even more rapid climate change.
Following this way of conceiving the project, I have compiled a set of references (in Academic references on this site) and set out the Deep-History Timeline in the Road Before section.