With all the discussion around The Voice, I thought it might be informative if I posted these words from my blog post of December 2012. I was teaching history at the time.

“A few thoughts on teaching about Indigenous Australia.
Teaching middle school history, a lifetime of interest in Aboriginal issues and reading Bill Gammage’s The Greatest Estate on Earth – How Aborigines Made Australia, inspired this post. It has provided an opportunity to meet up with the remarkable work of Joseph Lycett ‘Drawings of Aborigines and scenery, New South Wales‘, ca. 1820.”

Lycett was a forger and counterfeiter so he had a wonderful eye for detail.

I particularly enjoy the night fishing work. This was a practice common amongst the Gadigal people. This scene could well have been from Pirrama, at the end of my street.

Accessing Lycett’s Work

These images are freely available through the National Library of Australia. They are from a book published in 1830 and titled Drawings of the Natives and Scenery of Van Diemens Land 1830. This is a digitised version of the book.