Photo courtesy Queensland Museum
Accession Number: QE1142
Museum: Queensland Museum
Date Acquired: 1916
Collector: Joseph Campbell (1856-1933)
Date Collected: 1914-1916
Where from: Wrights Creek
Description:
Aboriginal shield with centre front nodule and carved handle in reverse. Front surface decorated with red, white, black and yellow ochre. Reverse surface decorated with red ochre. Munsell colours – Front: 5yr 2.5/1 black, 5yr8/1 white, 10r 6/8 brownish yell. 2.5yr 3/6 dark red. Back: 2.5yr 3/6 dark red (faded). Fish net design – Yidinji. Collected from Gossypium Park on 28 September 1916 and sold to QM (QE1006-QE4186). In 1910 a cotton plantation called Gossypium Park, was established south of Cairns at Wrights Creek, (near Kamma), which employed local Aboriginal labour. Five years later the plantation went into receivership and one of the cotton gins were sent to Yarrabah. In 1916, Joseph Campbell, former Director of Cotton Culture for Gossypium Park Estates Ltd., and supervisor of Aboriginal people on the plantation in 1914, sold a collection of artefacts including shields and baskets to the Queensland Museum for 30 pounds (Trish Barnard, Collection Manager, Aug. 2005).
The design on this shield is consistent with the ‘Hand held fish net’ design on Yidinji shields, similar to E013435 in the Australian Museum and 22096 in the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, and a contemporary version made by Michael Boiyool Anning (1955-) in 2011 registered as QE40655 in the Queensland Museum (Barnard 2013).
See: ‘Joseph Campbell’ authored by Trish Barnard