Photo courtesy Queensland Museum
Accession Number: QE1150
Museum: Queensland Museum
Date Acquired: 1916
Collector: Joseph Campbell (1856-1933)
Date Collected: 1914-1916
Where from: Wrights Creek
Description:
Shield – Red, yellow, white ochre, charcoal. Munsell colours: Front: 10YR4/4 dark yellowish brown, 7.5R3/4 dusky red, 5YR2.5/1 black, 5YR 8/1 white. Back: Unpainted. Design on front is possibly the ‘Canoe’ design. 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).
Design represents ‘canoes’ – see another historical version QE1089 in the Queensland Museum, Oc.1933.0403.3 in the British Museum and Michael Boiyool Anning’s (1955-) contemporary version of this Yidinji shield design which is held in the Queensland Art Gallery collection ‘Bark canoes’ 2004.163 (Barnard 2014).
See: ‘Joseph Campbell’ authored by Trish Barnard