Courtesy Queensland Museum
Accession Number: QE1956
Museum: Queensland Museum
Date Acquired:
Collector: Archibald Meston (1851-1924)
Date Collected: c.1900
Where from: McIvor River
Description: L585x W160x H200mm
Bag, netted twine, long bag, broken handle. The rich colour in this bag was acquired from bark the of Wattle trees (Acacia flavescens) when the stripped fibre would turn red after being immersed into brackish water for a few hours. Meston probably collected this bag in 1897 when he visited missions and reserves throughout Queensland to assess poor living conditions. A camp or outstation at Wayarrigu, McIvor River had been established north of the mission at Elim and Cape Bedford. Meston’s proposals were embodied in the ‘Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act’ of 1897. In January 1898 he received the first appointed as Protector of Aborigines for South East Queensland and Walter Edmund Roth was appointed the ‘Northern Protector of Aborigines (Trish Barnard, Senior Curator Indigenous Studies, October 2008).
See: ‘Archibald Meston’ authored by Russell McGregor