WOMBEETCH PUYUUN GRAVE MONUMENT & DAWSON FAMILY GRAVE

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument (1885) commissioned by James Dawson, including its immediate setting and tree to the west, and the Dawson Family Grave (c.1879-1929) both located in the Camperdown Cemetery.

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument and Dawson Family Grave is of historical significance to the State of Victoria. It satisfies the following criteria for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register:

Importance to the course, or pattern, of Victoria's cultural history.

Possession of uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of Victoria’s cultural history.

Strong or special association with a particular present-day community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.

Special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in Victoria’s history.

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument and Dawson Family Grave is historically significant for its capacity to demonstrate the rapid and devastating effect of European colonisation on Aboriginal people in Victoria from the 1840s. Commissioned by James Dawson in 1885, a white settler and outspoken champion of Aboriginal interests, this monument has no parallel in Victoria. The obelisk’s height, prominent location and unusual inscriptions make a powerful public statement about the dispossession of Aboriginal people. The imposing monument stands in contrast with Dawson’s own modest family grave which commemorates himself and his daughter Isabella, amongst others. Together James and Isabella worked with the local Aboriginal people to record their languages and culture, drawing on the knowledge of elders including Wombeetch Puyuun, with whom Dawson formed a particularly strong friendship. [Criterion A]

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument and Dawson Family Grave is rare in Victoria. There are few large-scale colonial monuments commemorating an Aboriginal person or group in Victoria dating from the nineteenth century. The obelisk is of a conventional European design but has highly unusual features including the inscription of Aboriginal cultural symbols (a liangle, a boomerang and a message stick) and the dates ‘1840’ and ‘1883’ representing James Dawson’s view that the local Aboriginal people were dispossessed during this time. The inscription of Wombeetch Puyuun’s name in his own language is uncommon for the era, and so is his burial in a Christian section of the cemetery after exhumation from the ‘Aboriginal section’ of the segregated cemetery. [Criterion B]

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument and Dawson Family Grave is historically significant for its association with Wombeetch Puyuun, James Dawson and his daughter, Isabella. Together the monument and grave speak to the close friendship of Wombeetch Puyuun and James Dawson, Dawson’s grief at the loss of Wombeetch Puyuun in 1883, and his despair at the colonial devastation of the local Aboriginal people. Wombeetch Puyuun was an elder in his own community and holder of knowledge. Through his friendship with James and Isabella Dawson he was instrumental as a teacher enabling the Dawsons to record language and customs which survive in the book Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes in the Western District of Victoria (1881). This work remains an important source for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Australia. It is notable that James Dawson gave up the grave plot originally purchased for his own family, in order to erect the Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument, he and his own family being buried in modest graves. [Criterion H]

The Wombeetch Puyuun Grave Monument and Dawson Family Grave are of social significance to Eastern Maar people including the descendants of the Liwura Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people. The monument is well-known and visited by the Eastern Maar and other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Victorians (and Australians) interested in the colonial history of Victoria and reconciliation. The story of the Wombeetch Puyuun and James Dawson has found an audience beyond Camperdown and Western Victoria and resonates across the State. It speaks to the impact of European colonisation on Aboriginal communities from the early 1800s to today, which is an important and challenging history that contributes to Victoria’s contemporary sense of identity. [Criterion G]