TY  - CONF
TI  - (Not) Royal Park: Recovering the Enduring Importance of a Kulin Nations Gathering Place for Culture, Health, Wellbeing and Healing
AU  - Murray, Uncle Gary
AU  - Kirby, Aunty Esther
AU  - Hunter, Sue-Anne
AU  - Rayner, Moira
AU  - White, Selena
AU  - Mongta, Sharon
AU  - Park, Royal
T2  - What If? What Next? Speculations on History’s Futures
AB  - Royal Park, Parkville, an area of windswept and open parkland just north of central
Melbourne, has a long and complex history that has been well documented in
historical studies and cultural heritage reports. Set aside early in the colony after La
Trobe and his council petitioned for an area of 2560 acres to be reserved for “public
advantage and recreation” and named in honour of the distant English monarch, it
was quickly whittled down to 700 acres after gold was discovered. Land was needed
for housing, experimental agriculture, a zoo, psychiatric asylum and hospitals in the
rapidly expanding colony and this empty patch of land in close proximity to the town
centre seemed suitable for ready appropriation. Later, during both world wars, it
was used for a military camp that was subsequently taken over for low-cost housing,
which became a notorious slum, before it was reclaimed as an area for sport and
open space.
Settler Australia has a long history of seeing empty land as a terra nullius, available
for the pickings. But this particular patch of country has a deeper history as a Kulin
Nation inter-tribal gathering site for ceremony, healing, law, trade and marriage.
Over the past three decades Royal Park has received renewed attention by postcolonial historians, artists, activists and landscape architecture through discourse,
performative arts practices and design, which have explored its unique ecology
and broader cultural history. But the parkland’s enduring cultural significance for
Indigenous people has had little attention. The authors draw on contemporary
ethnographic research with, and Indigenist research by, Aboriginal people who work
and use Royal Park for healing and cultural practices to this day. They argue that
history is ever-present in Aboriginal culture and Royal Park remains what it always
has been: a gathering place for culture, health, wellbeing and healing.
C1  - Perth
C3  - Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand
DA  - 2020/12/11/
PY  - 2020
DP  - Zotero
VL  - 37
SP  - 419
EP  - 426
LA  - en
PB  - SAHANZ
UR  - https://www.sahanz.net/wp-content/uploads/3A_419-426_MCGAW-ET-Al.pdf
KW  - Architecture
KW  - Landscape architecture
KW  - Urban planning
ER  -