TERRITORIAL encounters
Territorial Encounters is a series that explores the colonisation of South Australia, and more broadly, Australia. These daguerreotype photographs capture the South Australian coastline that was the last area of the Australian Continent that Europeans mapped. On the final completion of the Australian map by the British sailor Matthew Flinders. He laid claim to the entire Australian Continent for the British Empire. Flinders spent much of his time off the Coast of South Australia researching possible places with enough water supply that the British could use to build their colonies in South Australia.
As an Australian with Kaurna Aboriginal heritage from South Australia, this story about Matthew Flinders highlights how the British colonised my ancestors’ traditional lands. Tarnthanyangga, or Adelaide, on the Kaurna nation was one of the first and the largest places to be colonised in South Australia by the British. Kaurna people and their culture were and still are heavily impact by the process of British colonisation. In this Daguerreotype series, I have scratched the iconic grid system that the British used to survey and lay out their colonies in South Australia. The scratching of the grid system in to the landscape symbolises the heavy impact British colonisation has had on Kaurna and Nunga people (South Australian Aboriginal people). I have titled all the Daguerreotypes photographs after the Nunga place names where the British colonists used the grid system in South Australia to highlight the Nunga ownership of the landscape.
Please click on the thumbnails below to view photos full screen.
