Indigenous Women of Frontier

Indigenous Women of the Frontier: Survival, Knowledge, and Resistance in Early Colonial Victoria (1835–1900)

MLA Educational Series — History, Culture, and Gender on Country

The history of the Victorian frontier has often been told through the lens of men—explorers, settlers, and warriors—but the survival of Indigenous communities during colonisation depended equally, and often more profoundly, on the strength of women.

Between 1835 and 1900, Indigenous women in Victoria experienced violence, displacement, and systemic control, yet they sustained families, preserved languages, and maintained the spiritual and ecological knowledge that ensured cultural survival.

This article explores the lives of Indigenous women on the frontier—mothers, healers, guides, resistance leaders, and knowledge holders—highlighting the ways they negotiated colonisation through both survival and subtle resistance.

Women’s Roles Before Colonisation

Before British settlement, women were custodians of knowledge essential to daily and spiritual life. Across Wadawurrung, Kulin, and Gunditjmara societies, women managed food systems, gathered and cultivated murnong (yam daisies), fished with woven nets, and held responsibility for kinship, birth, and ceremony.

Women were healers, song keepers, and teachers. They knew the seasons, the medicines, and the stories written in the stars. Their connection to Country was expressed through care for water, soil, and plant life — living embodiments of the Law of Bunjil and Waa, who created balance between men and women (Barwick 1984; Clark 1990).

Colonisation would fracture these roles, but never destroy them.

Colonial Invasion and Gendered Violence

The arrival of pastoralists and soldiers in the 1830s brought new forms of violence, particularly against women. Indigenous women were targeted as labourers, servants, and sexual partners within the expanding frontier economy (Broome 2005).

Accounts from the Port Phillip Protectorate journals reveal numerous cases of kidnapping, assault, and exploitation by sealers, shepherds, and settlers. Protector Charles Sievwright, operating across Wadawurrung and Gunditjmara Country, documented repeated instances of women being abducted and traded between stations (Clark 1998).

For example, in 1839, he recorded the abduction of Purranmurning Tullawurnin, a Wadawurrung woman later associated with Framlingham Mission, whose story survives in oral history and in Jan Pritchard’s Untold Stories (2012). Her survival—and that of her daughter Fanny—symbolises both the trauma and resilience of Wadawurrung women on the frontier.

Women were often the first to experience the physical invasion of Country, yet they also became its fiercest protectors—carrying the memories and spirit of land when men were killed or displaced.

Mothers and Survivors: The Burden of Care

Indigenous women bore the greatest burden of survival after the collapse of traditional food systems. The destruction of yam-daisy fields and the fencing of waterways removed vital resources, forcing women to adapt (Pascoe 2014).

Mothers scavenged for food near stations or worked for settlers in exchange for rations. Some became domestic servants or wet nurses in colonial households, raising both their own children and settlers’ infants. Others acted as cultural go-betweens, teaching survival techniques to European women unaccustomed to the land (Cahir 2012).

Yet, even under duress, women continued to fulfil their cultural obligations. They taught children about plants, weather, and ceremony in secret. These teachings became acts of defiance—passing on knowledge that colonisation sought to erase.

Resistance and Leadership

Women were not passive victims of colonisation; they were central to resistance. Oral histories and Protectorate records document women who fought for their families and Country.

On Wadawurrung land, women participated in retaliatory raids during the early 1830s, warning camps of attacks and using fire as a tool of resistance (Clark 1995). Gunditjmara women at Budj Bim maintained eel traps and food systems in defiance of settler encroachment during the Eumeralla Wars.

In the 1840s, Woi Wurrung women at Nerre Nerre Warren Reserve resisted removal orders by hiding in bush camps near Dandenong. Some later became key community figures on missions such as Coranderrk, where women like Louisa Briggs and Margaret Tucker became leaders in land rights petitions and education (Barwick 1998; Broome 2005).

These acts of defiance — both visible and hidden — reveal women’s political power and determination to protect their kin.

Women on Missions: Control and Resilience

By the 1850s, Indigenous women across Victoria were increasingly confined to missions and reserves. These institutions, including Coranderrk, Framlingham, Lake Tyers, and Ebenezer, enforced strict gender roles based on European morality.

Women were separated from men, required to wear uniforms, and subjected to Christian marriage laws. Girls were trained for domestic service, often removed from their families to work in white households (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1997).

Despite these constraints, women maintained cultural authority within missions. They organised food distribution, healing, and education for children, often preserving language and song in secret.

At Coranderrk, women like Eliza Hamilton, Louisa Briggs, and Margaret Tucker played central roles in daily governance and resistance. Their petitions to government, written alongside men like William Barak, demanded fair treatment and land for their families (Barwick 1998).

Women’s leadership within these communities laid the groundwork for twentieth-century activism and the reassertion of Indigenous women’s voices in law and culture.

Labour, Exploitation, and Survival Strategies

Indigenous women’s labour was essential to the colonial economy. They worked as shepherdesses, cooks, and laundresses on farms, goldfields, and missions. In return, they were often paid only in rations or fabric.

Many women formed relationships—both consensual and coerced—with European men. These relationships produced children who were later targeted under the Half-Caste Acts, which classified mixed-descent children for removal.

Women learned to navigate these systems of power strategically. Some used their labour or connections to protect their families or secure safe passage between districts. Others resisted entirely, fleeing to bush camps and continuing traditional life at the margins of settlement (Broome 2005; Cahir 2012).

Their adaptability under duress became a foundation for Indigenous survival through subsequent generations.

Healing, Knowledge, and the Continuity of Law

Women remained healers and keepers of ceremony despite colonisation’s suppression of spirituality. They continued to use native plants for medicine—wattle gum for sore throats, eucalyptus for fever, and native mint for healing burns (Clarke 2008).

These practices survived even on missions, where Christian authorities condemned traditional healing as “superstition.” Yet women preserved this knowledge through oral instruction, often disguising it within domestic routines.

Their spiritual authority also extended to birthing practices. Birth on Country remained a sacred act, even when missions forbade it. Women like those at Framlingham continued to bury placentas beneath trees or near rivers—symbolic acts of belonging that connected the next generation to land and ancestors (Howitt 1904).

This continuity of women’s Law ensured that, even under colonial oversight, the heartbeat of Country remained alive.

Art, Memory, and Story

Visual storytelling has always been central to women’s cultural expression. In the nineteenth century, artists such as William Barak recorded ceremony, but women too used visual forms to remember and heal.

In the contemporary era, Dr Deanne Gilson (Wadawurrung) and her mother Mary Gilson continue this tradition through painting and installation. Their works depict Wadawurrung women’s experiences of dispossession and revival, honouring matrilineal heritage and Country. Gilson’s use of ochre, textiles, and traditional symbolism reconnects visual art with ancestral storylines, linking women of the colonial frontier with their descendants today (Gilson, 2020; National Gallery of Victoria, 2023).

Through art, Indigenous women transform trauma into truth-telling and cultural reclamation.

Legacy of Indigenous Women in the Frontier Era

By the late 1800s, colonial officials described Indigenous society as vanishing. Yet it was women—mothers, grandmothers, healers, and activists—who ensured its endurance.

They adapted law to survive colonisation, maintained kinship networks, and safeguarded language. The descendants of these women continue to lead cultural renewal across Victoria today through language programs, education, and heritage protection.

From Purranmurning Tullawurnin’s endurance in the 1830s to Louisa Briggs’ activism in the 1870s and Dr Deanne Gilson’s artistic renewal in the 2000s, the thread of women’s strength has never been broken.

Conclusion

The Indigenous women of Victoria’s frontier were warriors, teachers, healers, and mothers who carried the spirit of their nations through the darkest years of colonisation.

While their voices were often excluded from written records, their legacy endures through oral history, art, and Country itself. Their resilience transformed survival into sovereignty — proving that women’s strength is at the heart of Indigenous continuity.

Through them, the laws of kinship, care, and culture remain unbroken.

References

Barwick, D. (1984). Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans, 1835–1904. Aboriginal History, 8(2), 100–131.
Barwick, D. (1998). Rebellion at Coranderrk. Canberra: Aboriginal History Inc.
Broome, R. (2005). Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Cahir, F. (2012). Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870. Canberra: ANU Press.
Clark, I. D. (1990). Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Clayton: Monash Publications in Geography.
Clark, I. D. (1995). Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Clark, I. D. (1998). The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. Melbourne: Heritage Matters.
Clarke, P. (2008). Australian Plants as Aboriginal Tools. Rosenberg Publishing.
Gilson, D. (2020). Deanne Gilson: Wadawurrung Stories of Country. Exhibition catalogue. Geelong Gallery.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1997). Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Howitt, A. W. (1904). The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. London: Macmillan.
Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Broome: Magabala Books.
Pritchard, J. (2012). Untold Stories: Framlingham and Its People. Warrnambool: Jan Pritchard.

Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)

MLA

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Magic Lands Alliance acknowledges the Traditional Owners, Custodians, and First Nations communities across Australia and internationally. We honour their enduring connection to the sky, land, waters, language, and culture. We pay respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Peoples’ communities and language groups. This article draws only on publicly available information; many cultural practices remain the intellectual property of their respective communities.