“Early colonial settlement of Australia was predicated on a belief that the continent was a “terra nullius” – a land belonging to no-one. Although Aboriginal people populated the land, their apparently fluid and nomadic ways and lack of obvious building practice suggested no fixed ties to place to European colonisers familiar with gridded cities, property boundaries and western building practices. In his spatial history of early Melbourne, Frank Vitelli argues that Hoddle’s grid was “the means by which the settler colonial society established, legitimised and grounded their presence and simultaneously masked and concealed an earlier presence.” Striation of the land, regardless of topography and geology, into a grid of streets and property boundaries proceeded first, quickly followed by the erection of monuments to a foreign imperial presence. But, he argues through careful research, “White man’s monumental, epic sacred site was already someone else’s sacred site.”

It wasn’t until Norman Tindale mapped the Aboriginal language group boundaries in 1974, that this myth of terra nullius was first challenged and not until 1992, with Mabo, that it was overturned in the courts. Paul Memmott’s seminal book Gunya Goondie and Wurley, published as recently as 2007, is the first to document the rich and varied system of territorial occupation by Aboriginal people around the continent. Defined territorial boundaries to the ‘country’ of different clans, archaeological evidence of heritage sites, such as the Lake Condah stone huts and fish traps in Western Victoria, and traditional practices of possum skin cloak making (a kind of territorial mapping), suggest that prior to colonisation, Aboriginal people had their own systems of striation of the land.

Deleuze and Guattari suggest that a complex relationship exists between operations that “striate” space and those that “smooth” it, the former seeking control and order, the latter acting to deterritorialise. The smooth is the space of the Nomad, fluid, a line of flight, they argue, while “the city is the striated par excellence”. In the case of Melbourne, however, it could be argued that it is the act of physical striation by settlers that deterritorialises Aboriginal presence. Furthermore, Aboriginal placemaking operations were not simply smooth; their striations were less visible but equally organising.

Although interested in multiplicities and complexities rather than
binary distinctions, Deleuze and Guattari focus on comparing these opposites rather than the “defacto mixes, the passages from one to the other” that they assert more accurately reflect reality. This paper will interrogate the complex interrelations of the smooth and striated in Aboriginal place-making practices in light of new knowledge of ancient Aboriginal occupation of the land, post-colonial acts of resistance and traditional cultural practices, such as the quilting and inscription of possum skins, that seem to be both striated and smooth operations. This research is part of a current body of work underway on an ARC Linkage Grant, Indigenous Placemaking in Melbourne, with Melbourne City Council Indigenous Arts Program, the Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group and Reconciliation Victoria. Its aim is to advance the concept of a gathering place and cultural centre in Melbourne for Aboriginals from around the state and to research the placemaking practices that might inform it.

JANET McGRAW and NAOMI TOOTELL will be presenting this research. Janet is a senior lecturer in architectural design and practice at the University of Melbourne is a chief investigator practicing architect and creative researcher. Naomi Tootell, currently doing a PhD on the role of the non-indigenous collaborator on creative projects with Aboriginal people, is a Research Assistant on the grant. The research team includes Emily Potter, a cultural theorist at Deakin University, Anoma Pieris, an architectural historian at the University of Melbourne, and Graham Brawn, Emeritus Professor and architectural practitioner. Research assistant Carolynne Baker, currently working on a PhD on Indigenous Cultural Centres, adds further depth. Our methodologies are therefore multiple and dialogic, taking in history, cultural theory and creative collaborative research.