Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Barak was born in about 1824 — he remembered being about 11 years of age when John Batman made his notorious 'treaty' (in fact a land grab with no legal basis) with various Aboriginal elders at Port Philip Bay in 1835.3One of the significant men in Aboriginal society in Victoria at the time of Batmans arrival was Baraks father Bebejem, clan-elder of the Wurundjeri people, whose country comprised the area around the Yarra River. On the death of his father, which occurred shortly after European colonisation, Barak inherited his status of clan-elder of the Wurundjeri.4 It is symptomatic of the rapidity with which the colonisation of Victoria occurred that some two years after the arrival of the advance guard of colonisers, Barak was a student at a mission school, the school of the Reverend George Langhorne. By 1844 he was serving as a member of Victorias native police, a force that existed until 1853.5 Baraks hereditary position as aWurundjeri leader came into its own in the 1860s when Aboriginal settlements were being established in Victoria. For the last four decades of his life Barak was the most prominent man at the Aboriginal settlement at Coranderrk, which was established in 1863 on a block of land near Healesville, outside Melbourne. The Coranderrk Aboriginal Station was established on Wurundjeri land as an agricultural settlement and it continued to operate as an Aboriginal farm until its break-up in 1917. Official attitudes to Coranderrk were always shifting and on several occasions Barak led deputations to Melbourne to petition for better management to ensure the security of the government's commitment to the reservation.6From the moment of its establishment, Coranderrk became home for many Aboriginal people from south­ eastern and central Victoria. Barak lived there from the earliest days of its establishment until his death in 1903. By the end of the century he was well known among Europeans who looked upon him not only as a great survivor (unlike any Victorian of European descent he had been present at the moment of Victorias 38 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965