Ngadjuri landscape. Photo by Claire Smith.
Martindale on Ngadjuri Country
Authors: Claire Smith and Penny Edmonds
With Vincent Copley junior, Kara McEwen and Kathryn Sutton
Martindale Hall is located on the traditional lands of Ngadjuri people. These lands extend across the Mid North region of South Australia, from Gawler, just north of Adelaide, to Orroroo, on the southern edge of the Flinders Ranges. They include the townships of Clare, Burra, Robertstown and Crystal Brook.
The Ngadjuri, meaning ‘we people’, are known by neighbouring Aboriginal peoples as the ‘hills people’ or the ‘peppermint gum people’.
Ngadjuri people were forcibly removed from their traditional lands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries following violent encounters with British settlers and the decimating effects of introduced diseases. The relocation of Ngadjuri people to colonial-controlled missions led to a disruption of Ngadjuri links to their heritage sites and traditional lands.
Ngadjuri Elder Vincent Copley Senior explains: ‘The dispossession of Ngadjuri people was devastating. When they took Ngadjuri people away from their country they took away their ability to pass on their knowledge about the country to their children. That includes spiritual knowledge, ecological knowledge, knowledge about how to survive on the country, what the rock art meant. People lost the capacity to share all of that knowledge with their children and grandchildren.’
For much of the twentieth century, there was little acknowledgement of Ngadjuri people’s presence in historical narratives of the region, but Vincent Copley Senior has worked to change this.
“The dispossession of Ngadjuri people was devastating. When they took Ngadjuri people away from their country they took away their ability to pass on their knowledge about the country to their children. That includes spiritual knowledge, ecological knowledge, knowledge about how to survive on the country, what the rock art meant. People lost the capacity to share all of that knowledge with their children and grandchildren.”
From the 1990s, Vincent Copley Senior led Ngadjuri people in their efforts to reclaim cultural and physical knowledge of their traditional lands and encouraged community and government organisations to recognise Ngadjuri people as Traditional Owners of Ngadjuri lands. His work has included the recording of over 600 archaeological sites, including rock art sites, ochre quarries and stone artefact scatters. Since then, Ngadjuri have been increasingly involved in the heritage and management of their country again.
Today, this work is being carried on by other Ngadjuri people and by Vincent’s children, Vincent Copley Junior and Kara McEwen.
On 7 July 2023 the Ngadjuri people were recognised by the Federal Court as native title holders for 15,000 square kilometres of country encompassing the midlands of what is now South Australia.
“It’s important that people know that the Ngadjuri people are here, that we’re not just a footnote in history.”
At Sevenhill, near Clare, an engraved stone acknowledges the Ngadjuri people as the original custodians of the land. This was established by the Jesuits in collaboration with Ngadjuri.
Conversations on Martindale Hall
In November 2023 at our Martindale Hall team workshop on site, we spoke with Vince Copley Junior and Kara McEwEn (Vince Copley Senior’s son and daughter) about our joint project and Martindale Hall.
Martindale Hall History, Heritage and Slow Digitisation
Vincent Copley Junior: The project is fantastic, especially the 3D imaging. It points towards reconciliation as far as getting the two heritages, the two cultures together and working together.
Kara McEwen: The way that they present Martindale Hall is absolutely fantastic. I don’t think they should change anything. I love it all. That big, beautiful Asian cabinet—I know just where I’d put that in my house.
Vincent Copley Junior: Even in a European-heritage sense, it’s massively opulent. It had all the most mod cons for that period. No expense was spared. However, it crosses a time when Indigenous people were removed from the area into missions, so it’s a bit of a paradox—yes, it’s beautiful, but there is pain behind it.
Kara McEwen: Martindale Hall is very much a symbol of white culture. You walk in and you go this was the beginnings of our country as we know it today. I had really mixed emotions. On the one hand, it’s an absolutely stunning building and the architecture, the interiors are all perfectly of the era. The craftsmanship of the place, how it’s stood so long, it’s just a credit to the architects and builders of the day. The interiors are beautiful and everything about it is just beauty. But at the same time, it’s obviously a symbol of colonialism and of a time that was very detrimental to Ngadjuri people.
“History is not always fairytales and happy endings, and we have to own that as well. We have to own that there’s tragedy, there’s things in our past that aren’t so pretty.”
Aboriginal Objects
Vincent Copley Junior: Everything in the house screams wealth and Mortlock’s travels. It is very difficult to tell if some of the Aboriginal stuff is from this area or not.
Community Heritage
Kara McEwen: Obviously, the community are very proud of Martindale Hall, as they should be. Mintaro is just beautiful and that is their community and they’re very proud of it. They were talking about things that had been taken from Martindale Hall and given to Ayers House or to various other places around South Australia and I think even Australia. And they were very passionate that those things should come back here to Martindale Hall where they belong. They’re passionate about their heritage staying where it belongs. Absolutely rightly so, and so are we.
Truth-Telling
Kara McEwen: We’ve always been of the opinion, and so was our father, that Europeans and Aboriginal people have the same history. It’s a shared history, not a separate history. It’s a history that we own together. Martindale Hall is part of our shared history. However, history is not always fairytales and happy endings, and we have to own that as well. We have to own that there’s tragedy, there’s things in our past that aren’t so pretty. And if we can own it and come together as opposed to being separate, then we can move forward, then we can just move forward as a country.
Acknowledging Ngadjuri
Kara McEwen: There’s really no mention of Aboriginal people, other than as servants. In one of the rooms there’s a picture of an Aboriginal nanny. It would be nice if they incorporated some mention of Ngadjuri heritage, acknowledging that Martindale Hall stands on Ngadjuri country.
Vincent Copley Junior: In Mintaro, there’s not a lot of information about Ngadjuri people. Whereas, because we’ve been up around Clare and Burra when we’ve done research, there is information about Ngadjuri people everywhere up there now. It’s important that people know that the Ngadjuri people are here, that we’re not just a footnote in history.
Further Information on Ngadjuri
Copley, Vincent, and Peter Birt. ‘Coming Back to Country: A Conversation at Firewood Creek’. In Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice, edited by Claire Smith and H. Martin Wobst. Routledge, 2004.
Mayman, Jan. ‘“I Want to Tell My Children”: The History Hidden in the Berndt Notebooks’. Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December 2018. https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-want-to-tell-my-children-the-history-hidden-in-berndt-s-notebooks-20181211-p50lg3.html.
Ngadjuri Nation South Australia. http://www.ngadjuri.com.au/index.html.
Smith, Claire, Vince Copley Senior, and Gary Jackson. ‘Intellectual Soup: On the Reformulation and Repatriation of Indigenous Knowledge’. In Shared Knowledge, Shared Power: Engaging Local and Indigenous Heritage, edited by Veysel Apaydin. Springer, 2018.
Smith, Claire, Vincent Copley Senior, Kylie Lower, Josephine, Ania Kotaba, and Gary Jackson. ‘Using Archaeology to Strengthen Indigenous Social, Emotional, and Economic Wellbeing’. In Archaeology, Heritage, and Wellbeing: Authentic, Powerful, and Therapeutic Engagement with the Past, edited by Paul Everill and Karen Burnell. Routledge, 2022.
Smith, Claire, Gary Jackson, Geoffrey Gray, and Vincent Copley. ‘Friday Essay: Who Owns a Family’s Story? Why It’s Time to Lift the Berndt Field Notes Embargo’. The Conversation, 14 September 2018. https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-who-owns-a-familys-story-why-its-time-to-lift-the-berndt-field-notes-embargo-94652.
Warrior, Fred, Fran Knight, Sue Anderson, and Adele Pring. Ngadjuri: Aboriginal People of the Mid North Region of South Australia. SASOSE Council Inc., 2005.