Book Description

My love affair with all things Cox's Road (1814/15) began in February 1972, when I shared a common-room with thelate Theo Barker, the highly respected Bathurst historian at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education (now CharlesSturt University, Bathurst Campus). For three years he regaled his colleagues with numerous stories about colonialBathurst, including Cox's Road. In the ensuing years I have gathered together a significant amount of informationand visited most of the sites and places identified in the Cox's Road Dreaming Guide - very much through the eyes ofa professional ecologist.The title Cox's Road Dreaming resulted from a long period of reflection on the European interaction with Darug,Gundungurra and Wiradyuri, the three main Aboriginal Nations through which Cox's Road traversed in the period1813 to 1850. Early European historians and explorers were often guilty of writing the story of the traditional ownersout of the historical script as it related to Gregory Blaxland, William Wentworth and William Lawson, George Evans,William Cox and Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the proclamation of Bathurst in May 1815, and the opening up ofthe west to European agriculture and related fledgling industries. This Dreaming story is not seeking to emulateAboriginal Dreaming and song lines, although inspiration is drawn from Aboriginal culture. In this story tellingwe seek a nuanced reappraisal of this period of Australian colonial history, the debunking of some myths withoutnecessarily robbing them of their continuing importance, and to identify the outcomes for Aboriginal people that ledto their dispossession, the precipitous decline in their numbers, and their new reality as colonial fringe dwellers intheir own Country.A recurring theme in Cox's Road Dreaming is the focus on the Natural History associated with the road - the studyof organisms and their environments, geology, vegetation communities, and biological and physical processes. Inthe 19th century Natural History also embraced the study of Aboriginal culture, often in a very paternalistic anddemeaning manner. The study of Natural History in the late 18th and 19th centuries was often little more thanthe equivalent of stamp collecting of natural items. At its best it was undertaken to improve