A couple of years ago I read Don Watson’s Caledonia Austra­lis, where he wrote about the occupation of Gippsland by Scots whose loss of lands followed their defeat in the Highland war of 1745. In Watson’s account the highlanders shaped the early years of East Gippsland. Prominent among them was Angus McMillan who began his occupation of southeast Australia in Currawong on the southern Monaro (near Delegate) and, once having spotted Gippsland from the top of Mt McLeod, determined to get there. He made his exploration via Omeo with a small group of men. Strzelecki later followed in McMillan’s footsteps, but failed to acknowledge his predecessor, earning McMillan’s enduring enmity. They seem to be a competitive lot, the early explorers.

Following his explorations, McMillan became a major landholder based at Bushy Park on the Avon River. He prospered for a while but his fortunes declined due to poor speculative investments and the impact of bushfire. He died at the age of 55 after a horse rolled on him near Dargo where he was looking for goldfields on behalf of the government.

McMillan is remembered in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as a fine citizen who opened up Gippsland and mentored Scotsmen arriving in the district. (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcmillan-angus-2416) Watson and Gardner see him differently, as someone who went from being an exterminator of Aboriginal people to their official protector. Julian Drape, a kurnai writer, concludes that:

“While there are innumerable instances where McMillan was involved in hunting and shooting Gippsland Aborigines – so many that Gardner titled one of his chapters on McMillan in Our Founding Murdering Father “The butcher of Gippsland” – he is most often thought of as the heroic ‘discoverer’ of the district. It is perverse that in many false histories he is described as a benefactor of the Aborigines.

This re-writing of history – which allowed the Gippsland Guardian to say that McMillan’s “station at Bushy Park might well be called the Benevolent Asylum of Gippsland” (44) – occurred after many of the surviving Kurnai came to the stations, including Bushy Park, in late 1849 or 1850. (45) Gardner acknowledges that McMillan was probably more generous in providing basic supplies to the Aborigines than many of his fellow squatters. But the only reason the Kurnai were at Bushy Park camp was because McMillan and his like had previosly (sic)all but wiped them out. Gardner says that in return for handing out mutton and other supplies, McMillan “obtained a large, if in many cases unreliable, workforce.” He writes that because of the gold rush labour was scarce and expensive, so that McMillan’s handouts “may have been quite a bargain.” (46)

In a further display of the settlers’ attempts to re-write their history, Angus McMillan was appointed an “Honorary Correspondent” of the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines, on 30 August 1860. The irony could not have been lost on the Gippsland Aborigines.”

Gippsland’s other well known explorer was Alfred Howitt whose Gippsland life was fictionalised by  Jenny Herbert in “In the shadow of a hero“.

Howitt’s path was bound to cross with McMillan’s. They had much in common in a small society. Both, at separate times, were given the job of finding gold in the Omeo and Dargo areas after the Ballarat rush ebbed. They spent a couple of days together when Howitt’s group stayed at Bushy Park on the way to find gold bearing country. Although Howitt felt uneasy meeting the man many thought responsible for a particular massacre he hid his discomfort, preferring to remain in the influential McMillan’s favour.

Howitt was already a conflicted man; he suffered crises of conscience about taking credit for the discovery of King, the sole survivor of the Burke and Wills exploration of Central Australia. According to Herbert’s account, it was really Welch, another of Howitt’s party, who found King and the combination of Howitt’s guilt and fear of discovery thwarted their relationship throughout their lives. On the strength of his success uncovering the fate of the Burke and Wills party – an expedition that Howitt believed would have had a happier ending had he been chosen as leader instead of the charismatic Burke – Howitt was given the role of travelling magistrate. From his home in Bairnsdale he set off on horseback for remote places like Dargo and Omeo, leaving his wife Margaret (Limey) and children for weeks at a time. This was another source of guilt for him, but he loved being out in the bush, finding fossils and interesting rock forms and learning more about the Aboriginal people who fascinated him. Howitt never saw Aboriginal people as his equals but he was fascinated by their customs and Herbert gives no hint that he was ever murderous towards them.

Jenny Herbert’s book is the result of extensive research and written while she was studying for her PhD in creative writing. After years in the tourism industry (her other published work is called The Intelligent Traveller), she now lives in Metung within a stone’s throw of Clovelly, Howitt’s house. He emerges from the pages as a complex figure, a hero, flawed as surely all heroes are. Good historical fiction is an excellent way to submerge oneself in the past, to be drawn along by empathic experience rather than cold hard facts. ‘In the shadow of a hero’ is in the East Gippsland library and available for purchase on line and I recommend it.