7. McBryde, 'Exchange in south-eastern Australia'.
8. ibid., p. 132.
9. See R Broome, Arriving, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, 1994, p. 32 and W Bate, Lucky city: the first generation at Ballarat, 1851-1901, Melbourne University Press, 1978, p. 1.
10. See P Coutts and R Miller, The Mt William archeological area, Victoria Archeological Survey, Melbourne, 1977; McBryde, 'Where do the axes come from?'; H Lourandos, 'Intensification: a Late Pleistocene-Holocene sequence from south-western Victoria', Archeology in Oceania, vol. 18, 1983, pp. 81-94; McBryde, 'Exchange in south-eastern Australia'; H Lourandos, 'Swamp managers of southwestern Victoria', in Australians: a historical library, vol. 1, Australians to 1788, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon, Sydney, 1987.
11. See F Blacklock, 'Aboriginal skin cloaks', National Quilt Register, 2002, viewed 2 September 2005 at http://amol.org.au/nqr/fabri.htm; Anonymous, 'Opossum skin rugs', Illustrated London News, 24 April 1852, p. 314; R Wright, 'A modicum of taste: Aboriginal cloaks and rugs', Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Newsletter, vol. 11, 1979, pp. 51-68; Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Islanders Advancement, 'Snug as a bug', Archaeology Papers, vol. 11, 1984, pp. 1-8; M Chisholm, 'The use, manufacture and decoration of possum skin cloaks in nineteenth century Victoria', typescript, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies [AIATSIS] Library, Canberra, 1990; M Lakic, Women's work: Aboriginal women's artefacts in the Museum of Victoria, The Museum, Melbourne, 1992.
12. 'Exchange in south-eastern Australia', p. 140.
13. See A Howitt, The native tribes of south-eastern Australia, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1904, pp. 717-18 and McBryde, 'Exchange in south-eastern Australia'.
14. Blacklock, 'Aboriginal skin cloaks'; Anon., 'Opossum skin rugs'; Howitt, The native tribes of south-eastern Australia; C Daley, 'Reminiscences from 1841 of William Kyle, a pioneer', Victorian Historical Journal, vol. 10, 1925, pp. 158-72; J Dawson, Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1981, pp. 8-25; M Cannon (ed), Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2A, Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839, Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1982, p. 435; 'Snug as a bug'; Chisholm, 'The use, manufacture and decoration of possum skin cloaks'; Lakic, Women's work; I Clark (ed), The journals of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 1, January 1839 - 30 September 1840, Heritage Matters, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 42, 45; I Clark, A history of the Goulburn River Protectorate Station at Murchison, 1840-53, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, Melbourne, 1999, p. 190.
15. On 1 May 1802, Captain Matthew Flinders RN and two of his crew met with three unidentified Wathawurrung balug clansmen just west of the You Yangs, approximately 20 kilometres north-west of Geelong. The three Wathawurrung men approached Flinders' party 'without hesitation' and traded their weapons for tobacco and other unspecified gifts. Flinders and his men were well received by the Wathawurrung, shared a meal with them, and discovered rice - evidence of earlier trade with white travellers (probably sealers) - in one of their huts. See M Flinders, Voyage to Terra australis, facsimile reprint, Libraries Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1966 [1814], 30 April - 2 May 1802. See also J J Shillingshaw (ed), The historical records of Port Phillip: the first annals of the colony of Victoria, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1972; A Andrews (ed), Hume and Hovell: 1824, Blubberhead Press, Hobart, 1981, p. 220; 'Journey of discovery to Port Phillip, New South Wales, by Messrs. W. H. Hovell and Hamilton Hume in 1824 and 1825', manuscript, Hovell Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra; D Cahir, 'Conciliation and conflict: the Wathawurrung, 1797-1849, MA thesis, University of Ballarat, 2002. Peter Corris notes that sealers gathered wallaby and possum skins for export in the period 1810-34: Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1968, p. 52.
16. J Morgan (ed), The life and adventures of William Buckley, Australian National University, Canberra, 1980, pp. 25-6.
17. For further discussion about trading relationships and exchange of goods on the frontier see R Broome, 'Aboriginal workers on south-eastern frontiers', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 103, 1994, pp. 202-20; R Broome, 'Aboriginal victims and voyagers: confronting frontier myths', Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 42, 1994, pp. 70-7; H Reynolds, Black pioneers, Penguin, Ringwood, 2000, p. 249f; R Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: a history since 1800, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005, pp. 10-11.
18. CP Billot (ed), Melbourne's missing chronicle, Quartet, Melbourne, 1982, p. 62.
19. Assistant Aboriginal Protector James Dredge noted on one occasion that 'the Aboriginal men went hunting possums, and returned with between 40-50, one man had caught ten'. PROV, VPRS 4410/P0, Unit 2, Folder 47, James Dredge (Assistant Protector, North Eastern District), report of operations for the period 1 July 1839 - 29 February 1840.
20. William Thomas, January 1839, cited in M Cannon (ed), Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2B, Aborigines and Protectors 1838-9, Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1983, p. 436.
21. 'Opossum skin rugs', p. 314.
22. EM Curr, Recollections of squatting in Victoria from 1841 to 1851, Melbourne University Press, 1965.
23. Melbourne Court Register, January 1838, in Cannon, Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839, p. 465.
24. The majority of visual and written sources recording the child-carrying devices used by Aboriginal people in Victoria describe a possum skin. See K Kirkland, Life in the bush, by a Lady, Chambers, Edinburgh, 1845, p. 16; Chisholm, 'The use, manufacture and decoration of possum skin cloaks'; Lakic, Women's work.
25. An overlander noted: 'Mr Ebden [a pastoralist who occupied land near Mt Macedon] appeared dressed in possum jacket and cap'. J Cross, A month in the bush of Australia, Libraries Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1965, p. 35. Chief Protector of Aborigines for Port Phillip, GA Robinson, noted on October 1839 an unidentified white man wearing an 'opposum rug'. The journals of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 1.
26. Cannon, Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839, p. 435.
27. GA Robinson to Assistant Protectors, 8 July 1839, cited in Cannon, Aborigines and Protectors, 1838-1839, p. 726.
28. Three statements relating to the sale of possum skins by George Bertram are found in PROV, VPRS 4398/P0, Unit 1, Folder No. 1, Papers relating to the sale of skins by Bertram. [Includes] one letter from John Purcell to Le Souef with duplicate and statutory declaration of George Gilbert, border policeman, 1842.
29. Broome is one of the few historians to discuss the degree to which Aboriginal people in Victoria during the nineteenth-century adopted aspects of Western monetary principles. See 'Aboriginal workers on south-eastern frontiers'.
30. JP Fawkner, Melbourne's missing chronicle: being the Journal of preparations for departure to and proceedings at Port Phillip, ed. CP Billot, Quartet Books, Melbourne, p. 41.
31. ibid., 2 May 1836.
32. Cited in Cannon, Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839, p. 229.
33. ibid., p. 236.
34. ibid., p. 233.
35. 'Aboriginal workers on south-eastern frontiers'.
36. I Clark & T Heydon, The confluence of the Merri Creek and Yarra River: a history of the Western Port Aboriginal Protectorate and the Merri Creek Aboriginal School, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, Melbourne, 1998, p. 42; M Fels, Good men and true: the Aboriginal Police of the Port Phillip District 1837-1853, Melbourne University Press, 1988.
37. Robinson noted on 4 November 1844 that William Phillips arrived in Melbourne on the Goulburn cart with a load of possum skins for sale. The journals of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 4, 1 January 1844 - 24 October 1845, Heritage Matters, Melbourne, 1998, p. 245.
38. PROV, VPRS 4410/P0, Unit 3, Folder 82, William Thomas (Assistant Protector, Western Port District), quarterly report, 31 November 1844, for the period 1 September 1844 - 30 November 1844.
39. PROV, VPRS 44/P0, Unit 484, James Horsburgh, General Report of the Goulburn River Aboriginal Station, 6 January 1849.
40. By 1839 Aboriginal people in Central Victoria were asserting that the introduction of sheep and cattle had severely depleted their staple food sources. It is probable that the environmental destruction that accompanied colonisation led Aboriginal people to seek out increasing amounts of white carbohydrate food sources as well as money. See Cahir, 'Conciliation and conflict: the Wathawurrung, 1797-1849'.
41. PROV, VPRS 4398/P0, Unit 1, Folder No. 1, Papers relating to the sale of skins by Bertram. [Includes] one letter from John Purcell to Le Souef with duplicate and statutory declaration of George Gilbert, border policeman, 1842.
42. EB Addis, 'Report of the Crown Lands Commissioner for the County of Grant', manuscript, Mitchell Library, Sydney, 1842.
43. Thomas recorded that the Boonwurrung people traded 17 possum and kangaroo skins and seven baskets for flour and other unspecified goods. PROV, VPRS 4410/P0, Unit 3, Folder No. 67, Periodical Report for the period February to August 1840.
44. Life in the bush, by a lady, pp. 1, 20.
45. Cited in Cannon, Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839, p. 307.
46. Cited in P Griffith, Three times blest, Buninyong Historical Society, 1988, p. 4.
47. The diary of Charles Griffith, manuscript, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 1840-41, pp. 287-8.
48. Quoted in Clark, A history of the Goulburn River Protectorate Station at Murchison, 1840-53, p. 95.
49. Clark & Heydon, The confluence of the Merri Creek and Yarra River, p. 65.
50. ID Clark, 'The northern Wathawurrung and Andrew Porteous, 1860-1877', unpublished paper, University of Ballarat, 2005, p. 5.
51. 'The travels of Walter Bridges', manuscript, Ballarat Library, Australiana Collection, 1855, p. 10.
52. Cited (undated) in Castlemaine Pioneers Association, Records of Castlemaine pioneers, Rigby, Melbourne, 1972, p. 220.
53. R Annear, Nothing but gold: the diggers of 1852, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999, p. 92.
54. Pepper & De Araugo cited in I Clark, 'Aboriginal people, gold, and tourism: the benefits of inclusiveness for goldfields tourism in regional Victoria', Tourism, Culture and Communication, vol. 4, 2003, pp. 123-36, p. 133.
55. Nothing but gold, p. 95.
56. G Wathen, The golden colony, or Victoria in 1854: with remarks on the geology of the Australian gold fields, Longman, London, 1855, p. 131.
57. E Tame, 'Reminiscences of Melbourne and gold diggings 1852-6', manuscript, National Library of Australia, MS 8964, Box 925.
58. HW Wheelwright, Bush wanderings of a naturalist, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1979, p. 44.
59. [Manager] Shaw cited in I Clark, Aboriginal languages and clans: an historical atlas of western and central Victoria, 1800-1900, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, 1990, p. 49.
60. Cited in S Wiencke, When the wattles bloom again: the life and times of William Barak, last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe, the author, Woori Yallock, 1984, p. 52.
61. Report of the Central Board appointed to watch over the interests of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria, 1861-69 and Report of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria, 1871-95, quoted in Clark, 'The northern Wathawurrung and Andrew Porteous, 1860-77'.
62. Anonymous, 'The decaying race', London Times, 1865, p. 5.
63. Curoc, 'Protection to native industry by a blackfellow', Ballarat Star, 16 July 1861, pp. 7-8.
64. Report of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria, 1871-95, quoted in Clark, 'The northern Wathawurrung and Andrew Porteous, 1860-77'.
65. E Netell, 'Town Clerk's correspondence', manuscript, Buninyong Historical Society Files, 1867, pp. 2-3.
66. Quoted in Clark, 'The northern Wathawurrung and Andrew Porteous, 1860-77'.
67. RB Smythe, The Aborigines of Victoria, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1878, p. 180. See also discussion in McBryde, 'Exchange in south-eastern Australia'.
68. Henry Reynolds in I Clark, Sharing history, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Issues Paper no. 4, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1994, p. 10.

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