corrobberies

Updated: May 2, 2025

It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840: "It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces of white chalk and red ochre wherewith to bedaub their bodies for their filthy corrobberies."

Edward John Eyre - Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02

It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840: "It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces of white chalk and red ochre wherewith to bedaub their bodies for their filthy corrobberies."

Edward John Eyre - Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Complete

It seems, in truth, impossible that a race transported from their country, suddenly compelled to change all their habits and modes of life, kept under restraint, however mild and paternal, obliged to repress all the powerful instincts which lead them to desire a renewal of their wild and unfettered life, tormented by the memory of the freedom they once enjoyed, and galled by the moral chain which they now wear, constantly sighing in secret for the perilous charms of the wilderness, for their hunts, and their corrobberies, for the hills and mountains and streams of their native land it is impossible, I say, that a people whose life has undergone such a change, who cherish such reminiscences and such regrets, should increase and multiply and replenish the face of the land.

John Lort Stokes - Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers: Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in The: Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners: Of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits: To the Islands in the Arafura Sea