The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931

Abstract

ship names accompanied by the arrival date, captain, senior officers, and ordinary seamen. The shared experience of quarantine itself also produced a sense of camaraderie amongst civilian detainees. Both transient and enduring relationships are reflected in the sandstone carvings, as the extended shared residence itself forged new personal friendships, trade union sentiments, and romantic partnerships. Our authors also interpret the presence of such inscribed name clusters as reflecting an emerging collective identity associated with a new turn-of-century sense of Australia’s Commonwealth nationalism. The authors’ evocative material stories also explore proud experiences of Australia’s migrant and multicultural past. Quarantine Station inscriptions commemorate a rich global array of immigrants whose initial experience of Australia was the liminal space of (health) detention. Stone carvings depict an exotic range of languages, with Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese languages represented, in addition to Greek and Russian Cyrillic script. With their emphasis on ‘storytelling’, the authors weave numerous examples of these stone inscriptions into wider narratives and negotiations of arrival, transit, shared labour, skilled professions and new migrant identities. Finally, the Station’s inscriptions communicate the dynamics of global commerce and cross-cultural exchange. A history of the China Navigation Company (CNCo) accompanies the authors’ reading of the accomplished inscription. Running steamers into Sydney from 1886, three of the CNCo’s small fleet of four ships appeared in the Quarantine Station’s sandstone carvings. Their ‘most accomplished’ image depicts the company’s logo encircled by two dragons – this specific inscription incorporating a modified amalgam of heraldic elements culturally significant to both Chinese and British historic mythologies. Carved as a monument to the “SS Taiyuan”, the tilted rock face carving was first created in 1894, and subsequently reinscribed with later additions linked to the ship’s five separate voyages to quarantine in Sydney Harbour. Based around the narrative structure of ‘storytelling’, this handsome volume offers an outstanding example of how ephemeral cultural materials illuminate powerful stories of lives experienced under extended quarantine. It captures the boredom of isolation, the fear of disease, the pride of military and nautical service, the trauma of global wars and dislocations, the trepidation of emigration, and the experiences of multi-cultural identities. It not only acknowledges these themes as essential elements in the making of contemporary Australia but links them to the delicate inscriptions of Sydney’s Quarantine Station. Scholarly, accessible and (disturbingly) relevant, this volume demonstrates the intrinsic value of ‘storytelling’ within archaeological research.