News Archive

Exactly 178 years ago, a horrific event took place between the Noongar people and soldiers – ‘red coats’ – led by Governor James Stirling.The massacre at Pinjarra, in which many Noongar men, women, children and elderly people were killed, was the subject of research some 16 years ago co-authored by Australian Research Council Research Fellow – Indigenous Professor Len Collard , who was appointed to the School of Indigenous Studies last month.

Professor Collard is a Whadjuk Balardong Noongar and traditional owner of the Perth region and surrounding districts. His ground-breaking theoretical work has put Noongar cultural research on the local, national and international stage, through four successful ARC grants over 10 years.

His new three-year project will use multiple media to tell the story of the meanings of Noongar place-names and create 14 Indigenous language maps of the South-West.

Professor Collard was born in Pingelly, close to Pinjarra. He believes Pingelly most likely means ‘swamp-like’ and Pinjarra ‘swamp jarrah’.

While his Pinjarra report was published in 1996, the event – on the morning of 28 October 1834 – is still fresh in the minds of both Noongar people and non- Noongar people in the region. And the play about the massacre, Bindjareb Pinjarra , was performed at Cockburn Memorial Hall last week with actors including Kelton Pell, Isaac Drandic and Franklin Nannup, a local Pinjarra Noongar elder.

Professor Collard’s grandfather, Tom ‘Pop’ Bennell, had heard the story, as a boy, of the ‘red coats’ and of other ‘white fellas’ murdering Noongars in and around Fremantle, Perth and Bunbury.

The report, written in 1996 with Dr David Palmer of Murdoch University, reviewed settlers’ letters and diaries of the time as well as Government records, newspaper reports and oral histories from Noongar and non-Noongar descendants who had heard stories of what happened on that terrible day.

“It’s good for Noongar and Wedjela alike to hear, through this play, another version of the story apart from the one told by those who had a vested interest in getting Stirling’s message across,” Professor Collard said.

Published in UWA News , 29 October 2012