Photo by Trish Barnard

Accession Number: QE1089

Museum: Queensland Museum

Date Acquired: 1916

Collector: Joseph Campbell (1856-1933)

Date Collected: 1914-1916

Where from: Wrights Creek

Description: L970 x W330mm

Shield – orange, yellow, white ochres, charcoal. Collected from Gossypium Park 1914-1916 and sold to QM (QE1006-QE4186). In 1910 a cotton plantation called Gossypium Park, was established south of Cairns at Wrights Creek, (near Kamma), which employed local Aboriginal labour. Five years later the plantation went into receivership and one of the cotton gins were sent to Yarrabah. In 1916, Joseph Campbell, former Director of Cotton Culture for Gossypium Park Estates Ltd., and supervisor of Aboriginal people on the plantation in 1914, sold a collection of artefacts including shields and baskets to the Queensland Museum for 30 pounds (Trish Barnard, Collection Manager, Aug. 2005).

Design represents ‘canoes’ – see another historical version Oc.1933.0403.3 in the British Museum, QE1150 in the Queensland Museum, and Michael Boiyool Anning (1955-) contemporary version of this Yidinji shield design which is held in the Queensland Art Gallery collection ‘Bark canoes’ 2004.163 (Barnard 2014).

See: ‘Joseph Campbell’ authored by Trish Barnard

http://www.jcucollections.org/?page_id=786