Photo by Trish Barnard
Accession Number: QE1126
Museum: Queensland Museum
Date Acquired: 1916
Collector: Joseph Campbell (1856-1933)
Date Collected: 1914-1916
Where from: Wrights Creek
Description: L1200 x W400mm
NQ shield, Munsell colours ; front 5yr 8/1-white:5yr 2.5/1- black:10R 4/8 -red ; back unpainted. Collected from Gossypium Park on 28 September 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).
Interesting design on this shield and could possibly have been made by a Yidinji man (shield has typical scorpion black triangles but appears hybrid) who was working at Gossypium Park cotton plantation just for trade/sale (Barnard 2011).
See: ‘Joseph Campbell’ authored by Trish Barnard