Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to hunt at a place where kangaroos were known to graze (point 5); one of the shapes here
makes a plausible kangaroo, as rendered by someone unaccustomed to wielding a pen. The
men would return to the campsite (point 3) to roast their catch on the fire, and all would sit
round to enjoy the feast.
Galiput was from King George Sound, on the western south coast of Australia, and the
map presumably shows his own home. He drew it while staying with Morgan, a minor offi-
cial of the newly-founded Swan River Colony, near present-day Perth. Morgan had just taken
up post and - so we learn from a letter that he sent to the Colonial Office with this map -
he hoped that Galiput and another man called Manyat would improve communications with
local Aborigines, which were not good. The two visitors had stayed with him for some time,
and he records that they had gone to church on Sunday, and eaten a number of meals with
him.
While Morgan wrote his letter, Galiput sat nearby 'amusing himself with a pen', and drew
this map. Morgan was effectively witnessing how the Aborigine at his writing table - after a
while of trying out the novelty of a pen, 'which he now holds tolerably well' - could readily
adopt this new technology to communicate his view of his world. This interaction captured
a long tradition of aboriginal mapmaking, where a stick or finger was used in sand or mud
to make a sketch to narrate an event or to show how physical features related to one another.
These maps in mud were smoothed over by the tide, and the sketches in sand blew away in
the wind. Galiput's temporary access to the more permanent medium of ink on paper has al-
lowed his creation to survive in the archives.
