The Bowen Historical Society has celebrated the Indigenous history of the Whitsundays northernmost point this week through the museum’s Aboriginal displays.
The year-round displays have themselves a long history at the museum, having been originally transferred from the Bowen School of Arts – they include historical artifacts such as weaponry like cudgels, reed bags, tools, and even metal medallions.
The section pays homage to the Juru, Bowen’s traditional owners who hold title for the land northwards from Bowen to the Burdekin River, near to Home Hill.
Much of the history at the museum focuses on the Juru people and their relationship to figures like Bowen’s early day pastoralists and colonialists like Captain Henry Daniel Sinclair.
Sinclair, along with George Elphinstone Dalrymple, are in the section adjacent to the Aboriginal one, and Bowen Museum’s Alan Jurgens said they would love to expand both sections.
“We have some good displays on Bowen’s Aboriginal past and some really thorough ones on the port of Bowen’s founders, but we’d love more,” he said.
“There’s much more history that the Indigenous lived before we arrived, and I think the museum would benefit, as well as Bowen, from learning more about it.”
The Bowen region was widely inhabited by the Juru at the time of Sinclair and Dalrymple – but the history of its pastoralists, like much of Australia, is unfortunately tethered with bigotry and genocide.
“It is a history we can’t hide from. It must be told, and to do so we need volunteers and donations,” Mr Jurgens said.
Bowen Museum is open 9.30am to 12.30pm, Monday to Friday.
Bowen Museum volunteer Alan Jurgens in the museum’s aboriginal section
