SEMINAR: Anthropology & Sociology Seminar Series 2014 - Associate Professor Shino Konishi � History, School of Humanities and School of Indigenous Studies: Gogy�s attachment to Barrallier: Indigenous intermediaries in colonial NSW

This paper is a work in progress examining Francis Barrallier’s 1802 expedition to discover a means of crossing the Blue Mountains. Barrallier’s was not the first unsuccessful attempt to cross the mountains which had thus far served as the impenetrable boundary of the Port Jackson colony. However, it was notable for his extensive contact with local Aboriginal people, mediated by his Dharawal intermediary Gogy. In this paper I examine Barrallier’s account of Gogy but rather than evaluating Gogy’s contributions as an indigenous guide to the expedition as other historians have done, my aim is to try and elucidate Gogy’s strategic motivations for ‘attaching’ himself to Barrallier. By comparing the European accounts of Gogy to that of his contemporary, Bennelong, I will try to offer different perspectives on his seemingly mercurial and inexplicable performances, and highlight the way in which the colonists’ presence impacted on indigenous mobility within the local polity. In this paper I will tease out the way in which Gogy and Bennelong forged strategic relationships with individual colonists, and sought to occupy and maintain a middle space between natives and newcomers by alone mediating and controlling the wants of each side – knowledge of the local environments as well as peaceful interactions on behalf of the early colonists, and for Aboriginal people, information about the colonists, food, and material goods.