While walking at The Gorge near Mount Buffalo Chalet yesterday I saw a tourist sign, presumably erected by Parks Victoria, which read:
“James Manfield was one of the first Europeans to bring tourists to the plateau.”
My comments on this …
Although James Manfield was born in Somerset he spent most of his life in Australia and New Zealand. By the time he was guiding people to Mount Buffalo in the 1890s he could rightly be considered Victorian or Australian.
People born in Britain before the Common Market was established never considered themselves European; that was the “continent”.
The point of the sign was obviously to differentiate between white people and Aborigines. However, there is no evidence that Aborigines ever took tourists up the mountain, so there is no need to establish a point of difference.
Aborigines never had a permanent settlement on Mount Buffalo. Small numbers used to visit there in summer to eat moths. The native heritage is interesting and should be commemorated in a special way, but there is no need for politically correct tokenism.
The sentence should have read: “James Manfield was one of the first tourist guides on Mount Buffalo.”
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