Is this the first image of footy in Australia?

Museum Victoria has just released what they consider may be the first image of an Australian football game, being played by Indigenous people near modern-day Mildura. According to Dr Patrick Greene, Chief Executive Officer, Museum Victoria, “This is a remarkable image and we at the Museum are delighted to be able to publicise its discovery. If what we are seeing is indeed an Australian ‘football’ game, involving both marking and kicking, then this image may be the earliest yet known”. You can listen to Dr Greene’s interview with ABC’s Jon Faine here.

Dr Michael Green, Head of Indigenous Cultures says “Museum Victoria has little expert knowledge of football history, so I’d encourage those who know more to do further research on this image. Given the early date and what it depicts, we have decided to place the image in the public domain for further investigation and debate,”.So here is my current position (from my book)In recent years some have claimed that Marn-grook, an indigenous form of football, influenced T.W. Wills, who incorporated its elements into the Melbourne Football Club’s rules. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence to support this view. In his unpublished paper about the first aboriginal footballer, “Pompey” Austin (who played for Geelong in 1872), historian Trevor Ruddell discusses the kind of football played by Aboriginals of the Western District during the early colonial period:

There are accounts of Western District Aboriginals playing a team game which involved kicking and catching an orange sized ball made from a possum skin. James Dawson, a pioneer, Aboriginal advocate and amateur ethnographer saw such games and stated that they were, ‘…very rough; but as the players are barefooted and naked, they do not hurt each other so much as the white people [footballers] do.’[i]

Ruddell and others have argued that there are coincidental similarities to the modern game of football, such as the ‘high mark’, but there is no causal or documented link to the origins of Australian Football. He states that with the decline of indigenous populations after white settlement, and the establishment of the mission system, the indigenous ball game suffered, especially as it was linked to inter-tribal corroborees. This is a convincing argument given that colonial audiences were often amused at aboriginals playing football in the early days. It was generally assumed that the descendents of Britain were superior to Australia’s indigenous people, and in inventing a ‘game of our own’, it was seen to be important to maintain the ’sporting values’ of the English public schools and the Mother Country’s ‘muscular Christianity’. Australian Football was invented by and for a colonial class that needed fit and healthy men who could defend the Empire in a crisis and there seem to be few reasons why a paternalistic, and at times racist culture, would embrace an indigenous sport as its own.

[i] Dawson, James. Australian Aborigines: The languages and customs of several tribes of the Western District of Victoria, Australia. Walker, May & Co., Melbourne, 1881. p. 85. Dawson also wrote that traditional Aboriginal games were, ‘…held usually after the great meetings and korroboraes’ (p. 84) and because fifty to one hundred men were engaged by the ball game it suggests that such assemblies were important, if not integral, to the sport.