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| Planes across the paddocks: Tullamarine airport as viewed from Sunbury Road. |
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| Photo by Jenny Lee, 1999. |
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| Aerial view of Melbourne's international airport at Tullamarine, as it was on March 2, 1968. Or is it? In 2007 a reader advised Redreaming the plains that this photo 'is in fact an aerial shot of Essendon Airport'! |
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| Photo attributed to landscape architect, Mervyn T. Davis (1916-1985), contributed by the La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria. |
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Tullamarine, 20 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, is chiefly known as the site of Victoria's major airport.
The site was chosen in 1959, and the airport, linked to the city by a freeway, was opened in 1970.
The location was chosen partly because the open grasslands of the basalt plain could be put under tarmac at minimal cost, as had been the case at Melbourne's earlier airport on the plateau north of Essendon.
Even the name 'Tullamarine' seemed tailor-made for its new function. But if the conservative government of the time had known where the name came from, they might have had second thoughts . . .
Who was Tullamarine?
Tullamarine was a Woi wurrung man who escaped from the first Melbourne jail by burning it down, in a dramatic act of resistance to the imposition of white authority.
The background to the incident reveals much about how the white intruders overtaxed the hospitality of the Kulin peoples. By early 1838, Europeans had already taken over the best country around Melbourne, and sheep were spreading up and down the river valleys in plague proportions. Displaced from their traditional food-gathering areas, many Kulin took refuge in the town. Others came from far away, curious to see the strange new settlement.
At first, the only provision made for them in town was the Government Mission, near the present site of the Botanic Gardens, but it could not cope with the hundreds who flocked in. Tullamarine was a regular visitor there, and George Langhorne, the missionary, described him as 'a steady, industrious man'. He would have needed to be, given the regime at the mission, where people were expected to work long hours in the fields for very little return. When supplies at the mission ran short, the Kulin turned to other sources of food, among them a potato field beside the Yarra owned by one John Gardiner. One night in April 1838 a watchman saw a party of Aboriginal men, including Tullamarine, digging up potatoes. When he accosted them, a man pointed a gun at him.
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| Impression of the 1838 escape from Melbourne's first jail, of Tullamarine, a well respected Woi wurrung man. |
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| Watercolour by colonial artist, Wilbraham F. Liardet (1799-1878), completed in 1875 and published in Liardet's Water-colours Of Early Melbourne'. Contributed by the La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria. |
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The threat of violence was averted by Tullamarine, who persuaded his companion to lower his weapon. For a moment, this seemed to resolve the issue. The watchman and the potato-diggers shook hands, and the terrified watchman said he would not tell Gardiner they were there.
Then, as soon as their backs were turned, he ran home to raise the alarm. Gardiner's men rushed out, brandishing their weapons, and the potato-diggers fled. Most swam across the Yarra to safety, but Tullamarine was knocked down with the butt of a rifle, tied up, forced into a boat and taken to the jail, along with another man known to the Europeans as Jin Jin.
When news of the incident reached the mission, there was a panic. The residents crowded around the missionary's house, asking what would happen to Tullamarine and Jin Jin. Then, fearing retribution, all but 30 of the people headed for the hills.
Tullamarine soon followed them, much to the authorities' surprise. His method of escape was ingenious. The jail was a crude structure with wooden walls and a thatched roof. Tullamarine pulled a long straw from the thatch and worked it through a chink in the wall into the guard room, where he held it over a candle until it caught alight. He then used the burning straw to set fire to the roof and escaped in the ensuing confusion.
In May 1839 the Assistant Protector William Thomas recorded the death of Tullamarine's wife, who was among the many Kulin to succumb to diseases introduced by the white settlers. Too ill to travel, she had been left behind in the settlement while her people went off to gather food. Thomas attended her to the last, moistening her lips with a quill to relieve her discomfort when she could no longer drink water. He was deeply saddened by her death. She was buried next to her husband, who had died some six months earlier.
Further reading: Alastair Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, Kibble Press, 1987, p. 208; Historical Records of Victoria. Volume 2A: 'The Aborigines of Port Phillip, 1835-1839', pp. 213ff.
(Copyright Imagine The Future Inc. and Australian Film Commission, 2002.
Text by Jenny Lee for ITF.
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