George Murray Black
George Murray Black | |
|---|---|
| Born | Template:Birth date Tarwin Meadows, South Gippsland, Australia |
| Died | November 2, 1965 (aged 91) |
| Occupation(s) | Pastoralist, collector of Indigenous Australian remains |
George Murray Black (28 February 1874 – 2 November 1965) was an Anglo-Australian pastoralist notorious for extensively disturbing Indigenous Australian burial grounds, having excavated approximately 1,800 graves along the Murray River and other locations.
Early life
Born in 1874 at Tarwin Meadows within South Gippsland, Black was the son of George Black, a British settler who pioneered the establishment of the expansive pastoral estate known as Tarwin Meadows. The property’s name originates from the Aboriginal group that originally inhabited the region.
His mother, Isabella Watson, was the daughter of Sidney Grandison Watson, an early settler in the Walwa district.
In 1901, Black earned a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne. He married Eleanor Jane McMicking in June 1918.
Initial collecting
Black’s family had longstanding involvement in gathering Indigenous Australian cultural artifacts and human remains. When his father founded Tarwin Meadows in 1851, only a small number of members from the local Indigenous Tarwin community survived after frontier conflicts and disease decimated their population. George Watson accumulated a notable assortment of Aboriginal objects from this area, which was later donated to the National Museum of Australia.
Black’s uncle, Archibald Watson, who held a professorship in anatomy at the University of Adelaide, was recognized for collecting Indigenous human remains for scientific research.
Upon inheriting Tarwin Meadows in 1902, Black conducted extensive excavations of nearby Aboriginal burial sites, reportedly uncovering more than a dozen skeletons within the district.
Supplying the Australian Institute of Anatomy
Black established a professional connection with anatomist William Colin Mackenzie, providing Aboriginal skeletal remains to Mackenzie’s Australian Institute of Anatomical Research, founded in Melbourne in 1919. In 1929, this collection was transferred to the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra, where Mackenzie served as director.
By the late 1930s, Black had gathered a substantial number of Aboriginal bones from Victoria and southern New South Wales through widespread excavation of Indigenous graves. These remains formed what became known as the "Murray Black Collection" at the Australian Institute of Anatomy.
Following Mackenzie’s death in 1938, Black’s crude collection techniques faced criticism. The succeeding director, Dr Frederick Clements, denounced Black’s work for lacking scientific rigor and proper record-keeping, which diminished its research value. Black himself admitted to indiscriminately extracting bones and packing them haphazardly into crates, discarding those that did not fit into nearby waterways. As a result, Clements terminated Black’s involvement with the institute in 1940.
Work with University of Melbourne
Subsequently, Black collaborated with the Department of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne. Between 1940 and 1950, he methodically gathered Aboriginal remains from burial sites along the Murray River valley stretching from Swan Hill, Victoria to Renmark, South Australia. This assemblage—also referred to as the Murray Black Collection—comprised over 800 complete skeletons and was housed at the university.
Despite this extensive effort, Black’s unscientific methods failed to consider either the age or contextual significance of the remains or their burial locations. Remains deemed unsuitable were again discarded. Principal excavation sites included the Chowilla floodplain, Rufus River, Euston, Poon Boon, and regions adjacent to the Wakool River.
Death
Black passed away in 1965 and was laid to rest at Tarwin Lower Cemetery. His gravesite is secured with a concrete cover, surrounded by wrought iron railings, and marked by a stone obelisk designed in the Egyptian style.
Repatriation of the Murray Black Collection
Around 1986, nearly 1,600 skeletal remains from the Murray Black Collection were repatriated and handed over to representatives of Aboriginal communities originating from the Murray River area for proper reburial.