Australian Bark Shield

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  Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.

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  Today's object is one of the most potent in the whole of this series.

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  It has become symbolically charged, freighted with layers of history, legend, global politics, and race relations.

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  It's an Aboriginal shield, one of the very first objects brought to England from Australia,

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  and it was brought here by the explorer Captain Cook.

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  We know the precise date that it came into Cook's hands, the 29th of April, 1770.

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  We have written accounts of the day from Cook himself,

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  but the indigenous Australian who owned the shield did not write.

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  And this is why a history told from objects can be so important,

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  for the unnamed man confronting his first European on the shore at Botany Bay

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  nearly 250 years ago, this shield is his lasting statement.

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  It’s a bit of a cliché that they came from another planet, of course they did,

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  and these gentlemen hopping out of the boats with these clothes on

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  which looked very, very different, and muskets of course.

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  So the effect that it must have had upon a community must have been very traumatizing.

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  In its absence, really, of adornment, it’s very raw and it seems to me incredibly honest and useful.

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  And I think once we start to look at the other cultural heritage

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  and material objects of those people, we find a great deal that Cook was not able to see.

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  A History of the World in 100 Objects.

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  Australian Bark Shield. From Botany Bay. Made in 1770.

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