Aboriginal corroborees on Sunday night in 1840s become paid shows and part of early Adelaide's social life

From "Corroboree" (around 1864, Adelaide) painting by John Michael Skipper.
Image courtesy Art Gallery of South Australia, on loan from the South Australian Museum

One of Adelaide earliest public musical dance performances was an Aboriginal corroboree in the parklands in 1839.

The 1839 corroboree was at the Queen’s Birthday event hosted by governor George Gawler (borrowing  an idea from New South governor John Macquarie). Gawler’s “peace corroboree” was to “restore those former peacable relations … between us and our friendly native tribes” after a recent killing of the white settlers on the Maria at the Coorong.

But by 1845, Sunday corroborees, arranged and promoted by Aboriginals for a paying audience of European settlers, were a regular feature.

This is confirmed by C.A. Cawthorne’s diary and by Matthew Moorhouse, the first protector of Aborigines. The colonial secretary had ordered Moorhouse to tell the “native encamped near Adelaide” and Adelaide is “now a Christian country” and the “Sabbath must be kept holy” that they were to “abstain from making a noise on Sundays”.

Moorhouse replied: “I have told them repeatedly not to corrobory on the Sabbath, but crowds of Europeans visit them on this day, and offer them money, and the Natives find it more profitable to listen to them than to me. Last Sunday I believe they made nearly two pounds by their performances.”

Adelaide's Kaurna people became active organisers and promoters of corroborees and became hosts for Aboriginals vistors from from Murray Lakes and Murray River.

The commercial corroboree venture by Aboriginals in South Australia was checked by the 1850s Victorian gold rushes. The loss of the South Australian European labour force to the goldfields stimulated the rural demand for Aboriginal workers.

To meet this demand, the government closed the native school in the parklands and discouraged Aboriginal visitors to the city.