A FIGHTING CLUB, MOUNT BROWN, NEW SOUTH WALES MID 19TH CENTURY |

Please note there is a minor chip and pressure mark to the proper left edge of the club. It is mounted on a custom made stand. There doesn’t appear to be any visible evidence of repair or restoration. The wear is consistent with age and use.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Cf. James Edge Partington, Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands, 2^nd Ed., expanded and edited by Bruce L. Miller, SDI Publications, Bangkok, 1996, Series III, p.102, fig.20, for another example listed as from the “Adelaide Museum”, identified as being from Mount Brown. The closely related club of virtually identical form, featured in a drawing in Edge-Partington, is still held in the collection of the South Australian Museum. This club was collected by a station overseer and former NSW police-trooper, G.H. Birt, and was acquired between 1895 and 1903.

Dr. Philip Jones has advised that the related club is, “recorded as having been collected at Mt Brown, just south of Milparinka, in Malyangapa country. Mt Brown was named after J. Harris Browne, the doctor on Sturt’s 1844-45 expedition, and should really be spelt with the ‘e’. The nearby station is spelt thus. Early accounts of the gold discoveries at Milparinka & Mt Brown in 1879-1880 would indicate that Aboriginal people were attracted to the localities and this may have been the context for the collection of Birt’s Mt Brown material and for other Mt Brown material which comes to light. There would have been a lot of trading and exchange at that time and I’d probably agree that the clubs in question date from that period of initial contact, perhaps centred on the gold discoveries which attracted numbers of Europeans to the area for the first time”, (personal correspondence January 2018).

Sotheby’s would like to thank Dr. Philip Jones, Senior Curator, Anthropology, at the South Australian Museum, for his help with this catalogue entry.