‘From Riverbank Humpy to White House’

Abstract

Rumbalara Settlement , built by the Housing Commission and Aborigines Welfare Board on the outskirts of the Victorian town Mooroopna, was designed as a form of ‘halfway’ housing : a point on the journey European Australians believed Aboriginal people needed to take towards full assimilation . The tenants were segregated from the township in basic houses where they were to learn the tenets of so-called civilised living. The project quickly became mired in controversy due to the substandard quality of the houses and their segregated nature, and within a decade of its opening its residents had successfully campaigned for its closure and to be moved into houses in the township. In telling this story , I reveal the way that the spaces in and around the Victorian town were utilised in the project of assimilation . Government authorities carefully controlled those spaces and the houses on them, and the ways in which they could be entered and used, in order to prevent their unsettlement by people who were seen as needing pedagogic instruction in how to live in ‘white’ spaces. However, the houses were also sites of opportunity for their Aboriginal tenants in ways that disrupted and undermined the aims and assumptions of policy makers, particularly through unauthorised and disruptive movements . Through myriad forms of mobility , the tenants demonstrated and suggested their ongoing sovereignty over both Rumbalara and the land outside its boundaries .