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Aboriginal cricket tour items found in UK

A boomerang, spear throwers and firesticks are among artefacts from the 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England rediscovered at a museum in the UK.

Steve Waugh of Australia teaches some locals about cricket
Indigenous cricket tour items have been found in the UK (Getty) Source: Getty Images AsiaPac

Gaye Sculthorpe, curator of the Oceania section at the British Museum, found the items at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery in Exeter last week.

She said she was inspecting a group of artefacts from Victoria when she had "a Eureka moment" on seeing the name and date of the donor - W.R. Hayman 1868.

William Reginald Hayman was the Aboriginal team's manager when they toured England from May to October 1868.

"The 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England is a key moment in Australian history and these artefacts are of great significance as tangible evidence of this historic tour, the first Australian cricket tour to England," Dr Sculthorpe said in a statement on Friday.

Until now, the only Aboriginal artefact known to be surviving from the tour was an Aboriginal club in the collection of the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum at Lord's Ground in London.

The objects donated to the Exeter museum by Hayman included a boomerang, several clubs, two spearthrowers, two spears, two parrying sticks and firesticks.

He emigrated in 1858 from Devon in England to western Victoria where most of the cricketers came from.

During their tour, in which they played 47 matches, the Aboriginal cricketers mounted displays of their skills in boomerang and spear throwing and dodging cricket balls thrown at them before and after the games of cricket.

The British Museum is currently mounting the exhibition Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation, which runs until August 2.


2 min read

Published

Source: AAP


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