No longer a wandering spirit: the story of Bessy Flowers

Victorian Koorie descendants of Bessy Flowers at Bulla Miel (or its European name Bluff Knoll) in the Stirling Range, Western Australia, 2013.
Victorian Koorie descendants of Bessy Flowers at Bulla Miel (or its European name Bluff Knoll) in the Stirling Range, Western Australia, 2013. Reproduced courtesy of Sharon Huebner.

State Library of Victoria Conference Centre (enter via Door Three on La Trobe Street) 328 Swanston St Melbourne VIC 3000

FREE event

In 1867 Bessy Flowers, along with four other young Indigenous girls, was sent away from her home in Albany and never returned.

State Library Creative Fellow Sharon Huebner unravels the journey of two Aboriginal family groups – Wirlomin Minang Noongar from the Great Southern region of Western Australia and Koorie from Eastern Victoria – after discovering the history of their ancestor, held in a colonial archive for more than 150 years.

Inspired by a childhood portrait of Bessy taken by a colonial settler in the early 1860s, the event focuses on the Flowers Wirlomin Minang Noongar and Bryant Koorie families remembering Bessy after being absent from their history and identity. Both families share their experience of visiting historical sites that map Bessy’s past, and emotionally reinstate a place for Bessy’s memory within their culture.

Speakers

  • Sharon Huebner is a writer and photographer. In 2014 she was a Library Creative Fellow and in 2015 she was the Hugh Williamson Fellow at the University of Melbourne Archivers. In her research, Sharon explored the historical biography of Minang Noongar (Western Australia) woman, Bessy Flowers. This research drew on collaborations with Bessy’s Wirlomin Minang Noongar kin and her Koorie descendants developed as part of Sharon’s doctoral project at the Monash Indigenous Centre – a memory project which explored questions of identity through contemporary methods of inquiry that provided support to Noongar and Koorie practices of kinship.
  • Ezzard Flowers is a Wirlomin Minang Noongar from the Great Southern region of Western Australia. He was born on the United Aborigines Mission Gnowangerup in 1958. Ezzard is connected to Bessy Flowers through his grandfather, Clifford Flowers. Since 2010, Ezzard has been collaborating with Bessy’s great-grandchildren descended from her eldest daughter Magdalene, and belonging to the families of Keith (Bessy’s grandson) and Esther Bryant to reclaim and enrich the memory of their ancestor as part of contemporary Wirlomin Minang Noongar and Koorie stories that fuse the past with the present.