Sydney’s new Powerhouse Parramatta museum features artwork celebrating an aboriginal man who was executed for brutally raping a 15-year-old White girl.
Daniel Moowattin, who was the first aboriginal person to be officially hanged in Australia, is being honoured in five bronze plaques embedded into the pavement of the rooftop garden of the museum, which officially opens on Saturday.
Powerhouse Parramatta is hosting workshops on the public artworks later this month, but does not mention Moowattin’s sex crime and execution in promotional material, nor does an article praising Moowattin published on Wednesday by taxpayer-funded ABC News.
The ABC’s headline reads “Powerhouse Parramatta pays homage to Indigenous man’s forgotten botanical contribution”, says Moowattin “played a key role in documenting local flora”, and portrays him as the victim of “a history of silencing that the new Powerhouse Parramatta is trying to change”.
The article goes on to quote artist Keg de Souza, who worked with an aboriginal elder to “retrace the work of Moowattin”, who they believe climbed trees and picked eucalyptus leaves for British botanist George Caley due to handwritten annotations reading “got by Dan”.
“The collector was always George Caley, but obviously Daniel Moowattin was actually the collector climbing up the trees and collecting those things,” de Souza said.
Powerhouse Parramatta’s workshops are named Got By Dan, and the museum’s website states that the plaques “highlight the lesser-known story of Dharug man Daniel Moowattin’s role in the early documentation of eucalyptus between 1804–10”.
“In this workshop, participants will be invited to discover all 5 Got by Dan artworks, learn more about Moowattin and create their own rubbings of the plaques,” the listing states.
Moowattin was the third aboriginal person to visit England after being invited to join George Caley in 1810, and returned to Australian two years later and worked as a farm labourer.
In August 1816 he raped Hannah Russell, the 15-year-old daughter of a settler, after dragging her into the bush near Parramatta and beating her head against a tree.
He then robbed her and beat her violently against the stump of a tree while another aboriginal man cried “kill her, kill her”, before fleeing the scene when a stockman approached.
Moowattin was put on trial, and the court found him guilty after hearing evidence from explorer Gregory Blaxland, priest Samuel Marsden, and a man named Robert Lowe to determine whether he knew the difference between good and evil, the Sydney Gazette reported at the time.
He was executed on November 1, 1816.
Header image: Left, one of the plaques. Right, a plaque on the museum rooftop (Powerhouse Parramatta).
