Derrimut (Indigenous Australian)

Portrait of Derremart by Benjamin Duterau. Painted in 1837 as a result of the visit to Hobart with J.P. Fawkner. (Dixon Galleries, State Library of NSW.)

Derrimut's gravestone in Melbourne General Cemetery

Derrimut (or Derremart or Terrimoot) (1810c - 28 May 1864), was a headman or arweet of the Boonwurrung people from the Melbourne area of Australia.^[1]

He informed the early European settlers in October 1835 of an impending attack by "up-country tribes". The colonists armed themselves, and the attack was averted. Benbow from the Bunurong and Billibellary, from the Wurundjeri, also acted to protect the colonists in what is perceived as part of their duty of hospitality.^[1]

He fought in the late 1850s and early 1860s to protect Boonwurrung rights to live on their land at Mordialloc Reserve. When the reserve was closed in July 1863, his people were forced to unite with the remnants of Woiwurrung and other Victorian Aboriginal communities to settle Coranderrk Mission station, near Healsville.^[1]

Derrimut became very disillusioned and died in a Benevolent Asylum at the age of about 54 years in 1864. In his honour, over his body, interred in the Melbourne General Cemetery according to European rather than Aboriginal rites, a tombstone was erected.^[1]

The Melbourne suburb of Derrimut is named after him.

Notes

1 2 3 4 Ian D. Clark, "You have all this place, no good have children ..." Derrimut: traitor, saviour, or a man of his people?, in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 1 December 2005. Accessed 8 November 2008

References

Lack, John. 1991, 'Traditional Koori Society/The Destruction of Koori Society' in A History of Footscray, Hargreen Publishing Company, North Melbourne, Victoria
Presland, Gary. 1994, The Land of the Kulin: Discovering the lost landscape and the first people of Port Phillip, McPhee Gribble, Penguin Books, Australia.
Presland, Gary. 1997, The First Residents of Melbourne's Western Region, Revised Edition, Harriland Press, Forest Hill, Victoria.
Priestley, Susan. 1988, Clans of the Kulin in Altona A Long View, Hargreen Publishing Company, North Melbourne, Victoria.
Walsh, Larry. 1996, STILL HERE: A brief history of Aborigines in Melbourne's western region up to the present day, Melbourne's Living Museum of the

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