Cage of Ghosts - 2019 Winner NSW Premier’s History Prize - is a landmark publication. In this richly illustrated and thought-provoking book, photographer and writer Jon Rhodes takes the reader on a search for reminders of the almost invisible Aboriginal presence in south-eastern Australia, where the impact of European settlement has been the most intense. Without making a conscious effort, it’s possible to travel all over this part of Australia, in contrast to the Centre, and never come across any significant Aboriginal places. Or to ever realise that, only a little over two centuries ago, hundreds of distinct tribes of hunter-gatherers had occupied this land for many thousands of years.
Rhodes examines in vivid and fascinating detail the histories of an extraordinary cast of 19th and early 20th century ethnologists, antiquarians, surveyors, anthropologists and artefact collectors, who were obsessed with documenting Aboriginal culture. He takes up recording where these men left off, journeying from Sydney’s Eora rock engravings at Point Piper, Bondi, Allambie Heights and Mt. Ku-ring-gai; to ceremonially carved trees on a Kamilaroi bora ground near Collarenebri in north-western NSW; to the Djab wurrung paintings of Bunjil and his two dingoes in Victoria; and to the Ngunnawal scarred trees in the nation’s capital, Canberra.
By intermingling these esoteric narratives with his personal observations, Jon Rhodes solves many of the intriguing puzzles he investigates, but raises the one big question yet to be answered – when will the fundamental truth of the 140-year-long Australian Frontier War finally be publicly acknowledged, and memorialised?
Jon Rhodes is one of Australia’s outstanding photographers, and is well represented in both State and National collections. Cage of Ghosts the book is based on his exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Library of Australia in 2007.
Rhodes examines in vivid and fascinating detail the histories of an extraordinary cast of 19th and early 20th century ethnologists, antiquarians, surveyors, anthropologists and artefact collectors, who were obsessed with documenting Aboriginal culture. He takes up recording where these men left off, journeying from Sydney’s Eora rock engravings at Point Piper, Bondi, Allambie Heights and Mt. Ku-ring-gai; to ceremonially carved trees on a Kamilaroi bora ground near Collarenebri in north-western NSW; to the Djab wurrung paintings of Bunjil and his two dingoes in Victoria; and to the Ngunnawal scarred trees in the nation’s capital, Canberra.Â
* 2019 Winner NSW Premier’s History Prize
Cage of Ghosts, by local author Jon Rhodes, is a landmark publication. In this richly illustrated and thought-provoking book, he takes the reader on a search for reminders of the almost invisible Aboriginal presence in south-eastern Australia, where the impact of European settlement has been the most intense.
  Without making a conscious effort, it’s possible to travel all over this part of Australia, in contrast to the Centre, and never come across any significant Aboriginal places. Or to ever realise that, only a little over two centuries ago, hundreds of distinct tribes of hunter-gatherers had occupied this land for many thousands of years.
2019 Winner NSW Premier’s History Prize
Judges’ comments:Â
This substantial work makes a highly original contribution to the regional history and heritage of New South Wales. Starting from his own photographic documentation of sites of the Aboriginal presence in the landscape, Jon Rhodes explores the history of the transformation of these rock engravings and carved trees into cultural heritage. He also uncovers a cast of enthusiasts and antiquarians who recognised the value of these sites and tried to protect and preserve them, and of the anthropologists who ‘saved’ the trees only to cut them down and send them to museums.
Through vivid illustrations and reports of his visits, Rhodes characterises the presentation of these sites today as ‘caged’, places that are now imprisoned by development or for their own protection. Underpinned by his painstaking research into previous settler engagement with these sites, Rhodes creates a subtle, challenging narrative of the ambiguities and complexities of non-Indigenous relations with Indigenous culture over more than a century. His beautifully crafted history reminds us of the political implications of heritage, and of the physical and cultural shaping of country during millennia of Indigenous custodianship.
Cage of Ghosts is a book of unusual originality. At once personal and scholarly, stories presented in words and in pictures, it is a subtle exploration of the way that thousands of years of Indigenous history are both visible, and hidden, in Australian landscapes. It is a formidably documented study with the power to reshape how we see the places where we live. Jon Rhodes evokes a multilayered country whose meanings have been shaped by the ancient cultures of First Nations peoples, but also by the complex, tragic history of settler colonialism.
