Some recollections and records of the Clarence and Richmond River Aborigines, compiled by Robert Leycester Dawson, September 1935 - Page 2

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Some Recollections and Records of the Clarence and Richmond River Aborigines.
At Kirkconnel [Kirkconnell] near Bathhurst, about the year 1866, I saw my first Australian aboriginal.  He was a tall man, he carried a spear and was draped in a dingy blanket to which clung a young opossum which he was trying to sell. Aboriginess[Aborigines] must have been fast dying out in that early settled district for during four years of my childhood of Kirkconnel]Kirkconnell] this man was the only one of his race I recalled seeing.
Changing the scene to Bellevue, seven miles from Grafton and with frontage to both to the Yulgilbar road and to the Clarence river, parties of blacks travelling to and fro, and sometimes camping near our house, were frequent and familiar sights during the year 1869 and 1870.
On one occasion by invitation from King Billy, the Yulgilbar Chieftain, my parents, my brothers and I, with two employees went on horseback to see a big fight between the up river natives and those from Grafton and the Lower Clarence; quite and interesting and exciting adventure. Later on, escorted by King Billy, my brother and I went, after dark, a couple of miles into the bush to a camp of about 250 blacks to see a corrobboree, a wild such savage scene which mad a vivid impression upon my childish mind. We two

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