Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Hara-o & Karadra in Drawings and etchings of Nepean and Springwood Aboriginal m

Hara-o & Karadra in Drawings and etchings of Nepean and Springwood Aboriginal m

1819
PXD 923/7
Sepia wash drawing

Alphonse Pellion was a topographical painter, draughtsman and mid-shipman aboard the French vessel l'Uranie. In 1817 the ship set sail from France on an around-the-world voyage of exploration and science. Its professional scientists, naturalists and artists were charged with making scientific and ethnographic observations of the Indigenous people encountered.

In November 1819 the vessel landed at Sydney, and the crew was sent to explore the colony. Pellion and two of his companions set out across the Blue Mountains to visit the newly established town of Bathurst. During this trip he made a number of sketches, including views of Cox’s Pass, Cox’s River, and the local Indigenous people.

This sepia wash drawing was created by Sebestian Leroy, who was most likely a French commercial artist employed to devise an original pen and ink drawing by Pellion and prepare it for publication.This scene depicts two Aboriginal men Pellion met on the lower Blue Mountains on his way to Bathurst.

A translation of Alphonse Pellion's account of his excursion to Bathurst can be found in Olive and W.L. Harvard, 'Some Early French visitors to the Blue Mountains and Bathurst' in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. XXIV, 1938 p.245-260.

Alphonse Pellion stopped at Regentville in the Nepean District and Springwood on his way to Bathurst. It is likely that the small collection of drawings he created were of the Indigenous men that lived in these regions.