A History of Babywearing In Australia: Part One
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that the following article contains images of deceased persons.
The ancestors of Australia's indigenous people came to these lands tens of thousands of years ago and it is likely they travelled with babies and young children. We don't know the form of carrying tools they used at that time. However archeological evidence suggests that baby slings were used by mothers in the northern hemisphere around 10 000 years ago.
European people claimed the land they called Terra Australis in 1770 and settled in Sydney Cove in 1788, seizing the traditional land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation before progressively taking over country from indigenous people across the place now referred to as Australia.
In 1827 a young English woman arrived in Sydney. Charlotte Waring was engaged to a man she had met onboard ship, James Atkinson. His brother John was my own great, great, great grandfather.
Charlotte Waring Atkinson was an amazing woman, whose story has been captured by my distant cousins Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell. However, there is one historical link which connects Charlotte and I directly. Artist and writer Charlotte made a sketch of an indigenous woman proudly bearing a small child on her back, one of the earliest depictions of what many now call babywearing.
Traditional baby carriers around the globe vary greatly depending on climate. People living close to the Equator need to keep their babies cool. The closer people live to the Poles, the warmer their babies need to be.
We can see similarities between the first people in south-eastern Australia and the Inuit peoples living in the frozen north. Adults warming their bodies with animal skins simply support the infant within the same garments. The adult body heat is shared with the baby and insulated by the skins of animals designed to live in those climates.
The amauti is the parka worn by Inuit women of the eastern area of Northern Canada. Up until about two years of age, the child nestles against the mother's back in the amaut, the built-in baby pouch just below the hood. The pouch is large and comfortable for the baby. The shoulders are made loosely fitting so that the mother can move the baby to her breast for feeding without removing the child from the snug parka
The first nations people of south-eastern Australia were traditionally given the pelt of a possum or kangaroo at birth, which would be added to throughout life. Pelts would be stitched together with the sinew of kangaroo and decorated on the inside with intricate markings cut with shell or bone. Women would keep their infants close day and night, with the skin secured to make a “seat” high on the back to carry them.
Teenminne, a Ngarrindjeri woman wearing a possum skin cloak carrying a child on her back, South Australia, ca. 1870, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-148825818
To the north of Australia, the women of Papua New Guinea still use their traditional Billum. String bags made by looping together string made from natural fibres. The bags serve multiple purposes, carrying a range of goods ad personal belongings, as well as infants. In the hot climate, air can easily circulate around the naked baby, keeping them cool. Traditionally carried suspended from the head, Billum can also be hung from convenient tree branches.
Across the Pacific Ocean to Southern American continent, mothers in Paraguay used a similar design to carry children on the hip.
Another tool traditionally used to hold babies is the coolamon, a carved wooden vessel used to carry water, food and babies. Carried on the hip or resting on the sand, a coolamon is lined with possum or kangaroo skin, and/or soft bark from the paperbark tree. When not holding babies, these dishes could carry water, fruits, nuts or tubers and have also been used during traditional smoking ceremonies. *Coolamon is an Angicised version of the word in one traditional language, however there are many words they are known by within first nations communities.
We can look to hunter-gatherer people in Africa to see the origin of many modern carrier designs. This style of carrier would have suited the nomadic life of first nations people in the bush and desert climates of Australia too. Kangaroo and wallaby skins would have been ideal for such use.
Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people also used natural plant fibres. Collectively known as dilly bags the string bags are most commonly found in northern parts of Ausralia. Dilly is thought to have originated from the Turrubal word dili.
In arid areas spinifex grass is used, while in the Top End plants like pandanus are popular.
It is not clear if infants would traditionally be carried in dilly bags, although the bags are made in a variety of sizes.
A note about colonisation, the portrayal of first nations people in colonial art and photography, and our respect for cultural practices:
Women’s culture is rarely recognised in written histories, which almost exclusively focus on the achievements of men. Oral history is the practice of telling of stories and the sharing of knowledge from woman to woman, mother to daughter. Tradtional hunter-gather societies and early subsistence farming saw an equal division of labour with men responsible for hunting and animal hubandry while women gathered or grew plants, birthed and raised children and stored and prepared food. These skills were passed on verbally throughout time.
Traditional infant care practices are rarely written about. With the decimation of first nations culture through colonisation, much wisdom has been lost around the world. Images of women breastfeeding, carrying babies and doing domestic tasks were often made in circumstances which make many people uncomfortable today and are a stark reminder of the dehumanising of non-European people by British invaders.
We wish to honour the wise women of the past while recognising their treatment was inhumane and unacceptable. We use such images with respect to these ancestors, with the intention of educating generations to come.
We welcome feedback, corrections and contributions in an effort to record an accurate record of traditional practices of carrying babies before the arrival of Europeans to this land.
