Interpretations of Meerwah
ONE of Toowoomba’s significant landmarks is Meewah, Table Top Mountain or One Tree Hill, seen to advantage from the newly reconstructed lookout on Picnic Point’s Tobruk Drive.
This flat-topped extinct volcano remains a favourite subject for artists and photographers and currently features in local exhibitions.
The Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery is presenting Meewah: changing views of Table Top Mountain, an exhibition of works selected from the gallery’s permanent collections.
The quiet gravity generated by the artworks invites thoughtful consideration.
Meewah is an important Aboriginal ceremonial site and acted as a journey marker for groups travelling to the triennial festivities at the Bunya Mountains.
On September 13, 1843, Meewah became the scene for the Battle of One Tree Hill.
It was early in the history of settlement on the Darling Downs and pastoralists were claiming land and setting up sheep runs.
Supplies and equipment made the long trek from the port at Brisbane and undertook
the slow and arduous climb up the escarpment with heavily loaded drays pulled by bullock teams.
The Aboriginal people’s use of the land was disrupted, and groups were displaced.
The mass poisoning of some 60 individuals by European squatters at Kilcoy Station was a turning point with the local warrior Multuggerah organising a fighting alliance comprising members of several Aboriginal nations.
The Battle of One Tree Hill played a memorable part in the frontier wars and was one of the few where the Indigenous warriors initially had the upper hand.
The event is depicted in two dramatic narrative paintings by Vincent Serico.
In creating a response to
Serico’s works, Judy Watson’s Lines of resistance, a mixed media work that uses earth from Table Top as pigment, offers a more symbolic approach.
Her circular forms nod to topography while also representing the boulders hurled from the top of Meewah by Multuggerah’s “army”.
Other landmarks in Toowoomba’s volcanic belt include the basalt quarries, the subject of paintings by AAR (Rodney) Boyce and Herb Carstens.
The local Aboriginal people referred to the hills seen from the escarpment as “cloud catchers” that brought the rain.
These cloud formations are effectively depicted in the painting by Kenneth Macqueen and in photographs by Doug Spowart and Sarah Ryan.
A more current context for the Toowoomba setting is presented in Suzanne Mc Master’s portrait of Kim Walmsley, the diptych Road to Toowoomba by David Hinchliffe, and the beginning of the new range crossing captured by AW Morton.
The Doolamai Designs Art Gallery, 2b Taylor Street, features modern and traditional Indigenous artworks some of which pay homage to Meewah and events in local history.
Artist Domi Doolamai accompanies his vibrant paintings with detailed texts that share stories from the Dreamtime of creation.
Popular culture also finds a place in warrior-decorated skateboards, T-shirts, and jewellery.