Talk:Eton Vale Homestead Ruins

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Mujinga in topic So was Eton Vale squatted or not?
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So was Eton Vale squatted or not?

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Hiya currently the text says "Eton Vale Station was selected in 1840 by Arthur Hodgson who had followed the Leslie Brothers onto the Darling Downs" with Kerry reverting my change of the first 'selected' to 'squatted.' Does 'selected' have a special meaning I am not aware of? I won't revert but i'll give my reasoning for 'squatted' here:

On Arthur Hodgson's page it says:

In the 1846 publication, "Reminiscences of Australia with Hints on the Squatters' Life," Hodgson's brother describes the conflict involved in the taking of land ownership from Aboriginal Australians. They named this property Etonvale after Eton College, the illustrious school they both attended in England. The land they marked out was in the possession of the Barunggam people and the book recorded in some detail their "constant skirmishes with the natives" to wrest control of the area, and how "so many hundreds of these poor creatures have been sacrificed". The Hodgson brothers took an active role in the killings

Since the book has squatter in the title, I think it's uncontroversial to assume Eton Vale was squatted. If 'selected' has no special meaning then sure they chose/selected/picked it too.

However, the plot thickens, the book is actually online and searchable at the archive. Weirdly, the keyword search 'Eton Vale' gives nothing. I can find the quote on page13 but it seems to be a more general comment about how the Hodgson brother behaved. Mujinga (talk) 14:44, 15 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it has a meaning, see Selection (Australian history). But the change made wasn't just about the word (which is the word used in the citation in the article, which is online so you could have checked it), but also the addition of a link to "squattocracy", whose content had been changed. Can we please roll back all of these changes that relate to Australian historical land occupation that appear to have been made based on misunderstandings rather than reliable sources. Kerry (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2019 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia is a collaborative enterprise. I've just added the link to Selection (Australian history) on this article. If someone else had done that already I wouldn't have had to ask. Likewise if you don't like an edit i made, feel free to change it, as you did here, then we can discuss if necessary. But please note when i was making the edits i have to guess you are referring to, it was linking to Squattocracy and those edits will still lead back to the page at the moment called Squatting (Australia) so I don't see much harm done. Also you haven't replied to my comment really, since my point was that the book title self-describes the Hodgsons as squatters. I did check and read the 'Eton Vale Homestead Ruins' actually, your comment suggests you didn't suggest the source I referred to. Mujinga (talk) 09:25, 16 May 2019 (UTC)Reply
So it was squatted and I’ll add sources to confirm that. A colleague contacted the Queensland Heritage Register to ask why they used the word selected and they said that it’s impossible to check the records except by looking at the physical copies in Brisbane or Runcorn. The State Library of Queensland was also helpful, pointing out that Eton Vale exists on an Index to Squatters and Graziers held by New South Wales State Records. It’s been an interesting issue to research and I think more than anything points to the danger of compiling a wikipedia article based on one source alone, especially when others are easily available. Mujinga (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2019 (UTC)Reply