Cricket in the ‘contact zone’: Australia’s colonial far North frontier, 1869–1914

AbstractThe ‘contact zone’ is a concept developed by Mary Louise Pratt (1992). It is a space of colonial encounters where people from very different cultures meet and often clash, but despite their differences and asymmetrical power relations, new relationships are forged. Cricket is generally acknowledged as an important agent in developing imperial bonds and its vicissitudes a barometer of the ‘Britishness’ of a community. While the belief was strong in most Australian colonies that cricket was a valuable ‘civilising’ tool in developing relationships between Aborigines and White settlers, the same could not be said of northern Australia’s ‘contact zone’. The small White minority of the towns of Broome and Palmerston defined and differentiated northern Australia from other Australian colonial societies. A hybrid imagined community evolved in the publicly contested social terrain surrounding sporting activities, providing a microcosm to examine the complex social interrelationships of the ‘contact zone’.