Mediating encounters through bodies and talk

Until recently, Australian exploration historiography has tended to cast and interpret the encounters between European explorers and Aboriginal people in terms of a dyadic, hierarchical relationship. This has strengthened the assumption that within the context of exploration, encounters are only ever between Indigenous people and Europeans, and only ever occur in a binary relationship. Yet exploration archives indicate that European explorers were well aware of the extra dynamic that the presence of a ‘native aid’, or ‘intermediary’, brought to encounters. They stress, for instance, their unfamiliarity with new environments, the limits of their languages, and the misunderstandings that sometimes arose