In January 1890, judges from Victoria’s Royal Horticultural Society assessed the developing horticultural industry in Tatura, part of what is today the Greater Shepparton Region, as being in “a most creditable state of cultivation.” Just a few years previously there had been “scarcely an acre of orchard or vineyard” to be seen. In this paper, I explore the formation of the horticultural industry in Shepparton for what it reveals about the role of agrarian labour in producing a (post)colonial landscape etched with forces of both belonging and exclusion. Looking back to the formation of the industry demonstrates how farmers’ own labour practices and imaginaries underpinned the basis of their claim-making at the frontiers of the settler colony, but also reveals a deep-seated anxiety around their reliance on waged labour additional to that which they themselves could provide. Drawing historical research into dialogue with contemporary ethnographic fieldwork highlights how this anxious claim-making continues through the present.
11 March 2026, 11am AEST
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