Whence
Possum-skin cloak
Fashion

Where does Possum-skin cloak come from?

The possum-skin cloak comes from south-eastern Australia, in today's Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Aboriginal people there sewed dozens of possum pelts into warm, rainproof cloaks and carved the story of their clan and country into the skin.

Pelts, sinew and ochre

Cloaks were made where winters were cool and possums plentiful. Makers sewed the pelts together with kangaroo sinew and cut patterns into the skin side. The designs showed clan identity, animals, plants and features of the land. The cloak was then rubbed with a mixture of resin, ochre and fat, which both decorated and protected it. Cloaks were also blankets, mattresses and baby wraps, and they were handed down as heirlooms.

Rare survivors, new cloaks

Before 1830 almost every person in the region had a cloak of their own. Settlers prized them too, but as Aboriginal people lost their land and were given less waterproof blankets instead, cloak-making died out in the late 19th century. Cloaks are fragile and were often buried with their owners, so only a handful survive, among them a Yorta Yorta cloak collected in 1853 and a Gunditjmara cloak from Lake Condah collected in 1872. In 1999 Aboriginal women began relearning the craft from them.

Why people think of Canada

Fur clothing brings to mind the cold north and Canada, where the fur trade between European settlers and First Nations peoples spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast between the 16th and 19th centuries. But fur kept people warm in the far south too. South-eastern Australia has chilly, wet winters, and its peoples made cloaks for thousands of years. Since elders wore new cloaks at the opening of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, cloak-making workshops have spread through Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Possum skin cloak ↗ · web.archive.org › display ↗ · web.archive.org › possum skin cloaks ↗ · smithsonianmag.com ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › North American fur trade ↗

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