2025_LiveAuctioneers_Lot0073

Title: A message stick purportedly from Rottnest-Wadjemup listed for sale on Live Auctioneers

Description: Smalls auction description: "Rare Fine early Message Stick, Western Australia. Carved and engraved Message Stick made of wood with designs of lines and opposed triangles formed by punctured dots."

Item type: message stick from a private sale

Notes: Sold by Smalls Auctions, Paddington NSW, on Live Auctioneers on 6 December 2025, Lot 0073.

Correspondence with auction house:

PK

Dec 03, 2025 12:16 PM GMT+11

Hello, I'm interested in this message stick but would need to know more about its history. The style appears to be similar to message sticks from the Murchison region of Western Australia. Does the private collector have any more particulars that they might be willing to share?

Smalls Auctions



Dec 04, 2025 9:39 AM GMT+11 Hi P, The Message Stick is from the Collection of Gene Van Grecken, now deceased. His son tells me that he has a recollection that it has a connection to Rottnest Island. Between 1838 and 1931, over 4,000 Aboriginal men and boys from across Western Australia were incarcerated on the island, so a displaced native from the Murchinson region may have well produced it. Smalls Auctions

PK Dec 04, 2025 6:13 PM GMT+11 Thank you for your response. I have, in fact, been researching message sticks from Rottnest Island on behalf of the Australian Museum including the names of the prisoners who sent them, the identities of the messengers and the content of the messages themselves. If Gene Van Grecken's son has any positive documentation linking this object to Rottnest Island, or an account of how the object entered into his father's collection, that would be very useful and I would be prepared to bid on the item. Smalls Auctions Dec 05, 2025 9:46 AM GMT+11

Hi P, Gene Van Grecken travelled through vast tracts of Central and Western Australia in the late 1940s, collecting Aboriginal Art and Artefacts, and this message stick was just one of hundreds of items he acquired. He didn't keep specific records of where he picked individual items up.

So, unfortunately, his son has no other information on this item except his recollection of what his father told him.

But, he tells me it is very similar to message sticks he's seen in the museum collections in the UK, which also purport to be from Rottnest Island, which I presume you have also studied.

Smalls Auctions

Thanks for letting me know.

There are many message sticks of this kind from the Murchison region, butmonly a very small number were made by prisoners on Rottnest. (There is only one Rottnest message stick is in the UK.) I will think about bidding on it, but it's probably too vague at this point. If the eventual buyer wants to get in touch with me after the auction, in order to contextualise this message stick, I can be contacted via a web search for the Australian Message Stick Project.

Media Files:

Data Entry: Piers Kelly