On the evening of the 10th May 1854, at the Melbourne Mechanics’ Institute, former Assistant Protector Edward Stone Parker presented a public lecture titled Aborigines of Australia. Despite the title, much of Parker’s commentary focused on Victorian Aboriginal people, especially the Dja Dja Wurrung. His lecture was not simply a series of observations, whetting the colonial appetite for information about Aboriginal people in the wake of the 1850s humanitarian turn. Parker used the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s 1841 Queries Respecting the Human Race to frame his lecture. This gave scientific authority to his talk. Yet Parker did not blindly follow the order of questions and sections in the original queries. This paper will examine the form and content of Parker’s lecture and asks what changes to the 1841 Queries did Parker make? Why did he make these changes? What information did the Dja Dja Wurrung share with him that challenged assumptions held about Aboriginal people by northern armchair theorists?  And how were Dja Dja Wurrung epistemologies, such as the significance of Country, explained by Parker to his audience in this altered framework?