18-10-2013, 12:26 PM
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Truganini, last Aboriginal Woman of Tasmania
A bit of a sad story this one,but interesting too!Truganini, last Aboriginal Woman of Tasmania
Between 1803 and 1830 the Aborigines of Tasmania were reduced in numbers from five-thousand to less than seventy-five people. An article published December 1, 1826 in the Tasmanian Colonial Times reads:
"We make no pompous display of philanthropy. The Government must remove the natives, if not, they will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed!"
When a declaration of martial law was introduced in November 1828, whites were authorized to kill blacks on sight and kill them they did with a cruel savagery that's hard to comprehend. A bounty was declared and soon became a lucrative business, five pounds for each adult body and two pounds for a child. This bounty had the desired effect and they were almost completely wiped out. The remaining few were rounded up and placed in concentration camps where they died like flies from the white man's diseases.
In 1830 George Augustus Robinson, a Christian missionary, was hired to round up the remaining Tasmanian blacks and take them to Flinders Island.
Jared Diamond recorded that:
"On Flinders Island Robinson was determined to civilize and Christianize the survivors. His settlement - at a windy site with little fresh water - was run like a jail. Children were separated from parents to facilitate the work of civilizing them. The regimental daily schedule included Bible reading, hymn singing, and inspection of beds and dishes for cleanness and neatness. However, the jail diet caused malnutrition, which combined with illness to make the natives die. Few infants survived more than a few weeks. The government reduced expenditures in the hope that the native would die out. By 1869 only Truganini, one other woman, and one man remained alive."
On May 7, 1876, Truganini, born on Bruny Island and the last full-blooded Aboriginal person in Tasmania, died at seventy-three years of age. Her mother had been stabbed to death by a white man and her sister was kidnapped by white men. Her intended husband was drowned by two white men in her presence. After being thrown overboard and trying desperately to get back into the boat, they cut off both his hands and watched him drown, then they repeatedly raped her. But she refused to die.
"Don't let them cut me up," she begged the doctor as she lay dying. But because the native Aboriginal was considered a curiosity by the Europeans with most even believing they were the missing link between man and the ape, they dug her up and strung her skelton on wires and placed it upright in a box in the Tasmanian museum where it remained on show until 1947.
Finally, in 1976, the centenary year of Truganini's death, despite the museum's objections, her skeleton was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea in the Entrecasteaux Channel.
In 1997 the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter UK, returned Truganini's necklace and bracelet and her hair and skin found in a collection at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2002 were also returned to Tasmania for burial.
19-10-2013, 02:30 AM
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Re: Truganini, last Aboriginal Woman of Tasmania
I live in Tasmania and have done since I was nine and migrated here with my parents from the UK. My partner came here when he was 17 and we both feel a bit of both - a Mixture of English and Australian and we now come back to England every year so we see both sides.I think we shouldn't blame people in the past who had different values and beliefs and attitudes which were accepted at the time. We will probably get blamed in the future for what we're doing now.
As you probably know we don't have any full blood aborigines here any more but the Brits didn't really see what they did as wrong - it was done in the name of religion which has a lot to answer for everywhere.
Without wanting to cause offence, it seems to me that our mixed blood aborigines here in Tasmania waste a lot of time and energy on arguing about who is a "proper" aborigine or not - most of it in relation to government payment entitlements. There is a lot of the blame game from some of our indigenous people and I just can't see what it achieves. I might as well start blaming the Scandinavians for invading my native Yorkshire and raping and pillaging but what would be the point.
Re the Tasmanian devil, the mouth cancer is still happening but many healthy animals have been shipped to zoos all over the world so that they won't become extinct as the Tasmanian tiger did - hunted to extinction when people knew no better!
23-10-2013, 11:46 AM
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Re: Truganini, last Aboriginal Woman of Tasmania
Holy Batman! Is it a bird? is it a plane? No, its a bridge!
Batman Bridge over the Tamar in Tassie
You are probably wondering WTF this has to do with Tasmanian Aborigines. Especially as there is a suburb of Batman in Melbourne. Well I didn't know either until I looked it up when I came across the bridge during my visit to Tasmania.
From Wikipedia Read the whole article, it is very interesting.
In December 1825, or early 1826, Batman captured the notorious bushranger called Matthew Brady, resulting in an additional grant of land by the government.[1][3] Brady had been wounded in the leg in a conflict with the authorities, but got away safely. John Batman, who was in Tasmania at the time, went out unarmed on his own in search of Brady, and found him quite accidentally. He saw a man limping in the bush near a shallow creek, and hastened forward to him. It was Brady. He induced Brady to surrender and return with him. The outlaw was ill and suffering much pain, and he did as Mr. Batman asked. Brady was duly sentenced to death.[4]
Batman became a grazier. He participated in the capture of Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829.[5] He employed mainland Aborigines hired in Sydney, New South Wales, for 'roving parties' hunting Tasmanians.[6] Between 1828 and 1830, Tasmanians in this region were shot or rounded up by bounty hunters like John Batman.[7]
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