The month of March is Women’s History Month and as such I dedicate this week’s blog to an Aboriginal woman you will likely be familiar with – Trugernanner (Truganini) (c. 1812–1876).
Erroneously described in earlier history books as “the last Tasmanian Aboriginal” Truganini figures largely in the shameful legacy of “the destruction of a primitive and ingenuous race by degenerate white settlers and their convict servants,” as written by Bill Beatty in his 1962 book ‘Early Australia- with shame remembered’.
A lesser-known detail of Truganini’s life is the time she spent in the new village of Melbourne in the early 1840’s.
She spent more than five years with the then Tasmanian Aborigine Protector, George Augustus Robinson, traveling in Tasmania as his guide and interpreter. This was in an effort to bring the remaining natives to safety and ultimate exile on Flinders Island. Subsequently, Truganini was taken by him with fifteen other Aboriginals to Port Phillip on his appointment to the new post of Protector of the Aboriginal people of Port Phillip in 1839.
Perhaps it was on witnessing the already horrendous plight of the native Kulin people of this new town called Melbourne, the diseases which were spreading relentlessly, taking the lives of those already weakened by dispossession and trauma, the depravity of some settlers who took Aboriginal women and children as comfort trophies. Or was it on discovering that John Batman, founder of this new village and the murderer of her Palawa people was currently in residence at the place now called Batman Hill? Either way, Truganini and four of her party broke away from this hellish cesspit and took to the bush. One of this group was the warrior Maulboyheener whom Truganini was in love with.
By 1841 the group were eking out an existence at the top of Westernport Bay. It was here in early October that a chance encounter with two whalers resulted in Maulboyheener and the only other male of the small group, Tunnerninnerwait engaged in what was later described at their trial, as ‘non-characteristic violence’. The murder of the two whalers saw a posse of nine policemen and four Aboriginal trackers deployed and eventually bring Truganini’s group to colonial justice in Melbourne.
This is where once again, all history, just like politics, becomes local, for the appointed defender for the group of Tasmanians was none other than Redmond Barry, who would later become the judge that sentenced both Robert Burke for the murder of our own Henry Hurst of Hurstbridge and later the notorious Ned Kelly to hang for the murders at Stringybark Creek.
Barry was less successful on this occasion in his defence of the group. While Truganini and the other two women were acquitted, Maulboyheener and Tunnerninnerwait were sentenced to hang for the murder of the whalers. Watched by over three thousand spectators, their hanging was the first public executions in the new district that would eventually become the state of Victoria.
Truganini and the remainder of her group returned to Tasmania where she lived until 1876 and where she witnessed the systematic genocide of her people. Even in death the promises made to ensure her body would be cremated and her ashes scattered at sea were betrayed. Her grave at the Women’s Factory in Hobart was desecrated, her skull removed and skeleton put on public display. It wasn’t until the early 2000’s that the final remains of her body was returned to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
So much of our Australian colonial history is difficult to research, to read, to discuss. By educating ourselves as to what happened in another time and place, we are made more aware of what is happening today. War and violence disproportionately affects women and children across time. We pay our respects to Truganini in Women’s History Month and the price often unpaid to women across the globe.
Til next week Triganin – see you soon.
References:
‘Early Australia with shame remembered’ by Bill Beatty
‘Truganini journey through the apocalypse’ by Cassandra Pybus – available from the Allwood Library
Picture of Truganini, Woolley, C. A. (Charles Alfred), 1834-1922