The final solution down under. Tasmania. And the man who was supposed to save them, may have contributed to their extinction…
Flinders Island, to northern tastes, is said to hold great beauty: windswept silence, bare central hills, thick and aromatic foliage along its shores. To the aborigines transferred there from Tasmania it, however, looked desolate indeed. They may have seemed happy as they boarded their ship at Hobart, smiling their child-like smiles and “going through feats of their wonderful dexterity,” but eyewitness accounts of their arrival at Flinders read very differently: To them, the winds were violent and cold, the rain and sleet penetrating and miserable, the shore looked sterile; it all added force to their forebodings that they were being taken there to die.
— Verbal accounts describe that there were two very distinct physical groups of Tasmanian Aboriginal people. The northern people being darker and differing physically from those of the south who were described as having a lighter skin colour which they heightened with charcoal powder, covering the redder tinge to their skin.
It would be a reasonable assumption to note that the photos do not represent all those who were surviving at Oyster Cove in 1868. My understanding of our history from the invaders perspective would indicate that they would have been selective in who they portrayed.
For all who view the photos it is the overwhelming sadness of the people which is like a physical blow even a hundred and thirty years later. The pride in who they were is still evident, even though at this time they were willing themselves to death so they could join their friends and family who had already rejoined the Great Spirit. They were living in appalling conditions that were unfit for animals, harassed at every turn by what is described in one account “as the dregs of the european community”.
Read More:http://www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/ancestors.htm
And so they were. Authority would not admit the fact, even to itself, but like unwanted old relatives consigned to an institution, the aborigines were taken to Flinders Island to die. After a couple of false starts they were housed in a settlement on the southwestern shore, named for them, Wybalenna- Black Man’s Houses. It was set on the neck of a promontory, and from the hills above it one could see the sea on either side, and on a clear day make out the hills of Tasmania itself.
Wybalenna had its own jetty, convenient for the bishops and governors who occasionally came to observe the progress of the natives’ salvation, and its own chapel, and naturally its own cemetery. The natives lived in an L-shaped terrace of cottages, the staff in houses nearby. ( to be continued)…
—B Duterrau, ‘G.A. Robinson with a group of Van Diemen’s Land natives’, 1835 – an idealised version of Robinson’s activities (ALMFA, SLT) —click image for source…
ADDENDUM:
Although under Robinson’s general superintendence, it was largely managed by commandants who had little interest in their charges and behaved like gaolers. Mortality had been severe, and by 1835 the Aboriginal population, estimated at about 4000 before European settlement began, had shrunk to fewer than 150 natives, of whom about half were the survivors of those sent by Robinson to Flinders Island. Introduced disease was now rapidly reducing the number of survivors.
When Robinson himself took control at the Flinders settlement in October 1835 he first set out to provide adequate food supplies and to improve housing; but his greatest change was to root out Aboriginal culture and to attempt its replacement with a nineteenth century peasant culture. Schools were established in which the natives were taught to read and write. Catechetical religion took a prominent place in all the instruction. The teachers were drawn from the Europeans in the settlement and from those native children who had learned to read and write at the Hobart Orphan School. Attempts were made to ‘civilize’ the natives in other ways: markets were held where they were taught to buy and sell in hope that they would come to realize the value of property; they were given new names and taught to elect their own native police. The experiment failed, partly because the natives were dying off rapidly, but chiefly because no culture can be uprooted without being replaced by an adequate and acceptable substitute.
Robinson’s work among the Tasmanian Aboriginals had more than a local interest, because Arthur, once he had seen that conciliation could prevent the inevitable clash between the colonizing power and the native inhabitants, was anxious that it should be tried in the newer Australian colonies to prevent a recurrence of what he had experienced in Tasmania. As early as 1832 Arthur suggested that Robinson might practise the principles of conciliation at Spencer Gulf or Swan River, and in February 1835 he was asked to undertake such work at Portland Bay. This scheme came to nothing, but in August 1836 Robinson was offered appointment as protector of Aboriginals in South Australia; he refused it because the salary was less than he thought he deserved. Some two years later he was offered the chief protectorship at Port Phillip, and as he considered the salary adequate he accepted.
Robinson left Flinders Island for Port Phillip in February 1839. His departure marked the end of a vision, the saving of the Tasmanian race. He spent nearly eleven years at Port Phillip, but his work there was not impressive. Unlike the Tasmanian tribes the Victorian Aboriginals, on whom he tried to thrust his idea of civilization, were free to come and go as they pleased. His handling of the affairs of the protectorate was weak, anything of value coming from his sub-protectors, although he made several note
hy overland journeys to South Australia, New South Wales and the Murray valley, the day-to-day record of these in his journals giving valuable information about the tribes and the state of the country he traversed.Read More:http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-george-augustus-2596
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