The courageous life of Truganini

Truganini is well known as the last Tasmanian Aboriginal, however, many sources have proven that fact

incorrect and offensive. She was a pioneer for Aboriginal rights in the 1800s and experienced many horrible situations that fueled her fight. Many details of her life are contested by historians, as there are not many clear accounts of the events surrounding her. Before British settlement, around 5000 people were living in Tasmania and she died as the ”...last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine”.

Truganini was born to a Nuenonne leader Mangerner and she practised traditional customs and was fully immersed in her culture. The Nuenonne clan belonged to a language group with the Mellukurdee, Lyluquonny, Needwondee and the Ninine clans. Truganini’s mother may have been of the Ninine clan. These clans would gather twice a year, to gather food and engage in ceremonies. The island of the Nuenonne people was called Lunawanna Alonnah. The island is made up of two large areas of land, connected by a thin stretch of sand. The British renamed it Bruny Island. The Nuenonne people, through many millennia, had created open clearings of grasslands that supported a healthy population of wallabies by using controlled burning.

This life was interrupted by the British genocidal ways. Captain James Cook landed on what he called Adventure Bay in 1777 as eight men and one boy approached him. These Nuenonne people believed the British to be their deceased ancestors, with pale skin, and as such, the British were treated as kin. Twenty-five years after, French explorers and scientists arrived on the land. By this time, many white men were active around the island and had conducted raids on the coastal clans. Women were stolen to catch seals and act as sexual slaves. The French sometimes enjoyed singing and dancing with the Nuenonne men but the woman often refused to come near them. Not far from the north of Lunawanna Alonnah was what the Britsh called Derwent river. Here, in 1804, they set up a second penal settlement which they named Hobart. Following this, many cargo and convict ships now sailed near to the Nuenonne country and often stopped for water there. Disease and uncertainty were brought there by way of the escaped convicts and ex-seamen who were attracted to the heavy bush cover.

Truganini was born around 1812 and by the time she was around 17 in 1829, her mother had been murdered by sailors, her uncle shot by a soldier, her sister kidnapped by sealers, and Paraweena, her then-fiance, murdered by timber-getters. At that point, she met George Robinson who later became the Chief Protector of Aboriginal Peoples in the Port Phillip area. Robinson arrived on the island because Mangerner and a group of Nuenonne elders had persuaded a ship’s captain to take them to Hobart to meet with Governor Arthur. They expressed their concern about their women being taken and the food sources they relied on diminishing as a result of the British invasion. Gov. Arthur was impressed by the elder’s intelligence and level of articulation and was genuinely concerned about the mistreatment of the original people. Unfortunately, his well-meaning towards these people did not translate to successful action in protecting them. Gov. Arthur appointed Robinson to ensure policies of conciliation and establish friendships with the people. Robinson negotiated with Gov. Arthur to receive a land grant on Bruny Island. He named this area Missionary Bay and it was here, he wanted to build a thriving Christan community. Truganini met her husband Wooredy at the Missionary Bay. Wooredy was in his forties when he met Truganini and her around her late teens or early twenties. He was an important Nuenonne elder who left the southern part of the island to visit Mangerner. Truganini and Wooredy accompanied Robinson, two of his sons and an assortment of other people on missions around the Tasmanian area, acting as guides and helping Robinson understand their customs for several years. This was recorded in his journal which today is the best record of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

Reports from Robinson’s journal have helped historians to frame Truganani’s life and how she lived, however, as she was an Aboriginal woman, many of the British people around her did not consider her to be worth much thought in their accounts and journals. Unfortunately, this means that much of her life and her personality has been framed and biased by white men. Her life and the lives of others around her have been somewhat lost to history and historians today try to piece together her life by reading between the lines of white men’s accounts of her. As Cassandra Pybus puts it in the preface to her book, Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse (2020), “Necessarily, telling her [Truganini’s] story means telling the stories of her husband and her other close male companions also travelling with Robinson, who were often given more of his attention.”

Truganini was known as a bright, resourceful woman and an obituary in the Gippsland Times (1877) stated: “...and in spite of her more than seventy years she seemed as merry as a cricket” (p4). Despite all that happened in her life, Truganini’s relationship with the white settlers was achieved because of her intelligence and her ability to endure the terrible things she experienced. Truganini’s relationship with Robinson was established mostly because she wanted to do anything to protect other victims of the Black War. When Robinson was told to round up Tasmanian Aboriginal people to resettle them on Flinder’s Island, Truganini and Wooredy accommodated the plan to prevent further violence against them and others. They were told that they would be given homes, food and their customs would be respected but this was not the case. Robinson set out to turn them into a model society and the main idea of the settlement was to make the remaining indigenous population ‘Christianized and Europeanized’ to become farmers but a combination of the unsanitary conditions and disease wiped out the indigenous population.

While Flinders Island was seen as nothing more than a death camp to the Aboriginal people, as (Morrison, 2010) says, “Robinson, however, was seen by the authorities as an expert in managing the first Australians and his notoriety won him employment in Victoria managing the 'Aboriginal problem'”. Truganini, Wooredy, Robinson and fourteen other Aboriginals relocated to Port Phillip where Robinson was appointed the Chief Protector, “...in an effort to try and reach some peaceful relations with the people there as well," says Greg Lehman, member of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's Aboriginal Advisory Council. Among the group were two men named Peevay and Maulboyheener, who had been with Robinson for at least eleven years. Truganini escaped from Robinson, most likely the result of the broken promises she’d been fed over her time with him. She moved with a group of four other people, two which were Peevay and Maulboyheener and the others were women who had also travelled with Robinson, Plorenernooper and Maytepueminer. The group was likely looking for Lacklay, Maytepueminer’s husband who had travelled with them and Robinson.

He had relocated to Port Phillip with the others but had disappeared in April 1840. The group attacked the settlers and stole from them, with Peevay and Maulboyheener killing two men. The group was tried and eventually Maulboyheener and Peevay sentenced to hanging on account of murder. Truganini, Plornernooper and Maytepueminer were originally charged with accessories to murder, before Robinson claiming that women cannot act of their free will and therefore they cannot be held responsible for an act such as this one, and they were changed not guilty. The women were released into Robinson’s care who arranged for them to be returned to Flinders Island. Wooredy was among them, but he passed away on the journey.

Truganini used her relationship with the settlers to try and protect other victims of the British settlement. By 1836, there were only around 300 Aboriginal Tasmanians left and while they all ended up dying, her good relationship with the settlers meant they lived longer than might have if they were just left alone. When her relationship turned sour in Victoria, she brought to light the suffering and contributed to a small rebellion. When she died, she requested to be buried near the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, where she was born, but her skeleton remained on display for three years instead. Around a century after her death, the skeleton was cremated and the ashes scattered around the D’Entrecasteaux Channel by Aboriginal rights workers. She remained a fierce warrior for Aboriginal rights throughout her life and while a lot of it seems in vain since so many died, she was an inspiring, persistent leader and remains that icon still today.

Written by Grace Hessian