The attempted genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of Tasmania is one of the most tragic episodes of modern history. Ironically, if it were not for American and British sealers and whalers who had operated from the shores of Van Diemen's Land since 1793, abducting Aboriginal women and taking them to the Furneaux Islands in the Bass Strait as their slaves and mistresses, the Tasmanian Aborigines would have disappeared without trace. Until recently, it was stated in school books that the last Aboriginal Tasmanian was Truganini , who died at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, in 1876. However, a strong Aboriginal movement has grown up in Tasmania in the last twenty years, with over six thousand descendants proclaiming their heritage and pushing for land rights.

 

The Aboriginal people of Tasmania appear to have been racially distinct from those of the mainland, although their beliefs and rituals were similar. About twelve thousand years ago, the thawing of the last Ice Age brought rising ocean levels, which separated these people from the mainland and caused their genetic isolation; it's thought that on the mainland new cultures probably entered ten thousand years ago. This isolation was also evident in cultural development : they couldn't make fire but kept alight smouldering fire sticks; their weapons were simpler - they didn't have boomerangs; and although seafood was a main source of food, eating scaly fish was taboo. In appearance , the men were startling, wearing their hair in long ringlets smeared with grease and red ochre, while women wore theirs closely shaved. To keep out the cold, they coated their bodies with a mixture of animal fat, ochre and charcoal; women often wore a kangaroo-skin cloak. Men decorated their bodies with linear scar patterns on their abdomens, arms and shoulders. Their art consisted of rock carvings of geometric designs, still to be seen in areas on the west and northwest coasts.

When the first white settlement was established in the early years of the nineteenth century there were reckoned to be about five thousand Aboriginal people in Tasmania, divided into nine main tribes. A tribe consisted of bands of forty to fifty people who lived in adjoining territory, shared the same language and culture, socialized, intermarried and - crucially - fought wars against other tribes. They also traded such items as stone tools, ochre and shell necklaces, and bands moved peaceably across neighbouring tribes' territory along well-defined routes at different times of the year to share resources: the inland Big River tribe, for example, would journey to the coast for sealing. Once they realized the white settlers were not going to "share" their resources in this traditional exchange economy but were instead stealing the land, the nomadic people displayed a determination to defend it - by force, if necessary. Confrontation was inevitable, and by the 1820s the white population was in a frenzy of fear - though for every settler who died, twenty Aborigines met a similar fate. In 1828 Governor Arthur declared martial law, expelling all Aboriginal people from the settled districts and giving settlers what was, in practice, a licence to shoot on sight. Alarmed by these events, the British government planned to round up the remaining Aborigines and confine them to Bruny Island , south of Hobart Town. In 1830 a mass militia of three thousand settlers formed an armed human barrier, the Black Line , which was to sweep across the island, clearing Aborigines before them, in preparation for "resettlement".

The line failed; but unfortunately the final tactic was "divide and rule", in which the Aboriginal people themselves, with their superb tracking skills, were enlisted to help ensnare their tribal enemies. The 135 Aborigines who survived the Black Line were moved in 1834 to a makeshift settlement on exposed and barren Flinders Island . Within four years most of these people died of disease, or as a result of harsh conditions. In 1837 the 47 survivors were transferred to their final settlement at Oyster Cove, where - no longer a threat - they were often dressed up and paraded on official engagements. The skeleton of the last survivor, "Queen" Truganini, originally from Bruny Island, was displayed in the Tasmanian Museum until 1976, when her remains were finally cremated and scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, according to her final wishes.