This is a shocking, disturbing, hard hitting book about white colonisation and the treatment of Aborigines that makes you pause and think and realise that in some ways nothing is different today with the way First Peoples are treated. 

The book is divided into four parts, of ten chapters and there is a Preface and Afterward plus maps , illustrations both in colour and black and white, biographies,. a timeline etc BUT no index – and this is yet another biography where one is needed. It is of medium size and thickness with a glorious cover photo of giant kelp. 

Cassandra Pybus’ book is the story of a Stolen Generation,  enforced assimilation  and genocide before the terms were invented. Truganini has in some ways become an icon as ‘the last of her race‘, the Tasmanian First Peoples. The book tells of the callous settlement by British forces of Tasmania in the early 1800’s. It is a story full of duplicity and government stalling and lack of comprehension by the white people as to Aboriginal life.  Pybus’ book tries to depict the culture shock and interaction between the two cultures; one exemplified by interwoven links to Country and cooperation, the other preoccupied with prestige, prosperity and eradication of the First Peoples. 

In the opening pages we learn that Pybus’ family have direct links to the land where Truganini once lived. Pybus documents how Truganini’s clan, the Nuenonne, at the time she was born, still gathered shellfish from what we call Bruny Island (lunawanna-allonah), continued traditional ways millennia old and met at a sacred site  along with other clans. Using historical sources and eyewitness accounts Pybus brings Truganini intensely alive – she was beautiful when young, intelligent, a fabulous swimmer and good at catching possums, among other things . 

But they and other clans of the area were all but extinguished by the 1820’s – highly developed people viewed as nonentities by white settlers who invaded their land, to which they were greatly attached, no treaty ever signed ceding the land to the white people. 

Pybus documents an extraordinary tale of survival and endurance and we also meet Truganini’s various husbands but particularly cleverman and fierce warrior, Wooredy. Mannapackername and ‘King Billy’, and her friends and clan members Dray, Kickerterpoller, Peevay and others. We learn of the sad fate of Matthina too.

Under Governor Arthur’s rule, martial law was enforced as white settlers attempted to rid the island of Tasmania’s First Peoples through poisoning, wars, massacres and the ineffective ‘black line’.  There was also imposed assimilation to a degree, with the First People made to wear clothes, as an example, and the way children were snatched and sent to Orphan School. Under Robinson the plan was to settle the remaining First Peoples on Flinders Island, far from their various Countries, which was similar to losing their identity for them and there were appalling conditions on the island – leading to grief and loss, alcoholism, nicotine dependence, starvation and enforced prostitution with the white sealers and whalers,, all caused by the insensitive, presumptuous, brutal behaviour of the white settlers. 

George Augustus Robinson features prominently in the book and a large part of the book follows his task of collecting the remaining people on the west coast of Tasmania , supposedly for their protection and better welfare. Robinson was a was a self styled missionary, a mass of conflicting values (Idealistic, arrogant, ruthless, determined to succeed and make his name, sometimes disturbed,  duplicitous, sometimes compassionate yet egotistical and concerned about Christian morals) who acknowledged that people he was trying to  save were the actual owners of the land. 

We also learn of his antipathy and squabbles with his nemesis John Batman. Yet he also trafficked in human remains.  Truganini is involved as one of the guides , saving his life twice and we accompany them and the other guides on the seemingly endless treks around the island then known as Van Diemen’s Land.  Robinson joined in corroborees on the treks, playing the flute. The treks were all on foot and draining .There were some dangerous rivers to cross too. There was no real reward for her or the other guides and no real support after the missions were completed. .

Truganini and Wooredy modelled for various artists, among them portraitist Benjamin Dutterau, sculptor Benjamin Law, convict artist Thomas Bock, and in her last year several photographers. In 1834 Robinson visited the studio and farm of landscape painter John Glover, where the Aboriginal people who accompanied him danced for the artist.

Truganini returned to Flinders Island before spending the last decades of her life at Oyster Cove, from where she continued to visit Bruny Island every spring. Her last years were spent in Hobart, where her health sadly deteriorated. 

Truganini passed away in 1876. “Me going back to my people,” she declared. In the Afterward we learn what happened to Truganini’s skeleton after she died and the grisly exhibition that was made of it, displayed in a museum until the 1970’s. In 1976, after a major campaign, her ashes were finally scattered in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel as she originally requested . 

At times harrowing, Pybus’ book, at times, makes you both angry and ashamed of how white invaders treated the First Peoples and it gives Truganini the respect and acknowledgement she thoroughly deserves.

Truganini by Cassandra Pybus 

Publisher : Allen and Unwin

ISBN:9781760529222

Publication date 03/03/20

RRP $32.99

https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/other-books/Truganini-Cassandra-Pybus-9781760529222