Tesi sul tema "Aboriginal Tasmanians"

The nineteenth century discourse of extinction – a consensus of thought primarily based upon the assumption that ‘savage’ races would be displaced by the arrival of European civilisation – provided the intellectual foundation for policies which resulted in Aboriginal dispossession, internment, and death in Tasmania. For a long time, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were thought to have been annihilated. However, this claim is now understood to be fanciful. Aboriginality is no longer defined as a racial category but rather as an identity that has its basis in community. Nevertheless, extinction discourse continues to shape the features of modern literature about Tasmania. The first chapter of this dissertation will examine how extinction discourse was imagined in the nineteenth century and will trace the parallels that contemporary fiction about contact history shares with it. The novels examined include Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World by Mudrooroo, The Savage Crows by Robert Drewe, Manganinnie by Beth Roberts, and Wanting by Richard Flanagan. The extinctionist elements in these novels include a tendency to euglogise about the ‘lost race’ and a reliance on the trope of the last man or woman. The second chapter of the dissertation will examine novels that attempt to construct a representation of Aboriginality without reference to extinction. These texts subvert and ironise extinction discourse as a way of breaking the discursive continuities with colonialism and establishing a more nuanced view of Aboriginal identity in a post-colonial context. Novels analysed here include Drift by Brian Castro, Elysium by Robert Edric, and English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.
However, in attempting to arrive at new understandings about Aboriginality, non-Aboriginal authors are hindered by the epistemological difficulties of knowing and representing the Other. In particular, they seem unable to extricate themselves from the binaries of colonialism.

The following study, in examining theoretical constructs and their practical implications, as they relate to organization management, innovation, and ethnicity, notes the inter-relationship of all aspects of administration. It also recognizes that organizations are social entities which have a nonrational component. These non-rational elements can lead to prejudice, discrimination, and hostility, particularly across organizations and across ethnic boundaries. In the field of education it is contended that innovation or change is only acceptable where effective communication across all involved groups occurs; and in ethnic settings educators must heed the feelings of the ethnic community accepting that the community has knowledge about its culture that they do not possess. Educators are often unprepared, or unwilling, to do this, hence the move towards change stagnates, and hostility between the groups festers. To overcome the stalemate appropriate cultural forms of communication between the participating groups must be established. To demonstrate the application of the various theories under review, an inter-organizational conflict situation between the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee was examined. The reasons leading to the conflict are cited, along with their relevance to theory, and proposals to overcome the obstructions facing each group are delineated. In putting forward these notions there is a realization that closer bonds must be forged between the University and the TAECC if the conflict is to be resolved. To do this it is advocated that the change strategy, Organization Development, be utilized, using outside change agents who are acceptable to both organizations.

This study attempts to trace the meaning of the word ‘genocide’ in its use in the Australian context. Adopting an historical contextualist approach. the study finds that ‘genocide’ emerged in 1959, in the assimilation critique of Stanley F. Davey, where it was used to condemn the perceived psychological effects of assimilation policy upon Aborigines as an emergent social collectivity. This idea of ‘genocide’ was predominant in Australian discourse throughout the 1960s and 1970s, gaining recognition as ‘the Aboriginal perspective’. As such, it encountered the obstacle of European Australians who maintained an objective understanding of Aboriginal identity, contained in visions of both ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’. I examine the case of Tasmanian discourse history, where these two perspectives on Aboriginality and ‘genocide’ came into direct conflict over the claim of Tasmanians’ extinction. The study concludes by raising the question of how scholars may approach the identification and discussion of this Aboriginal concept of identity genocide in a scholarly context, given that its meaning is predicated on subjective historical experiences and feelings.

The history of the dispossession of the Mairremmener People is an analogue for the histories of indigenous peoples in all those lands seized by the British under the cloak of the ideology of imperialism and the conceit of the superiority of Western culture. In Van Diemen's Land in the years between 1803 and 1832, the Mairremmener People suffered the brunt of colonial expansion, and were its prime victims. Their history is the substance of this thesis.

This study involved an investigation of the Aboriginal community - the small township on Cape Barren Island living at The Corner. Cape Barren Island is located off the northeast corner of Tasmania in Bass Strait. The aim was to determine whether the Government housing provided for them is appropriate in facilitating their lifestyle. The study also examined traditional Aboriginal customs and compared these with the contemporary Aboriginal community lifestyle to determine if any traditional domiciliary cultural practices exist today. Consideration was given to whether these continued practices - influenced the way in which dwellings were used by the contemporary Aboriginal community of Cape Barren Island. The study involved different methods for the collection of data. Literature sources such as the observations of European settlers and explorers provided information on the domiciliary behaviour of Tasmanian Aborigines during the early years of colonisation of Tasmania. Primary sources were a significant part of the study, and included architectural records, the author's behavioural and architectural observations, participation in communal activities, informal interviews with residents and the use of questionnaires. A body of data was used to carry out a post-occupancy evaluation of the government dwellings. The general results indicated that with a few exceptions, most traditional cultural practices no longer play a part in the lifestyles of the contemporary Aboriginal community of Cape Barren Island. But those remaining elements of traditional culture which are still maintained today, do have an effect upon the domiciliary behaviour of these people and the way dwellings are used. The major conclusions drawn from the study indicate:- (i) The development of community housing on Cape Barren Island has stemmed from conventional ideas of Australian suburban planning and does not include any inherent characteristics of the natural environment or cultural behaviour and practices of the Aboriginal people. (ii) The design and construction of government dwellings on the island were responsible for much of the dissatisfaction expressed by the Aboriginal residents with their houses. Incorrect orientation of dwellings, inappropriate choice of building materials and poor workmanship contributed to the partial failure of many government dwellings. (iii) The design of government dwellings needs to incorporate an open plan arrangement of general living areas to enable domiciliary activities, which are an integral part of contemporary Aboriginal Islander life, to comfortably take place within them. (iv) Design modifications could easily rectify many of the problems associated with existing dwellings experienced by the contemporary Aboriginal residents of Cape Barren Island. The thesis concludes with a list of design and planning recommendations for the future design and planning of Aboriginal housing on Cape Barren Island.

The Tasmanian muttonbird, scientifically called the short-tailed shearwater Puffinus tenuirostris probably obtained its name because its flesh tasted like mutton. Over 80 percent of the world's population of 23 million birds breed in Tasmania, with the largest ' rookeries on the islands of Bass Strait. The bird has an egg-laying season of remarkable constancy enabling commercial exploitation to be carried out to a strict calendar. The term "muttonbirding" defines the capture of the bird, its killing and its processing into a product fit for human consumption. The remains of muttonbirds have been found in archaeological sites in Tasmania and mainland Australia, but the meagre number present suggests that the birds were not an important food source to the Aborigines. In 1798 the seal colonies of Bass Strait were discovered and exploited by nonAboriginal sealers to near extinction. The sealers who remained took Aboriginal women for "wives". The population grew slowly, based on a subsistence muttonbird economy. By 1872 the descendants of white sealer-Aboriginal women liaisons constituted just 40 percent of the total 27 4 people in the Fumeaux Group, as immigrants took up leases of. islands once occupied by the descendants and eventually for~ed them onto Cape Barren Island. The area they settled on Cape Barren Island was 'declared a Reserve in 1881, and became an enclave requiring laws and government money to administer. Having very little income, the annual harvesting of muttonbirds was the highlight of the year to these people. The immigrant settlers also looked to muttonbirding to sustain them through hard times, and to pay off mortgagees. By the early 1900s up to 400 people participated in the annual season. In the 1920s, catches of up to one million birds were recorded. Such a locally important industry required regulations to be frequently gazetted to conserve the birds, for administrative purposes, and to bring about hygiene in the presentation of the muttonbird for human consumption. The industry enticed some people into believing that t~ey could make much money by buying and selling birds, even as recently as the 1980s. All such enterprises collapsed. Nowadays, the total catch is approximately 150,000 birds annually, with the largest number coming from islands in northwest Tasmania. In recent years there have been protests against the taking of muttonbirds by amateur muttonbirders as people have become more environmentally conscious. These protests resulted in the closure of many traditional rookeries around Tasmania, but left the industry unscathed. The future of the industry largely lies in the hands of the young generation of muttonbirders. As long as there are people who believe strongly in the tradition of muttonbirding, and people who will eat muttonbirds, there will probably be an industry. The short length and ready accessibility of nesting burrows, easy landings, and the close proximity of the resource to human settlements are the main reasons why the industry existed and has persisted in Tasmania.

This project describes the process of incorporating Aboriginal Studies into a secondary school curriculum in Tasmania. The curriculum developed from specific projects to a cooperative entitled Ria Warrawah, the first secondary school-based indigenous cooperative in Australia focussing on 12 to 16 year old students. The description of the project proceeds from an analysis of relevant literature to an account of the case studies and the series of interviews with members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community which together formed the theoretical base for this model curriculum for indigenous students. It has been appropriate to refer to the first person throughout. The project description was concluded by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the cooperative, and by describing future directions based on stories of experience and enquiry.

As the title indicates this study is restricted to those Aboriginal tribes located in the North West region of Tasmania. This approach enables the regional character and diversity of Aboriginal communities to be brought into focus; it also facilitates an examination of the unique process of dispossession that took place in the North West region, an area totally under the control of the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co). Issues dealing with entitlement to ownership and sovereignty will be established by an examination of the structure and function of traditional Aboriginal Societies in the region, as well as the occupation and use they made of their lands. Early contact history with the Europeans is examined to demonstrate that there was a real possibility of developing productive relationships with the indigenous inhabitants at the time the VDL Co. took up their land grants. The character of the VDL Co manager Edward Curr, his role in the development of the VDL Co and his harsh treatment of those under his authority, including the Aborigines is also an important area of study. While Company Directors were prepared to countenance the dispossession of the Aborigines and consequent destruction of their culture, Curr was content to preside over their physical destruction. This thesis will demonstrate that Edward Curr persistently ignored instructions from his Directors to the contrary and created, fostered and supported an ethos that encouraged the systematic eradication of the Aboriginal population on allocated Company lands. In 1834, after only eight years under the care of Curr's administration, less than one sixth of the original Aboriginal inhabitants had survived to be taken into exile by the Friendly Mission. Robinson's Friendly Mission provided the main physical contact between the North West Aborigines and Arthur's administration. Thus the activities of the Friendly Mission and its role in removing many of the Aborigines, by force in many cases, is detailed, as is their treatment and condition at the Wybalenna Establishment. The history of the North West Aboriginal tribes will continue by tracing the events and experiences that followed the exile to Flinders Island and Oyster Cove, concluding with the death in 1857 of the last survivor of the North West population. It will be established that the genocide perpetrated against these tribes, was initiated as part of local VDL Co policy, a process exacerbated through colonial administrative expediency and brought to completion by neglect. Finally, there is a brief review of the popular ideologies concerning race, current during the period under study and the extent to which these ideas moulded attitudes and policies relating to Aborigines both in the North West and in general.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the Aboriginal crisis in Van Diemen's Land with a view to establishing what effective efforts were made in the late 1820s and early 1830s towards realising a treaty between the colonial administration and the Aboriginal tribes of Van Diemens Land. The idea is not a new one. In 1995 Professor Henry Reynolds' published Fate of a Free People in which he argues that for a number of prominent Aboriginal leaders, at least, a de facto peace treaty was negotiated with the Colonial Government. Reynolds focuses primarily on roles played by the Aborigines in bringing their people in and their interpretation of how the crisis was concluded. This thesis does not challenge Reynolds' claims. Instead, it attempts to evaluate the Aboriginal-settler clash from the perspective of the Colonial Government, and Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Arthur in particular. Specifically it seeks to determine to what extent Arthur participated in a treaty-making process, even if he did not ultimately conclude a treaty with the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land. This thesis examines British policies towards the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land from the time of its official settlement in 1804 through to the effecting of the Treaty of Waitangi in January 1840. While it focuses in greatest detail on relations between the colonial government and the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s and early 1830s, the study of colonial relations is broadened both chronologically (to 1840) and geographically-north to mainland Australia, and east to New Zealand-to include brief accounts of the negotiations of the Batman treaty and the Treaty of Waitangi, so as to provide a wider context by which to evaluate Governor George Arthur's efforts with treaty-making in the Van Diemen's Land.

The project is an investigation of the historical and contemporary context of art making as a tool for cultural survival, with particular reference to Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and in particular my own art practice, as maker and mentor. The exegesis explores the Tasmanian Invasion and colonial attempts to eradicate Tasmanian Aboriginal culture. It examines early colonial resistance and strategies of suppression of cultural expression as practiced by the colonial powers. Against this is placed an exploration of the role of fibre in traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal culture: how fibre was central to survival and how it was utilised, particularly by women, to create many essential possessions of the everyday tool kit of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Fibre plants and techniques for working with them, along with the use of kelp for making water carriers, were developed over thousands of generations. The importance of fibre and kelp techniques and forms in both cultural and physical survival is demonstrated through adaptive processes that continue to the present day. The project demonstrates how current programs for cultural revival often draw on museum collections from the early colonial period to reclaim cultural knowledge to ensure that modern research in the field is underpinned by actual traditional practices. These programs and projects are central to a growing cultural resurgence within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, playing a vital role in challenging the myth of extinction often associated with the Tasmanian Aborigines. The support work for the project includes documentation of projects carried out since 2006, demonstrating the power of art-making to both revive and communicate a culture once considered lost. The project also looks at the art work and experiences of the artist and other Australian Aboriginal women artists, who have dealt with similar histories. It explores their roles as 'cultural warriors' ('Cultural' and 'culture warriors' has been applied in various ways in Aboriginal political and social issues but is used specifically here. See Appendix A for definition) and ambassadors for their people and cultures, and how they have utilised their arts practice from a culturally specific perspective. The exhibition brings together a range of fibre-based works which have been constructed over the past two and a half years and which respond to the framework set up for this project: the use of continuing practice to disseminate knowledge and revive a culture. The central installation comprises 179 circles of dodder vine chained in groups of ten, surrounding a central woven form encasing a kelp armour. Each group and number of works, together with the materials and techniques used, carries significance within the colonial and more recent histories of cultural crisis for Tasmanian Aboriginals. The central work reflects on the colonial period of 'protection', and will be surrounded by other large scale works, variously exploring issues of hidden language, hidden history and the importance of inter-generational practices for sharing of culture.

This thesis looks at the reality of the situation of the Tasmanian Aborigines using the theme of the 19th Century genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Sacred wound in the context of the law and spirituality. The methodology of the lived experience of the author is drawn upon for a legal and spiritual analysis of cases lived by the author, which provide a backdrop to the handing back of certain Aboriginal lands in Tasmania as well as reflecting on the intersection of Aboriginal lore and the legal system. The meaning of these cases goes beyond a rational legal analysis as the idea that genocide is still continuing is a difficult one for Australians to understand due to compartmentalisation between spirituality and the law in the context of modern Australia. The High Court case of Mabo poses a dilemma for Aborigines as it contains an opportunity to move beyond terra nullius thinking, but at the same time it limits claims in a way that continues dispossession and may in certain circumstances disallow aspects of Aboriginal self determination. Within this apparent standoff lies the possibility for a development of the law that can embrace or incorporate the Aboriginal spiritual attachment to the land, ancestors and artefacts. There is no word in the English language that can describe the multifaceted, inside and outside, perspectives required to carry out the required discussion that could bring the law more into tune with the people, the land and the original inhabitants. The spiritual direction of Australia, however, could be affected by the turning away from a material, logical rational perspective to the embracing of connection as a value in itself: to spiritual values and a personal sense of calling. The Sacred wound is the meditation around which the discussion of all these themes of lived experience, the law and spirituality moves and ultimately rests.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis looks at the reality of the situation of the Tasmanian Aborigines using the theme of the 19th Century genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Sacred wound in the context of the law and spirituality. The methodology of the lived experience of the author is drawn upon for a legal and spiritual analysis of cases lived by the author, which provide a backdrop to the handing back of certain Aboriginal lands in Tasmania as well as reflecting on the intersection of Aboriginal lore and the legal system. The meaning of these cases goes beyond a rational legal analysis as the idea that genocide is still continuing is a difficult one for Australians to understand due to compartmentalisation between spirituality and the law in the context of modern Australia. The High Court case of Mabo poses a dilemma for Aborigines as it contains an opportunity to move beyond terra nullius thinking, but at the same time it limits claims in a way that continues dispossession and may in certain circumstances disallow aspects of Aboriginal self determination. Within this apparent standoff lies the possibility for a development of the law that can embrace or incorporate the Aboriginal spiritual attachment to the land, ancestors and artefacts. There is no word in the English language that can describe the multifaceted, inside and outside, perspectives required to carry out the required discussion that could bring the law more into tune with the people, the land and the original inhabitants. The spiritual direction of Australia, however, could be affected by the turning away from a material, logical rational perspective to the embracing of connection as a value in itself: to spiritual values and a personal sense of calling. The Sacred wound is the meditation around which the discussion of all these themes of lived experience, the law and spirituality moves and ultimately rests.

This thesis argues for Benjamin Duterrau’s merited place in Australian colonial art history. It examines Duterrau’s depictions of Aborigines, both formally and contextually, seeking to reignite interest in Duterrau’s work and its importance in contemporary society. On a more general level, it is concerned with visual European responses to Aborigines and how those responses may be read by a modern-day audience. Since the sale of Duterrau’s work immediately following his death in 1851, there has been no solo exhibition of his work. His colonial depictions of Aboriginal people have largely been overlooked by scholars whose attention has instead turned to Thomas Bock and John Glover. In comparison, Duterrau’s work is often considered artistically amateur and his recordings of people and events inaccurate. Instead I argue that his images are important historical texts that can add new dimensions to understanding colonial ideologies and European relations with Aborigines. While there has been no significant study dedicated to Duterrau’s work, other than Stephen Scheding’s The National Picture (2002) which is primarily concerned with the whereabouts of one of Duterrau’s paintings, scholarly work focusing on Duterrau has tended to see his work in terms of colonial propaganda. From the limited writings on Duterrau, The Conciliation (1840), Duterrau’s painting of George Augustus Robinson surrounded by Aborigines, has attracted the greatest interest as it is widely accepted as the first history painting in Australia. The significant status of The Conciliation has sparked debates over the historical accuracy of its depiction. For many writers its place in art history continues to be problematic. Duterrau’s oil portraits of Aborigines are also bathed in controversy. This thesis will engage with the differing views and provide an analysis of how Duterrau’s work may be valued in contemporary Australian society. In doing so it reveals the contingencies of reading an historical artwork and the complex, emotional investments in portraits of Aborigines.

This thesis provides a preliminary discussion of the Palawa ('Tasmanian Aboriginal') languages. Tasmania as an island has been physically separated from the Australian mainland for over ten millennia, and as one might expect one consequence has been that there have been a number of divergences in the development of its languages from those of the mainland in terms of the pronunciation and range of its segments, its phonology, the semantic content of its lexemes, its word and sentence construction, and its syntax. To adequately cover all these topics, and as well the genetic connections between Palawa and the mainland languages would be a vast enterprise running into many hundreds of pages. In consequence the thesis has been limited to a number of matters which are basic to an adequate discussion of the topics referred to. The thesis thus provides a description of Tasmania as a geophysical land mass which differs in important respects from most of mainland Australia, and of the important changes which have taken place since its human colonisation in terms of its climate, fauna, and flora. An outline of the languages and dialects spoken at the beginning of the nineteenth century follows, together with a description of Palawa socio-economic organization. As then discussed, the rapid collapse of Palawa culture after Tasmania's invasion by the British, led to the loss and very imperfect preservation of the Palawa languages. Chapter 6 details the sources of the extant materials with respect to the languages, and provides an overview of studies undertaken to date. Chapter 7 then proceeds to an in depth study of the Palawa lexicons with a view to identifying and determining the segments regularly articulated by Palawa speakers, and the contexts in which those segments were contrastive. This study will incorporate all extant information with respect to the various spelling conventions used in European transcriptions of Palawa words. It will also compare the transcriptions with a view to resolving a number of both latent and patent ambiguities. The principles of historical linguistics will be used to elucidate many such matters. The thesis will not embark upon a description of Palawa phonology, morphology, the semantic development and content of Palawa lexemes, nor Palawa syntax. Accordingly a discussion of Palawa place names, clan names, and personal names will also not form part of the thesis.

The interaction of Aboriginal people with expressions of Christian faith during the colonial history of Australia has been examined in various contexts but not to any great extent in Australia’s southernmost setting of Tasmania. This thesis traces the interactions of Tasmanian Aboriginal people with Christianity from the beginnings of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land to the early years of the twentieth century. While surviving documentary sources are limited they show a vibrant precontact Aboriginal religious life. Its elements were multi-layered, complex and open to interacting with the different religious lives of other clans and subsequently with the colonists. Pre-existing religious beliefs and practices were the paradigm through which Aboriginal people interpreted the Christian faith. In the first generations of colonial contact there was not a mission among Aboriginal people by any church missionary society. Most religious oriented conversations occurred in the less formal settings of conversations between individuals or within families. Some conversations were with the Government appointed conciliator, catechist or clergy who were part of Government programs such as the Hobart Orphan School, the Settlement at Wybalenna, and Oyster Cove Station. These formal settings provide archival sources that indicate a variety of interactions and Aboriginal responses to Christian faith. The polyvalent rather than uniform responses demonstrate the ‘agency’ of Aboriginal people. Most chose to reject the Christian faith. Some, however, incorporated various elements including baptism, participation in church services, family Bible reading, Bible translation, writing addresses and the preaching of Christian sermons. A substantial focus of this thesis examines the oral and literary responses to exposure to the Christian faith at a pivotal location during a crucial period of colonial history, namely the Wybalenna Settlement on Flinders Island from 1832 – 1847. Previously unpublished sources analysed include Bible translations, catechetical examinations, literacy tests, Christian addresses and newspaper articles. The interplay of oral and written responses is examined as well as ways Aboriginal people incorporated Christian faith as they adapted and mediated personal and clan roles and relationships in the dynamic context of Wybalenna. The formal settings of the Wybalenna Settlement and Orphan School contrast the largely independent practices of particular families on the Furneaux Islands throughout most of the nineteenth century and the Nicholls Rivulet Methodist Church in the early twentieth century. These more informal settings demonstrate ways in which Aboriginal people’s adoption of Christian faith was constrained by denominational structures and a general lack of interest in them by most church members. Nevertheless, Aboriginal Christian people formed long and lasting relationships with a few colonial Christians who supported their development of uniquely Tasmanian Aboriginal Christian lives.

This thesis examines the enlistment and contribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal soldiers to the first Australian Imperial Force. It also considers how they were treated both in the front line, and on their return to Australia. On 20 October 2014, Tasmanians will celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the departure from Hobart of the troopships Geelong and Katuna. On board the Geelong as a young sergeant allotted to the 12th Battalion was Alfred Hearps, a nineteen year old clerk from Queenstown. Young ‘Jack’ (as he was known to his family) would be the first of 74 Tasmanian Aborigines to volunteer for service with the first Australian Imperial Force. Men came from all walks of life and from all over Tasmania to enlist when the recruiting offices opened in mid-August 1914. Over the four years that the war was prosecuted, 18 men from the small island community of Cape Barren Island would volunteer. Seventeen of these men were Straitsmen, the descendants of the sealers who settled on the Bass Strait islands with the Aboriginal women they took as ‘wives’ and with whom they raised children. A further thirteen Aboriginal men from nearby Flinders Island would also enlist along with eight grandchildren of Fanny Cochrane Smith. A total of 34 descendants of Dalrymple Briggs would also enlist – most, with the exception of three, coming from Aboriginal communities in the north and north-west of Tasmania. Four men from Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, were also included in this thesis, as they were the descendants of Betty Thomas, a Tasmanian woman who was probably taken there by sealers. The number of Aborigines who managed to enlist is not great, perhaps 800 to 1,000 across Australia: nevertheless, they made a significant contribution to Australia’s war effort. It is only in recent years that this contribution has been fully recognised, and that there has been a concerted effort to write them back into the Anzac legend. Dawes, Robson and White have all examined what drove men to enlist in the first Australian Imperial Force: but with very little evidence of any kind, it has been much harder for historians to suggest why Aborigines, who were essentially barred from enlisting (under Section 61 (h) of the Defence Act of 1903) would volunteer to fight for a country that had pushed them to the margins of society. While the founding fathers wanted a ‘white army’ for a White Australia following Federation, in actual fact the first Australian Imperial Force was ethnically diverse in its make-up. Tasmanian Aborigines, in particular, are conspicuous by their very absence from the literature. Timothy Winegard was only able to add a now outdated figure at the last minute before his book on the contribution of Indigenous peoples from the British Dominions went to print in 2012. This thesis writes the contribution of Tasmania’s Aboriginal soldiers back into the historical record to stand alongside the accounts emerging from other Australian states and territories. It would appear that the Tasmanian Aboriginal men had little trouble in convincing the recruiting officers that if they were fit enough, they should be enlisted. This was not the experience of many Aboriginal men from mainland Australia, some of who were discharged soon after volunteering, with their records marked as being irregularly enlisted because they were not of ‘substantial’ European origin. However, once accepted, it would appear that the Australian Imperial Force was an ‘equal opportunity employer’ with all recruits given the same pay, clothing, equipment and rations based solely on rank. Yet while this was true of the early phase of their enlistment, statistical evidence would suggest that Aboriginal soldiers were not treated the same as settler Australian soldiers once in the front line. In order to examine this, four cohorts have been considered. The first comprises the 74 men from this study. Two further cohorts were derived from a one in five sample taken from the Letter B Database set up by Professor Kris Inwood of Guelph University, Canada – one of men born in Tasmania, the other of those born in mainland Australia. A fourth cohort is comprised of mainland Australian Aboriginal soldiers. Rather than being ‘over by Christmas’ 1914, the war dragged on for four years, with the loss of over 63,000 Australian lives and a further 152,422 casualties. The Australian government was overwhelmed by the number of men and families requiring support upon their return to Australia. Given the fact that returned Aboriginal soldiers were once again marginalised when they returned home, many must have wondered whether the Repatriation system set up to take care of the needs of returning soldiers would treat them the same as settler Australian soldiers or whether they would suffer discrimination once more.

Small, remote island communities often share problems of isolation and limited natural resources to sustain a viable economy, consequently many have sought to diversify into the tourism industry. The Aboriginal community of Cape Barren Island, Tasmania, has very limited economic activities and is considering tourism ventures. Sustainable island tourism may provide important economic, social and cultural opportunities to stimulate selfsufficiency, community cohesion, cultural preservation, as well as self-determination and empowerment for the Aboriginal community. The aim of the research was to analyse how the Cape Barren Island community could develop sustainable island tourism. The research pathway was directed by ascertaining the natural and cultural values on the island and identifying and assessing the opportunities, benefits, issues and constraints for the community to develop sustainable island tourism. A qualitative research approach was employed which incorporated the concept of triangulation. Semi-structured interviews, a focus group and field observations were conducted on Cape Barren Island. Key informant interviews representing the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and the tourism industry provided an overview of the issues and constraints surrounding indigenous tourism development in a Tasmanian context. From the research a number of themes developed: 1) accessibility, 2) infrastructure and natural resources, 3) land ownership and control, 4) community cohesion, 5) human resources, 6) skills, training and capacity building, 7) traditional skills and knowledge, 8) funding and costs, 9) cultural awareness and product, 10) authenticity and interpretation, and 11) seasonality and exogenously driven forces. There is the potential for the community to develop sustainable island tourism which could provide significant economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits and opportunities, however, a number of issues and constraints would have to be overcome. Recommendations were presented from the research to assist the community in developing sustainable island tourism.

As the title indicates this study is restricted to those Aboriginal tribes located in the North West region of Tasmania. This approach enables the regional character and diversity of Aboriginal communities to be brought into focus; it also facilitates an examination of the unique process of dispossession that took place in the North West region, an area totally under the control of the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co). Issues dealing with entitlement to ownership and sovereignty will be established by an examination of the structure and function of traditional Aboriginal Societies in the region, as well as the occupation and use they made of their lands. Early contact history with the Europeans is examined to demonstrate that there was a real possibility of developing productive relationships with the indigenous inhabitants at the time the VDL Co. took up their land grants. The character of the VDL Co manager Edward Curr, his role in the development of the VDL Co and his harsh treatment of those under his authority, including the Aborigines is also an important area of study. While Company Directors were prepared to countenance the dispossession of the Aborigines and consequent destruction of their culture, Curr was content to preside over their physical destruction. This thesis will demonstrate that Edward Curr persistently ignored instructions from his Directors to the contrary and created, fostered and supported an ethos that encouraged the systematic eradication of the Aboriginal population on allocated Company lands. In 1834, after only eight years under the care of Curr's administration, less than one sixth of the original Aboriginal inhabitants had survived to be taken into exile by the Friendly Mission. Robinson's Friendly Mission provided the main physical contact between the North West Aborigines and Arthur's administration. Thus the activities of the Friendly Mission and its role in removing many of the Aborigines, by force in many cases, is detailed, as is their treatment and condition at the Wybalenna Establishment. The history of the North West Aboriginal tribes will continue by tracing the events and experiences that followed the exile to Flinders Island and Oyster Cove, concluding with the death in 1857 of the last survivor of the North West population. It will be established that the genocide perpetrated against these tribes, was initiated as part of local VDL Co policy, a process exacerbated through colonial administrative expediency and brought to completion by neglect. Finally, there is a brief review of the popular ideologies concerning race, current during the period under study and the extent to which these ideas moulded attitudes and policies relating to Aborigines both in the North West and in general.

When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission tabled Bringing them home, its report into the separation of indigenous children from their families, it was criticised for failing to consider Indigenous child welfare within the context of contemporary standards. Non-Indigenous people who had experienced out-of-home care also questioned why their stories were not recognised. This thesis addresses those concerns, examining the origins and history of the welfare systems of NSW and Tasmania between 1880 and 1940. Tasmania, which had no specific policies on race or Indigenous children, provides fruitful ground for comparison with NSW, which had separate welfare systems for children defined as Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This thesis draws on the records of these systems to examine the gaps between ideology and policy and practice. The development of welfare systems was uneven, but there are clear trends. In the years 1880 to 1940 non-Indigenous welfare systems placed their faith in boarding-out (fostering) as the most humane method of caring for neglected and destitute children, although institutions and juvenile apprenticeship were never supplanted by fostering. Concepts of child welfare shifted from charity to welfare; that is, from simple removal to social interventions that would assist children's reform. These included education, and techniques to enlist the support of the child's family in its reform. The numbers of non-Indigenous children taken into care were reduced by economic and environmental measures, such as payments to single mothers. The NSW Aborigines Protection Board dismissed boarding-out as an option for Indigenous children and applied older methods, of institutionalisation and apprenticeship, to children it removed from reserves. As non-Indigenous welfare systems in both states were refined, the Protection Board clung to its original methods. It focussed on older children, whilst allowing reserves to deteriorate, and reducing the rights of Aboriginal people. This cannot simply be explained by race, for Tasmania did not adopt the same response. This study shows that the policies of the Aborigines Protection Board were not consonant with wider standards in child welfare of the time. However, the common thread between Indigenous and non-Indigenous child removal was the longing of children and their families for each other.

Tasmania’s unique combination of geography, deep human history and the particular context of British colonial settlement offers a valuable case study of the spread of European philosophy, literary, scientific and artistic traditions through British imperial interests in the South Pacific. During the 1820s, in order to facilitate economic and social development, the colonial government of Van Diemen’s Land attempted the effective removal of all ‘wild’ Aborigines from the island. A limited anthropological record prior to this period produced a blank ethnographic canvas that was slowly populated with figures owing more to the European imagination and earlier encounters with Indigenous people elsewhere in the empire than to the existential character of Tasmanian Aborigines, their culture and history. Aborigines were depicted through a range of tropes dominated by romantic notions of noble savagery, settler experiences of conflict, the desire for peace and prosperity, and ultimately, for Aboriginal absence. By the end of the century, this had resulted in Tasmanian Aborigines being rendered as tragic characters, emblematic of their own demise – a trope that has persisted to the present day – influencing descriptions across art, literature and science. Visual representations of Tasmanian Aborigines from the nineteenth-century have proliferated through historical literature, trade and exhibition. However, changing modes of visual literacy, defined by Barbara Stafford as ‘a cultural construct, rising or falling with cultural and scientific assumptions and values of a given period’, and a dearth of critical art-historical interest in these representations, have led to a limited ability for most observers to contextualize this visual history, or to understand the complexity of this important aspect of Tasmania’s visual history. This problem is significant in its consequences for realizing the full value of a diverse body of objects and images in the archive relating to Australian colonial history and their role in influencing the formation of contemporary social frameworks involving Aboriginal people and attitudes to their treatment in Tasmania. Several authors, including Tim Bonyhady, David Hansen and Penny Edmonds have advanced knowledge on particular artists working in Tasmania, or on specific representational modes. However, there has been no systematic attempt to construct a critical overview on the subject since the work of Brian Plomley half a century ago. Significantly, only one exhibition (and resulting publication) is known to have been dedicated to the representation of Tasmanian Aborigines in art. My unique contribution to this task of analysis is to bring an interdisciplinary approach that crosses boundaries between the philosophy of science and the practices of art history. This, coupled with my cultural knowledge as an Indigenous Tasmanian scholar of the context of the people and environments depicted in this visual record, enables a contribution of new knowledge through deeper and richer analysis and interpretation than has been undertaken to date. In particular, I bring this knowledge to the task of examining tensions between desires to decipher colonial images as cultural products, and to understanding them as agents for provoking meaningful response in viewers. This project is the first significant art-historical study to address a number of key questions examining how Tasmanian Aborigines have been variously characterized across the period of the nineteenth-century, and proposes a number of distinct tropes of representation drawn from earlier encounters with ‘savage peoples’ by the West. In doing so, it engages critically with an existing body of literature that has yet to be subject to a concerted analytical review. At the same time, this thesis builds on seminal work by the small number of art historians, including Bernard Smith, Nicholas Thomas, and Ian McLean who made early considerations of the representation of Tasmanian Aborigines as a component of larger studies, and who provided a starting point for the context and methodology of this inquiry. This thesis examines a selection of visual records including drawing, painting, sculpture, printing, and photography produced up to the end of the nineteenth-century. By investigating the influence of European ideas through the overlapping traditions of art and science on perceptions of Tasmanian Aborigines and their culture, I identify and problematize major themes emerging from extant literature, and identify limitations in the approaches of earlier contributors. Selected works of key artists are examined in order to analyze how these objects exemplify a range of ideas and values at play in the context of their production. Importantly, older traditions upon which these ideas draw are explored to suggest deeper functions of these representations in promulgating the foundations of Christian empire in a remote antipodean colony. This project’s examination of the records of ethnographic illustration from British and French expeditions, through to the work of a number of colonial artists depicting Tasmanian Aborigines, makes an important contribution to critical understandings of the evolution of ideas about European relationships with nature, place and identity in the Antipodes. Importantly, I offer insights into how these ideas were deployed in response to the particularities of British settlement in Tasmania, and the resulting contrasts between British artistic production and earlier French depictions of the island’s indigenous people. This reveals significant changes across the period under consideration and points to the role that visual arts played in documenting and explicating practices that many controversially describe as genocidal. By interrogating the social, political, philosophical and aesthetic environment from which the visual record of Tasmania’s Indigenous history has emerged, I offer a deeper analysis of the function and influence of key traditions and tropes that have become foundational to contemporary ideas about Aboriginal Tasmania. The results of this investigation reveal that shifting patterns of representation of Tasmanian Aborigines have been informed by a complex history of depiction of indigenous people by Europeans over many centuries prior to the colonization of Australia. These patterns mark significant changes in the deployment of art traditions, scientific and religious ideologies, and colonial policy on the one hand, and changes in how this visual history is read. By describing this process, I seek to enable a more detailed and critical understanding of how and why familiar conceptions of Tasmanian Aborigines have emerged. Identifying avenues for further research, and offering new and richer interpretations of artworks depicting Tasmanian Aborigines creates opportunities for contemporary Tasmanians to reinterpret the past. In doing so, prospects for a new sense of place on the island beckon through re-evaluating the role of visual history in influencing relationships with Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, and deeper understandings of the implications of colonization. These opportunities have potential relevance across a range of Australian and international colonial contexts.

This thesis is an articulation of how I make sense of being a young Tasmanian Aboriginal woman through story, place and movement. The first part of the thesis consists of creative works that chart multiple approaches to the question How does movement create the conditions in which story and place bring each other into being?. The second part of the thesis is an exegesis of the creative works, which consists of two parts: the context of the creative works and the analysis of the creative works. The context traces the route my family and I walk from punnilerpanner country / Tarleton, the country that grew me up, to tebrakunna / Cape Portland, my ancestral country, as well as the multiple departures and returns that constitute the (ongoing) route. I outline the cultural practice of walking on country and examine how it relates to story and place. I also engage in dialogue with western philosophical and literary perspectives on the interrelatedness of place, narrative and movement. The analysis examines the responses that arise out of the creative process. This thesis, therefore, functions as both a story and a map: it is a map become story, and a story become map.

Frontiers involve competition for space and conflict between mentalités. This thesis examines a single, small frontier in detail, using as an exemplar, Loonwonnylowe, now known as Bruny Island — describing the impact the invading British had on its people. Departing from a conventional historical narrative, I view the available ethnographic evidence through a lens influenced by landscape. I first describe the land before the advent of the British in terms of the food resources it provided for human consumption and employ human ecology to understand how those resources influenced Aboriginal behaviour. The Bruny Islanders were foragers. To survive, they needed to live in small family groups that moved across the land on a daily basis. So central was the land to their existence that it was revered by the Aborigines. A reconstruction is made for the first time of this sacred landscape of Loonwonnylowe. The complex interrelationship between the Tasmanian foragers and their land was destroyed in less than thirty years through the rapacious dispossession of resource hungry British agricultural settlers. I describe this invasion and its impact on the island and its people. In the last stage of dispossession, British officialdom attempted to ameliorate their impact by seeking to civilise the Aborigines through conversion to Christianity and training as agricultural labourers. To effect this, the colonial government set up an Aboriginal Establishment, a type of mission, and George Augustus Robinson was appointed superintendent. Robinson, a builder-cum-missionary, had emigrated from London. An examination of Robinson’s early life reveals the tools and cultural prejudices he brought to his job, a mindset contrasting starkly with that of the indigenous landowners. The Establishment is described from the perspective of the Aborigines, the surrounding settlers, Robinson, and his convict servants. The Establishment failed after nine months. This thesis explains various factors contributing to that failure. Many Aborigines died during that time. For Robinson however, it was a watershed period. His long-term and personal interest in Aborigines and their culture was first stimulated at Bruny Island. His legacy, consisting of thousands of pages of manuscript, Australia’s largest body of nineteenth-century ethnographic material, uniquely illuminating a people on the cusp of change, is used in this thesis.

This thesis uses Historic Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) to uncover the continuing and new patterns of land use in colonial Van Diemen’s Land to 1835. In 1817 free settlers were frst encouraged to emigrate to the colony of Van Diemen’s Land. They brought with them substantial assets, as well as ideals of British agriculture, and the following years saw a massive transformation of the island’s landscape. By the 1820s many visitors assumed these new agriculturalists were aspiring to recreate Britain, and praised what they saw as the early stages of this. They dismissed the work of the former convicts on their much smaller grants, and ignored the thousands of years of land management conducted by the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. In fact, as much as the settlers sought to reshape the landscape, they themselves were reshaped by it. Their aspirations were only possible because of the work of their predecessors. By placing land grants and sales data into an HGIS, this thesis reconstructs the sequence of European settlement in three regions of the island: New Norfolk, Bothwell and through the Midlands. These case studies are used to argue the existence of two primary European settlement patterns. The frst is riverine intensive, a pattern based on European and settler-colonial precedent. The domain of emancipist grantees, the name refects the signifcance of waterways in shaping the early colony. This pattern gave way to the open extensive in the early-1820s, as the colony’s economy shifted to fne wool exports and the settlers required larger acreages. This thesis argues that both of these patterns were reliant on the Aboriginal mosaic patterns, as the settlers were drawn to areas kept clear with fre-stick farming. Settlers in the open extensive stage were particularly drawn to the large ‘plains’, and their land-use represented a drastic departure from accepted British methods. Nonetheless, the riverine intensive settlers also benefted from cleared lands. By combining the settlement pattern parameters with environmental data and settlement sequences, this thesis argues that it is possible to uncover details of the pre-European landscape that were not recorded before it was irrevocably altered by the arrival of large-scale pastoral pursuits. Connecting land records to colonial survey charts also enables this thesis to measure the extent to which acreages were over- or under-measured. Using these fndings, it analyses allegations of corruptions that were frequently levelled against the colonial surveyors. Their work is critiqued within the context of surveyor work-load, changing settler and governmental priorities, and the rise of the Black War.

There is scant information available on the occurrence of fire in the Eastern Tiers of Tasmania. Whole, very large and fire scarred eucalypt cross sections were used as source material for the reconstruction of a fire history for this region. Accurate dating of fire scars in Eucalyptus has been problematic due to the unreliable nature of the annuality of growth rings. Eucalypts have a proclivity for growth anomalies such as false and or missing rings. The annuality of eucalypt tree rings was assessed using dendrochronological techniques on a sub-set each of young trees <140 yrs (n = 15) and old trees > 150 yrs (n = 27). A software program was developed to assist with data capture and analysis. “Detect Rings” identified ring boundaries and measured ring widths from high resolution photographs. However, the seven sampled eucalypt species (E. amygdalina, E. obliqua, E. dalrympleana, E. tenuiramis, E. delegatensis, E. pulchella, E. globulus), were not amenable to withinor between-tree cross-dating. Multiple radial ring counts from 104 large trees (photographs: n = 27, in situ: n = 77) were aggregated and tested for reliability with a mean error margin of ±7 rings being calculated where tree age was estimated at > 200 years. Additional sources of error were progressively eliminated. The integrity of fire scar capture from thirteen sites, each with variable sample numbers, was addressed by the development and application of a sample size adjustment procedure analogous to the bootstrap. This process indicated that 9-10 sample trees per site were sufficient to detect a high proportion of fire events large enough to generate injurious fire scars. There was no effect on fire scar distribution resulting from tree age, species composition, landscape position, bark thickness, diameter over bark, slope or elevation. The age of the oldest sample tree was estimated to be ~570 years. The sample size adjustment procedure was used to derive the mean decadal fire years for each tree at each site. Temporal and spatial patterns were then discerned. Temporal patterns were related to variation in annual rainfall. Approximately 29% of fire years which occurred across three or more sites were related to years of low rainfall indicating a relationship between low rainfall and widespread fires. A composite fire scar chronology was developed 1740 – 2004 from which distinctly different periods of fire years were defined. Fire years were recorded as mean fire years per decade, per period, thus: 0.7 in the Aboriginal era 1740 – 1820, 0.4 in the Transitional era 1820 – 1850, 1 in the 2nd European era 1850 – 1910, 1.5 in the 3rd European era 1910 – 1990, and 0.7 in the Current or 4th European era 1990 – 2004. Between-decade fire scar variability was highest in the Aboriginal era. The incidence of fire scars massively increased across most sites from the 1850s and continued at high levels until the late 1980s, although a reduced number of fire scars were recorded in the first decade of the 20th C. Occurrence of fire scars in the most recent period, 1990 – 2004, was shown to approximate that of the earliest period 1740 – 1820. These distinctly different temporal periods were interpreted as being caused by cultural activity. Intensive use of the forests for timber-getting co-incided with the Victorian gold-rush of the early 1850s and is the most likely explanation for the sharp increase in fire years at this time. Land use analysis further defined differences in fire years between public and private land with many more fire years being recorded on private land in the first half of the 3rd European period. A tradition of burning for fresh pick in sheep ‘run’ country, and cultural familiarity with fire, are reflected in this distribution.

Early European explorers were puzzled by the absence of Aboriginal populations on the larger more remote larger islands of the Bass Strait as at least King and Flinders Islands appeared capable of supporting human populations. Subsequent discoveries of stone artefacts on several of the Bassian islands were variously ascribed to human occupation during the landbridge phase or historic times, when Aboriginal Tasmanians had been taken to the islands by sealers and by G.A. Robinson for resettlement However, the discovery of shell midden sites on Flinders Island in the 1970s brought ne\v perspectives to the previous artefact finds - these prehistoric midden sites suggested people had been living on or visiting Flinders Island after the inundation of the Bassian landbridge. Radiocarbon dating of the midden sites on Flinders Island indicated that people were on Flinders Island until about 4,500 BP but absent in more recent times. The aim of the research was to investigate why it should be that evidence of human occupation on Flinders Island disappears from the archaeological record about 4,500 years ago, some 5,000 years of so after insulation. The primary step in this investigation was to determine whether the habitation ceased due to the island being abandoned, or whether it was a case of in situ extinction of the island population. Lampert (1979) had investigated a similar mid-Holocene habitation cessation on Kangaroo Island, and although concluding that the population probably died out he could not dismiss the alternative possibility that people had watercraft and had ceased visiting or living on the island about 4,000 years ago. Unlike Kangaroo Island, the Fumeaux Group had outer islands which enabled the issue of watercraft use to be investigated and thus resolve the primary question of island abandonment or extinction. Results of surveys of the Outer Islands indicated that people in the Furneaux region in prehistoric times did not have watercraft and thus the mid-Holocene middens on Flinders Island were deposited by an isolated relict population. Subsequent excavations on Badger and Prime Seal Islands in the Furneaux Group indicated that people had not only been stranded on Flinders Island by the post-glacial sea level rise, but had been occupying the area from at least 23,000 years ago in late Pleistocene times. The evidence from Beeton Rock.shelter and Mannalargenna Cave suggests relatively low levels of human occupation from about 23,000 BP until the early Holocene when the post-glacial sea level rise resulted in the formation of the outer islands and severed overland access to these peripheral Fumeaux areas. A more intense phase of occupation is evident behveen about 18,000 BP and 15,500 BP, and it is argued that this phase reflects a greater mobility of people in the region during the last glacial maximum. The adaptation of stone working techniques to locally available fossil shell resources, and the continued practice of shell working for ten or more thousand years or so, suggests that these sites may have been part of a northeast Tasmanian cultural system focused on the plains of the Bassian region. Despite the rapid onset of the terminal Pleistocene marine transgression, people remained in the Furneaux region. As the sea level continued to rise, fragmenting the Furneaux peninsula into the Furneaux Islands, people retreated toward the more upland areas that today comprise Flinders Island. The chronology of site abandonment in both the outer island excavations tracks the contracting land-use pattern in the region as areas were abandoned corresponding with retreating shorelines. Lltimately a group of people became stranded on Flinders Island and lived there in isolation until about 4,000 or so years ago. The Flinders Island habitation cessation coincides with major changes in the archaeological record in mainland Australia and Tasmania, and a similar disappearance of evidence of human occupation on Kangaroo Island. Furthermore, these changes also coincide with a mid-Holocene climatic shift associated with the onset of the ENSO (El Nifto Southern Oscillation) cycle which brought about droughts and fires to the southeast Australian region. The demise of the Flinders Island population had been previously interpreted in light of the devolutionary cultural model posited for the Aboriginal Tasmanians by Jones (1977b). These interpretations suggested that Flinders Island represented a microcosm of the purported trajectory for Tasmania, played out to its ultimate conclusion. This proposition is examined in light of the cultural and palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Furneaux region and a number of case studies of island extinctions and abandonments. These other examples include a range of chronologically, geographically and culturally diverse societies and provide both biogeographic and cultural models for human habitation cessation on islands.

Eastern Van Diemen’s Land was the site of the most intense frontier conflict in Australia. What is known today as the Black War (1824-1831) produced at least 450 colonial casualties and all but wiped out the Aborigines. This thesis examines the attitudes and experiences of the men, women and children –black and white – who were involved. It asks: How did each side perceive the other? What motivated them to violence? What tactics did they employ? How did each side cope with being hunted? And what was the emotional cost? These questions are long overdue. Historians have almost invariably examined the War from the ‘top down’, poring over ethical and legal questions. These are important concerns for posterity, but they were not those of Aborigines or frontier colonists. Their beliefs, desires, behaviours and emotions constituted the human side of the Black War, and they have been all but ignored. The alternating white/black chapters of this thesis juxtapose the perspectives of colonists and Aborigines. Close attention has been paid to the minutiae of frontier life, which were a chief determinant of behaviour and experience. Drawing on a range of methods, the cultures, voices and actions of participants have been sifted from Tasmania’s vast archive. To verify and contextualise this anecdotal evidence, a catalogue of all recorded violent incidents and their details has been appended. The Black War was a guerrilla war consisting of hundreds of ambushes on Aborigines’ camps by night, and on colonists’ huts by day. Exceptions to this day/night pattern were rare, which meant the War was fought and experienced according to a solar rhythm. A key source of white violence was sex deprivation. European women being extremely scarce, so frontiersmen sought black females any way they could. Later, revenge and self-defence also motivated them to kill. Aborigines attacked whites to resist invasion, avenge mounting insults, and to plunder food and blankets. Both lived in suffocating fear, terrified of their enigmatic foes. Likewise, both saw themselves victims, and both felt justified in victimising the other. It was not a battle between good and evil, but a struggle between desperate human beings. This thesis challenges a range of long-standing assumptions about the War, while also providing new evidence and perspectives. Its attitudinal and experiential analysis illuminates the War in a new light, while its quantitative analysis indicates a larger-scale conflict than previously imagined, with distinct and telling patterns of violence. Moreover, a systematic examination of frontier conflict at the ground level and from both is all but untried in Australian history.