Frontier of space, frontier of mind: The British invasion of Loonwonnylowe

Loonwonnylowe is an hour-glass-shaped island, of 353 km², lying close off the south-east coast of Tasmania, and now known as Bruny Island. It comprises two bioregions that, with a temperate maritime climate, 250 km of coastline, diverse geology, and hills rising over 500 m, encompass highly variable habitats containing rich suites of natural resources. Over the past 6000 years it was the home of 30 or so Aborigines. The inhabitants maintained close relationships with nearby Tasmanian mainland tribes who lived across a swimmable strait, less than 2 km wide in places. This proximity to the mainland contributed to the rapid obliteration of Loonwonnylowe's inhabitants when, in 1804, British colonists established a permanent settlement, Hobart, just 20 km to the north. British hegemony manifested immediately through wide-scale depredation of the natural resources that were fundamental to the daily existence of Loonwonnylowe's inhabitants. This culminated with the murder, kidnapping, rape, and death of the Aborigines from introduced diseases.

Frontiers in Australia, particularly Tasmania, have attracted extensive historical treatments. Nevertheless, modern histories (for example, Clements, 2013) barely acknowledge the invasion of Loonwonnylowe, despite it suffering Tasmania's earliest European incursions. Loonwonnylowe provides a remarkable location for a microhistorical study of the evolution of a frontier due to its contained island nature, allied with a wealth of ethnographic and historical evidence related to its people and their destruction. My thesis interrogates this evidence.

Chapter 1 introduces the rationale and methodological approach of the study. As an archaeologist, I am trained to extract the maximum of information from minimal material: to employ, for example, a variety of evidence-based techniques on a single piece of shell, a stone flake, or a fugitive hand-print, in order to tell a coherent story of the past. I have applied the same mindset here to documentary sources. I was influenced by the method of enquiry advocated by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess of asking ever-deeper questions of a particular norm, term, or concept, until the basis for a fundamental understanding is reached (Hay, 2002). I was also influenced by the ideas of logical positivists, promulgated by the ‘new archaeology’ of the 1960s and 1970s, who sought to use scientific methods to leverage data to promote, refine, and test hypotheses about the past (Binford, 2001). Silberbauer's (1994) recommendation to perform ‘rescue anthropology’ using ethnohistorical sources in the absence of a traditional forager people to study and question about their past, also resonated with me. Drawing on ethnohistorical sources such as diaries, newspaper accounts, advertising, and shipping news, allows for the emergence of a detailed account of the Aboriginal dispossession. In 1829, the British eventually attempted to ‘ameliorate’ the desperate condition of the survivors by setting up a village on Loonwonnylowe, in which Aborigines could be inculcated in the ways of agriculture. This Aboriginal Establishment (as it was known) quickly became a mechanism of oppression. It was superintended by a builder-come-missionary, George Augustus Robinson, whose activity generated over 500 manuscript pages (journals, notebooks, letters, lists, memoranda, maps). The thesis provides a close reading of these and other evidentiary sources, drilling down to understand events on the frontier's edge, most especially for the people whose property was forcibly taken and who left no documentation of their own.

Chapter 2 ‘The land of the Stringy Bark People’, as Loonwonnylowe was known to other Aborigines, describes the hunter-gatherer landscape of the past. Land is paramount to hunter-gatherer sustenance, underpinning their very survival. The biogeographical diversity of Bruny Island is reflected in a greater variety of terrestrial mammal species than on any other Tasmanian offshore island. The plants and animals that coexist on that land represent food and raw materials for consumption and exchange. The land, and its flora and fauna, simultaneously facilitate and constrain an individual forager's day-to-day existence, their social organisation and their mobility.

Food questing was dominant in the forager's mind. Using human behavioural ecology and, particularly, optimal foraging theory (Kelly, 2013), I modelled this pursuit. Questing involved movement and dispersal across the landscape in search of food; procurement of raw materials to make tools to help gather and process food; and transport of food back to camp. At camp, food was prepared for consumption, social relationships forged and maintained to facilitate sharing in times of shortage, and storying of the landscape encoded information to be passed down to the next generation.

The chapter goes on to describe terrestrial mammals available on Loonwonnylowe, together with associated human predator behaviour and hunting techniques. The Loonwonnylowe Islanders were, paradoxically, severely constrained by their diet despite the rich resources available. Marsupial meat is lean; consuming too much risked protein-poisoning. The plant foods available may have made a poor dietary contribution on Loonwonnylowe. Acquiring carbohydrate-rich plant foods to counterbalance the lean meat was probably limited to harvesting plant roots, a very labour-intensive occupation for the women. The more-easily-gained macronutrient that would offer an alternative energy source to protein, therefore, was fat, for which the focus turned towards the coast.

Chapter 3 ‘The search for fat’ concentrates mainly on coastal foodscapes centring on cetaceans and seals and, to a much lesser extent, avifauna and shellfish. New evidence came to light during this research that the Stringy Bark People scavenged and hunted cetaceans, a major source of fat. George Augustus Robinson wrote that the Loonwonnylowe Aborigines “eat also whale blubber sea hogs [porpoise]” (Robinson, 1837–1865: Frame 1001, c.f. Frame 1002). This passage, not noted by previous researchers, opens a new dimension in the study and interpretation of the Tasmanian food quest. Consumption of whale, particularly from seasonal strandings, which are common on the island in the present day, is estimated to have had a strong influence on the economy, seasonal movement, and periodic social congregations. Seals and birds, too, were sources of fat, though it is unlikely that the latter were a major component of the Bruny Islanders diet. Swans and mutton-birds have long been thought by historians and archaeologists to be a major food source and a driver for human seasonal movement in Tasmania (Bowdler & Ryan, 1987). However, a close analysis of recent distribution and population data of the birds suggests that these were not an important consideration for the Loonwonnylowe inhabitants.

Chapter 4 ‘The people of the stringybark’ discusses the Tasmanian Aborigines group size and mobility, characteristics arising from their food-gathering strategies. The Tasmanians have often been typified as living in bands that aggregate into tribes. Instead, a detailed analysis of all the Tasmanian ethnographic literature indicates that families were the dominant social grouping and that larger congregations were rare events. Family-size groups seem to be a naturally-occurring human preference, emerging from studies of human organisation such as fractal network analysis of forager societies worldwide, evolutionary psychology, and even an analysis of a modern online gaming community.

Foraging as a way of life necessitated constant movement in the quest for food and in travelling to a new foraging ground once a locality became depleted. Movement across the landscape was a defining characteristic of Tasmanian Aborigines. Early European settlers commented on this behaviour. Tasmanian Aborigines were noted by early explorers to be in constant daily movement, a unique characteristic contrasting with estimates of less than 80 moves a year by other forager groups around the world (Kelly, 2013: tab. 4.1). In the first analysis of a series of daily movements, reconstructed from observations contained in explorers' journals, Tasmanian Aborigines were recorded travelling between 400 m a day and 4.6 km a day. Islanders were also recorded as far as 150 km from Loonwonnylowe, a very long distance by the standard of any hunter-gatherer society worldwide and evidence of the maintenance of long-distance social and economic networks. Finally, I identify for the first time an unusual form of mobility, cursorial hunting of the large Forester kangaroo. Cursorial (or persistence) hunting is uncommon worldwide and is usually limited to ungulates. The chasing down of a large kangaroo which is able to move more efficiently than an ungulate, by retaining elastic-storage energy within their hind limbs, would have required even greater stamina and tenacity.

Chapter 5 ‘Before the Dreamtime – the sacred landscape of Bruny Island’ discusses the numinous quality of the land and everything on it. In response to their deep reliance on the land and the life forms on it, the Tasmanians developed a profound spiritual affinity with it. Because of its supreme centrality to the foragers' lives, land was sacred. In this chapter, I argue that the Tasmanian Aboriginal spirituality shared aspects with the Dreaming of the Australian mainland and most likely took an early proto-Dreamtime form. Further, I describe and analyse recently-discovered rock markings on Loonwonnylowe that are a manifestation of the sacred landscape.

Chapter 6 ‘The stolen land: The Bruny Island frontier’ describes the European invasion and appropriation of the island and its resources. On a late spring afternoon, nearly 400 years ago, any Loonwonnylowe islander looking eastwards across Storm Bay would have seen two small islands beneath billowing clouds approaching the shore. On these islands outlandish white beings called out in a strange tongue. A wind arose, the islands retreated and vanished over the horizon. The opening scene in one of Australia's longest frontier confrontations had just taken place. The arrival and sudden disappearance of trader-explorer Abel Janzoon Tasman and his ships on 29 November 1642 (Duyker, 1992) would have been a remarkable, astounding, even supernatural, experience. For the first time in millennia, Tasmanians became aware that there was a manifestation of the world beyond their skyline of forest and sea that needed to be explained and incorporated into their knowledge system.

After Tasman, British and French expeditions called in to Adventure Bay for wood and water. However, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, over the comparatively short period of three decades, the Aborigines' complex, finely-tuned relationship with their land was destroyed. In that time, the land was overrun and commercially appropriated by an invading industrial force unleashed by the British half a globe away. Using historical sources including newspaper accounts, advertising, and shipping news, I present an original and detailed chronology of this seizure. The initial predation of the Aborigines' foodstuffs, their seals, wallabies, and whales, was quickly followed by the mining of their shell middens for mortar lime and the felling of their forests for ships' masts, building timber, fuel, and tanning bark, as well as the clearing of sand-dune vegetation for lye to manufacture soap. The Aborigines of Loonwonnylowe by turns accommodated, resisted and argued their point. Ultimately, they were unable to counter the power of the British. The settler-raiders, particularly sealers and loggers, accelerated the destruction of Aboriginal society through the kidnapping, enslavement, and rape of women and girls, and the murder of men.

The invaders brought a different view of this land. Their belief system, dominated by logos, was encoded in their great book called The Bible. They believed in a sky-god in human form. Their god had a commercial view of the relationship between humanity and the natural world. “…. let [man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26). By the late 1820s, though, the colonial government recognised the impact their colonisation of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) was having on the indigenous people and attempted to “ameliorate” their condition. Amelioration was to be achieved by acculturation into British ways of life, conversion to Christianity, and training in agricultural labouring. George Augustus Robinson was tasked by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to set up an Establishment on Loonwonnylowe to undertake the so-called amelioration and civilisation of the Aborigines. The Aborigines did not submit to the British plans, so the initiative failed. The site was abandoned after 9 months.

The remaining chapters investigate Robinson and the interaction of the last Loonwonnylowe Aborigines with Robinson, Robinson's convict servants, and other settlers. Chapter 7, ‘George Augustus Robinson: the early years’ and Chapter 8 ‘George Augustus Robinson: the mind on the frontier’ offer a counterpoint to the preceding descriptions of the lifeways of the Stringy Bark People. Robinson's observations of Australian Aboriginal life are contained in some 30,000 pages that comprise his 70 volumes of papers that form one of the finest 19th-century ethnohistorical records in existence. Through those records, Robinson illuminated the Georgian mind on the frontier. I interweave five background themes to reconstruct the motivation and principles that Robinson brought bear on his work with Aborigines. First, an understanding of his family background, gained through genealogical research. Second, a reconstruction of his socioeconomic milieu — including his parish of birth and childhood experience in London, as well as his later places of residence in the city. Third, identifying the development of his religious beliefs and moral principles until the end of the period of the Bruny Island Establishment in 1830. I argue here that Robinson was associated with and influenced by the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, a minority dissenting sect. Also significant is the influence on Robinson of his local missionising activities in and around London. Fourth, recognition of the considerable skills and knowledge in building and brickmaking that he took with him to Tasmania. Finally, reconstructing Robinson's library and readings, particularly up to 1830, to gain insights into his internal dialogue and the trajectory of his interests. Robinson's actions have attracted severe criticism from many quarters, but he was arguably the best man then available in the colony to attempt to peacefully subjugate Loonwonnylowe's Aborigines.

Chapter 9 ‘Aborigines, Robinson, and the Aboriginal Establishment’ describes the raison d'être for the mission, and the general plan that Robinson attempted to follow in constructing buildings, educating Aboriginal children through the forced learning of the English language, and training the Aboriginal adults in agriculture. Using missionary models from the Pacific, he quickly began learning the local languages in order to facilitate proselytisation. However, the Aborigines fell ill from a lung disease, with a number dying at the Establishment. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to an analysis of that calamity. I propose that the newly-adopted habit of wearing clothes, issued by the Government, together with the replacement of traditional foodstuff with insufficient and inappropriate Government rations, disastrously reduced the Aborigines' vitamin D uptake. In turn, this increased their susceptibility to influenza and other diseases. Ultimately, it was impossible for Robinson to constrain these traditionally-mobile foragers in one place. They had earlier come to an accommodation with nearby settlers and were constantly escaping the Establishment to visit and garner food.

Chapter 10, ‘Aborigines, settlers and Robinson’, details the growing relationships and varying degrees of accommodation between Aborigines, settlers, and convict servants. By 1829, when the Establishment was founded, the Aboriginal population of the island was reduced to about 20, many of whom were refugees from the mainland. I calculate that over 45 free settlers and 111 convicts resided on Loonwonnylowe by then. Colonists, approximately eight times the number of Aborigines, now lived within a half day walk of the Establishment. The Aborigines developed a passion for tea, sugar, and tobacco, stimulants unavailable to them in nature. Robinson was unable to provide sufficient quantities of these items, causing the Aborigines to move away from the Establishment towards white settlements where they were easily procured. Aborigines also replaced the labour-intensive digging for roots by craftily harvesting potatoes from the settlers' fields. Aboriginal women were able to access fats from the whalers by trading sex for food, unwittingly becoming the major vector for venereal infection of their people. The failure of Government in Hobart to deliver sufficient rations, of a type to keep Aborigines interested in remaining at the Establishment was a constant frustration to Robinson.

Of all the institutional failings faced by Robinson that jeopardised the success of the mission, the most acute was the obligation to employ convict labour, as free labour was scarce. Chapter 11, ‘Convict labour, Robinson and Aborigines’ reconstructs the relationship between the Aborigines and Robinson's convict servants, as well as between Robinson and his convicts. Because Robinson's troubles with his convict servants were recorded in his journals along with related notes, posterity is fortunate to have inherited detailed and intimate records of convict resistance against a master, including individual disobediences as well as collective strikes. Parallelling Robinson's descriptions of convict resistance, there are unique passages relating to convict-Aboriginal interactions. Robinson's contemporaries, and modern historians, often blame poor relationships between settlers and Aborigines on violence meted out by unsupervised convicts, such as shepherds and timber-getters living in remote situations on the frontier. Passages in Robinson's journals provide a corrective to this perspective, showing a far more nuanced and positive relationship between the two groups.

The last Stringy Bark People were removed by Robinson from Loonwonnylowe on 30 January 1830, 26 years after the founding of Hobart, never to return. With them went knowledge of the island's plants and animals, appropriate ways of managing the bush, stories handed down from generation to generation, and the sacred meaning of the markings on the rocks, lost forever. The millennia-long complex harmony between foragers and land was destroyed in a generation through the rapacious dispossession by the British.

This removal was to be repeated by Robinson across Tasmania, all surviving Aborigines being swept up and incarcerated, first on an unoccupied offshore island, and later in a redundant disease-ridden penal station. Where they pined, and died. Robinson sailed away, becoming a wealthy gentleman retiree in Bath, England, feted by the intelligentsia.

My research attempted to understand one frontier in one small corner of the British Empire; analysing the needs and behaviour of the indigenous people as they engaged with their estate and 30-odd people struggled against the overwhelming force of the British Empire. I wanted to comprehend and appreciate how the calamitous changes wrought by the invaders might have been experienced by the Tasmanians. Inevitably, the thesis struggled to fully appreciate and represent the horror and resulting anomie the Loonwonnylowe experienced during this time—an experience that still resonates for Aborigines today.

This thesis was partly funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.