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Who Was the Last Aboriginal Tasmanian?
For many years, it was believed that the Aboriginal people of Tasmania had become extinct and that their culture, languages, and customs were lost due to the devastating impact of British colonialism. There have been ongoing debates about who was “the last Aboriginal Tasmanian,” with two candidates being considered: Truganini and Fanny Cochrane Smith. However, it is now acknowledged that the Aboriginal Tasmanians did not die out in 1876 when Truganini passed away, or in 1905 when Fanny Cochrane Smith died near Oyster Cove. Both women were more than just the labels assigned to them by historians.
Aboriginal Tasmanians: A Doomed Race?
Model ship by Glen Mackie, contemporary artist. Source: Australian Museum Collection
By 1818, less than 20 years after contact, the Aboriginal population had fallen from around 7,000 to about 5,000. At this point, parity had been reached between the colonial and the Aboriginal population, although among settlers women were in a distinct minority. Within a generation of the invasion, the Indigenous population dropped to 1,000.
By 1830, that of the South West Nation had fallen from 300 to only 60 members. Similar numbers can be observed among the other eight nations, decimated by the ruthless colonial violence of the Black War (1824-1832) and the Black Line (between September and November 1830), as well as by the several European-imported illnesses that have killed Indigenous peoples across the whole world, particularly influenza. Who was to blame for what is now recognized as the genocide of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders?
Eddie Mabo, in 1989, the 1992 Mabo Decision discarded the “terra nullius” concept. Source: National Museum of Australia
In the early 1800s and for decades to come, British settlers invoked the “doomed race” concept, which is today widely accepted as a form of scientific racism. According to this theory, Aboriginal people were too “savage” and primitive to survive the impact of the more “advanced” European culture. In a way, it was their fault: they were directly responsible for their own disappearance and, in 1803, they already were on the road to extinction.
The “doomed race” concept, and the accompanying religious beliefs in fatalism, were all meant to absolve settlers and deny their responsibility for the death of thousands of men, women, and children. For almost two centuries, Aboriginal Tasmanians have been considered extinct. Once again, this is the direct result of years of colonial fabrications.
Truganini (1812-1876)
Truganini, photograph by Alfred Winter, 1869. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Truganini was a member of the South East Nation. The ancestral lands of their people, the most maritime nation on the whole island, ran from present-day New Norfolk, on the west bank of the River Derwent, to Storm Bay. They occupied the southeast coastline for more than 500 kilometers (311 miles), including Bruny Island and the waters of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Hobart was founded on their lands.
Truganini, who belonged to the Nuenonne, was born in 1812 at Recherche Bay, in the area around the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Her mother was a Ninine woman from Port Davey, and her father, Manganerer, was the chief of the Lyluequonny Clan. Later in life, Truganini expressed her desire to be buried in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, in its deepest part, away from British scientists and bone collectors, near the stone quarry where her father and her first partner, Woorraddy, often went to manufacture their flaked stone tools.
Bruny Island, Tasmania, photograph by Patrick McGregor, 2021. Source: Unsplash
Truganini’s life is intertwined with the colonial history of Van Diemen’s Land. At the time, sealers operating in the Bass Strait were often reported abducting, raping, and killing Aboriginal women, especially those of the South East Nation. A European sailor stabbed and killed Truganini’s mother and a British soldier shot her uncle. Truganini’s two sisters were abducted by John Baker, an African American sailor, and taken to live with yet another sealer on Kangaroo Island. One of them, Moorinna, was accidentally shot and died there.
In her seminal book Tasmanian Aborigines, historian Lyndall Ryan reports that Truganini’s fiancé Paraweena was “thrown out of a boat by sawyers who (…) then cut off his fingers while he clung to the side of the vessel.”
Truganini, portrait by Thomas Bock, 1831-2. Source: National Portrait Gallery
The winter of 1829 represented a turning point in Truganini’s life: her father died, she partnered with Woorraddy, chief of the Nuenonne clan, and she met G.A. Robinson (1791-1866), who had been hired by the colony’s governor Sir George Arthur (1784-1854) as the “mediator” between settlers and Aboriginal people. Over the next few years, between 1830 and 1834, she accompanied him on his missions across Van Diemen’s Land to convince the remaining Aboriginal clans, both inside and outside the Settled Districts, to surrender.
In October 1835, Truganini arrived at Wybalenna (“Black man’s houses”), an Aboriginal settlement on the west coast of Flinders Island. In 1833, it accommodated around 120 Aboriginal people. At Wybalenna, Truganini partnered with Weernerpaterlargenna, a man of the Big River Nation who was assigned the European name, Alphonso. A new phase in her life had just begun.
Trousers Point Beach on Flinders Island, 1930s. Source: Furneaux Museum
Weernerpaterlargenna died in 1847, just as the Wybalenna community was being relocated to Oyster Cove. Known among Aboriginal people as putalina, Oyster Cove was a former penal station built in 1843 and abandoned two years later because it was considered unfit for convicts due to its poor health standards. The entire station was damp and cold, especially in the winter months.
The death rate among its Aboriginal population was shocking. By July 1871, only two women still lived at Oyster Cove. One was Mary Ann, Walter Arthur’s wife, who died in July, and the other was Truganini. At this point, she was arguably the most famous (and respected) Aboriginal woman in Tasmania. Ryan notes that in the years after her death, she was still “remembered with considerable affection. Some of the settlers recalled her marvellous eyesight, great good humour, extraordinary knowledge of the bush and the stars, and prowess as a swimmer.”
Truganini, Mary Ann, William Lanney, and Bessy Clark, photograph by Henry Frith, 1866. Source: National Portrait Gallery
Always accompanied by her faithful dogs, she was often seen heading to Nicholls Rivulet to meet with Fanny Cochrane Smith. She died, surrounded by her dogs, in early May 1876, at Mrs Dandrige’s house in Macquarie Street, in Hobart, where she had relocated after the floods at Oyster Cove two years earlier, in the winter of 1874. Wrapped in a white shroud, she was buried in a coffin covered with native flowers.
Her remains suffered the same fate as those of William Lanney (also known as King Billy or William Lanne). He was the “last full-blood Aboriginal man” and (probably) Truganini’s third partner. Two years after her death, the Royal Society of Tasmania exhumed her remains, stored them in a box, and sent them to Melbourne.
Fanny Cochrane Smith
Horace Watson recorded the songs of Fanny Cochrane Smith using an Edison phonograph, 1903. Source: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Truganini’s death in 1876 was announced as the “death of the last full-blood Tasmanian” and hailed as the testimony of the inevitable demise of an inferior race. This was of course far from the truth.
Fanny Cochrane Smith was the first child born at the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment. Her mother, Tanganutura (also known as Tarenootairrer and Sarah), was a woman of the North East Nation, probably a member of the Pinterrairer clan from Layrappenthe country, south of Cape Portland. Around 1815 she was abducted by James Parish, a sealer operating in the Bass Strait. Years later, she was among the Aboriginal men and women taken by G.A. Robinson to Flinders Island. Here she met Nicermenic, a man from Robbins Island, who would become her lifelong partner. Together they had Fanny, who was born in December 1832. At the age of eight, she was taken from them and sent to Queen’s Orphan School.
Oyster Cove was known among Aboriginal Tasmanians as putalina, photograph by Kraig Carlstrom. Source: National Museum of Australia
Upon her return to Wybalenna, Fanny was sent to live and work as a domestic servant in the home of catechist Robert Clark. Cochrane was Clark’s wife’s maiden name. Clark’s methods were so brutal that Fanny once attempted to burn down his home. Five years later, she and the other survivors of Wybalenna were dispatched to Oyster Cove. Truganini was among them.
At Oyster Cove, Fanny Cochrane married English sawyer John Smith, an ex-convict who had been convicted for stealing a donkey. From 1857 until his death, they lived together at Nicholls Rivulet, not far from Oyster Cove, on a dowry allotted to them by the colony’s government. Over the years they built a business cutting and selling timber. Both Fanny’s brother and mother died at Oyster Cove and the entire Oyster Cove community gathered to perform ceremonies and bid them farewell.
The Conciliation, painting Benjamin Duterrau, 1840. Source: National Portrait Gallery
Truganini often visited Fanny Cochrane Smith at her farm at Nicholls Rivulet. Together they would teach children the corroboree songs of their ancestors, how and where to catch possums, and where to find the abalone shells to make necklaces. In one of her most famous photographs, Fanny Cochrane is seen wearing shell necklaces and possum skins over her late Victorian dress. Her hair is adorned with wildflowers. It was taken in 1888 and she was 54 years old. Fanny was very well respected by the Aboriginal community and by settlers alike. The picture exemplifies Fanny’s ability to live and thrive in between worlds.
At her home, she would teach the culture of her ancestors to her children — six boys and five girls. She would go out into the bush to gather bush food and dive for shellfish, just like her ancestors did. Then, along with her husband, she would organize fundraising efforts to build a Methodist church for her community.
Walter Lyall and pupils in Dryazell schoolroom on Flinders Island, 1909. Source: Furneaux Museum
She was 65 when she met Horace Watson in 1899. The son of a builder from Leicestershire who had migrated to Adelaide in 1852, he was a pharmacist and entrepreneur. His mother came from Sussex. Watson saw Fanny sing at the Theatre Royal (where she performed twice over the years) and asked her to make phonograph recordings of her songs. Over a series of sessions, between 1899 and 1903, they recorded some of the songs of Fanny’s ancestors. They are the only recordings ever made of Tasmanian Aboriginal songs. The first was made in the rooms of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1899.
The eight wax cylinders are now in the permanent collection of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. Copies are held at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra. Today, thanks to Fanny’s and Watson’s cylinder recordings, linguists have been able to reconstruct one Tasmanian Aboriginal language: Palawa Kani.
Fanny Cochrane Smith’s wax cylinder recordings. Source: National Committee of Australia
Fanny Cochrane Smith died aged 74 on February 24, 1905 and was buried the following day at Wattle Grove Cemetery at Port Cygnet. More than 400 people showed up to follow her funeral cortège. Only one year before, Truganini’s remains had been taken to the Tasmanian Museum, but Fanny’s remains were left undisturbed. Her descendants form a vital part of today’s Aboriginal community. Rodney Dillon, for instance, the Tasmanian Commissioner for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), is one of Fanny’s great-great-grandsons.
Examples of “Extreme Primitivism”
Petroglyphs in Northern Tasmania. Source: National Museum of Australia
By the time the Black War was over, colonists had stopped regarding Aboriginal men, women, and children as human beings. In the late 1850s, the Aboriginal people at Oyster Cove were mere “scientific curiosities.” Scientists and bone collectors from across the globe, particularly from England, were now treating their remains as trophies to be collected, studied, and displayed in museums for Europeans to marvel at.
In 1867, Morton Allport, a lawyer from Hobart, dug up the remains of one of the members of the Oyster Cove community, Bessy Clark, and sent them to the Hunterian Museum in London. A similar, if not even more barbarian fate, attended William Lanney, a respected and beloved figure among Aboriginal people at Oyster Cove. After his death in March 1869, his body was transferred to the morgue at the Colonial Hospital.
William Lanney, by Charles Woolley, 1866. Source: National Portrait Gallery
Here Dr William Crowther, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, cut off his head and inserted that of another (white) man in his place. The head was later transported to the School of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. The night after the funeral, Dr Crowther, Dr Stokell and other members of the Royal Society arrived at St David’s Cemetery, dug up Lanney’s body, and further dismembered it.
Although Fanny Cochrane Smith’s death was announced as “the death of the last Tasmanian,” neither she nor William Lanney nor Truganini were “the last” Aboriginal people in Tasmania. At that time, a large Aboriginal community could still be found on the islands of the Bass Strait.
A hundred years after Truganini’s death, Roy Nicholls campaigned to have her remains removed from the museum where they had been stored for so many decades. He succeeded. Truganini’s remains were finally cremated and her ashes scattered in the deepest recesses of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, on lands sacred to her and her ancestors.
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