August 26.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Women enslaved on Tasmanian islands
'Tyereelore', a word of unknown origin, was the name north-east Tasmanians gave to women enslaved on the islands. Practically all accounts describe the Tyereelore's lives as full of violence and despair. Some of these women confided in [George] Robinson following their emancipation, telling him:
…that the sealers flog the women, that all the women have been flogged and that they tie them up to trees and flog them on the buttock. BULL.RUB said Black Jack flogged her because she had not caught some kangaroo, gave her two dozen [lashes], and at another time Jack Brown flogged her; and TAN.LE.BONE.YER had been flogged several times...The white men flog the black women for nothing and flog the women belonging to other white men. Thomson beat the women on the head with a stick or tomahawk, plenty of blood.
With Robinson probing further, Bullrub revealed that the sealers also starved the women, who were forced to live on whatever food they could procure themselves. [1] Likewise, the east coast woman, Looerryminer, explained to [Quaker missionary James] Backhouse how the sealers:
…flogged the women who did not pluck Mutton-birds, or do other work to their satisfaction. She spread her hands to the wall, to shew the manner in which they were tied up, said a rope was used to flog them with, and cried out with a failing voice till she sank upon the ground, as if exhausted. This woman's statements were confirmed by others, several of whom have escaped to the settlement. [2]
These examples form part of a substantial body of testimonial evidence that confirms the prevalence of gratuitous violence, and explains why the Tyereelore were so often terrified of their white masters.
Like most protracted ordeals, there were moments of respite, if not laughter and enjoyment. There may even have been unrecorded exchanges of kindness between master and slave. Indeed, several Tyereelore remained with the sealers after the rest relocated to Flinders Island, and within a generation they and their ageing masters had established a functioning community that still exists today. However, although we can speculate on the possible consolations of their condition, the evidence for the period 1810-32 invariably portrays the Tyereelore's life as one of suffering and misery, or what the Hobart Town Gazette called 'a cruel chain of unspeakable torment'. [3]
Plomley, Friendly Mission, pp. 291-92.
Backhouse, A Narrative, pp. 88-89.
Hobart Town Gazette, 26 August 1826.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 198-199, 252 n.47, n.48, n.49.
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Need for a history of Queensland’s Native police
Assessing the real implications of the Native Police for the history of Indigenous Australia is a difficult and distressing task. Settlers, who killed many Aboriginal people, passed the land they stole on to their descendants. The Native Police, a part of the colonial state, supported that dispossession. For this reason alone, the force demands special attention, because it was established by the orders of the European executive and regulated by the decisions of the colonial parliament. The current situation of Indigenous people in Queensland is largely a result of their dispossession, in which the Native Police played a major role.
Acknowledgment: Jonathan Richards, The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2017, p. 20.