March 7.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Consequences for women and children
Sex and the shortage of women
In 1822 there were six times as many men in the colony [of Tasmania] as women, and the ratio among the convict population was 16 to one. [1] The military permitted only one soldier in eight (usually the officers) to have their wives and children accompany them on overseas duty. [2] The few available women in the colony were mostly convicts, who could take their pick of men, and generally opted for wealthier, free suitors. [3] For convicts and soldiers this made sexual opportunities – to say nothing of loving relation-ships – depressingly scarce. Thousands of predominately young men in their sexual prime were forced onto the frontier without any 'acceptable' sexual outlets.
This situation produced a fair share of homosexuality and bestiality, but it also meant that native women were highly coveted. [4] Initially some frontiersmen were able to trade for sex, but as demand outstripped supply, and as more and more women were taken by force, the relationships necessary for such exchanges broke down. Consequently, rape and abduction became increasingly common.
The link between the gender imbalance and sexual predation did not go unnoticed. One settler writing to the Tasmanian went so far as to suggest that the government should release all female convicts into the interior in order to stem the prevalence of 'nameless crime' and 'the aggressions of the Stock keepers upon [the natives'] Wives and Daughters'. [5] J. West drew the connection more explicitly: 'It would be impossible even to hint [at] the series of facts, which are authenticated to the writer, and which strangely blended ferocity and lust. The sealer or stockman, who periled his life to accomplish the abduction of a native female, thought that danger but fairly avenged by the destruction of her relatives!'. [6]
Colonists stole native children
Colonists also coveted native children. By 1813, Governor Davey was convinced 'the resentment of these poor uncultivated beings has been justly excited by...the robbery of their children'. [7] ...Governor Sorell echoed Davey's condemnation in 1819, demanding all colonists who acquired their children 'illegitimately' to hand them over to the government, but this was never enforced. [8]
Tasmania' first chaplain, Robert Knopwood, was aware of the prevalence of kidnapping from the outset...In 1814, Knopwood was gaining the trust of a local tribe until '[a] number of children were forcibly taken from them and they disappeared'. [9]
...Colonists stole native children for several reasons. Some entertained genuine, if misguided, civilising intentions. Not far beneath the philanthropic surface, however, was the need for labour. Many native children who were taken under the pretext of being 'civilised' became little more than slaves. [10] In some cases, there were almost certainly sexual reasons for keeping native children...Bass Strait sealers regularly took native girls from mainland Tasmania to keep as sex slaves, but paedophilia also occurred elsewhere in the colony. [11] In 1824, for instance, convicts raped two nine-year-old 'half-caste' girls in separate incidents...The Colonial Advocate recognised in 1828 that the problem of 'child rape' stemmed from 'the transportation of male convicts without a due proportion of females'. [12] If such men were unable to restrain themselves in the face of certain execution, it stands to reason that native 'orphans' were also preyed upon.
Blue Book for 1822, in Australia Bureau of Statistics, 'Tasmanian statistics 1804-1902'.
J Lennox and J Wadsley, Barrack Hill: a history of Anglesea Barracks 1811-2011, Defence Publishing Service, Canberra, 2011, p. 34.
e.g. D Oxley, Convict maids: the forced migration of women in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996.
N. Shakespeare, In Tasmania, Random House, Milsons Point, 2004, pp. 98-99; Boyce, Van Diemen's Land, pp.237-40; Alexander, Tasmania's Convicts, pp. 122-29; J. Damousi, Depraved and disorderly: female convicts, sexuality and gender in colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997.
Tasmanian, 10 December 1830.
West, History of Tasmania, p. 9.
Government Order, 25 June 1813, in NJB Plomley (ed.), Friendly mission: the Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834, 2nd edn., Quintus, Hobart, 2008, p. 27.
Hobart Town Gazette, 27 March 1819.
West, History of Tasmania, p. 9. M Nicholls, (ed.), The diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood 1803-1838: first chaplain of Van Diemen's Land, THRA, Hobart, 1977, p. 99.
Boyce, Van Diemen's Land, pp. 84-87.
See Chapter 8 in Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 190-203.
Colonial Advocate, 1 August 1828.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 20-22, 222 n.28, n.29, n.30, n.31, n.32, n.33, n.34, n.36, n.37, n.38, n.40, n.41, n.43.