Tragedy in Van Diemen's Land

  • Period: to

    Van Diemen's Land

  • Settlements in Van Diemen's Land

    In 1803 and 1804 the settlements of Hobart Town and Port Dalrymple (later Launceston) were established in Van Diemen's Land.
  • Killing of Tasmanian Aboriginals

    Hundreds of Aoriginal Tasmanians were killed when they attempted to stope soldiers and convicts building huts near the present site of Hobart.
  • Aboriginal resistance

    Aboriginal resistance around Sydney was crushed by military expeditions sent by Governor Macquarie.
  • War in the 1820s

    Official government policy was to treat Aboriginal Tasmanians with friendshi but by 1820s there was a state of ware in eastern Tasmania.
  • 1821 to early 1840s

    survivors from many different language groups were moved to Flinders Island, where they were guarded and forced to wear European clothes and to attend sermons on Christianity.
  • Van Diemen became a seperate colony

  • Governor Arthur

    Governor Arthur ordered Aboriginal people out of all settled districts.
  • Exile, disease and despair 1829 - 1834

    George Augustus Robinson, a Meethodist lay preacher, travelled among the survivors.
  • The lining of convicts and soldiers

    more that two thousand soldiers, convicts and settlers were formed into the lines for a drive to capture all the Aboriginal people in the area of conflict or drive them through the narrow strip of land that forms Eaglehawk Nech and into the Tasman Penisula, where they could be kept away from the settlers.
  • people destroyed

    203 Indigenous survivors
  • disease and despair

    most had died of disease and despair. 47 survivors were resettled at Oyster Bay near the Hobart but they continued to die.
  • Van Diemen's Land renamed

    Van Diemen's Land renamed Tasmania. There were even fewer Indigenous people.
  • Lone Survivor

    Truganini was the only survivor at Oyster Bay who later died in 1876