Tragedy in Van Diemen's Land

By henkelka2018

  • Hundreds of Aboriginals killed

    Hundreds of Aboriginal Tasmanians were killed when they attempted to stop soldiers and convicts building huts near the present site of Hobart.Over the next few years, gangs of escaped convicts raided Aboriginal camps, killing men and kidnapping women. There were killings and kidnappings by lawless kangaroo hunters, sealers and whalers. European diseases also took a heavy toll. Another problem for the first Tasmanians was that whites slaughtered the native animals that were their main source of f
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    Settlements Established

    The settlements of Hobart Town and Port Dalrymple (later Launceston) were established in Van Diemen's Land.

  • Resistance crushed

    The Aboriginal resistance around Sydney was crushed by military expeditions sent by Governor Macquarie.

  • War in eastern Tasmania

    Official government policy was to treat Aboriginal Tasmanians with friendship but, by the 1820s, there was a state of war in eastern Tasmania.
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    Survivors forced to move to Flinders Island

    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.

  • Aboriginals ordered out of settled districts

    Governor Arthur ordered Aboriginal people out of all settled districts.
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    Aboriginals deceived by George Robinson

    George Augustus Robinson, a Methodist lay preacher, working on behalf of the government, travelled among the survivors. Robinson believed that they would be wiped out if they remained in Tasmania and he convinced some of them to agree to what they believed would be a temporary move to an island off the Tasmanian coast. They were deceived.

  • Drive to capture Aboriginals in the area of conflict

    More than two thousand soldiers, convicts and settlers were formed into 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 Neck and into the Tasman Peninsula, where they could be kept away from the settlers. Despite the scale of this operation, only two Aborigines were captured.

  • Aboriginal Survivors

    Only 203 survivors remain

  • Only 47 survivors remain

    Most of the Aboriginals had died of disease and despair. Forty-seven survivors were resettled at Oyster Bay near Hobart but they continued to die.

  • Tasmania

    Van Diemen's Land was renamed Tasmania

  • Truganini the only survivor

    Truganini was the only survivor at Oyster Bay. She died in 1876.