Meanjin Anthology by Heath Sally;

Author:Heath, Sally;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2012-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

By mid-1829, Arthur seems to have decided on Bruny Island as the site. He ordered that all Aboriginals living with Europeans were to be sent to Bruny and soon after dispatched the few captured Aboriginals to join them. He was prepared to be generous in assisting the experiment. To Robert, an industrious fellow raised by settlers since a baby, he made a grant of twenty acres, as well as a boat, cart, bullock and farm implements. Likewise, Kickerterpoller was promised land and a boat. Perhaps these two, having learnt the rewards of European labour from childhood, were to be models for their fellow countrymen.

Whatever the intention, neither Robert nor Kickerterpoller became farmers. By the time they reached Missionary Bay, Robinson had despaired of Bruny for his Aboriginal establishment. Death had rapidly overtaken the Nuenone since Robinson’s appearance among them. Mangana, on whom he had relied, had taken his second wife and son on an annual trip to Recherche Bay in August 1829. There his son was killed and his wife seized by mutinying convicts on the brig Cyprus. He returned to find that in his absence eleven of his people had died, as well as eleven visitors from Port Davey. To Mangana’s further dismay, Robinson had shown himself to be unable to restrain the women, Truganini, Pagerly and Dray, from cohabiting with the European men who supplied them with tea and sugar, and all three were debilitated with venereal disease. Mangana himself died in December.

Not to be daunted, Robinson hit upon the audacious idea of taking the five surviving Nuenone—Woorredy, Myunge, Droyerloine, Truganini and Pagerly—as well as Dray from Port Davey, to conciliate the tribes of the west coast and bring them under the umbrella of his protection. To this group he added the newcomers Kickerterpoller, Eumarrah, Trepanner, Maulboyhenner, Pawaretar and Robert. They left Bruny Island on 28 January 1830. The Aboriginals never returned. What became of Robert’s twenty acres, I have no way of knowing. Probably it was absorbed into the estate of some enterprising settler, to be passed on to his descendants and defended with the fierce determination and full force of the law that is so endearingly British.

Robinson did return to check on his own land on 5 April 1833. He dined with Richard Pybus, and they discussed property values and the cost of improvements. That evening in his journal Robinson had reason to query the veracity of Pybus’s assertions on this score. They remained neighbours for another five years, although Robinson was perpetually absent. In 1838, when Pybus sold 1880 acres, Robinson’s interest was aroused at the prospect of capitalising his property also. But it was not until 1848, just before he departed for England, that Robinson sold his Bruny Island holding, by then one of many land grants he had received.

Not Bruny but Flinders Island became the site of Robinson’s philanthropic enterprise for the approximately three hundred Aboriginal people he was able to track down and conciliate between 1830 and 1835. There, at the dreary

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