Truganini by Cassandra Pybus

Author:Cassandra Pybus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

BENEATH THE LOWERING bulk of Ben Lomond, Truganini and Wooredy and their usual companions camped on a bend of the meandering Nile River during the first week of January 1834. This part of the north-east was the country of Maulboyheener’s mother, although he would not have been happy to be back in the region where John Batman had initiated several massacres. Their camp was painfully close to the site of Batman’s surprise dawn raid on a large group of Pyemairenerpairnener and Plangermairener people in the early spring of 1829. By Batman’s own account, fifteen men were shot dead and he subsequently executed two wounded male prisoners. Maulboyheener escaped that attack, but three weeks later he was taken in another surprise raid on nine families. Batman never admitted to killing the men on that occasion, reporting only that he shot about forty dogs, burnt the huts and rounded up nine women with their children. He kept the infant Rolepana, and the rest of the captives were sent to the Richmond jail, from where Robinson had rescued them.

The mission party was camped a few miles away from Batman’s homestead, because Robinson was determined to rescue Rolepana, now known as Ben Lomond, as well as Karnebucher’s son Meelerleeter, now known as Jack Allen. Rather than confront this loathsome man himself, Robinson directed his son George to take Karnebucher to Batman’s home to retrieve both boys. They returned without them; Karnebucher was beyond inconsolable. Batman had been very belligerent, George reported. He had refused to release the boys, and on being shown a letter from the governor, he had insisted the boys ‘were as much his property as his farm and he had as much right to keep them as the government’. An official letter was never going to compel Batman to surrender the boys, a local settler informed Robinson; they were too useful to him. One boy looked after the pigs, the other milked the cows and was often seen ploughing. Batman flogged the boys with a whip to make them work, Robinson was told.

About a mile in the other direction was a large farm belonging to the distinguished landscape painter John Glover. Robinson took this opportunity to visit Glover to commission a frontispiece for his proposed book. Glover gossiped to Robinson that Batman was ‘a bad man’ who had turned his wife out of doors and had lost part of his nose to syphilis. Whatever Glover said in private about Batman, in public he maintained friendly relations with his neighbour. He had recently walked to the top of Ben Lomond with Batman and one of the captive boys—probably Jack Allen—whom he had drawn in his sketchbook.

After viewing Glover’s landscapes, Robinson took the celebrated painter to meet his companions at the river camp. The people danced while Glover sketched them. Delighted, Glover repaid the honour by inviting them to visit his studio. Modestly clothed in their dresses, or trousers and jackets, they walked to Glover’s farm, where they were shown landscape paintings of the surrounding Ben Lomond country.

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