Wybalenna is land held by the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania on behalf of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
It is a site of enormous cultural and historical significance because it was a site of mass incarceration of our people – the largest of its kind in Lutruwita /Tasmania and one of the first Christianising missions in the country.
However, it is not a place where our people forgot who they were, how they got here or the lands they had left behind. Agency, strength and resistance permeate every aspect of the story of Wybalenna. It is a place of determination, resistance and survival, and this further adds to its importance to the community.
Today, Wybalenna is Aboriginal land: a place where we, as a people, can connect to our history and share our own stories.
History
Wybalenna was established in 1833, the culmination of an extensive genocidal campaign focused on the removal of our people from our lands. After trying to establish camps on other Bass Strait islands, our people were moved to Flinders Island in November 1831.
They started at The Lagoons, east of where Whitemark is today, but there was no fresh water, and the area was prone to flooding. Several of our people died and are buried at The Lagoons.
It is estimated that around 300 people were exiled to Wybalenna during the time it was operated as a place of incarceration for our people.
Nearly all of our people who had survived the war on mainland Lutruwita were rounded up and forced here. Men, women and children, matriarchs, chiefs, and resistance fighters – everyone.
Our people saw the devastation of traditional ways of life and the degradation of their lands in less than one generation. They were promised a season away from their homelands, and a place of sanctuary and safety where the colony would ensure they would want for nothing. They would be taken care of until it was time to return home.
Although many of our people were rounded up at gunpoint, our ancestors fulfilled their part of the agreement when they came here. They waited a very long time for the colony to do the same.
Wybalenna was a death camp. Many of our people lived long enough to see a new generation born into incarceration, but most never saw their home country again.
Despite the assimilationist regime, our people did not give up who they were, nor submit to the conditions of their imprisonment.
Our people continued to go into the bush to hunt and perform ceremony. Many of our people refused to wear European clothes or eat European food. Instead, they only used what was brought back from hunting trips. They often refused to work for keeps, knowing that rations were poor compensation for the land the colony had stolen.
Here at Wybalenna, our people’s children were taken from their parents and were not allowed to live with family and community. Many children were sent to the Orphan School in Hobart, even though often their parents were alive and pleading for their return.
Separating the children was an attempt to make sure that our culture and language could not be passed on.
Despite more than a decade of incarceration and an intense assimilationist program, our ancestors never forgot their homelands. They knew they did not leave their country to become prisoners: they were a free people of Lutruwita.
Our ancestors maintained their culture and identity at Wybalenna and passed this knowledge on to the next generation of Tasmanian Aboriginal people. The children who were born and grew up at Wybalenna continued their forebears’ resistance in new ways.
In 1846, our people sent a handwritten petition to Queen Victoria in England, marking the first petition to a reigning monarch from any Aboriginal people in all of Australia.
The petition was signed by the adult men of Wybalenna who fought in the war. The petition highlighted the appalling conditions of the settlement. It reminded the empire that our ancestors were free people who had never forgotten our home country, nor their right to it.
In the petition, our people were able to tell their own story, speaking of the agreement to end the war for our country, which was still so clear in their minds.
The Petition
Petition to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 17 February 1846
The Humble Petition of the Free Aborigines Inhabitants of Van Diemens who live upon Flinders Island in Bass Strait.
…. we your Majestys Petitioners are your Free Children, that we were not taken Prisoners but freely gave up our Country to Colonel Arthur then the Governor after defending ourselves.
Your Petitioners humbly state to you Majesty that Mr Robinson made for us and with Colonel Arthur an agreement which we have not lost from our Minds since and we have made our part of it good.
Your Petitioners humbly tell Your Majesty that when we left our own place we were plenty of People, we are now but a little one.
Signed: Walter G Arthur Chief of the Ben Lomond Tribes, King Alexander, John Allan, Augustus, Davey Bruney, King Tippoo, Neptune, Washington.
Wybalenna closed a year after the petition was sent to Queen Victoria. Our old people had spent more than a decade watching boats come and go until, finally, one came for them. On 18 October 1847, a boat sailed from Flinders Island carrying 10 men, 23 women and 10 children.
Our people were finally taken back to mainland Lutruwita/Tasmania, but this move did not result in better conditions or freedom from colonial control.
The 47 survivors of Wybalenna were moved to an abandoned convict station at Putalina/Oyster Cove south of Nipaluna/Hobart. This was a forced mission, like Wybalenna, but in a different location.
All Tasmanian Aboriginal people today come from around nine women who survived the war and Wybalenna. The families of Fanny, Dolly and the women taken by sealers to the Bass Strait Islands make up today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal community. Today, our people live across Lutruwita/Tasmania, the islands of Tayaritja in Bass Strait and beyond.