Tasmania & the Black War

British settlement of Tasmania began in 1803 as a penal extension of New South Wales. Within twenty years, sheep-grazing had pushed settler land into the heart of Palawa hunting grounds — particularly the Big River and Oyster Bay country in the island's centre. Conflict accelerated through the 1820s as the colonial population doubled, then doubled again.

Settler killings of Palawa men, women, and children were widespread, often unrecorded, and rarely prosecuted. Lyndall Ryan's 1981 reconstruction The Aboriginal Tasmanians identified at least 75 documented massacres in the period 1804–1834; her later Tasmanian Aborigines (2012) revised the count upwards as more colonial records were digitised^[8].

In 1830 Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur declared martial law and offered bounties — £5 for an adult Palawa, £2 for a child. The same year he organised the "Black Line": more than 2,200 soldiers and settlers in a single human chain attempting to drive every Palawa east into the Tasman Peninsula. The Line was a military failure (it captured two people) but established the political will to remove every Palawa from the main island.

George Augustus Robinson — a Methodist builder appointed "Conciliator of the Aborigines" — undertook a series of "friendly missions" between 1830 and 1834, persuading the surviving Palawa to surrender on the promise that they could return to their country once peace was restored. They never could. They were instead transported to Wybalenna on Flinders Island in Bass Strait.

At Wybalenna disease, depression, and the systematic suppression of Palawa language and ceremony killed most of those who had survived the wars. By 1847, when the survivors were moved again, to Oyster Cove south of Hobart, only 47 remained.

While colonial Tasmania was telling itself a story of "the last of the Tasmanians" — culminating with Truganini's death in 1876 — Palawa women taken or escaped to the Bass Strait islands had been raising families with European sealers since the 1810s. The Pakana and Trawlwoolway communities of those islands are the direct ancestors of today's roughly 25,000 Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

The extinction narrative served settler conscience and settler land title. Its dismantling, led by Aboriginal activists from the 1970s onwards, is still in progress.

1. 1803

   British penal settlement at Risdon Cove.

2. 1804

   Risdon Cove massacre — first major settler killing of Palawa.

3. 1820s

   Frontier killings accelerate as sheep-grazing expands.

4. 1830 Nov

   The 'Black Line' — 2,200-strong cordon attempts to clear the island.

5. 1832

   Most surviving Palawa surrender to Robinson and are removed to Flinders Island.

6. 1847

   Wybalenna closed; 47 survivors moved to Oyster Cove.

7. 1876

   Truganini dies; settler press declares Palawa extinct.

8. 1976

   Truganini's remains cremated and returned to country.

9. 1995

   Tasmanian Aboriginal Lands Act returns 12 sites.

The trigger was pasture. Between 1817 and 1830 the settled districts expanded across the hunting grounds of the Big River and Oyster Bay nations, and grazing destroyed the kangaroo populations that fed them. Resistance to that dispossession was met with martial law, declared in 1828 and extended repeatedly, which effectively licensed armed parties to kill.

The Black Line of 1830 was the logic taken to its conclusion: a cordon of some 2,200 soldiers, convicts and settlers dragged across the island to drive every remaining Palawa onto the Tasman Peninsula. Militarily it failed almost completely. Politically it established that removal was now government policy.

George Augustus Robinson persuaded most surviving Palawa to surrender between 1830 and 1834 on the promise of sanctuary and eventual return. They were taken instead to Wybalenna on Flinders Island — a settlement of European clothing, English lessons, Christian names and permanent confinement, where respiratory disease and malnutrition killed the majority.

Forty-seven survivors were moved to Oyster Cove in 1847. The remains of the dead, including Truganini's skeleton, were taken by museums; hers was displayed until 1947 and not cremated and returned to country until 1976.

Declaring the Palawa extinct was administratively useful: it closed the question of land, ended any obligation, and turned dispossession into tragedy rather than crime. The story survived in Australian school textbooks well into the twentieth century, while Palawa families on Cape Barren Island were living and being denied recognition at the same time.

Recognition came slowly. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Lands Act 1995 returned twelve sites including Wybalenna and Oyster Cove; kunanyi and other place names were restored under the dual-naming policy; and the state government apologised for the removal of Aboriginal children in 1997 and 2006.

Was the Black War a genocide?

Most historians of the period — Lyndall Ryan, Henry Reynolds, Tom Lawson, Ann Curthoys — now argue it meets the 1948 UN definition. The documented acts include killing, conditions calculated to destroy, forcible removal of a whole population, and the transfer of children.

Are there Aboriginal Tasmanians today?

Yes. Thousands of people identify as Aboriginal Tasmanian, with continuous community descent through the Bass Strait islands, particularly Cape Barren Island. The nineteenth-century claim of extinction was false when it was made.

Who was Truganini?

A Nuenonne woman of Bruny Island (c.1812–1876) who survived the frontier wars and Wybalenna. She was called 'the last Tasmanian', a label she rejected and which was untrue. Her skeleton was displayed at the Tasmanian Museum until 1947 and only cremated and returned to country in 1976.

What was the Black Line?

A cordon of roughly 2,200 armed men drawn across settled Tasmania in October and November 1830 to force the remaining Palawa onto the Tasman Peninsula. It captured two people and killed two, at enormous cost, and confirmed removal as official policy.

What happened at Wybalenna?

It was the Flinders Island station where surrendered Palawa were confined from 1833. Housing, diet and enforced European routine produced fatal respiratory illness and malnutrition; most of those sent there died before the station closed in 1847.