Rare Book Collection
Tasmania (2) – Roth
Portraits of the surviving members of the Oyster Cove community, 1866. The work of Hobart photographer Charles A. Woolley, the photographs were taken for the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Originally published as engravings in Bonwick’s The Last of the Tasmanians [1870] the photographs here later appeared in Ling Roth’s The Aborigines of Tasmania.2nd ed. Halifax [1899].
William Lanne was captured with his family in 1842 and taken to the Aboriginal compound at Flinders Island. He was one of the 46 people removed to Oyster Cove in 1847, but was sent to the Orphan School in Hobart until 1851. Lanne worked for Mary Ann and Walter George Arthur at their farm for a short time and in 1855 joined a whaling ship. Although Lanne died a tragic death in March 1868, he was not allowed to rest in peace, as his body was dismembered and used for scientific purposes.
Little is known about the life of the woman Patty (Goneannah/Cuneennar), who was listed under the name Noemineerdrick in Robinson’s Census of the Captured Aborigines 1832-1836. She was probably a member of the group captured in 1834 and removed to Flinders Island.
Panger-no-widedic (Bessy Clark) was a Ninene woman, whose homeland was near Port Davey. When she was nine years old, she was captured at Lowgernoun (Little Rocky River) with her parents, her older sister Pyterruner and eight others. Her father, Cordwanne, was a leader of the Ninene.
Wapperty, (Wobberrertee), a Trawlwoolway woman, was a daughter of Mannalargenna, a respected leader. Some time in the 1820s, she was abducted by the sealer, John Thomas who took her to the Hunter Islands in Bass Strait.
All three women were taken to Flinders Island. When the Wybalenna complex there was closed, they were returned to Tasmania where they died at Oyster Cove in 1867.
See: N.J.B. Plomley Weep in Silence (1987)
also The Dictionary of Australian artists : Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870 / edited by Joan Kerr (1992)
