I've been on holiday in Tasmania for the past week. While I was there I visited the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and it got me thinking about George Robinson and the fate of the original Tasmanians. We were taught in school that the Tasmanian Aborigines had been wiped out. The last of them, Truganini (at least that is one variant of her name) died in Hobart in 1876. Of course this version of history is not quite true. There are still descendents of the first Tasmanians living now. I'll get back to them later. In the meantime, George Augustus Robinson. Robinson was a bricklayer and Methodist lay preacher who moved to Tasmania as a free settler in 1824. In the 1830s he abandoned his bricklaying business and went on a mission to the remaining Aboriginal people in the eastern part of Tasmania. His mission was prompted by the state of all-out war that had broken out between the European settlers and the original inhabitants. For the Europeans, the Aboriginal peop
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson