tasmania: first they had to be found

The final solution down under in Tasmania…

…authority could not of course, sanction the extermination of the natives. Humanitarianism was a powerful motive of Empire, and public opinion in England would never stomach genocide. Sir George Murray, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, observed in a dispatch to the governor that “the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object the extintion of the native race could not fail to leave an indelible strain on the character of the British Government.”

— Henry MUNDY
London, England 1796/1800 – Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 1848
Movements: Australia from 1831
Elizabeth, Mrs William Field c.1842
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Painting, oil on canvas—click image for source…

Anyway, God would doubtless arrange such a consummation in His own time- or as Sir George put it, “it is not unreasonable to apprehend that the whole race of these people may at no distant period become extinct.”

Meanwhile, what could be arranged with a clear conscience was the removal of the entire race to somewhere else. There were several suitable islands around the coast, and extensive unsettled tracts of mainland, too. “Really it is high time,” remarked the Launceston Advertiser one day, “they were either removed out of the Island, or driven by force of arms to the uninhabited districts…”

—nother convict, the talented artist and engraver Thomas Bock, arrived in 1824 and after receiving his pardon decided to remain in Hobart to become the first professional painter in Australia.
Bock was one of the first in Australia to take photographs (daguerreotypes) and ran an art school and gallery in Hobart. He painted some fine portraits, including some of the last fullblood Tasmanian aborigines after they had been rounded up by G.A. Robinson, the ‘Protector of Aborigines’. These paintings are now in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and are important because they were completed before contact with white settlers affected the Aboriginals’ appearance.—Read More:http://www.artionado.com/AustralianColonialArt/Convict%20Bock.html

First they had to be found. By now they could be counted in the hundreds rather than the thousands, but they were a slippery, will-o’-the-wisp people, moving dappled through the eucalyptus glades or blending indistinguishably with the seashore rocks. Unsuccessful attempts were made to lure them, tribe by tribe, into Hobart and the paternal arms of Authority; in 1830 it was decided that they must be flushed from their nests, like game upon some vast estate, and beaten before an inescapable cordon mile by mile down the length of the island into the Tasman Peninsula at the bottom. There they would be rounded up and taken away to convenient reservations. ( to be continued)…