The final solution down under in Tasmania….
George Augustus Robinson. The type who would run a reformatory for reclaimed London hookers out of Dickens’ Hard Times. He was tireless, humorless and untiring. Also uneducated, dogmatic and his bent was to redeem. This type who one can imagine running a grim and improving school for indigent children was the man to whom a baffled government, after the farce of the Black Line, turned for an alternative solution.
Robinson had entered the government service as an intermediary with the natives. Out he would go into the bush, with a couple of servants, his Bible pack, and a tame native woman, Black Moll, dressed up in gay ribbons to attract attention- they called her Robinson’s decoy duck. He learned the aboriginal language, and over many months of wanderings throughout the island he made contact with most of the surviving tribes and gained he confidence of many.
Robinson approached the native’s kindly, often entertaining them upon the flute and sometimes spending weeks at a time in their company, for he knew that God had called him to save them from their sinful ways and lead them toward the Truth. In fact, Robinson undertook to persuade all the surviving Tasmanians out of the bush and into government control, and almost single-handed he succeeded. ( to be continued)…
ADDENDUM:(see link at end)…Lanne was captured along with his family in 1842 and taken to the Aboriginal camp at Wybalennaby George Augustus Robinson. In 1847 he was among the survivors of Wybalenna to be moved to Oyster Cove. He did not stay there long but was sent to an orphanage in Hobart in 1851. In 1855 he joined a whaling ship to become a professional sailor. As such he was away from Tasmania for extened periods but he visited Oyster Cove when he had shore leave.
Lanne died on 3 March 1869 from a combination of cholera and dysentery in Tasmania. His body suffered amongst the worst indignities inflicted by scientists on any Tasmanian. It is one of the reasons why modern Tasmanian groups are extremely suspicious of the movtives of modern scientists, This is regrettable – but om view of the grisly facts, understandable. The subsequent events have been described as follows (from David Davies, 1973″The last of the Tasmanians”, Frederick Muller, London. 235-6):
Dr. Crowther of the hospital vainly applied to the Government for permission to send the skeleton to the Royal College of Surgeons in London. However, a rather macabre note was struck at Lanne’s funeral, for it was found that the head of the corpse was missing. During the night aft
he burial the rest of the body was dug up and several parts removed. Crowther was blamed for the removal of the head and his honorary appointment as surgeon at the Colonial Hospital terminated, but it is interesting to note that the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons awarded him during 1869 a gold medal and a Fellowship of the College, the first instance of an Australian having been given this honour.
The missing skull was never found. Read More:http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter52/3-Tasmania-destruction/destruction.htm