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stanro's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Pybus can write well. And she pulls no punches. This is Truganini’s story. “For nearly seven decades she lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than most human imaginations could conjure …” And Pybus’ family was a major beneficiary of what Truganini lived through, gaining the largest parcel of land on Lunawanna Alonnah, that after removing the native Nuenonne clan, became called Bruny Island. Pybus continues “… these are people whose lives were extinguished to make way for mine.”
But as Pybus explains, there is little that Truganini placed on the record. She spent several years assisting George Augustus Robinson, an Englishman who may be among the first to make a living by protecting Australian Aborigines from the depredations brought on by his countrymen, by exploiting them himself. He kept detailed diaries and Pybus has to infer Truganini the person, from the viewpoint of this other — a man compassionate in his way, but even more; self-serving, self-aggrandising and seeking wealth through this work. At about one third in, it feels more like it’s about Robinson and those Aboriginal people he needed to track others — supposedly for their safety but in at least some cases, for the financial reward — than it is about her.
Almost in passing and easily missed, is this sentence within a much larger paragraph. “A common practice was for lonely shepherds to kidnap a [black] woman to hold as a sex slave — sometimes chained out the back of the hut …” They didn’t tell us this in Australian history studies!
I must admit I struggled with the unfamiliarity of the Aboriginal names like Mannalargenna and Peevay and Kickerterpoller and Tanleboneyer.
Mostly, though, I struggled with the brutality of what occurred, and with the self-serving hypocrisy of George Augustus Robinson. As the description of events on Flinders Island unfolded, I was reminded of Jock Serong’s excellent “The Settlement,” dealing with this same subject.
Truganini’s life continues beyond her association with Robinson. Being as it is — the destruction of a people by a combination of factors arising from colonisation and with her dying without kith or kin and cut off from country — there is little pleasure in the reading of the tale. But it is compelling. And the Aboriginal characters are alive and complex. There are brief biographies and other information about the original inhabitants of Tasmania. It is a wonderful piece of scholarship.
#areadersjourney
tildahlia's review against another edition
3.0
I think other reviews will do a better job of describing the inherent tensions associated with a white author seeking to humanise and flesh out a First Nations woman via a coloniser’s diary. I felt conflicted through a lot of this book, particularly at the end where she acknowledges the need for land to be given back ‘without provisos’ in the same breath as describing how she buys a swathe of Bruny Island off her uncle, who inherited down the line from settlement. I did learn a bit of history though - particularly Tasmania’s Black War. Plenty more to learn.
annieg's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
This book is deeply haunting and a must read for any Australian. The subtitle journey through the apocalypse is an incredibly accurate description of a journey through one of the most beautiful places in the world during a horrific genocide. The story of what happened in Tasmania is a microcosm for what happened across the continent. We know vaguely without the personal details that massacres and atrocities happened, or I only know in large scale numbers but this gives humanity and narrative back to these people. The lists of the dead is endless and haunting, entire clans destroyed because of the arrogance, brutality and indifference of colonisers. Its soul destroying realising the people and knowledge we lost because of it. It's impossible to read this and not understand the deep seated anger that Aboriginal people have for white Australia..
The narrative style is compelling and its incredible well researched.
The narrative style is compelling and its incredible well researched.
georgia59's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
A recounting of unbelievable atrocities against the original people of Tasmania. A very hard read. A highly well researched book by a descendant of one of the 19th Century settlers in Tasmania. Cassandra Pybus has made a gracious attempt with this book to document the wrongs of the colonists and never exonerates them.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, and Genocide
Moderate: Alcoholism, Forced institutionalization, Slavery, and Kidnapping
henrymarlene's review against another edition
5.0
For some, there may be some familiarity associated with Truganini, who has been referred to the 'the last of her race' of Aboriginal people in Tasmania. Cassandra Pybus’ tragic account of Truganini’s life and death left raw emotion of a life unimaginable. So heart-wrenching to be physically and emotionally extracted from history and culture, and watch others be extinguished from that very life and history. To know that this story occurred in Australia’s history is mortifying, a thousand times over. Pybus captured the torture and trauma of Truganini as her past was ripped away from her, again and again, over years and years. So many times she was physically close to Nuenonne country, with chances to reconnect to land and culture blocked.
The sadness and ostracization of Aboriginal people, and Truganini’s life was not lost in this book. The colonisers wanted assimilation, and the rejection of the Dreamtime and acceptance of an English and Christian way of life: when the Aboriginal people attempted to live within white communities, they were again rejected, discriminated against, cast out, and abandoned by those who moved them there.
Cassandra Pybus captured the irresponsible and unaccountable behaviour and thinking of the British colonial people, who disassociated themselves from the actions they were inflicting in removing and exterminating the original people of Tasmania. The use of Truganini as a pawn and bait in George Robinson’s ‘process’ of exiling Aboriginal people within the expeditions across and around Tasmania’s most inhospitable wilderness was for no other reason than to capture and remove them all, never to protect them, never to learn about their culture, retain their connection to the land or keep them safe from harm. Pybus’ own connection to Truganini was through her own kin; her great-great-grandfather was given a free land grant of over a thousand hectares of Nuenonne country. The original inhabitants, including Truganini, were ripped from their connection to Nuenonne, never to prosper from its secrets, strength and lifeblood.
This book should be a compulsory road for all: this history, this sadness and this atrocity is with me forever. This was an outstanding, if not tragic and distressful, read. Thank you Allen and Unwin for the ARC. Thank you, Cassandra Pybus for returning a voice to Truganini.
The sadness and ostracization of Aboriginal people, and Truganini’s life was not lost in this book. The colonisers wanted assimilation, and the rejection of the Dreamtime and acceptance of an English and Christian way of life: when the Aboriginal people attempted to live within white communities, they were again rejected, discriminated against, cast out, and abandoned by those who moved them there.
Cassandra Pybus captured the irresponsible and unaccountable behaviour and thinking of the British colonial people, who disassociated themselves from the actions they were inflicting in removing and exterminating the original people of Tasmania. The use of Truganini as a pawn and bait in George Robinson’s ‘process’ of exiling Aboriginal people within the expeditions across and around Tasmania’s most inhospitable wilderness was for no other reason than to capture and remove them all, never to protect them, never to learn about their culture, retain their connection to the land or keep them safe from harm. Pybus’ own connection to Truganini was through her own kin; her great-great-grandfather was given a free land grant of over a thousand hectares of Nuenonne country. The original inhabitants, including Truganini, were ripped from their connection to Nuenonne, never to prosper from its secrets, strength and lifeblood.
This book should be a compulsory road for all: this history, this sadness and this atrocity is with me forever. This was an outstanding, if not tragic and distressful, read. Thank you Allen and Unwin for the ARC. Thank you, Cassandra Pybus for returning a voice to Truganini.
madeleinekl's review against another edition
4.0
Devastating, but an important history lesson and a fascinating, if horrifying read. Reiterates how little there is to celebrate about the vile and treaturous colonisers who invaded sovereign country. I wish Pybus had been more upfront about how her family's heritage as first colonisers benefitted her life, but perhaps she wanted to keep the focus on Truganini's story.
rachhenderson's review against another edition
3.0
How I hate when a story is super important, well researched but just a tad boring. Cassandra Pybus aims to tell the life story of Truganini who was 'the last Tasmanian Aborigine'. Unfortunately, records from the time aren't extensive, reliable or unbiased, so the book draws largely on the journals of George Augustus Robinson who rounded up the last surviving native people of Tasmania, ostensibly to save them. Large chunks of the narrative involve walking, walking, walking, diving for abalone, walking, spotting people in the distance, more walking, more diving, more walking. It's all very factual (as I guess a biography should be) but there's not enough source material to keep a full length book interesting.
Super important. Horrific. Australians need to do better at recognising and atoning for the actions of our predecessors. But the book was just a bit dull for me. 2.5 stars rounded up.
Super important. Horrific. Australians need to do better at recognising and atoning for the actions of our predecessors. But the book was just a bit dull for me. 2.5 stars rounded up.
hazeyjane_2's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Like most other Australians, I learnt about this topic at school. However I don't think I could have fully appreciated the atrocities and hypocrisies that went on during this period - selling skulls, slavery, dressing up people and painting them like dolls, dismembering body parts of the deceased, not allowing proper burial, the Europeans' introducing the Tasmanian Aboriginal people to alcohol, tea and sugar, the ravages of syphilis, the insulting and nicknames bestowed on the First Nations peoples (King William), and altogether the utter devastation that was wrought in a period of scarcely half a century. The callousness of most English towards the First Nations people makes for grim reading. A succession of incompetent and hard-hearted governments is broken up by a grand total of three people who show any human sympathy at all. The deplorable Robinson is the most sympathetic to the cause of the Tasmanian Indigenous peoples on paper, certainly more so than his colleagues, but he comes through loud and clear - his diaries brim with self-serving delusion. In the first half of this book we see him responsible for the deaths of countless who were imprisoned in the harrowing conditions on Flinders Island, where he dragged and tricked them to suffer and perish, and then took the credit and the land grant for rousting the last of the original inhabitants from their lands like so many cattle.
Truganini and her companions are brought as much to life as they can be, seen through the eyes of colonial settlers at some two hundred years' remove.
Truganini and her companions are brought as much to life as they can be, seen through the eyes of colonial settlers at some two hundred years' remove.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide and Racism
crivens's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to like this so much more. Returned unfinished.