Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [106]
Darlene said she got that all the time. She put on a snooty Britishsounding accent, “Oh dahrling, you're not the real thing. What are you carrying on about?” Then she switched back to her own voice, a measured Australian twang. “But we're here. Indeed.”
Tasmania is frequently described as a place where colonization led to the total genocide of its native people. A woman named Truganini is usually cited as the last surviving Tasmanian aboriginal. She died in 1876.
“That's a great myth,” said Darlene. “She certainly wasn't the last Tasmanian aborigine and she wasn't even the last tribal aborigine. She's used as an iconic symbol for white Australia—and for science.”
Darlene's use of the word “science” caught us off guard. Wasn't Trowunna a place that engaged in science? Chris, the animal manager, had an honors degree in zoology. Darlene said she meant that science— supposedly so objective—was actually highly subjective, manipulated to an appalling degree at times by whoever held the reins of power. She said science and its labels had been used to marginalize and denigrate her people.
From the very first days of exploration, Europeans had a great curiosity to see how the aboriginal Tasmanians lived, but very little interest in whether they continued their way of life—or even kept living at all. Aboriginal culture was a source of fascination, and when Europeans first visited the island, they had a strong desire to “study” the Tasmanians.
Captain William Bligh's encounter with the island's aboriginals was not the first, but it was illuminating. He and his crew from the HMS Bounty spent three weeks in Tasmania in 1788, resting and refueling after an arduous two months at sea while en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Tahiti. Bligh (who had earlier visited the island with Captain James Cook) was eager to be the first to make an anthropological study of the Tasmanian people. To Bligh's chagrin, the islanders proved uncooperative, disappearing into the trees whenever he approached. Finally when one of the Bounty's crew made contact, Bligh rushed over hurling trinkets. Alarmed by this ham-handed assault, the Tasmanians ran off. Later, Bligh wrote bitterly in his ship's log that the Tasmanians were “the most wretched and stupid people existing.” Or perhaps the residents of Trowunna were quick studies, knowing better than to face down British guns. Incidentally, Bligh's crew visited Tasmania eight months before their famous mutiny.
The Tasmanian aboriginals had more interaction with a French crew a few years later. In 1792, the ships Recherche and Espérance led by Bruny d'Entrecasteaux landed on the southeast coast of the island. And the meeting was amicable. Unlike Bligh, the French crew wrote that the Tasmanians' eyes “expressed sweetness and kindness” and that they displayed “surprising intelligence.” Many gifts of goodwill were exchanged, with the sailors receiving kangaroo skins, shell bracelets, and throwing stones. The French watched Tasmanian women dive for crabs and shellfish, and the men demonstrated their spear-throwing prowess, repeatedly hitting a target at thirty paces. The Tasmanian aboriginals also submitted to all sorts of bizarre measurements being taken. One sailor took thirteen body measurements of a Tasmanian man, including full height, length of forearm from elbow to wrist, width of mouth, length of ears, and length of male member (natural state). In their turn, the Tasmanians couldn't quite believe that there were no women on board and performed their own examinations, frequently checking the sailors' private parts to make sure they were men. This was the last time relations were so friendly.
After the British colonized Tasmania—then still called Van Diemen's Land—in 1803, the relationship between the settlers and aboriginals turned sour within a very short time. The Tasmanian aboriginals were seminomadic. They lived completely off the land, returning each year to shellfishing grounds in one season and to kangaroo-hunting grounds in the next. The settlers began eating up all the aboriginal