WEBVTT - A macabre act of betrayal 0:00:03.240 --> 0:00:06.960 It is the probably one of the most significant colonial 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:09.879 sources that we have, and he's been kind of saddling 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:13.920 neglected except by me, because it's such a complicated character. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.400 He's so the good is so interwoven with the evil, 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:21.079 it's really hard to pull them apart. 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:29.040 I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:32.000 In Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.159 forgotten characters. I need to tell you up front that 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.360 today's episode will not be for everyone, but for those 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.000 who choose to listen, it's one of the most compelling 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.440 and disturbing episodes we've produced of this podcast. Just a 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:50.919 warning to listeners, this episode contains extremely dark content and 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:55.319 graphic details of the deaths of Indigenous people, particularly in 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:59.520 relation to the horrific crime of grave robbing. Today we 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:04.240 are speaking with Tasmanian historian Cassandra Pybus, who is the 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.840 best selling author of Traganini, who we spoke with four 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.520 years ago about that wonderful book. Now Cassandra is here 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.520 to talk about her new book, which is called A 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:20.400 Very Secret Trade, The Dark story of Gentlemen collectors in Tasmania, 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.240 and she'll talk about one of those collectors in particular 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:35.200 who was named George Augustus Robinson. Welcome back to the podcast, Cassandra. 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.119 I'm delighted to be here now. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.320 The last time we spoke was back in twenty twenty 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:44.479 when we talked about your last book, TRAGANINNI Journey through 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.240 the Apocalypse, which has now sold over thirty thousand copies. 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.080 So well done, very well done. 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:53.720 How you like it now? 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.680 That was such a compelling story and if any listeners 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:58.920 want to hear that episode, they should scroll back to 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.040 March twenty three, twenty twenty, and I highly recommend it 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.160 was such an amazing episode to listen to be Cassandra, 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.440 I thought that it was an obvious starting point for 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.440 us today because it was towards the end of you 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.720 writing that book that you first stumbled across this horrific 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.799 secret from the past. Can you explain what you found 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:22.640 and how it all unraveled. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.360 Well, I was just about to send my manuscript to 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:29.880 the final manuscript to the publisher, and I thought, oh, 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.000 I just better double tech something. The man who transcribed 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.079 George Augustus Robinson's journals on which most of Chugliny is based, 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.360 has an archive up in Lonceston, and I thought there 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.680 must be something in there that I might need to see, 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:47.880 or something that I've missed. And so I'm sitting in 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.680 this little archive and lon system push it, going through things, 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:55.760 and I suddenly see this letter he's transcribed from a 0:02:55.760 --> 0:03:00.520 colonial lawyer who basically name didn't mean much to me, 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:04.560 who describes that in the museum of the Royal Society 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.600 of which he is the curator, the honorary curator, they 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:11.560 had the complete skeleton of one of tugging in his 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:17.000 best friends, who died several years before she did. And 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.440 I was just literally for a moment stop breathing. I 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:26.160 was so shocked, so shocked to read this, And I thought, goodness, 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.520 if this shocks me, who else is going to be 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.680 shocked by this? And what more is there? And so 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:39.440 I go and find his letterbook, his business letter books, 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.440 his lawyer's letter books. It's full of stuff about wills 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:46.040 and you know, interest payments and stuff like that and 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.240 touched away and there are several letters to overseas museums 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:54.360 about the skeletons that he's complete and perfect skeletons that 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.440 he's sending them, that he has gone to great expense, 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:03.160 and personal trouble to get from the graves of Aboriginal 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.680 people on Flinders Island and wait for it at Oyster Cove. 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.360 And who knew, Well, no one knew, because this is 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:17.839 a very secretive business, and as the title of my 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.480 book suggests, a very secret trade. So I thought, oh, 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.600 here's something. And so it's taken years and years and 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:32.080 years of work to uncover a whole network of grave robbing, 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:37.640 basically so much so that I would think that there 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.720 was not one a known Aboriginal burial site. And I 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.560 think it's important to know that the indigenous people of 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.920 Tasmania burnt their dead, cremated their dead, and so that 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.760 it was only after they came into contact with them 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.839 were put into what some people would refer to as 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:01.800 concentration camps, but or settlements offshore settlement at Flinders Island, 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.680 where they buried in traditional kind of Christian burial, even 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:10.800 if they weren't Christian. And so therefore all those known 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:16.640 burial sites eventually were raided for their schleetal remains. How's 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:17.360 that for shocking? 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.600 That is shocking. And interestingly enough, Tragerini had always made 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.200 it clear what she wanted to happen to her body 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:26.680 after she died, didn't she? 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:33.360 Yes, she got a very sympathetic clergyman downe at Oyster 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:36.320 Cove where that she were. She was the last survivor 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:39.200 to row her out into the middle of the very 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.560 deep and very broad don Tree Casto Channel and said 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:46.560 to him, bury me here, it's the deepest place. Promised me, 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:51.120 promise me. Because she knew what would happen to her body, 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.840 and there was attempts to make to bury her secretly 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.120 and to make sure that nobody got hold of her body, 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:01.480 but they did two years later. Some years after that 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:03.000 it was put on public display. 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:07.320 So you think she was quite aware of this practice. 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:09.560 Of course she was aware of it. They've been digging 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:12.520 up the graves of Oyster co for at least fifteen 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:17.440 years before she died. I discovered and who was it 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:23.880 who was organizing that. Two separate governors, two separate governors, 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:30.880 first Governor gor Brown and then Governor James Duquet, trying 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:36.520 to please people in London who were collecting these remains 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:40.520 because they considered the Tasmanian First people to be a 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:45.159 completely unique race, completely unique, nothing like anybody else in 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:49.359 the world. They placed them somewhere between neanderthor Man and 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:55.599 modern man. And so they thought, oh, these are really curious. 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.039 You know, rare rare verity is a big thing if 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.200 you're a collector. And there's a lot of nonsense talked 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:07.400 about this being a scientific inquiry, and it was scientific 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.520 in so far as they decided that this were These 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:14.360 were the skulls mostly what they were interested in of 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:20.320 a people unlike any other people. But my but they 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:24.200 did very little. They've never done very much scientific investigation 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:28.040 on these skeletal remains. I think it was really about 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:29.360 collecting verities. 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.400 Now, your new book A Very Secret Trade tells the 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.760 story of what you term grave robbers or gentlemen collectors 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.560 as they're called in Tasmania. But today we're going to 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.560 tell the story of one in particular who featured very 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.440 heavily in Tuggerini's story. And there's obviously a lot of 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:49.240 crossover in the two stories. So where does Robinson's Where 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:50.600 does Robinson's story begin? 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:56.200 Well, basically, he comes from London. He was a working 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:00.360 class Londoner. He was a bricklayer. I think came to 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:06.000 the colony in the late twenties, eighteen twenties and set 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:10.640 up building houses. Quite successful builder he became. But of course, 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.360 you know, the colony is just a kind of mirror 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:20.080 image of the imperial world. So of course his London 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:23.680 lower class accent would have always given him away. He 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:25.760 would never have been able to pass himself off as 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.840 a gentleman or anything close to one, so that he 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.360 might have been making quite a bit of money as 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.520 a tradesman, that he would always be looked down on 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.600 by the colonial elite. And so he seems to have 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:47.840 a genuine, deep religious conviction about saving the indigenous people 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:54.040 of Tasmania from destruction that he could see was you know, inevitable, 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.680 and bringing them into the light of God. And so 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.560 he went around Tasmania over a period of four years 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:10.120 with a handful of his mission guides or hissabled companions 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:14.720 as they called them, including Kragnini and her husband Worriedy, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:21.800 conciliating the different clan groups all around Tasmania and persuading 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.080 them that if they didn't come with him and put 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:30.120 themselves under the Governor's protection, they would be annihilated. And 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:32.600 I think they could see enough of the riding on 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:37.000 the wall to often agree with him that they that 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:42.240 their life, their way of life was completely under attack 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.800 and they would not survive. But others were just persuaded 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.000 by at gunpoint eventually that this is what they should do. 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:54.040 And he never understood until quite near the end that 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:57.959 the intention was to remove these people from the island 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:04.920 colony completely. And so he then becomes the instrument of 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.920 taking them to a settlement on Flinder's Island in the 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.760 middle of the Bass Strait, knowing full well that this 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:17.439 is a betrayal, fundamental betrayal of what he had promised them, 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:20.920 that they would be somehow allowed to stay in, if 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.520 not exactly their own country, at least in a part 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.280 of the country that they had the islands they had 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:33.000 inhabited for forty thousand years. And so then he becomes 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:39.000 the commandant of the Aboriginal settlement on Flinders Island. That's 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.000 the title he's given, and so this is a huge 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:46.040 step up in the world for him. But it's terrible 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:51.000 because not unsurprisingly, these less than three hundred people who 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:57.560 just died. There's a myth that circulated around when I 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.560 was a younger person in Tasmania about how they died 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.600 of a broken heart or they died of loneliness because 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:10.880 they'd been taken away from their country. They died of tuberculosis, 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:16.760 they died of measles, they died of they basically tuberculosis 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.880 ran rife through that population, and so they were all 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:24.120 very susceptible to any kind of respiratory viruses that came 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.520 in when ships came to bring the salted food that 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:33.120 they were being fed, so the water they drank was salty. 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.600 Their health was just they went from being very healthy 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:39.720 people to being extremely unhealthy people who died very quickly, 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:45.560 and they had no proper medical treatment. And so he 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:47.319 just wanted to get out of there as soon as 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:51.960 he could and became the protector of the protector interesting 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:56.600 terminology of Aborigines in Victoria, which was then called the 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:57.680 Port Phillip Settlement. 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:02.920 Did he put his hand up for that role? 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.880 Oh, he begged and begged and he basically created the role, 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:09.880 the idea of the role, and then begged and cajoled 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.480 and wheedled the governor of New South Wales to give 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:12.960 it to him. 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.640 And why was that? Was that because he saw that 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:18.760 as a way to move up in the world, or. 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:21.439 He thought the way to get away from the graveyard. 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.280 He was living in and to take the remaining people 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:28.000 with him, but the governor wouldn't let him take all 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.840 the people from why Berlina. He said that he could 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.040 take one family, now that would have been drugging and 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.000 we're already and we're ready his two sons. But in 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.920 fact he couldn't leave behind the people who'd been with 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.319 him for all these years, and he took them all, 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.720 fourteen people and because they were all family to him, 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.160 and that caused a huge amount of trouble for him 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.240 in Victoria because he then became responsible for them. Because 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:57.000 these are Tasmanians, they're not Victorians. They've got nothing in 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.320 common with the people. They've been separated from Victoria twenty 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.400 five thousand years. He got nothing in common with people 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:08.000 from Victoria. It was a disastrous thing to do, and 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:12.959 basically they were Eventually what was left of them were 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.840 returned to Flinders Island, including Drugnenni and he then went 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:23.280 on to have a short lived career in Victoria before 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.120 he retired and went to live in England. And in 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:30.600 that time he made himself a very rich man because 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:33.959 he traded in land in Port Phillip when it became 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:37.800 became Melbourne, and then there was the gold rush and 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:40.120 he was one of the first people to buy gold 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.640 nuggets from guys who came in from finding the gold. 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:46.960 And then he had huge land grants in Tasmania that 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.600 he sold, and he sold them all up and went 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:53.480 to England as a very wealthy man. His first wife 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.960 had died. He left all his kids behind, bereft and 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:02.400 without any money into the gentry class because they had 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.199 the money to do it, and then went off to 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.520 Europe for three years and taught himself foreign languages, which 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:09.600 got rid of his accent. 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:13.480 So you talked about how his motivations were genuine at 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.600 the beginning. Did they stay that way? Did he always 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:18.880 believe that he was doing the right. 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:23.080 Thing by these aboriginal people, or did his motivations changed 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.360 because he obviously made a lot of money. So did 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.640 he just become very greedy and see this as a 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:30.240 way to make his fortune. 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.760 Anyone who comes to the colony of Van Diemen's Land, 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:39.000 as Tasmeia was known as a free settler is wishing 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.560 to increase their status in the world and make money. 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:50.000 Has five children and he's got to provide for those children. 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:54.800 So always in what he is doing. There is this 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:01.680 pecuniary interest in land grants, getting more the lang grands, 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.120 in particular getting as a tradesman, he wouldn't have normally 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.920 got land grants. He gets a lot of lang grands 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:14.280 as a reward. But he would always have said, and 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:19.400 I have often defended him to a degree of saying, well, Georgia, 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:23.320 Gustus Robinson's the best, you're going to the best of them. 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:28.200 He always believed that bringing these people into the light 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:35.080 of into God's life would save them. He didn't expect 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:40.640 that God would allow them all to die, and so 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.280 that's why there's this sort of desperate desire to try 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.360 and move them to Victoria where they might be healthier 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.360 and they could integrate with the Victorian first people. And 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.200 of course that didn't happen, because that's not how the 0:15:55.200 --> 0:16:01.360 world works. And in Victoria that the task that faced 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:07.440 him with the Victorian clans was so overwhelming that he 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:12.960 just couldn't handle it. And so building a big house 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.200 for himself in Victoria and buying up land cheaply to 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.600 sell once prices boomed with the gold Russian stuff became 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.480 much more of a driver for him because I think 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.560 he couldn't face the fact that he was failing at 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:33.960 his god given task of saving the indigenous people. So 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:39.200 there's always been this balance between his ideal his idealism, 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:45.120 and his his desire to rise up in the in 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.000 the status he felt bitterly the way in which even 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.640 the convicts used to make fun of him, how lowly 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:56.000 his status was, and he wanted to have you know, 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.120 he wanted he wanted respect, he wanted to be treated 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:01.400 like a gentleman, and eventually he was. 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.359 Now. I'd love you soon to take us through some 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.000 of the very specific discoveries that you made about George 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:14.720 Augustus Robinson, but first to understand that we really need 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.560 to hear about his journal. So can you explain to 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:22.439 us the family connection that you have to Robinson. 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:27.760 And ancestor mi colonial ancestor. The first first Pybus to 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.840 come to Tasmania took up the first land grant on 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:37.280 big Land Grant on Brunie Island, and within months of that, 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.480 that was in eighteen twenty nine, George Augustus Robinson was 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:44.119 given a very small grand Land Grand immediately adjacent to 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.639 the Pybus Land Grand to set up a kind of 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:51.640 mission station. It didn't last for very long, because an 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.840 epidemic of influenza wiped out the people of Bruney Island 0:17:54.920 --> 0:18:01.280 very quickly in eighteen twenty nine. But that those two people, 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:06.080 Robinson and Richard Pybus, became close friends and stayed close friends, 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:08.879 so that Richard Pybus was his agent when he was 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.439 in Victoria, and he sold his property for him and 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.080 looked after his property and then sold it for him. 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:20.840 And I was directed to read George Augustus Robinson's journals. 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:23.439 Turns out he was a great scribbler, and he wrote 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:28.359 a journal long often item every day by the great 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:34.280 Lindall Ryan, Australian historian, to whom I'm very indebted, who 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:44.040 died yesterday, oh published which has touched it. And she said, ah, 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.800 you know you should read Georgia Augustus Robinson's journal. He 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:51.040 talks about your grand great grandfather, great great grandfather. Oh 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:55.440 oh god no. And so I started reading this journal, 0:18:55.520 --> 0:19:00.320 this daily account of his association with the people are 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.119 the first people of the island, and what he was 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:08.400 doing and the justifications he was making about what he 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:11.480 was doing and removing these people, and it was it 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.240 just turned my life around. And now I hear I 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.600 am with my third book about George Augustus Robinson and 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:21.840 his vision for the people of Tasmania and where that led. 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.800 It is probably one of the most significant colonial sources 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.800 that we have, and he's been kind of saddly neglected 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.600 except by me, because it's such a complicated character. He's 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:38.880 so the good is so interwoven with the evil, it's 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:40.920 really hard to pull them apart. 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.680 So let's start to go through what you discovered in 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:49.840 the journals. So Robinson returned to Australia before leaving Australia 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:50.440 for good. 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:52.080 What did he get up to there? 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:57.760 Well, basically he I'll go back to the time that 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:02.200 he was trying to get out of going to staying 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:07.280 at Yvelina and just burying more people. And he was 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.560 visited by the new governor of Van Dema's Land, Sir 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:17.720 John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane Franklin, both famous names, 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:23.240 or certainly Lady Jane Franklins, for very briefly for a 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:28.239 sort of tour of duty of the Aboriginal settlement. And 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.240 in order to get to go to Victoria, he needed 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:35.439 the new governor to give his permission, and so he 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.959 wanted to curry favor with the new governor, and so 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.840 he got the people to dance for them and to 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:44.680 pretend to be aboriginies for them, as normally they weren't 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.360 allowed to they weren't allowed to take their clothes off, 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:50.040 and they weren't allowed to wear oka, and they weren't 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.840 allowed to have ceremony, but he let them do it 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:57.040 to entertain, to entertain the governor and his wife. And 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:01.080 as they were leaving, Lady Jane Franklin asked him if 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:06.560 she could he could get her some Aboriginal skulls, and 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.399 he had noticed that in his diary, And then a 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.439 bit later in his journal he notes that he was 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.760 attending auta he demanded that there be autops he's done 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.960 on the bodies as people died, because he wanted to establish, 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.040 if possible, what was they were all dying of, And 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.360 it was all to do with disease lungs, and there 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:30.400 it is, he says. He talks about this man called 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.360 Christopher and how he ordered the body decapitated and sent 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:39.520 it off to someone else to be have the flesh 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:44.199 taken off the skull and then buried the rest of 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:48.560 the mangled body. And then a little while later there 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:50.879 was another, a woman, and then a little while after 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.639 that there was the woman's husband, who was a major 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.280 figure in the you know what we might have referred 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:01.879 to as the chief and he took a trip up 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:06.960 to see the governor and could present his case about 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:11.760 why should be the protector of Aborigines in in across 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:15.440 Bastradia in what became Victoria, And he undoubtedly took those 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:19.400 three skulls with him, And that lady Jane Franklin donated 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.080 those skulls to the Royal College of Surgeons in eighteen 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.879 fifty four. Shouldn't say where she got them from, but 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:29.200 she donated three Tasmanian skulls, and I can only presume 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:33.080 that they were the three skulls that George Augustus Robinson 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:35.840 took from the people that he'd been caring for and 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:42.760 looking after and was and had vowed that he would 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.760 look you know, that he would protect them. And I 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:50.199 also discovered that at the same time that he was 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:56.280 weedling to get the amulets of the dead that they 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:01.040 would wear around their neck, small bones from the body 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.560 of their children or their loved ones, and he would 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:06.679 get hold of them and say he'd keep them for 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:09.040 safe keeping, and in fact he was keeping them for 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:13.760 a collection which he eventually took to England with him. 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:16.800 So that much I knew about him from his journal, 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.119 But it was only until I was looking into his 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:24.639 life in Bath that I found out that what I 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:28.080 had written about in his journal for those three skulls 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:34.240 was routine. And then he probably left why Billina with 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:39.119 at least a dozen Kasmanian skulls as well as these 0:23:39.440 --> 0:23:43.280 amulets of the dead and some other skletal material and 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:49.399 bits of their hair, obviously building a collection. And I 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:51.840 can tell you I was pretty shocked about this, because 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:57.359 I'd always given him much more the benefit of the doubt. 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:02.480 He knew, he knew, absolutely knew these people very very well. 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:06.920 He knew they had a complete abhorrence, a horror of 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:11.200 anybody interfering with their bodies after death. He knew that, 0:24:12.400 --> 0:24:15.000 but he did it anyway, And to my mind, that 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:20.119 makes him the most abhorrent of all of these skull collectors, 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:25.800 because he understood at a profound level what a terrible 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:26.840 betrayal this was. 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:32.200 Tell us more about the journal entries and exactly what 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:35.320 they said. Was he talking about them in sort of 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:39.200 scientific terms or medical terms. Was he showing any sort 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:40.080 of sense of guilt. 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:46.639 No, he was just being completely pragmatic about it. He 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:53.480 describes the state of their diseased lungs and then casually, 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:57.359 basically casually says, you know, I ordered the skull that 0:24:57.480 --> 0:24:59.600 I ordered the body to capitate it in the skull 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:05.080 s off for you know, to be stripped, and then 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:07.560 he doesn't say anything more about and then then then 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:10.720 their extentry will be talking about the funeral. Now, it 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:14.240 was quite interesting that before George Augustus Robinson came to 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:17.920 Flinder's Island and there were other people in charge, people 0:25:17.960 --> 0:25:22.360 were not buried in coffins, but he insisted that they'd 0:25:22.400 --> 0:25:25.439 be buried in coffins. Now I think he insisted they 0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:27.760 would be buried in coffin was because the bodies were 0:25:27.760 --> 0:25:31.560 so mangled by the time the surgeon had cut them 0:25:31.600 --> 0:25:33.960 open for him to look at and take bits off, 0:25:34.880 --> 0:25:39.600 that the people would be just horrified and so distressed 0:25:40.119 --> 0:25:42.000 if they got to see the state of the body. 0:25:43.080 --> 0:25:46.200 So they would have these Christian burials of mangled bodies 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:49.119 in what whilst he was going off with their heads. 0:25:50.080 --> 0:25:52.200 I don't know how many, but I can account for 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:53.520 about a dozen. 0:25:57.320 --> 0:26:01.600 Now you were able to visit Robinson's final resting place 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:03.480 last year, weren't you. Can you tell us about that? 0:26:03.680 --> 0:26:05.960 Yeah, it took a bit of finding. I always knew 0:26:05.960 --> 0:26:08.040 he was buried in Bath, and I knew that there 0:26:08.160 --> 0:26:12.840 was a kind of engraved thing I thought on her headstone. 0:26:12.840 --> 0:26:15.920 It turned out he didn't have a headstone to say, 0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:19.280 you know, here lies George Augustus Robinson, the Protector, the 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:26.480 Protector and Pacificator of the Aboriginals of Australia, or I 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:29.040 think that's what it says. But the two terms that 0:26:29.080 --> 0:26:35.080 stuck in my mind were protector and pacificator. And it 0:26:35.200 --> 0:26:37.919 was a graveyard that was clearly a private graveyard that 0:26:38.040 --> 0:26:42.040 was clearly for the gentry class, that had huge, great 0:26:42.400 --> 0:26:44.879 statues and stuff, and you know, all that kind of 0:26:44.920 --> 0:26:49.439