Greens and Invasion Day., page-93

 

Here is a bit more on the fate of the Tasmanian Aboriginals.

The document has at least another 4 pages outlining the murderous actions of mostly released convicts and how they reacted to their circumstances.

In the final analysis, the possession and settlement of Tasmania was a much more important goal to them than the preservation of Aboriginal life, let alone any recognition of their culture or rights.

 

The Tasmanian Aborigines mounted a fierce and proud resistance, but it was doomed in the face of the relentless and brutal determination of the whites.

 

Bonwick,a Christian historian, when chronicling in 1870 the last years of the Tasmanian race, hesitated to record all that his research had revealed for fear of not being believed.

 

He wrote: There was not even the apology of avarice, as they had nothing to give; it was rather a demoniacal propensity to torture the defenceless. And an insatiable lust, that heeded not the most pitiable appeals, nor halted in the execution of the most diabolical acts of cruelty, to obtain its brutal gratification.

 

At first, as was the pattern elsewhere in Australia. The Aborigines avenged  death for death, marking their man and awaiting their opportunity. Such was the aggression hurled against them that inevitably, as also happened elsewhere, they began to regard all whites as their enemies.

 

What other choice did they have? Those simply shot were fortunate. Many were cruelly tortured, maimed, blinded, burnt and castrated.

 

The evidence in official documents is horrifying enough without guessing at that which was never divulged. They were shot for dogs' meat.

 

Women were chained to the huts of white settlers, used by the men, and then tortured to death, some being forced to wear the heads of their murdered husbands. Whereas Aborigines were hung for crimes against British law, no whites were ever hanged for killing Aborigines.