Melbourne's invisible Indigenous history

Updated

Eclectic. Beautiful. A great place. This is how 26-year-old Gunnai man Robert describes his home city of Melbourne. But it's also a place he struggles with. In this five-part documentary by 774 ABC Melbourne, Robert Young grapples with an invisible history of this city.

There's no place you can go and say 'this is where they lay'.

When Robert Young walks around Melbourne, he sees a city rich in the history of sportsmen, jockeys, politicians, soldiers and explorers.

But at one particular site of significance to Indigenous people, he sees no recognition of its history.

At this site, on the corner of Franklin and Bowen Streets in the city's north, Mr Young discovered the story of two Indigenous men — Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener — and their connection to one of his own ancestors.

"It's a weird feeling," he said, standing at the site. "There's still a connection to the story but there is no recognition of it, or that they ever existed."

The promise of a future

The story starts in Tasmania, where two Indigenous men, not much younger than Mr Young, were growing up amid a colonial war. Their names were Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener.

Historian and author Clare Land has spent years piecing together the story behind Melbourne's colonisation, through their lives.

She retraced the men's Victorian experience back to their upbringing in Tasmania in the early 1800s, when a war was taking place between colonists and Indigenous people.

"There was really a war declared against Aboriginal people... private citizens were shooting Aboriginal people, there were roving parties, clashes on the coast and men of sea hunting seals and abducting women," Dr Land said.

"Tunnerminnerwait witnessed this kind of thing at the Cape Grim massacre in 1828.

"Twelve of his family were killed on that day, so this would have been very formative, there's no doubt about that."

Tasmanian elder Aunty Patsy Cameron, a descendent of Maulboyheener, has retraced their journeys during the 1820s and 1830s, including returning to the massacre site at Cape Grim.

"When I go out on country and go to places where these massacres occurred, it really does bring back that point to us, in the present day, as to why we are who we are — why Tasmanians are tenacious and proud of our origins," she said.

"Because we feel if we're not, if we gave up our claims to our incredibly ancient heritage, then those ancestors would have died in vain.

"They were fighting for the very rights of this land and to exist."

In the middle of the colonial conflict, a man named George Augustus Robinson started his own mission to "protect" the Tasmanian Aborigines.

"He's an incredibly problematic character because in some ways he's a friend of Aboriginal people and in other ways he's a foe," Dr Land said.

Robinson earned the trust of some Indigenous people in exchange for promising he would protect them until the war in Tasmania was over.

But Dr Land said he also betrayed many of those who trusted him by violating sacred cultural practices in dissecting the bodies of Aboriginal people after they died, and sending parts to museums against their wishes.

"Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener came into contact with George Augustus Robinson as part of his 'friendly missions'," Dr Land said.

He then came up with the idea he would take all the remaining Aboriginal people in Tasmania to Port Phillip. He was only allowed to bring 16.

That group included Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheener, and a woman named Truganini — one of Mr Young's ancestors.

Truganini was the last full-blood Tasmanian Indigenous person, but beyond that, Mr Young knows little else.

"Truganini was an ancestor of mine through my dad's mother, but I didn't know about her connection to Tunnerminnerwait or Maulboyheener, or anything else about what she did," he said.

She became one of the three women who stuck with Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener in the years ahead, including throughout a daring mission they all shared.

The breaking point

The 15 years leading up to the gold rush was an incredibly rapid and brutal colonisation in which a lot of Aboriginal people were gotten rid of.

Imagine a hill where Southern Cross Station now stands, and a blue lake glistening in Flagstaff Gardens. Replace Elizabeth Street with a river and Queen Street bridge with a waterfall.

This was the image of Melbourne in the 1830s, when settlers and squatters were moving into Port Phillip.

"The face of Melbourne changed very dramatically within a few years of concerted colonisation," Dr Land said.

"The 15 years leading up to the gold rush was an incredibly rapid and brutal colonisation in which a lot of Aboriginal people were gotten rid of."

This was what greeted Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener as they arrived, under the "protection" of Robinson.

Melbourne was a very small town, largely populated by Tasmanians seeking new and cheap land.

"The people there were from Tasmania and would have had the same attitudes — that the First Peoples were vermin and their land was theirs to take," Aunty Patsy said.

Robinson began a journey around Victoria with Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener, gathering accounts of settler conflict with Aboriginal people.

He recorded evidence of murders and the decline of Indigenous communities and clan groups — a familiar scene for Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener.

Tunnerminnerwait, I believe, had just had enough. He could see what was happening and what had happened to his people and his family in Tasmania and it was happening again.

When the group returned to Melbourne, tensions rose and there was a split between Tunnerminnerwait's group and Robinson.

"Tunnerminnerwait, I believe, had just had enough. He could see what was happening and what had happened to his people and his family in Tasmania and it was happening again," Dr Land said.

There was the suggestion of an argument noted in Robinson's diary, but no mention of when Tunnerminnerwait's group began their independent mission, striking out against the colonists.

Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheener, Truganini and two other women gathered supplies and forged out into the bush.

The confrontation on the coast

I just wonder if it was a matter of whether they wanted to go out and try and resist the inevitable...or were they seeking another way out?

Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener's daring departure sparked a wave of anxiety amongst Victoria's settler society.

Their group ventured out to the Dandenong Ranges and south to Wilson's Promontory, gathering weaponry and destroying livestock and huts on their way.

Aunty Patsy imagines they were searching for a channel back to Tasmania, heading as far south as possible.

"I ask myself questions all the time about the Port Phillip experience and why did that small group venture down to Wilson's Promontory?" she said.

"I just wonder if it was a matter of whether they wanted to go out and try and resist the inevitable... or were they seeking another way out?

"If I put myself in their shoes, I would be seeking a passage back home. And I truly believe these young men and women were seeking just that."

Activist Dr Joe Toscano has spent the past ten years pondering the story as well, and has formed his own theory behind the group's departure.

"These were men and women who got to the end of their tether, who knew what was in store for Victorian Aborigines and saw the future in this new society, and who decided to strike out," he said.

Whatever the reason, the result was inevitable.

"Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener and the three women were very aware of the possibility of being shot on sight," Dr Land said.

"They were very aware of being hunted because they had burned down some huts, so they were being hunted themselves."

In late 1841, things came to a head in a fatal clash at Wilson's Promontory, between Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener's group and two white whalers.

"The group of five shot at a group of whalers — one whaler died immediately, the other was injured then he was... had to be killed by hand, with clubs and things," Dr Land said.

"The question is, did the group of five mean to shoot the whalers, or were they acting in self defence, knowing they would be shot on sight because they were being hunted down anyway?"

Six weeks later, the group was captured and brought back to Melbourne to face what was a budding colonial legal system.

The example of death

They have been aware of their fate. They have seldom spoken and frequently stand motionless for hours.

News of the "black murderers" quickly made headlines in Victoria.

Immense public attention was focused on Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener after their arrest, and their trial was widely reported.

"You have been with Mr Robinson long enough to know that there exists a Supreme being, and also that those who commit murder are punished by death," a newspaper report quoted the judge during the Aborigines' sentencing.

Their version of events remains unrecorded, because as the pair were not Christian, they were unable to give evidence at their trial.

"It's interesting isn't it, how our men and women in that time are called murderers, and the people who were fighting and dispossessing them of their homelands were just called settlers," Aunty Patsy said.

Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener's trial was a demonstration of this distinction — they were the murderers, and the notion of frontier conflict was already being denied, according to Dr Land.

"This was not a criminal justice situation; it was a military war situation, but it was tried as a crime," Dr Land said.

The Port Phillip Patriot wrote of the executions that they would have "more of an effect on their race than a thousand protectors".

"This was a political execution to actually reinforce to Victorian Aboriginal people, if they resisted, this is what would happen to them," Dr Toscano said.

When the day of Tunnerminnerwait's and Maulboyheener's executions arrived, thousands descended upon Melbourne to witness the event, held on La Trobe Street.

"It was the first execution in Victoria by the courts and it was a field day — it was a great event for early Melbourne, people came like it was a carnival," Dr Land said.

"The execution was really a disgrace — Tunnerminnerwait was killed efficiently by the noose but Maulboyheener was suffocated really, it was a terrible bungling."

A witness account documented by Wesleyan preacher and schoolmaster, James Dredge, noted Maulboyheener was so affected that his limbs refused to perform and he had to be dragged to the platform, shaking and howling.

Tunnerminnerwait was more stoic and asked to have his eyes uncovered so he could look at Maulboyheener until the end.

Dredge described that Tunnerminnerwait seemed to leave the world without a struggle, "as if the bitterness of death had long passed", but Maulboyheener's athletic frame convulsed as a horrible scene of strangulation followed.

Its a description that haunts Mr Young.

"It's like Tunnerminnerwait knew that even though his physical body was going to end, his spiritual body was going to return to the land which he called home, to be with his ancestors," he said.

After the execution the men's bodies were taken to the Queen Victoria Markets site, where they were buried in unmarked graves, and where they remain to this day.

"It's eerie... there's no place you can go and say, 'this is where they lay'," Mr Young said.

It is a thought that troubles Aunty Patsy when she visits the bustling shopping precinct.

"When I go there, I have that sense of great sadness — I just feel that I want to take them home," she said.

The way we remember

What's in our memorial landscape doesn't reflect what happened in the past; it reflects what people want us to know about the past.

For the past ten years, the City of Melbourne council has been under pressure to erect a monument at the site of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener's executions, on Franklin Street.

"There is almost no commemoration of frontier conflict in Australia and certainly not in a capital city in Australia," Dr Land said.

"A monument to this story would be personally significant, to have just one form of acknowledgement of their own history, because really, the rest of Melbourne is a monument to colonisation."

Aunty Patsy is now working with the City of Melbourne to select an appropriate monument for the site.

"By not putting up memorial plaques, it takes away our part of history, it removes us, it makes us invisible," she said.

When the monument is erected, she hopes to bring saltwater and sand from Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener's homelands to scatter on the site.

Koori woman and memorials researcher Genevieve Grieves is also working with the City of Melbourne on the project.

"What's in our memorial landscape doesn't reflect what happened in the past, it reflects what people want us to know about the past," she said.

Ms Grieves hopes erecting a memorial on Franklin Street will spark many more memorials recognising Melbourne's Indigenous history.

"I can understand that anything that enters the memorial landscape is political — it's an area where there are battles for representation about who owns the past," she said.

"But this is just the beginning really, this is just one story, there are so many other stories that are important for our city."

Mr Young said the stories were important to him because they explain where he comes from.

"As an Aboriginal man, you can say that is your history... and our stories run parallel to each other, so if we just look over we can see we are actually on this journey together," he said.

"Our stories actually mean something."



Download the full radio documentary Invisible History of Melbourne.

Invisible History was produced by 774 station reporter Clare Rawlinson, with audio production by Dave Williams.

Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, history, law-crime-and-justice, melbourne-3000, vic

First posted