Woman Warrior of Tasmania Tarenorerer

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is being recorded. I pay my respects to the elders and knowledge holders past, present and emerging. Also, a quick warning that this episode has references to sexual violence committed against women and children, so if that is a sensitive topic for you, I suggest skipping the episode. Today we are heading to Tasmania to meet the incredible warrior woman Tarenorerer, who led attacks against the white invaders of her land during the Tasmanian Black Wars.

Before I get in to Tarenorerer’s story, it is important to set a little background context to what was going on in Tasmania. In the early 1800s, around the time that Tarenorerer was born, Europeans were sent to Tasmania to establish a penal settlement, and over the next 50 years more than 70 000 convicts were sent there to complete their sentences. Of course, as with every other colony in Australia, there was no treaty with the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. And the Aboriginal people were not at all happy with the fact that these strangers had come and were taking more and more of their land. But it was not just the land that was being violated. Due to many factors, such as the majority of convicts being men and the soldiers not being allowed to bring their families, there was an incredible gender disparity in colony. This led to many acts of sexual violence being committed against both women and even more disturbingly children.

These factors of land loss and atrocities toward the First Nations people led to a lot of conflict between the colonists and the rightful owners of the land. This period is known as the Black Wars. These wars were between about 1824-1832 and our warrior woman Tarenorerer would have been in her mid-twenties when these wars were happening. 

The conflict between the two groups was so severe that the Governor declared Martial Law. Martial Law means that the military—in this case the British military—were in control of the area rather than the police. In a notice sent out in 1830 the Governor offered a reward of “£5 for every adult Aborigine captured and delivered alive to a police station, and £2 for every child.” This notice referred to Aborigines as a “horde of Savages… whose prowess is equal to their revengeful feelings.”

 Another thing that was happening something called the Black Line. The Black Line, was ironically actually made up of white people. It was essentially a human chain made up of more than 2300 soldiers, white settlers and convicts. If you have ever done an emu parade on the oval to pick up rubbish, or seen volunteers searching for a missing person, it would have been like that, except the intent was much more sinister. Their mission was to remove all of the Aboriginal People from Tasmania. The Black Line went for a period of about 3 weeks as they attempted to intimidate, capture, displace and relocate the First Nation’s people of Tasmania.

This was not the only attempt to relocate the Aboriginal Tasmanian people. There was another event known as Robinson’s “friendly” expedition. You obviously can’t see me, but the word friendly was in air quotes. Anyway, George Augustus Robinson literally published his journals and papers and this book was called “Friendly Mission.” There is also a famous art work of him with a group of Aboriginal people. He is wearing what looks like a train conductor’s cap. Robinson actually had the role of “Protector of Aboriginals”. If you know anything about the Stolen Generation, the “Protector of Aboriginals” did more dispossessing and displacing that they did protecting. Although I am sure his intentions for the time were very righteous- especially as he was a very Christian man- but looking back with our modern lens, it is not a great legacy.

Robinson, thought that he would find an island where he could relocate all of the mainland Aboriginals to where they could learn European culture, religion and agricultural practices and of course adopt the English language. He began by establishing friendly relations between the tribes, giving them food and gifts and then began to persuade them to come and live on his community where they would be given food, clothing and left alone by the settlers—basically captivity. This settlement was set up on Flinders Island, a little island just to the North East of Tasmania. So that is the scene, now let’s meet our warrior.

Tarenorerer was born around 1800, so when the Black Wars were at their peak, she would have been in her mid 20s. As a teenager, she was abducted from her clan by another clan and sold to a group of white sealers—men who kill seals for a living—for the price of some flour and dogs. This would not only have been an arrangement of slavery but no doubt, because of the gender inequity in Tasmania, she would have been subject to years of sexual abuse by these men. While she was living in captivity with these sealers, she paid close attention and one of the skills she picked up was how to use firearms.

Tarenorerer managed to escape from the sealers in 1828 and she not only joined a clan at Emu Bay, she became their leader. One of the first things that she taught them was how to use guns.

One day a group of stockmen were driving their cattle into an Indigenous kangaroo hunting ground. Tarenorerer’s new clan confronted these stockmen.  She would stand on higher ground taunting the men so they would come out of their huts. She knew that they had a weakness. The time that the men took to reload their guns was vulnerable moments, so she ordered her men to attack in this precious time window.

During this time, Robinson was well on the way to succeeding in his “friendly” mission to clear the Aboriginal clans from the mainland of Tasmania. While he was passing by her territory, she had shadowed his party along the coast. Robinson had also heard of Taranorerer- in fact he referred to her as an “Amazon”. I don’t mean the online shopping company, before Jeff Bezos repurposed the word for the world of Internet shopping, Amazons were a tribe of fighting warrior women in Greek mythology.

Unfortunately, some bad luck befell Tarenorerer. She was once again captured by sealers and they tried to put her to work as a slave. She, of course, refused this generous offer and so they decided to put her in isolation on an island. On the way to the island, she tried to kill the sealers—obviously.  Then another chap called Parish—who was a friend of Robinson– turned up in his boat and saved the sealers.  That is how Taranorerer ended up crossing paths with old George—friendly mission—Robinson. Although, he did not realise it was her at first, as the sealers had renamed her “Mary Ann”. The fact that the settlers were just handing out random names to Aboriginal people is topic for another day. If you do want to hear ab bit more about this, I have an episode from Season 2 called the Queensland Native Mounted Police, that looks at similar time period and discusses this issue in more depth. 

Unfortunately, her identity was discovered, and Robinson wrote that it was the “most fortunate thing that this woman is apprehended and stopped in her murderous career.”  However, she did manage to cause a little havoc whilst in Robinson’s camp. She spread a story amongst the Aboriginal people- who were willingly travelling with Robinson -that there was a boat full of soldiers with guns coming from Launceston to chain them up, put them in jail and shoot them. Robinson, of course, was not very happy with this little upset to his “friendly” mission, so he sent her away with his scout Parish to search for more women to join his party. Upon her return, she again threw the camp into chaos by telling them that the white men were intending on shooting them.

Given her traumatic teenage years spent in captivity, slavery and most likely sexual abuse of the sealers, Tarenorerer did not have a glowing opinion of white people. She told Robinson, that she liked the white man about as much as she liked a black snake.

Sadly, in May 1831, it was not in battle that she lost her life, it was her contraction of influenza that ended her fight for her people’s lands.