Truganini Point

Bruny Island is divided into two parts connected by a long thin strip of land. On the northern end of the neck, as it is called, is Truganini Point. There is a lookout on the highest point here that is about 300,000,000 steps up from the platform from which these photos were taken. Not being in the mood for complete exhaustion before lunch, I did not climb the stairs to top.



This place is named for one of the most well-known Aboriginal Tasmanians. She was a strong woman with a horrid youth. Born in about 1812, by 1829 her mother had been killed by sailors, her uncle shot by a soldier, her sister abducted by sealers, and her fiancé brutally murdered by timber-cutters, who then repeatedly sexually abused her. 

Truganini helped with the relocation of aboriginals to Flinders Island, off the north coast of Tasmania and then later, with the creation of a similar place for aboriginals on the mainland at Port Phillip. After several years in the Port Phillip area, she joined some outlaws, was injured and returned to Flinders Island.

Before her death, she begged the government for a respectful burial. Her wish was to be cremated and her ashes scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Two years after her death in 1876, she was exhumed and her skeleton was put on display by the Royal Society of Tasmania. It was only in 1976 that her final wish was carried out.

The wildness and peace of this spot was a great place to contemplate this terrible life and death of this woman.