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Opposite  Swan Island  on the north east corner of Tasmania on 6th August 1831 at least one of my ancestors was made a crucial  promise by an envoy of the Government that has not been kept... we are waiting...

 

George Augustus Robinson 6th August 1831:

This morning I developed my plans to the chief Mannalargenna and explained to him the benevolent views of the government towards himself and people. He cordially acquiesced and expressed his entire approbation of the salutary measure, and promised his utmost aid and assistance. I informed him in the presence of Kickerterpoller  that I was commissioned by the Governor to inform them that, if the natives would desist from their wonted outrages upon the whites, they would be allowed to remain in  their respective districts and would have flour, tea and sugar, clothes &c given them; that a good white man would dwell with them who would take care of them and would not allow any bad white man to shoot them, and he would go about the bush like myself and they then could hunt. He was much delighted. The chief and the other natives went to hunt kangaroo: returned with some swan's eggs which the chief presented me as a present from himself- this was an instance of gratitude seldom met with from the whites.

 

In 1994 I first made note of those words found on page 394 of 1073 pages in the 1966 mammoth transcription by N.J.B. Plomley of  George Augustus Robinson's journal.  In 1996 my first artwork clearly based on the incomplete transaction, our unfinished business: Shadow of the Spear  was completed. The words from this diary extract sang strong when I visited the area of that verbal and inscribed promise six generations later to realise that looking across to Swan Island brought much personal anguish about losses and absences. Standing there, alone at that place, also brought vivid clarity about the importance of remembering what has gone before. I realised during the making of Shadow of the Spear that I had a path and task set; that of translating into inviting and approachable visual art forms the written and subsumed histories of cultural invasion, collision and trauma that has plagued Tasmania, Australia and Indigenous peoples everywhere.

 

Four years after Robinson made that promise Mannarlargenna was exiled from his homeland to Flinders Island in Bass Strait - where most Tasmanian Aboriginal people were shipped who survived the first 30 years of invasion. On the journey across, after stopping at Swan Island, Mannarlargenna held a telescope and studied his country with great intent as it grew  ever smaller. Mooring next at Green Island Mannarlargenna cut off all his hair, symbolic of great loss. Mannarlargenna died on Flinders Island one month later from what was medically diagnosed as pneumonia.

 

Promissory note - opposite Swan Island  as with Shadow of the Spear takes that same moment and day of a promise later seen to be empty and reworks things present of the place and transaction into visual art : Tea tree, time, memory, light and dark, words burnt  into memory and string that binds. My understanding is that Tasmanian Aboriginal people on that day were promised that if they put down their weapons, here taken to mean spears, they would, in return, be able to live and hunt freely in their country ever more. Robinson is making explicit his, and by extension as an employed representative of the British Government, the Official understanding that Tasmanian Aboriginal people clearly recognised and held ownership and rights to their own country. They laid their spears down in surrender as a clear response to this and other such 'promises' in order to regain responsibility for and free movements across their respective lands.

 

In Promissory note - opposite Swan Island tea tree sticks activate story and place from the past into a pointed formation reminiscent of a light. They metaphorically track movement through time of countless unlit firesticks. Awaiting re-ignition these bare bones of traditional means of warmth, light, meals shared and stories told have been essentially extinguished over the past 200 years through the actions of European invasion. The tea tree sticks also resemble a glowing ball of artificial light that emanates today from Swan Island lighthouse. Built in 1842 some years after the events I am referring to, its light powerfully cuts into the dark of the night across my north eastern coastal country today and for me ties past and present together as it sears the skies.  The stick of symbolic light is placed geographically in the work at the point on the silhouette of Swan Island where the lighthouse is located in actuality. The tea tree sticks also take the form of a dandelion, symbolically blown by some cultures to make wish come true, as I today often do in reflection of this promise and how it could have been and never was.

 

The winds and the plants and the rocks still hold secrets and lies told to and by people, the loneliness and windswept beauty of my sleeping country is in barren form in this work about the loss in remembering what no longer is.

 

Julie Gough

13 February 2005

 

Ref 1: Robinson, G.A., Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers (of) George Augustus Robinson, 1829 - 1834,  ed. N.J.B. Plomley, Tasmanian Historical Research Society, Hobart, 1966.

 

Ref 2: Julie Gough, Shadow of the Spear, 1997.  Six ti-tree spears,  six slip-cast ceramic swans'  eggs,  six  rows of pyrographically (hand burnt) copperplate text on Tasmanian oak slats placed in the six shadows cast by the spears leaning on the wall. Dimensions 6 x 6 ft, acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.