Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener commemorated in Bass Coast
More Victorians are learning about the lives of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener, cut short in 1842 when they were the first people hanged in Victoria after being found guilty, perhaps dubiously, of killing two whalers.
The Bass Coast South Gippsland Reconciliation Group initiated a commemoration five years ago, on the 20th January, the anniversary of their hanging, when we belatedly discovered the story that unfolded in our region. The men were captured at Harmers Haven, on the coast near Wonthaggi.
This year again, in Wonthaggi, we remembered Tunnerminner wait and Maulboyheener, brave casualties of colonial cruelty and hypocrisy. The Bunurong Land Council provided a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony, and the Bass Coast Reconciliation Network hosted it. Paul Patten, proud Gunnai/Yorta Yorta man, and local AHLO, MC’d the gathering and Geoff Ellis, co-chair of the Reconciliation Group, spoke about our journey of self-education and allyship in this and other projects, and he told something of the story.
The men are also commemorated in Melbourne, with an installation and annual remembrance at the site of their hanging outside the Old Melbourne Gaol.
Aunty Dyan Summers, a Bunurong senior Elder, was interviewed on ABC Gippsland prior to the gathering. The men were tried but unable to speak in their own defence because they were not Christian and unable to swear on the bible. The jury argued for clemency but the judge ruled that they be hanged, Aunty Dyan said. No white man met that fate, despite the hundreds of Aboriginal men, women and children killed in that decade, in Gippsland alone, by settlers.
The men had been cynically brought to Victoria from Tasmania by the newly appointed Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, to ‘civilise’ the local Aboriginal tribes.
This story is part of our history and, as Geoff Ellis said, ‘we have learnt how history is inextricably connected to pride in culture and the powerlessness inflicted by wilful ignorance and lack of recognition of other people’.
Marg Lynn
BCSGRG
Below: article featuring the commemorative event by BCSGRG on 20 Jan 2023.
Image: Darrell, Nikeah, Tjarai, Eric and Jungala, members of the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation whohosted the event Welcome to Country.
Courtesy of BCSGRG.
