The Black Line

One of our guest lecturers mentioned the 'Black Line' in his talk to us and it's been on my mind ever since. The information he gave us was that white people formed a line and walked across Tasmania killing ever Aboriginal person along the way. I felt compelled to research this further in order to understand why, when, whom and what the outcome of all this was...

During the 1820s white settlers poured into what was then known as Van Diemen's Land, bringing vast numbers of sheep and rapidly taking up the land. Aboriginal resistance hardened. The colony fell into a a state of panic as attacks and murders became more and more frequent.

Vigilante gangs of soliders and settlers avenged Aboriginal attacks by killng men, women and children. In 1830 A military operation known as the 'Black Line' was launched against the Aboriginal people remaining in the settled districts. Every able-bodied male colonist convict or free, was to form a human chain across the settled districts, moving for three weeks south and east in a pincer movement, until the people were cornered on the Tasman Peninsula.

The Black line captured only an old man and a boy, but succeeded in clearing the remaining Aboriginal people out of the area.

Though the outcome of the Black Line fulfilled its purpose of clearing the Aboriginal people of the area, I was so relieved to hear that it wasn't a mass massacre where hundreds of people died, which is how it had sounded in the lecture. The idea, however, is still appalling and really rather disgusting. These people were herding the Aboriginal people as if they were animals, which back then they surely thought they were. Looking at circumstance like this, there really is no question who the animals were and who was in the wrong.





http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/land/invasion/tasmanian-land-war.html