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Truganini

Cassandra Pybus

4.17 · Rating details · 235 ratings · 61 reviews

The haunting story of the extraordinary Aboriginal woman behind the myth of 'the last Tasmanian Aborigine'.

'At last, a book to give Truganini the proper attention she deserves.' - Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator of Oceania, The British Museum

Cassandra Pybus' ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, just off the coast of The haunting story of the extraordinary Aboriginal woman behind the myth of 'the last Tasmanian Aborigine'.

'At last, a book to give Truganini the proper attention she deserves.' - Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator of Oceania, The British Museum

Cassandra Pybus' ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, just off the coast of south-east Tasmania, throughout the 1850s and 1860s. As a child, Cassandra didn't know this woman was Truganini, and that she was walking over the country of her clan, the Nuenonne, of whom she was the last.

The name of Truganini is vaguely familiar to most Australians as 'the last of her race'. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy: the extinction of the original people of Tasmania within her lifetime. For nearly seven decades she lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than most human imaginations could conjure. She is a hugely significant figure in Australian history and we should know about how she lived, not simply that she died. Her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy. Now Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness accounts to write Truganini's extraordinary story.

A lively, intelligent, sensual young woman, Truganini managed to survive the devastating decade of the 1820s when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but extinguished. Taken away from Bruny Island in 1830, she spent five years on a journey around Tasmania, across rugged highland and through barely penetrable forests, with the self-styled missionary George Augustus Robinson, who was collecting all the surviving people to send them into exile on Flinders Island. She managed to avoid a long incarceration on Flinders Island when Robinson took her to Victoria where she was implicated in the murder of two white men. Acquitted of murder, she was returned to Tasmania where she lived for another thirty-five years. Her story is both inspiring and heart-wrenching, and it is told in full in this book for the first time.

‘For the first time a biographer who treats her with the insight and empathy she deserves. The result is a book of unquestionable national importance.’
—Professor Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania ...more

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published March 3rd 2020 by Allen Unwin

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Mar 12, 2020 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aww2020, 2020-challenge-reading, arc-are, provided-by-publisher, aussie-author, nonfiction

Inspired by her ancestors connection to the woman known as the ‘last Tasmanian Aborigine’, Truganini by Cassandra Pybus, is a stunning historical biography.

Born around 1812 on Bruny Island, Truganini survived the capture, forced relocation, attempted assimilation and sanctioned extermination of the First Nations population of Tasmania, before dying in 1876. Drawing on a number of historical sources, including personal journals, oral histories, government records, and newspaper archives, Pybus pi ...more

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Apr 04, 2020 Natty rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-books, publisher-freebies, allen-unwin-freebies, non-fiction-leadership-self-help, aussie-author

4 Stars

To Ms Pybus,

Wow oh wow!!!!

For me, the name 'Truganini' was something I had heard in passing but knew nothing about the person behind the name, until I read your book. Unfortunately Australian history is still very limited in the voices and perspectives on offer, slowly more and more are becoming available to reach and more importantly educate.

What I loved about this book was how you told a story with the facts, and not just give us the facts in a dry manner like so many non-fiction text ...more

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Feb 28, 2020 Joselle Griffin rated it it was amazing

A very very sad and necessary journey to read. I love that this book attempts to tell the story of Truganini by piecing together the stories told about the men Robinson spent more time writing about. The factual narrative of the sexual exploitation of the women and the murder and destruction of the traditional owners of Tasmania somehow emphasises and makes the terror even more poignant. Pybus emphasises Truganini being a complete warrior woman who had to survive and tried to make her own decisi ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Esther King rated it liked it

Please note this is a 3.5.

I have a few conflicting feelings regarding this book. On one hand, it’s a story that needs telling and reclaiming, but on the other, it’s a story that we only have colonial eyes to view it through, and that complicates matters. The diary being the sole source of information on Truganini’s life is a difficult thing to stomach, as it’s simply not enough about her so much as it’s about deceptions and genocidal mindsets regarding the First Nations People.

Truganini is a fa ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-womens-writers-challenge, librarybooks, aussieauthor2020

‘The life of this woman, Truganini, frames the story of the dispossession and destruction of the original people of Tasmania.’

When I was a child, growing up in Tasmania, I was told that Truganini had been the last Tasmanian Aborigine. There was no discussion, then, about ‘how’ or ‘why’. Simply an assertion, presented as fact. I made it to adulthood before questioning this.

Cassandra Pybus’s family had a connection to Truganini: their land grants on Bruny Island were country that once belonged to ‘The life of this woman, Truganini, frames the story of the dispossession and destruction of the original people of Tasmania.’

When I was a child, growing up in Tasmania, I was told that Truganini had been the last Tasmanian Aborigine. There was no discussion, then, about ‘how’ or ‘why’. Simply an assertion, presented as fact. I made it to adulthood before questioning this.

Cassandra Pybus’s family had a connection to Truganini: their land grants on Bruny Island were country that once belonged to Truganini’s Nuenonne clan. This connection has provided Ms Pybus with a source of inspiration for this book.

Truganini was born around 1812 (as we measure time) on Bruny Island. She died in 1876. And in between? How did she live? Truganini was born as part of a traditional community, which was then displaced, dispossessed and frequently diseased by British colonisers. How did Truganini survive?

In 1830, Truganini was taken from Bruny Island and then spent five years journeying around Tasmania with George Augustus Robinson, as he collected Aboriginal people for their tragic exile to Flinders Island. Robinson then took Truganini to Port Phillip, where she and four others were implicated in the murder of two white men. In 1842 acquitted of the charges, she was returned to Flinders Island. In 1847, Truganini (and forty-six others) were sent to a new settlement at Oyster Bay.

In this book, Ms Pybus draws on original eye-witness accounts, including George Robinson’s journal, to provide more detail of Truganini’s life. Imagine: a young woman, suffering from venereal disease (which had probably rendered her infertile) being used by Europeans to try to trap her own people into exile. Imagine: a young woman, losing every connection she had to people and place, being confined and required to adopt (at least some) European habits. And when she died, it took nearly one hundred years for her remains to be cremated and scattered according to her wishes.

This is a confronting read, especially for those of us descended from nineteenth century European settlers. We cannot change the past, but we can acknowledge it.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
...more

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Jun 10, 2020 Karen McCulloch rated it really liked it

Firstly, this book was a devestating read. As a 5th generation Tasmanian, a descendent of settlers and convicts, I grew up with a vague knowledge of Robinson and an even more vague knowledge that atrocities had occurred to the first nations peoples of Tasmania. For the 27 years I lived in Tasmania I neither knew nor saught to understand. By the time I reached the final pages of this book I was heaving with sobs for my ignorance, for the cost paid by the Tasmanian aboriginal peoples for my white Firstly, this book was a devestating read. As a 5th generation Tasmanian, a descendent of settlers and convicts, I grew up with a vague knowledge of Robinson and an even more vague knowledge that atrocities had occurred to the first nations peoples of Tasmania. For the 27 years I lived in Tasmania I neither knew nor saught to understand. By the time I reached the final pages of this book I was heaving with sobs for my ignorance, for the cost paid by the Tasmanian aboriginal peoples for my white privilege, for the unspoken dark histories of that island. Pybus has researched her material well, and the stories are presented methodically, convincingly, engagingly. She sticks to her sources and doesnt take liberties in the story telling that aren't hers to take. I have been greatly impacted by this book, it's turned my sense of place upside down, and I am deeply grateful that Cassandra has written it. This story needs to be heard, this book needed to be written.

However, this is NOT Truganini's story. Its a series of events, involving Truganini, and viewed through the eyes of white male settlers, and gathered into this book by a white woman not unlike me. We can imagine elements of Truganini's character, her resliiance , her strength, her generosity, but we still don't know her or her story, and I believe this is very important to ackcnowledge. All of our school taught history is written through this extremely limited viewpoint, and this has to be acknowledged if we are going to even begin to deconstruct white supremacy.
Without minimising the value of this book, i feel that use of the term 'Truganini's story', which is used in the blurb and in many book sellers reviews, is misleading and disrespectful. Will Truginini's story ever be told? Its not my place to answer this question, but the tragedy of this Island's history, the interruption and destruction of the ancient local culture, the complete disrespect for their complex, sophisticated, and wonderous way of life, means we don't already know and celebrate her and her people's way of life.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that I am still ignorant, still learning, still unknowing. If anything I've written is offensive to the First Nations People of Tasmania, I am here, open to be corrected.

I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone who is not familar with the untold history of Tasmanian and Victorian white settlement, the details we weren't taught in school, and to those who like me, boasted of their ancestors feats without thought for the complete loss and destruction they caused. ...more

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Sep 28, 2020 Elaine rated it liked it

Shelves: owned, gift-from-gr-friend, arc, tasmania

The story of Truganini and other Aborigines of Tasmania is a very moving one. It is always sobering to read about what occurred in those times, when the first settlers arrived and proceeded to take from and almost completely eradicate the very first Australians. I did find the writing a bit too clinical and stilted and at times repetitive. More like a list of events rather than a telling of a story and experience. This may have been due to the fact that I was reading an arc and I may have been s ...more

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Jun 24, 2020 Anne Fenn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-best-reads, history

A fantastic book, so interesting to read. It had the little I knew about Truganini, as most Australians would, but then there was so much more, of a surprising nature. If you’re ready for the worst- invasion, suffering, rape and kidnapping, you’ll get that but I’ll leave you to find out the other side of her story. Apologies if that stops too short for you but the history reads like an unfolding revelation, I don’t want to spoil it .
The author draws on historical records of government, includin ...more

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Mar 14, 2020 Deb rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

I found this book exhausting to read and frequently put it down, only to pick it up again. It is heart breaking, shocking, tragic and inspiring.

Cassandtra Pybus has used eye witness accounts to put together the story of Truganini, who was the last of her race, dying in 1876. Truganini managed to survive the 1820s, when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but wiped out. For five years she traveled with George Augustus Robson, who was collecting all the surviving people to send them into ...more

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Aug 22, 2020 Kelly rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian

The true history of Australia is not as peaceful as we once learnt about in school. The first peoples of Australia were taken from their lands, abused, deceived and often murdered at the hands of European settlers. As a white Australian, I benefit from this horrific legacy and I believe it is my duty to, at the very least, educate myself on the truth of what occurred. This book attempts to pick apart the colonial mindset of the European journal writers (of those who had direct and regular contac ...more

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Feb 18, 2021 Viola rated it liked it

Shelves: environment, prisons, slavery, treaty, travel, first-nations, decolonisation, surveillance

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

“ In 1839, George Augustus Robinson arrived in Melbourne as Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Port Phillip District, bringing with him a select group of Aboriginal guides from Tasmania, including a woman called Truganini. He could never have foreseen the dramatic and tragic consequence.

Sometime in August 1841, Truganini left Melbourne with her new husband Maulboyheener travelli ...more

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May 13, 2020 ANNIEOS rated it really liked it

This is an important book for Australians to read. It brings to life the appalling slaughter of indigenous people in Tasmania in the early days of colonisation, shining a light in the very dark corners of our history.

Aspects of the writing frustrated me - but it provided the basis for a strong bookclub discussion.

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Jun 20, 2020 Kate Hallam rated it it was amazing

Gosh, absolutely heart breaking, but such an important book to read. Picturing the geography of as I know it more than a hundred years after these events have taken place, has changed the way see these places. Such an incredible story of resilience that brought me to tears more than once. Equally fascinating and heavy on the heart.

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Jun 16, 2020 Nish rated it it was ok

Like many other reviewers, I too grew up with the myth of Truganini. So I was pretty excited to run across Cassandra Pybus' book at the bookshop.

Unlike many reviewers, here, however, I didn't enjoy the book. Like the one other reviewer here to give the book a low star rating, I felt uneasy about the historical scholarship in this book. This, to a certain extent, has to do with authorial voice. I understand that the needs of the general readership may have required the author to adopt an looser n Like many other reviewers, I too grew up with the myth of Truganini. So I was pretty excited to run across Cassandra Pybus' book at the bookshop.

Unlike many reviewers, here, however, I didn't enjoy the book. Like the one other reviewer here to give the book a low star rating, I felt uneasy about the historical scholarship in this book. This, to a certain extent, has to do with authorial voice. I understand that the needs of the general readership may have required the author to adopt an looser narrative form for this history. The problem in adopting this form is that at times its hard to differentiate between how the various characters, particularly Robinson, think of themselves, and what the author's views are. So, does Robinson think of himself as 'decent' man, or does the author? Does Robinson think of himself as 'well-intentioned' or does the author?

If it's the author who thinks of Robinson as overall decent and well-intentioned, then we have a bigger problem of how a colonizer whose ultimate, undeniable goal was his own social uplift and financial security, can be referred to in those terms? Does a man who, despite brief moments of self-reflexivity, forced Indigenous people at gunpoint to relocate, separated Indigenous children from their parents, failed to shelter them from the doom that he promised to shelter them from, and then returned to England without glance backwards, deserve any effort at rehabilitation.

I was also disappointed with the author's reversion to modern psychology to diagnose and understand the behaviour of Indigenous Australians at that time. For example, Pybus diagnoses Truganini with Stockholm syndrome (24). The problems of retrospectively applying modern terms to historical actors should be familiar to a historian. Because the fact is that we don't know why Truganini made the choices she did but even if we were to venture a guess, surely the idea that these relationships were "mutually exploitative" (that Indigenous women sold their bodies for food and other necessities) makes more sense than a modern, highly disputed psychological condition like Stockholm Syndrome; a diagnosis moreover, that eliminates Truganini's own agency. The author might benefit from watching Indigenous artist Tracey Moffat's "Nice Coloured girls." ...more

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Apr 28, 2020 Barbara Phi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-read-in-2020

Truganini was an occasional subject in my education in Tasmania. I grew up at Oyster Cove and went to school in Hobart but also at Woodbridge and Snug, all places which would have been familiar to Truganini, and yet we were only ever taught that she was the last of her race. This book is an absolute revelation exposing the story of this rather remarkable woman. Her skills went beyond bush craft and her story is worth your attention. It's mostly a rattling good read and the story is compelling. I ...more

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Mar 23, 2020 Janelle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

This book is described as “heart wrenching “ on the cover and it truly is a difficult book to read but it should be read. So much to take in, for example: The arguments over the skeletons of aborigines by the Royal Society and college of surgeons in London and the lengths they would go to obtain them is outrageous.
Cassandra Pybus says it all in the afterword:
“the deeper truth is every Australian who is not a member of the First Nations is a beneficiary of stolen country, brutal dispossession, in ...more

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Apr 28, 2020 Ayesha rated it really liked it

Growing up I'd heard of Truganini but knew nothing about her, other than her sad designation as the last of the original Tasmanians... As a First Nations Australian I was very interested to learn the real story, and this book did an excellent job of telling the story behind the name, and conveying the tragic details of the lives of her and her companions. It should be mandatory reading in all Australian schools! ...more

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Jun 04, 2020 Brona's Books rated it really liked it

Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse is an extraordinary read.

Cassandra Pybus has compiled a thorough and very personal history of Truganini's life and times. I say personal, because what gives this book that little extra something special is Pybus' relationship to Truganini. As she says in her Preface, the 'rapid dispossession (of the original people of Tasmania), and its terrible aftermath, is the foundation narrative of my family.'

This book has been a 30 year labour of love for Pybus, Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse is an extraordinary read.

Cassandra Pybus has compiled a thorough and very personal history of Truganini's life and times. I say personal, because what gives this book that little extra something special is Pybus' relationship to Truganini. As she says in her Preface, the 'rapid dispossession (of the original people of Tasmania), and its terrible aftermath, is the foundation narrative of my family.'

This book has been a 30 year labour of love for Pybus, as she has searched for the right way to tell this story. Feeling very conscious about not speaking for someone who left behind no letters, diaries or direct speech of her own, Pybus chose to only use documents that contained first hand accounts from people who had actually met Truganini, 'people who saw and heard her with their own eyes and ears, then - ideally - made a contemporaneous record of it.'

Pybus was also conscious that most of these first hand accounts about Truganini, were written by men, 'pompous, blinkered, acquisitive, self-aggrandising men who controlled and directed the context of what they described.' She was determined to find the 'woman behind the myth.'

One of those pompous, blinkered, acquisitive, self-aggrandising men was George Augustus Robinson (1791-1866). His Australian Dictionary of Biography claims that he was a protector of Aborigines, however his diaries reveal a man far more self-interested and self-serving than this generous sounding title would imply.

Richard Pybus and his wife (Cassandra's ancestors) arrived in Australia in 1829 and were given a 'massive swathe of North Bruny Island, an unencumbered free land grant, even while Truganini and her family were still living there.' Their other (white) neighbour on this island, Nuenonne land, was George Robinson.

This is where we first meet a young Truganini - in the journals, letters and notes made by the Harrison - at home on Bruny Island with her family.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like for people of Truganini's generation. To have been born into one world - a safe, familiar, world where you knew you belonged - but then to grow up in another - with alien rules and expectations, even while still living on your own country. To have the certainty of your birth right taken from you, subjected to judgement and harsh treatment and to be denied the solace of your own way of life A way of life now seen as inferior, if not completely denigrated and despised.

Robinson's diaries document this rapidly changing world for Truganini and her family. Whalers stealing the young girls and women, having to barter for goods (often with their bodies), the life-long effects of syphilis and other venereal diseases, dressing up in European clothes to impress governors, Christian leaders and journalists only to run off naked back to their home land, what was left of it...that is, until the influenza virus of 1829.

After the flu virus had ravaged the island, Robinson in his diary said,
only fourteen Nuenonne remained to receive the benefit of his proselytising. These traumatisied survivors were slashing their faces and bodies in grief, in no state to heed his Christian platitudes.

Naturally, Truganini's story is bound up with Robinson's story. He seemed to have taken on a fatherly role in her life. She also seemed to realise that by sticking by him, she was guaranteed a safer passage through this fast-changing world. So when Robinson left Bruny Island to take on a missionary role tracking remote clans on the west coast of Tasmania so he could bring them 'under his protection'. Truganini joined him, little realising that she would never live on Bruny Island, her home country, again.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2020/... ...more

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Jun 03, 2020 R. Verhagen added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. *Edited*

First I have to acknowledge the true merit of Cassandra’s work is in the sentiment - it is intended to make a statement for reconciliation with First Nations people. Flaws of her prose are somewhat redeemed by her closing statements about the repatriation if Truganini’s ashes, and her call for a unified nationhood.

However, I have structural criticisms. I'm sorry to say, Cassandra doesn't achieve her intended 'redirect[ion] of the lens' to find the woman behind the myth. I don't think we ...more

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Jan 29, 2021 Madeleine Laing rated it really liked it

Devastating, but an important history lesson and a fascinating, if horrifying read. Reiterates how little there is to celebrate about the vile and treaturous colonisers who invaded sovereign country. I wish Pybus had been more upfront about how her family's heritage as first colonisers benefitted her life, but perhaps she wanted to keep the focus on Truganini's story. ...more

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Jun 10, 2020 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-author, 2020-aus-release, 2020-read, cultural-australia, australian-women-writers, history-australian, arc-request

Hard to do justice to this book and the material because it can be quite confronting and with the Covid-19 concerns while I was reading it, I was not in the right frame of mind to read it and had to pause part way through.
Well worth the read, Truganini lived during a huge period of violence and upheaval, she really seemed to survive under her own terms and adjusted as best she could to those things she had no influence under. I had no idea that she had spent time in Victoria nor gone back to Ta ...more

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Sep 20, 2020 Helen rated it really liked it

Review to come

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Jun 08, 2020 Jocelyn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: on-my-e-reader

A biography of Truganini, an indigenous woman of Tasmania who lived through and was a participant in the destruction of indigenous society in Tasmania by the British invaders. This book is an amazing combination of history and story-telling. It is a convincing, moving, enthralling history of a fascinating woman and her times. It is also an important counterbalance to all the stories from convict and coloniser perspectives, accurately representing what is known and what is now unknowable about Tr ...more

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Aug 29, 2020 Jenny Esots rated it really liked it

This troubling account of the indigenous people in Tasmania has been told with fresh eyes by historian Catherine Pybus. Catherine's great great great grandfather lived on the land of Truganini's people and Catherine now resides there. I was most captivated by the preface and afterword which gave Catherine's context in this sense of place.
It is impossible to hear the story of Truganini and her people without a deep sense of sadness.
The sadness will always linger in Tasmania and in the broader sen ...more

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Mar 05, 2020 Cheryl rated it really liked it

The account of the atrocious way in which the colonials systematically forced the Aboriginal people in Tasmania off their land, and in the end caused their extermination, is hard to read; it makes me feel ashamed and angry in turn. In particular Truganini's story is heartbreaking as she is used by the so called 'Protector' of the Aboriginals, George Robinson, in his misguided program to assimilate her people.
Pybus' well researched and historical narrative of how Truganini was ripped from her lan ...more

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Jun 27, 2020 James Whitmore rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, australian, 2020

Cassandra Pybus’s connection with Tasmania’s Aboriginal people is that one of her ancestors was granted a large piece of Indigenous land, thereby playing a role in their dispossession. It is this connection that drives Pybus’ biography of Nuenonne woman Truganini, fetishised as “the last Tasmanian”. Pybus largely didn’t work with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. She describes the process of writing about Indigenous people as “fraught” (in an interview with Honi Soit well worth reading), and c ...more

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Mar 02, 2020 Marles Henry rated it it was amazing

For some, there may be some familiarity associated with Truganini, who has been referred to the 'the last of her race' of Aboriginal people in Tasmania. Cassandra Pybus’ tragic account of Truganini’s life and death left raw emotion of a life unimaginable. So heart-wrenching to be physically and emotionally extracted from history and culture, and watch others be extinguished from that very life and history. To know that this story occurred in Australia’s history is mortifying, a thousand times ov For some, there may be some familiarity associated with Truganini, who has been referred to the 'the last of her race' of Aboriginal people in Tasmania. Cassandra Pybus’ tragic account of Truganini’s life and death left raw emotion of a life unimaginable. So heart-wrenching to be physically and emotionally extracted from history and culture, and watch others be extinguished from that very life and history. To know that this story occurred in Australia’s history is mortifying, a thousand times over. Pybus captured the torture and trauma of Truganini as her past was ripped away from her, again and again, over years and years. So many times she was physically close to Nuenonne country, with chances to reconnect to land and culture blocked.
The sadness and ostracization of Aboriginal people, and Truganini’s life was not lost in this book. The colonisers wanted assimilation, and the rejection of the Dreamtime and acceptance of an English and Christian way of life: when the Aboriginal people attempted to live within white communities, they were again rejected, discriminated against, cast out, and abandoned by those who moved them there.
Cassandra Pybus captured the irresponsible and unaccountable behaviour and thinking of the British colonial people, who disassociated themselves from the actions they were inflicting in removing and exterminating the original people of Tasmania. The use of Truganini as a pawn and bait in George Robinson’s ‘process’ of exiling Aboriginal people within the expeditions across and around Tasmania’s most inhospitable wilderness was for no other reason than to capture and remove them all, never to protect them, never to learn about their culture, retain their connection to the land or keep them safe from harm. Pybus’ own connection to Truganini was through her own kin; her great-great-grandfather was given a free land grant of over a thousand hectares of Nuenonne country. The original inhabitants, including Truganini, were ripped from their connection to Nuenonne, never to prosper from its secrets, strength and lifeblood.
This book should be a compulsory road for all: this history, this sadness and this atrocity is with me forever. This was an outstanding, if not tragic and distressful, read. Thank you Allen and Unwin for the ARC. Thank you, Cassandra Pybus for returning a voice to Truganini.
...more

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Apr 17, 2020 Jim Rimmer rated it really liked it

Shelves: australia, australian-history, non-fiction, history, biography

I grew up with many of the stories conveyed here but they were just shards and splinters, glimpses of the past. The author has done an admirable job of providing a window through time and a new perspective on a history known by too few.

Though diminutive in statue Truganini is a women of enormous importance to history, and an ongoing legacy that will never be diminished.

This book isn't faultless. On many occasions it is a challenging and emotional read, but it's an important story that all should ...more

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Feb 26, 2020 Tim rated it it was amazing

I would like to thank Cassandra Pybus and Allen and Unwin for the ARC of Truganini, Journey through the Apocalypse.

This is a historical account of Truganini whose people enjoyed an idealistic lifestyle on Tasmania's east coast until the European invasion. George Robinson the “Protector of Aboriginals” was tasked with the removal of Tasmanian Aboriginal people to the Furneaux Group. Cassandra Pybus has researched the material meticulously using Robinson’s journals and other sources. Truganini ass ...more

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Apr 16, 2020 Jason McCracken rated it liked it

An Important story but I found the writing a little stale, maybe because it was pretty much just a rewritten diary. The author butting in with her own obvious “woke” opinions on how bad the white man leading the aboriginals didn’t really help either. Of course the white man was bad you fucking idiot!

Anyway.....

Truganini herself is more of a secondary character for the first half of the book and she spends most of her time running away, whinging about her sore legs and sleeping with any white m ...more

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About Cassandra Pybus

Cassandra Pybus

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Cassandra Pybus is ARC Professorial Fellow in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. She is the author of many books including Community of Thieves and The Devil and James McAuley, winner of the 2000 Adelaide Festival Award for non-fiction.