Fanny Smith was born into a world of total chaos. But she survived and her legacy continues today.
After decades of war and disease almost annihilated the Indigenous population, the remaining 300 or so survivors were taken to the settlement of Wybalenna on Flinders Island in Bass Strait in 1831."Wybalenna was set up with an enormous sense of optimism and hope by the colonial government," historian Rebe Taylor from the University of Tasmania says.
"He used to strip the Aboriginal children naked and flog us on the table … I was flogged on my naked skin with a long stick. I was flogged plenty of times in a week," 13-year-old Fanny told the inquiry.Fanny also described how she was chained up, forced to sleep in a box and "never allowed to talk". "[The huts] would have been so damp, they would never have dried out most of the winter. These huts that were too damp for the convicts, they weren't too damp for the Aboriginals," another great-great granddaughter, Colleen Frost says.But when Fanny was 19, an ex-convict named William Smith offered her a different future.
On her marriage, the government of the colony gave Fanny a land grant of 100 acres at the nearby Nicholls Rivulet — in recognition of her people's dispossession — and a pension of £24 a year.
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