This page has been validated.

CHAPTER IX.

OYSTER COVE.

The terrible mortality of the Natives on Flinders Island excited the sympathy of their friends in Hobart Town. Several times had Mr. George Washington Walker and I conversed upon the subject, and wished that the remnant could be brought nearer town. We knew that this was the desire of the Blacks themselves, who said if they could only live in their own country again, they would all be healthy and happy. One Hobart Town paper had a violent leader upon the subject, expatiating upon the outrages of 1831, and predicting a bloody renewal of them, should the Natives be allowed to leave the Flinders' asylum. As if twelve men, the number then alive, could light up the fires of country homesteads, and resume the spear of slaughter, in a colony of eighty thousand Whites!

The Natives obtained their wish. In October 1847, forty-four of the Tasmanian race were removed from Flinders Island to Oyster Cove, There were twelve men, twenty-two women, and ten children, or non-adults. Some of these, the latter particularly, were half-castes. The boys ranged from the age of four to fourteen years; the girls, from seven to thirteen. When Mr. Clark wrote to me in August 1849, he had then with him but one child, six others being placed at the Orphan School—to die.

Oyster Cove is but a few miles' distance from Hobart Town. Leaving the park-like South Arm to the left, and Mount Louis, 680 feet high, to the right, the junction of the Derwent with the ocean is gained. There the Storm Bay opens to the south-east, and the narrow D'Entrecasteaux Channel to the south-west; these waters being separated by Bruni Island. Entering the channel, Mount Louis is on one side, and the old aboriginal settlement of North Bruni on the other. The first little harbour