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Roughley-Shaw, Maxine --- "Wybalenna and the Treaty of Whitemark: A Major Step in Reconciliation" [1999] IndigLawB 53; (1999) 4(22) Indigenous Law Bulletin 10


Wybalenna and the Treaty of Whitemark:
A Major Step in Reconciliation

by Maxine Roughley-Shaw

On Sunday 18 April 1999 a light was turned on, extinguishing a dark chapter of Aboriginal history in Tasmania.

On that day, the Premier of Tasmania formally handed title to the ‘Wybalenna Aboriginal Station Historic Site’ to Marley Clark, a young member of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Community.

The hand over followed from an historic agreement entered into between the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association and the Flinders Municipal Council which was drafted and signed at Whitemark, Flinders Island on 15 November 1996. This agreement has become known to many as the Treaty of Whitemark.

The Treaty of Whitemark

The 1996 Treaty of Whitemark records the local council’s support for handing over the title to Wybalenna to the local Aboriginal community. The preparedness of both the Aboriginal and white communities to work together in the consultative management of the area, including the local chapel[1] and the cemetery containing the graves, many unmarked, of both Aboriginal and white residents, is stated in the Treaty:

[T]he Flinders Island Council and the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated have recently engaged in further discussion with a view to resolving...[their]... differences in approach and have, in consideration of the mutual benefit so deriving, agreed to present a joint proposal and request to the Tasmanian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.

A structure for a local management committee was agreed to and annexed to the Treaty.

Hitherto, the local Government body had been quite emphatic in its opposition to such an arrangement.

The Black History of Wybalenna

The white community of Wybalenna was not prepared to acknowledge that in the Furneaux Group there had remained a black community with a culture which was firmly established, honourable and private. It was and is a community which is held together with strong family ties. It is made up of individuals who gain their strength from mutual encouragement and their support from their community. It is a group which is, of course, not without its problems but by acting locally they are able to take the necessary steps to overcome their problems.

To add strength in overcoming those problems and to negotiate with governments and others, the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated was established in 1973. The Association is comprised of people who are proud of their heritage and the strength of character which has prevailed notwithstanding all of the pressures which have destroyed other communities.

The Association’s aim is to provide cohesion in the struggle to survive – the struggle to preserve and develop the self respect and restore dignity to the Aboriginal community in a society which was not yet ready to admit the existence of the Aboriginal community let alone its rights to survival and to self respect.

Underlying all of this was the objective of achieving land rights. This aim was written into the original constitution. The Association has at its heart the ambition of achieving the right and the opportunity to control and manage Wybalenna – a symbolic place - which can help to restore the self-respect and dignity which is their fundamental entitlement.

For more than a quarter of a century since the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association was established the members have enjoyed the added strength of participation and presentation in their affairs through the Association which set out to ensure that housing, education, training, child care employment and equal opportunity were all available to their people.

After the signing of the Treaty there followed some two years of further negotiation with all parties which concluded on Sunday 28 February 1999. That day, the Premier of Tasmania came to Flinders Island and announced to the community that Wybalenna was to be placed under the management of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association and that a Bill called The Wybalenna Amendment Bill was to be introduced to the next session of Parliament. He made reference to the fact that it was fitting that Wybalenna be returned to the Aboriginal community because the first petition calling for recognition of Aboriginal land rights, sent to Queen Victoria in 1846, was from Wybalenna. The Premier also said that:

What happened should never have occurred...[the governments are] the direct successors of the colonial governors of the 1830’s ... we have responsibility, where we can, to do what we can to rectify past injustices.

Ruby Roughley who was the plaintiff in a 1993 High Court claim for the restoration of the title to Wybalenna to the Aboriginal community said, following the Premier’s announcement on 28 February: ‘Today is a day long overdue. I’ve wanted this for such a long time. Our Ancestors can finally rest in peace.’ Mrs Roughley’s comments were supported by those of another local Aboriginal elder, Ida West, who said ‘this has put to rest the ghosts. It is good for black and white people’. The local Mayor, Lyn Mason, expressed the wish that Wybalenna should become a national centre for reconciliation.

Following this, the State Parliament legislated to implement the 1996 Treaty of Whitemark so that the hand-over could take place, which it did, on 18 April.

Earlier Claims

One major spur to achieving this result was the institution of legal proceedings in the High Court of Australia in 1993 when Mrs Ruby Roughley, on behalf of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Association commenced legal proceedings against both the Commonwealth and the State Governments. Though not taken to trial, the claim was a catalyst to moving forward with negotiations.

The claim followed the handing down of the Mabo (No. 2)[2] judgment but was based not only on the Mabo (No. 2) principles, but also upon other principles which were used to underpin the various forms of Aboriginal Land rights legislation, including that of the Commonwealth in relation to the Northern Territory. It was also based on common law.

The claim itself related to the special circumstances of the Furneaux Group of Islands in Bass Strait and Flinders Island in particular and was founded upon the rather special history and circumstances of the Aboriginal community in that area. The community was substantially comprised of white sealers and whalers together with Aboriginal women. Their descendants can trace much of their history to members of the Cape Portland tribe of North East Tasmania who had lived and developed a unique culture on the various Islands of the Furneaux Group.

For two hundred years of recorded history and for thousands of years of history recorded orally which may now be confirmed by archaeological evidence, the Cape Portland people had built a special relationship with the soil of Flinders and other Islands in the Furneaux group. This relationship is uniquely manifested and continued through the tragic history of Wybalenna.

In the 1830’s, people from the Furneaux Islands and the remnants of the whole the Tasmanian Aboriginal race were taken to Wybalenna, in so far as they could be caught or cajoled by the white settlers’ representatives, on the grounds that they would there be ‘protected’ from the dangers of warfare with the whites.

However, many Aboriginal people from the Furneaux Group avoided ‘collection’ and transfer to Wybalenna while others escaped back to their Island homes. Still others, who were living on Flinders Island, remained there when the 47 survivors of the Wybalenna internment camp were, in 1847, yet again transferred; this time, to their final home at Oyster Cove in Southern Tasmania.

The Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated is comprised of the people who have that long background of association with Flinders and associated Islands and who reside on Flinders. The racial discrimination and cultural confrontation which has prevailed in the area for all this time has been felt most by those living in the Flinders community – both black and white.

Reconciliation – Past with Present and Future

It is for these reasons that the Treaty of Whitemark, in which the local black and white communities and their organisations came together and mapped out their joint intentions and commitments to the land for the future, is such a milestone in the whole story of reconciliation. It is a credit to all involved.

With it, a new spirit of reconciliation became evident on Flinders Island and with it an opportunity for the Aboriginal and white communities to live together in harmony.

At the hand-over ceremony, Maxine Roughley Shaw, representing her mother the late Ruby Roughley and the whole of the Flinders Island Aboriginal community said:

We shall work in cooperation with our friends in local government on Flinders Island, with Lynn Mason and others, to operate Wybalenna in a way which will bring credit and pride to all involved while satisfying the interests of those people who make up the larger Tasmanian and Australian community.

We accept, with enthusiasm, the opportunity and we accept the challenge. We shall not fail – we shall succeed on behalf of all of those whose spirits finally rest in people and for all those whose future will be affected by the opportunity given – today – to the Flinders Island Aboriginal community.

The Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated is proud to have fought for and achieved the restoration of the basic dignity of the Aboriginal community and of its individual members.

Wybalenna and the cemetery and the chapel may now be used to celebrate that which is good in our community rather than to mourn the horrors of the past. In achieving the right to participate fully in both the control and management of Wybalenna, that sad and now somewhat forlorn area of land, has come to symbolise for the Aboriginal and white communities of Flinders Island a reconciliation that puts the past to a positive use for the future. It has been a long and winding path that has led finally to that quiet handover ceremony at Wybalenna on the 18 April 1999.

Maxine Roughley-Shaw is a direct descendant of Chief Mannalargenna, inaugural member of Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated. She has been a member of the executive committee of FIAA for over ten years and was one of the original people who physically reclaimed Wybalenna in 1991.


[1] Restored in the 1970’s by the National Trust using funds provided by the Federal Government.

[2] Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) [1992] HCA 23; (1992) 175 CLR 1.


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