Stories of Trucanini’s basket making and exchanges
Trucanini (Bruny Island – Hobart c1810 – 1876) can be connected with basket making for over 45 years. A basket and piece of rope made by Trucanini are reunited in the tayenebe exhibition with their story of how culture and its objects travel, and the complex interactions since colonial times between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.
In north-east Tasmania Trucanini, while out of her Country of Bruny Island, was berated, purportedly for not following local seasonal protocols when pulling plants for basket making. Robinson recounted: ‘3 November 1830 Opp. Swan Island: The fresh natives was angry with Trugernanna [Trucanini] for making the baskets or pulling the grass for this purpose; said it would make the rain come. Would not let them roast the goanna as it would make the rain come.’1
The making of baskets and necklaces were two of just a few Indigenous practices openly endorsed by government representatives. From October 1836 to March 1838 an experimental weekly market operated on Flinders Island where more than 30 Tasmanian Aboriginal women regularly traded. Trucannini is included in the list of girls and women at Wybalenna and Oyster Cove from October 1835 to May 1876 making it likely that she sold her baskets at the market.
In 1874 Trucanini is again recorded in terms of her basket making. This time the account is by a woman, and the period marks a change in gender balance in Tasmanian history, its recording, its collecting and its making. Miss Sarah Mitchell (1853–1946) kept a journal from age 13 to 93 that relates part of the story of the survival of a basket from 1874 to the present. 2
On 24 September 1874 Miss Mitchell wrote of the arrival of the basket to Lisdillon from Hobart: ‘Truganinni [sic] the last Aboriginal of Tasmania who lives with Mrs Dandridge gave papa a basket and piece of rope, her own make, which came last night too.’ 3
In May 1909 Miss Mitchell visited Launceston before travelling around the Bass Strait islands for six weeks. Her daily journal mentioned on Thursday 20 when she was in Launceston that she ‘…Went to museum it is very nice… Promised to lend Launceston Museum Truganini’s last basket she made for father’.
On 29 July 1909, Miss Mitchell sent the basket to the Queen Victoria Museum and Ar t Gallery (QVMAG) with the following letter : ‘To the curator, Museum, Launceston. Dear Sir, I am sending the basket and rope, with this. Registered. It will not perhaps go till next mail. It is a great treasure being Trugannini’s (sic) last basket she made. Sincerely (Miss) Sarah EE Mitchell.’
On 25 March 1946 Miss Mitchell, aged 92, wrote to the QVMAG enquiring as to the location and condition of this basket she had donated decades earlier. ‘Are the things I sent together? Is the basket Truganini made with them? Miss Dandridge who took care of her said it was the last basket she made, and it was done for my father who gave her 2/6 [two shillings and sixpence] for it. My sister and I sent her the lily rush by post therefore it is valuable.’ The basket and piece of rope made by Trucanini are reunited in the tayenebe exhibition with their story of how culture and its objects travel, and the complex interactions since colonial times between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.
Trucanini sold the basket for 2/6 to John Mitchell. This transaction raises as many questions as does the brief mention in Miss Mitchell’s letter that she and her sister sent the plants from which the basket was made. Tasmanian equivalences for 2/6 in 1874 include ‘a cab fare above 30 minutes not exceeding 45 minutes’ and ‘a monthly subscription for the circulating library’.4
ENDNOTES
1 Plomley, NJB, 1966, ibid, p.266. The goanna is a misnomer. This was likely a blue tongued skink.
2 Sarah Mitchell was a daughter of John Mitchell (1812–80) manager at Point Puer until he and his family relocated in 1852 to farm at Lisdillon, near Swansea. Mitchell, S, (1874) Diary of Sarah Mitchell of Lisdillon, east coast, Tasmania 1874. University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection, Australia. (Unpublished) http://eprints.utas.edu.au/7008/ (accessed 12 March 2009).
3 Mitchell, Sarah (1874) Diary of Sarah Mitchell of Lisdillon, East Coast, Tasmania 1874. University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection, Australia. (Unpublished). http://eprints.utas.edu.au/7008/
4 Walch’s Almanac 1874, J Walch & Sons, Hobart, Tas, p.145, p.29. Thanks to Therese Mulford for locating this information.
