Newgate Prison was in the centre of London, next to the Old Bailey courthouse. It was in use for over seven hundred years, from 1188 to 1902, and was added onto and partially rebuilt many times. The conditions inside were overcrowded and unsanitary – the stench of the prison was so awful that passers-by held their noses. Public executions took place on the gallows outside Newgate and usually attracted huge crowds, who cheered to see condemned prisoners meet their end.
Return to scene 12 to make your choice.
FACT FILE:
TASMANIAN ABORIGINAL PEOPLE
Indigenous people adapted to live in all of Australia’s environments, from the deserts and tropics to the snowy south. Some people believe that the First Peoples of Tasmania actually walked there over 40,000 years ago, when Lutruwita (Tasmania) and the mainland were still joined. However, the Creation stories of Tasmanian Aboriginal people tell us that they have been here forever.
Before Australia’s colonisation (the invasion by white people), Tasmanian Aboriginal people lived in a number of different groups around the island, and spoke different languages. The groups traded with each other and met for ceremonies. Their knowledge of the land, of seasons, animals, food, plants and medicine was incredibly detailed, and they had – and still have – a rich and vibrant culture and spirituality.
All this came under threat from colonisation. Tasmanian Aboriginal people suffered terribly from the arrival of the colonisers. Not only did the colonisers take their lands, they also spread diseases that killed whole families, and they committed brutal and bloody massacres. Tasmanian Aboriginal people fought back strongly against this invasion to defend their lands, their families, and their way of life, but by the start of the 1830s, they had been overpowered.
The colonisers sent away those Tasmanian Aboriginal people who survived this onslaught, to live at a place white people named Wybalenna (‘black man’s houses’) instead on Flinders Island and Cape Barren Island in the Bass Strait. The colonisers presumed these survivors would eventually all die there – and most did. Forty-seven people survived Wybalenna. In 1847, they were taken to a place south of Hobart called Oyster Cove, where they eventually died.
However, despite everything that was taken from them, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived through the lineage of a number of strong Aboriginal women who were taken, mostly as slaves, to islands in the Bass Strait by sealers. Today, they are passing their culture down to the next generations. They have revived and are speaking their language – palawa kani – and continue to speak up to protect their families and their beautiful homeland, Lutruwita (Tasmania).
Return to scene 23 to make your choice.
FACT FILE:
WHAT HAPPENED TO WAYLITJA’S PEOPLE?
In this book, Waylitja (pronounced ‘why-lee-tcha’) is a fictional Tasmanian Aboriginal boy, whose family lives around the area named by colonisers as Bothwell, in the broader region known as Big River.
Theresa Sainty is a Tasmanian Aboriginal Elder, who chose Waylitja’s name for this book and can tell us more about the story of his people. palawa kani is the revived form of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages. It’s a combination of words from many of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages. Theresa herself is one of the language workers who revived palawa kani.
EMILY: What does Waylitja’s name mean, and why did you choose it?
THERESA: ‘Waylitja’ is the palawa kani word for a parrot. palawa kani is the revived Tasmanian Aboriginal language, and the only Tasmanian Aboriginal language now spoken here in Lutruwita.
So when I was thinking about what we might call this young man, I thought of Waylitja, because of what he talks about in the book in terms of birds and animals. He’s got a lot of knowledge of all the resources that are within his country, and I thought that was a really nice name. I imagined that it could have been the name of one of our ancestors in the past.
And it’s an Oyster Bay/Big River word, and Bothwell either falls within, or is on the edge of, what we now know as Big River country, and so that was another reason why I thought that would be a good name for him.
EMILY: Waylitja’s people were the Big River people. What would their lives have been like before the invasion of white people?
THERESA: We know those old fellas would have spent the summer – well, what we now call summer – in their own country. But during the colder part of the year, those people had an arrangement with the Oyster Bay people on the east coast, so they would come down from the very cold lakes area and spend the colder times on the coast.
They were pretty lucky. They had rainforest-type resources, like the plants, foods and the animals, and the freshwater fish in the river systems, and then they came down to the coast and were able to feast on things like mutton-birds and shellfish.
EMILY: In one of the scenes in the book, Waylitja gives a shell necklace as a gift. Can you say a few words about the significance of shell necklaces, and perhaps how he would have come to have one?
THERESA: Shell necklaces are one of the oldest traditions, not just here in Tasmania but, really, worldwide, because it is a living tradition – Tasmanian Aboriginal people continue to make shell necklaces.
I imagine that when the Big River Mob went down to the coast, even if they didn’t make the necklaces themselves, they were possibly traded. So that’s one way he may have come by one.
EMILY: In the book, Waylitja leaves, and at that time the reader doesn’t understand why, and doesn’t see him again. Considering the historical knowledge we now have, why do you think Waylitja’s family left, and what would have happened to them next?
THERESA: Well, most of the
