George Augustus ROBINSON

ROBINSON, GEORGE AUGUSTUS (b. (?) London, England, 22 March 1788; d. Bath, England, 18 Oct 1866). Protector of Aborigines.

An active Methodist, Robinson emigrated to Australia as a builder. Arriving in Hobart in 1824, he became a prominent member of many Christian and charitable bodies including the Bethel Union and the Bible Society. By then, only about 300 of the violently oppressed Tasmanian Aborigines remained alive. Robinson was one of the few settlers to befriend them and learn their language.

When the 'Black Line' military operation of 1830 failed to capture the remaining Aborigines, Robinson travelled among them, gaining their confidence, and convincing them to accompany him. These 242 people were exiled on Flinders Island in 1834. Robinson was rewarded handsomely. He was also briefly commandant of Flinders Island, but his knowledge of the language and friendship with some of the people did little to change the emptiness of life in exile. Robinson was not himself a well-educated person and his attempts to inculcate the Christian faith were based on little more than rote learning of a kind of catechism.

Robinson's fame as a conciliator led subsequently to his appointment as Chief Protector of Aborigines in what is now Victoria in 1839. He proved inept at dealing with Aboriginal people where they were free to come and go, and incompetent as an administrator. When the protectorate was abolished in 1849, he returned to London, spending most of the rest of his life in relative affluence in Rome and Paris. In 1847, the last 44 of the Flinders Island exiles were released to linger and die at Oyster Cave near Hobart. The last of them, Truganini, died in 1876.

Robinson will forever remain an enigmatic and controversial figure. To some he was heroic, the saviour of the Aboriginal remnant: to others he was a traitor, leading them to exile and death. It is his detractors who most frequently allude to his Christian faith, inaccurately describing him as a 'bricklayer-turned-missionary'. He was never a missionary but he was certainly a Christian. To Robinson, exile on Flinders Island was preferable to massacre. He wrote, 'After all it is the will of Providence, and better if they died where they are kindly treated than shot at and inhumanly destroyed by the depraved portion of the whole community'. Robinson also hoped to teach the exiled Aborigines the Christian faith. Highminded this may have been but it was naive and misguided. What attractiveness could the Aborigines be expected to discern in the lives of supposedly Christian settlers who massacred and exiled them?

ADB 2; John Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990); N J Plomley, Friendly Mission ... (Hobart, 1966); N J Plomley, Weep in Silence (Hobart, 1987); Lyndall Ryan, The Tasmanian Australians(Brisbane, 1982)

JOHN HARRIS