Cassandra Pybus

Inspired by her ancestors connection to the woman known as the ‘last Tasmanian Aborigine’, Truganini by Cassandra Pybus, is a stunning historical biography.

Born around 1812 on Bruny Island, Truganini survived the capture, forced relocation, attempted assimilation and sanctioned extermination of the First Nations population of Tasmania, before dying in 1876. Drawing on a number of historical sources, including personal journals, oral histories, government records, and newspaper archives, show more Pybus pieces together the story of Truganini’s extraordinary life.

Placed under the ‘protection’ of Christian missionary George Robinson as a teenager she was induced to behave as his emissary/guide aiding in his self-appointed task to ‘save’ the indigenous peoples, by leading them Into exile. She was to spend more than a decade with Robinson, accompanying him to ‘New Holland’, before fleeing his patronage, only to be accused of murder and be sent into exile on Flinders Island, and later Oyster Cove. Even in death she was denied self-determination, her wish to be cremated and her ashes spread over the D'Entrecasteaux Channel ignored for over a hundred years.

Honestly I have no words to communicate the deep sorrow I feel for the fate of Truganini and all of the indigenous peoples. This harrowing narrative reveals a spirited and courageous woman who suffered unimaginable losses - the annihilation of her country, her culture, her kin, and her identity. Pybus’s account is rendered with honesty and empathy, shedding light on the shameful history Australia is yet to reconcile.

Profound, poignant, and perceptive, Truganini should be required reading for all Australian’s to aid in our understanding of, and acknowledgement of, our past. show less

Quite an excellent look at Revolutionary-era runaway slaves and their trials and tribulations after Yorktown. Pybus has done very good work here in reconstructing lives of folks whose lives are notoriously tricky to reconstruct, and in placing them in their own difficult post-Revolutionary contexts and settings, whether London, Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, or even Australia. Great research, put to very good use.

Of the 238 pages, most of them have nothing to do with the woman who walked to Russia. There are long passages retelling/discussing the writings of Jack London, John McPhee, and Jon Krakauer, and other whole sections on her side of the psychodrama between her and an old friend who is her driver on the trip. She did relate something new to me from history: two expeditions of Sir John Franklin--both of which involved cannibalism and the second of which no one survived. Eventually she does get show more to the bottom of her subject and (spoiler alert) debunks earlier journalistic accounts of a woman walking to Russia, but this is almost an afterthought. It's really a travelogue of her research trip, which seems ill-planned even in the context of late 1990s nascent internet. The subtitle says it all. show less

Basically a travel narrative which follows an Austraulian woman and her travel campanian across the US and Canadian countryside following the "tracks" of a Russian woman she had heard had walked back to Russia because she was homesick. A very interesting read.
http://talesofarampaginglibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/07/away.html