The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience provides an overview of the history of the site as well as the stories of the women and children that spent time here. Most of the structures and buildings that made up the Cascades Female Factory have been removed or lost with time. Today, you can take your time as you wander through the space and listen to true tales of the courage, resourcefulness and resilience of the women lived, worked and aspired to a better life outside these same walls. The audio experience fills in the space between then and now.
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
Chapter 10: Trukanini (Location: Yard 1)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Written and presented by Zoe Rimmer, who shares the important story of Trukanini and why she is honoured here.
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter at Trukanini’s tree (stop 10).
How is it that Trukanini came to be buried here, in the Cascade Female Factory?
Trukanini was a Nununi woman from Lunawuni (now called Bruny Island). She has become a renowned historical figure, having lived through the horrors of the Black War that took place throughout Lutruwita/Tasmania and one of the few to survive both Wybalenna and Oyster Cover Aboriginal internment camps. Her final years were spent in Hobart Town.
Trukanini’s distress at what happened to Aboriginal man, and her friend, William Lanne after his death caused her extreme angst for her own future (in death). William Lanne’s body was mutilated by members of the Royal Society and the eminent doctor, William Crowther (a man who later became Premier of Tasmania).
On Trukanini’s death, in May 1876, the Royal Society of Tasmania immediately lobbied the government for possession of her body.
Trukanini had stated her fierce opposition to any interference with her body, and she was clear as to how, and where she wanted to be buried.
Against Trukanini’s express wishes, Tasmania’s Executive Council directed that she be interred in the government cemetery in the Female Factory in Cascades. Here within the high sandstone walls of the convict prison she was protected from poachers or grave robbers - but not from science. To the eternal shame of the Royal Society, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Tasmanian Government of the day, Trukanini’s worst fears became reality, and she suffered the most undignified treatment.
After two more requests from the Royal Society, the government gave their permission for Trukanini to be exhumed in December of 1878. Her remains were transferred to the new Tasmanian Museum in 1885.
In breach of the conditions placed on the Royal Society and the Museum that Trukanini not be accessible to the public, by 1888 her skeleton was loaned for temporary display in the Melbourne Exhibition Building.
Later, the Museum had Trukanini’s skeleton articulated for permanent display in their new wing featuring the Aboriginal collections. Here Trukanini became a prized centerpiece; displayed among cultural artefacts such as shell necklaces, baskets, stone tools and portraits of her people. In this glass cabinet of curiosities, she was trapped, wrongly labelled as the “last” of an “extinct race” from 1904-1947.
It took until 1976 for the Pakana (Tasmanian Aboriginal) community to free Trukanini from the vaults/stores of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
One hundred years after her death, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community were finally able to carry out her wishes, and her remains were cremated and scattered deep in the d’Entrecasteaux Channel.
We mark the place where Trukanini was initially interred, here in Yard 1, with one of her Countrymen - tuylini (stringy bark).