Frontier War Stories - Joseph Toscano - Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Saga

Episode Fourteen of Frontier War Stories Boe Yarns with Dr Joseph Toscano author of Lest We Forget The Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Saga, also national convenor of the Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner commemoration committee.

At 8.00am on Tuesday the 20th of January 1842, over 5,000 people, a quarter of Victoria‟s white population, gathered at the outskirts of Melbourne crowding round the gallows erected on a small rise east of Swanston Street and north of La Trobe Street. The crowd, in a carnival mood, had come to see the public execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner.

Early in October 1841, Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Pyterruner, Truganini and Planobeena – 5 of 16 Tasmanian Aborigines who had been brought to Melbourne by Robinson in 1839 to „civilise‟ the Victorian „blacks‟, stole two guns and some ammunition from a settlers hut at Bass River. Over the next seven weeks, they robbed many stations in Dandenong and Mornington, wounding four white men and killing two sealers „Yankee‟ and William Cook. All five were captured by a party of police, settlers, soldiers and black trackers on the 20th of November 1841.

(Words taken from the Booklet "Lest We Forget The Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Saga)