'As much as they can gorge': colonial containment and indigenous Tasmanian mobility at Oyster Cove Aboriginal station

In 1803, the British began to expropriate Van Diemen’s Land(now Tasmania) principally as a repository for convicts. They did thiswithout prior negotiation with the estimated 6,000 Aboriginal peopleresiding there, whose ancestors’ custodianship of country dated backat least 40,000 years. As increasing numbers of free settlers arrived, theBritish settlements in the north and south of the island, and the pastoralfrontier, expanded. Consequently, Aboriginal mobility became severelyconstrained. Conflict over space, mobility, bodies and resources led tosustained warfare between Aboriginal people and colonists throughout thelatter half of the 1820s and the early 1830s. The Vandemonian War wasultimately resolved by the exile of Aboriginal survivors to islands in BassStrait. This was achieved by diplomatic negotiations between Lieutenant Governor George Arthur and Kickerterpoller (known to colonistsas Black Tom), and by Conciliator of Aborigines George AugustusRobinson’s ‘friendly mission’ in which Kickerterpoller was a participant