A People Who Have No History?

Ian Anderson in his paper “A People Who Have No History? “ reports on a 1976 Adult Education seminar where NJB Plomley presented a monograph in which he "[discussed] recent research on several aspects of the life of the extinct Tasmanian aborigines’. Within it there was a section headed ‘Hybrids’, where Plomley said: It is not unlikely that the first Tasmanian-European hybrids were conceived in 1793 in intercourse between seamen of D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition and the aboriginal women they met in south-eastern Tasmania. If not, then less than ten years later the unions between the sealers of Bass Strait and Tasmanian native women were producing hybrids …The children by a European father and native mother are really handsome, of a light copper colour, with rosy cheeks, large black eyes (the whites tinged with blue), long dark eyelashes, fine teeth, well-proportioned head, and robust limbs…. While this description applies to first generation hybrids, in subsequent generations the characters of the first parents would be expected to become evident in a haphazard way …"

ROF Ian ANDERSON

University Administration and Support, Engagement
Honorary, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health

• Aboriginal health, identity and culture
• Health Policy and Systems Research (Indigenous Health)
• Health policy
• The sociology of health and illness
• Theory development in the social sciences

BACKGROUNDING

• Background paper on Indigenous Australian Higher Education: Trends, Initiatives and Policy Implications Prepared for The Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People ... Click Here

• First Australians Identity is tied to the cultures that a person is raised in and how they identify with that culture ... Click Here

• Norman James Brian Plomley, also known as Brian Plomley, born 6 November 1912 – 8 April 1994 ... regarded by some as one of the most respected and scholarly of Australian historians and, until his death, in Launceston, the doyen of Tasmanian Aboriginal scholarship ... Click Here

• NJB Plomley Books and booklets:

• Tasmanian Aboriginal material in collections in Europe, 1961
• French manuscripts referring to the Tasmanian aborigines: a preliminary report, Museum Committee, Launceston City Council, 1966
• (editor) Friendly mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1966
• Friendly mission: the Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1934. A supplement, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1971
• A summary of published work on the physical anthropology of the Tasmanian aborigines, Museum Committee, Launceston City Council, 1966
• An annotated bibliography of the Tasmanian aborigines, Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional paper, no. 28, London, 1969 ... Click Here to access a more complete list
• NORMAN JAMES BRIAN PLOMLEY – Norman James Brian Plomley AM (1912–94), one of the most respected and scholarly of historians writing about the Tasmanian Aborigines, was born in Sydney, and graduated BSc (Sydney, 1935) and MSc (Tasmania, 1947). During a varied academic career he worked in England, Hobart, Sydney and Melbourne, mostly as a lecturer in Anatomy. He donated his collection of books, maps and papers and established the Plomley Foundation at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston: he had been the Museum's Director from 1946 to 1950 and was an honorary research associate there at the time of his death.  ... Plomley's major books are Friendly mission (Hobart, 1966), The Baudin expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines 1802 (Hobart, 1983), Weep in silence (Hobart, 1987) and The General … Bruny d'Entrecasteaux(Launceston, 1993). Plomley's publications reawakened interest in the study of Tasmanian Aboriginal history, and his Friendly Mission in particular can be regarded as a seminal work in this field. Further reading: QVMAG, 'Guide to the Plomley collection', CHS 53. ... Barbara Valentine

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