HOBART 1818

Thomas William Birch arrived in Hobart aboard the whaler, Dubuc in May 1808. On  12 September 1808, Thomas Birch married Sarah Guest (from Norfolk Island). In 1808 Thomas was one of three surgeons in Hobart Town but he moved into shipbuilding. He became involved in both the whaling and the sealing industry. He also established himself as a merchant in Macquarie Street. Records show that Thomas Birch owned land at Richmond, Hollow Tree, Jericho, Cambridge and Lovely Banks.

The newspaper advertisement (above) advising Thomas Peters and others that their stock have strayed into his herd, refers to Birch’s property at Duck Holes near the Coal River. This would have been his property he own at Richmond.  At that time he had a young aboriginal named Kickerterpoller working on his land.

It is said that Birch had ‘somehow or other, acquired’* Kickerterpoller from his people, who were the Poredareme clan of the Oyster Bay nation (the Paredarerme), when he was about nine. Birch had him baptised, and set him to work as a farm hand. He became known as ‘Birch’s Tom’ and ‘Black Tom’.  Gilbert Robertson, whose farm neighboured Birch’s Coal River farm, may have first come to know Kickerterpoller at this time. After Birch’s death in December 1821 Kickerterpoller returned to the Oyster Bay people for a time and was actively engaged in assaults on settlers in the southern midlands. 

‘Over the summer of 1826–7 clans from the Big River, Oyster Bay and North Midlands nations speared a number of stock-keepers on farms and made it clear that they wanted the settlers and their sheep and cattle to move from their kangaroo hunting grounds. Settlers responded vigorously, resulting in many mass-killings, though this was poorly reported at the time. On 8 December 1826 a group led by Kickerterpoller threatened a farm overseer at Bank Hill farm at Orielton, near Richmond; the following day soldiers from the 40th Regiment killed 14 Aboriginal people from the Oyster Bay nation and captured and jailed another nine, including Kickerterpoller.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War

Gilbert Robertson, who had been Birch’s neighbour, was the Chief Constable at Richmond when Kickerterpoller was released. It was arranged that he went to live with Robertson and he acted as guide for his roving party.  In 1829 Governor Arthur ordered that the five Aboriginals who were living with Gilbert Robertson were to be transferred to work as guides for George Augustus Robinson, who had been employed by Arthur to set up an Aboriginal establishment on Bruny Island. 

‘Newspaper editor henry Melville reported a supposed conversation between Kickerterpoller and the Governor about this policy of confining Aborigines to an island. Kickerterpoller had put to Arthur the obvious question: You send him to dat hyland, and take’t all him own country. What you give him for him own country? The Governor sagaciously replied that he would give the Aboriginals food and blankets, and teach them to work.’ ~ Cassandra Pybus Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree University of Queensland Press 1998  p 77 

By the time Kickerterpoller was delivered to him, George Robinson had realized that the Bruny Island establishment had failed. On the 1 December 1829, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur granted Robinson permission to organise an expedition to Port Davey on the south west coast. This was to be the first of the ‘Friendly Missions' in which he planned to inform the local tribes that Governor Arthur had humane intentions. “Governor Arthur promised Kickerterpoller a whaleboat as a payment for helping Robinson to make contact with the clanspeople in the bush, but it seems that this promise was never honoured. He married one of Robinson's Aboriginal guides, Pagerly, who accompanied him on Robinson's expeditions around the island.” # Robinson set out from Hobart with Kickerterpoller, and the ten survivors from Bruny Island on 28th January 1830. The party emerged at the coast in a state of exhaustion and starvation. Robinson then went up the west coast, arriving in Launceston in October. Meanwhile in late 1830, the colonial government organised a military operation known as the 'Black Line’. Thousands of men formed “a human chain across the settled districts, moving for three weeks south and east in a pincer movement, until the people were cornered on the Tasman Peninsula.” http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/land/invasion/tasmanian-land-war.html

In August 1831 Robinson records in his journal: ’This morning I developed my plans to the Chief Mannalargenna and explained to him the benevolent views of the government towards himself and his people …I informed him in the presence of Kickerterpoller that I was commissioned by the governor to inform them that if the natives would desist from their wonted outrages upon the whites, they would be allowed to remain in their respective districts and would have flour, tea and sugar, and clothes &c given them; that a good white man would dwell with them who would take care of them and would not allow any bad white man to shoot them, and he would go with them about the bush like myself and they then could hunt, He was much delighted.’ ~ Perkins, Rachel. & Langton, Marcia. First Australians  The Miegunyah Press 2010 p.60.

In 1832 Robinson left Launceston on an expedition to the northwest coast. At the time ‘several of his guides were suffering from severe sickness. Kickerterpoller was one of three guides who became seriously ill and he was taken to a colonial homestead at Emu Bay to recuperate while Robinson and the rest of his troupe continued on their journey. He died from acute diarrhoea on 16 May 1832.’  #   http://www.utas.edu.au/telling-places-in-country/historical-context/historical-biographies/kickerterpoller 

Robinson’s ‘Friendly Missions' ‘ultimately led to the removal of the majority of the Aboriginal people from the mainland of Tasmania to the islands in the north east, and later to Oyster Cove. The removal is now a hotly contested subject, with Robinson's motives, role, and actions being much revisited and debated. In 1838 Robinson left Tasmania for Port Phillip, Victoria, where he was appointed the 'Chief Protector of Aborigines'. By 1849, however, the Protectorate system had failed. After a brief visit to Tasmania in 1851 (during which Robinson paid a final, disconcerting visit to the remaining Aborigines at Oyster Cove), he departed for his homeland.’  ~ Jacqui Darcy http://www.utas.edu.au/telling-places-in-country/historical-context/historical-background/robinsons-biography

See Also:

Australian Dictionary of Biography  http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-george-augustus-2596

Family Connections: 52 Ancestors #13 Thomas Birch. Blog entry for Monday, 17 March 2014 http://connectingthefamily.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/52-ancestors-13-thomas-birch.html 

Fleetwood, Elizabeth. A Crying in the Wind http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/article/a-crying-in-the-wind-...-toms-story/

Haebich, Anna. Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800-2000  page 92 

* Pybus, Cassandra. ‘A Self-Made Man’ in Reading Robinson: Companion Essays to George Robinson’s Friendly Mission http://books.publishing.monash.edu/apps/bookworm/view/Reading+Robinson%3A+Companion+Essays+to+George+Robinson%E2%80%99s+Friendly+Mission/176/OEBPS/c07.htm

Pybus, Cassandra. The Colourful Life of Gilbert Robertson 2011   http://launcestonhistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CassandraPybus20112.pdf