From 1804 through to 1830, the Government and white settlers of Van Diemens Land engaged in a guerilla war with the Aborigines. The whites committed unspeakable acts of violence, slavery and murder against the natives, who retaliated with spears against the pastoralists and settlers who were denying them access to kangeroos and other game.

In 1830, the Government instigated an operation called the "Black Line", bringing together some 2,200 white men, settlers and military, in a concerted effort to move the Aborigines from the settled areas of the island up to the Tasman Peninsular. Taking seven weeks the operation netted just two Aborigines.

Moving from a military strategy to one of "pacification", the Government employed an immigrant house builder from London, George Augustus Robinson. Robinson set out from Hobart on an eight month trek through the wilderness of Tasmania with a group of convict servants, two Aboriginal chefs, and a group of four male and three women Aborigines searching for the last surviving tribal groups. Robinson saw himself as a Conciliator who would liberate the remaining Aborigines who were left hiding and bring them into a haven safe from white persecution.
Robinson undertook five more similar expeditions, eventually making contact with every tribe and group of Aborigines left in Tasmania.

Truganini, one of the women who joined Robinson on his trek, was an 18 year old girl who stood a mere 4'3" tall. Her mother had been stabbed to death by whites, her blood and tribal sisters kidnapped for slavery, her stepmother abducted by convict mutineers, and Truganini herself had been raped by the same whites who had killed the Aboriginal male she was betrothed to. Prior to the trek (which brought in 16 Aboriginal warriors), Truganini was a bright, promiscuous girl who, in order to survive, sold herself to whites for tea and sugar.

Truganini died from a stroke in 1876, the government burying her corpse in a vault in the Hobart Penitentiary. In 1878 she was dug up and her bones boiled and stored in an apple crate. Found some years later, the bones were strung together and Truganini's skeleton went on display until 1947. In storage until 1976, the centenary of her death, Truganini was cremated and finally, as she wished, her ashes scattered on the waters of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel.