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The tragic story behind this doll has been revealed as it's finally returned to Australia
A doll discovered in a box in England has been returned to Australia after more than 100 years, revealing the tragedy behind it.
Published 30 September 2022 2:25pm
By Sarah Maunder
Source: SBS News
Image: The doll believed to belong to Mithina. (Supplied / TMAG)
A precious doll has finally arrived back in lutruwita (Tasmania) after being lost for decades in England. And with it comes the story of its owner - believed to be a Tasmanian Aboriginal girl named Mithina (also spelled Mathinna), whose short life was marked by tragedy.
Mithina was born on Flinders Island, Tasmania in 1835. Her father Towgerer (also written as Towtrer) was the chief of the Lowreenne tribe - where modern-day Strahan and Macquarie Harbour is located.
Towgerer - and Mithina’s mother Wongerneep - were captured by George Augustus Robinson, who was Protector of Aborigines (using the offensive misnomer), in 1833. They were taken to Flinders Island to an Aboriginal settlement called Wybalenna.
From the early 1820s to about the mid-1830s, the Black War raged in Tasmania. Exact figures are unknown, but it’s estimated that at least 900 Tasmanian Aboriginal people and 200 British colonists were killed.
A portrait of Mithina by Thomas Bock. Source: Supplied / TMAG
Julie Gough is a Trawlwoolway woman and curator from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) First People’s Art and Culture Team.
“It was like offshore detention for almost 20 years,” Julie says of Wybalenna.
It was like offshore detention for almost 20 years.Julie Gough
“From 1830 to 1847, Aboriginal people were continually taken there after they had either been captured or surrendered.
“It was misconstrued to them [Tasmanian Aboriginal people] about what was happening, where they were going, and for how long they’d be there.”
Trawlwoolway woman and curator Julie Gough. Source: Supplied / TMAG
“Mithina was sent to Hobart [from Flinders Island] even though she was not an orphan,” Julie says.
A rural locality in modern-day northeast Tasmania is named after Mithina, and a plaque there reads that she was “kindly adopted” by the Franklins.
“But it appears more that she was to be a servant for the family,” Julie says.
Eleanor Franklin - the daughter of Governor Franklin and his first wife Eleanor Porden - was 11 years older than Mithina, and wrote in her diary at the time of Mithina being given a doll with a petticoat.
The doll believed to have belonged to Mithina. Source: Supplied / Gell Trustees via Derbyshire Record Office, UK/ TMAG
“The fact that they basically sent her to the orphanage that much earlier before they departed for England is painful to consider,” Julie says.
It also appears the doll did not stay with Mithina but rather went to England with the Franklins.
Mithina was only 17 or 18 years old when she died at an Aboriginal settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart.
“She died in mysterious circumstances,” Julie says.
“Some of the terminology is that she drowned in a puddle or a creek at Oyster Cove, after such a horrendous young life.”
A chance discovery
In 2017, the Derbyshire Record Office in Matlock, England, had received about 100 boxes from the well-known local Gell family.
The doll - measuring only 12cm tall - was found inside one of those boxes, along with a pin cushion.
The pin cushion had a label on it that identified it as being made by "Tasmanian girl, Methinna [sic]."
The pin cushion that was found with the doll. Source: Supplied / Gell Trustees via Derbyshire Record Office, UK
Dr Gaye Sculthorpe, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, who until recently was the head of the Oceania section at the British Museum, travelled to Matlock to view the doll.
“Fortunately, the historic label on the cushion identified Mithina. Without that, [finding the doll] may never have eventuated,” Julie says.
Artefacts return home
The doll and pin cushion returned to Australia this week and will now feature in a new exhibition at TMAG titled taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country.
The exhibition “presents creative work from 20 Tasmanian Aboriginal artists responding to the relationships between community and Ancestral objects, particularly those held in institutions outside of lutruwita/Tasmania”.
It sees a number of ancestral objects from around the world returned to Tasmania on long-term loans from museums and institutions. The objects will be displayed alongside the Tasmanian Aboriginal artists’ work.
An artwork depicting the doll by Janice Ross. Source: Supplied / TMAG
Janice Ross says Mithina’s story was much like her own.
Born in 1969, she was adopted by a non-Aboriginal family when she was a year old. It took 23 years for her to reconnect with her Aboriginal community.
“As the Aunties always said to me: ‘oh you’ve never been gone, you’ve been always with us, it’s just that sometimes the spirits in our young Aboriginal children, they’re sleeping for a while until they awaken,’” Ross says.
For her installation in the exhibition, Ross has painted Mithina’s doll, pin cushion, and homelands in southwest Tasmania, imagined as they were before colonisation.
She has also incorporated stringy bark collected from her sister’s property, to help visitors to the exhibition have a deeper connection to the Aboriginal stories.
“Having a natural resource within an institutional setting [a museum] can bring about the story for people to connect with,” she says.
The exhibition is the result of years of hard work by the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and TMAG. Much of the groundwork started in the 1970s, with the community searching for the remains of ancestors who were taken from Tasmania to museums across the world during colonisation.
“Our ancestors have been held in many institutions around the world - human remains - so how our objects and our ancestors ended up overseas, sometimes it’s possible to know the details, but other times it’s less clear,” Julie says.
“The ancestors are connected to the objects that they made, and many of our ancestors have been coming back slowly since the 1970s, to be laid to rest on home ground.
“But the cultural objects, I suppose, have been waiting their turn, because bringing back the ancestors has been the primary responsibility of community.”
The cultural objects ... have been waiting their turn.Julie
The returned objects are on time-limited loans of about two years.
Julie says the negotiations with institutions, archives and museums around the world have been a careful, respectful task of conversation and diplomacy.
“This is a step towards repatriation,” she says.
Zoe Rimmer is a pakana woman and artist whose work is also on display.
"Unfortunately, we’re only loaned the objects. We have got a long-term loan, but our ultimate dream is for these objects to come home for good," she says.
"To have our own space where we can care for them culturally, appropriately and share them with the public when and how we feel appropriate."
taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country runs at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) in Hobart until 12 February 2023.
palawa kani, a Tasmanian Aboriginal language, does not use capital letters.
