Tarenorerer
Resistance leader and guerrilla warfare expert.
Tarenorerer was a Tommeginne woman from the north-east Tasmanian coast. She was abducted in her teens by men from another tribe and traded to white sealers for flour and dogs. The sealers called her Walyer and she was enslaved for several years on islands in the Bass Strait.
What
When she escaped (1828) and returned home to the area that is now Burnie, she was a very angry woman. She was also a woman who had learned to use firearms. Tarenorerer pulled together a multi-clan resistance group of women and men, taught them to shoot to kill, and led raids on settlers, stock, and supply lines.
George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of the Aborigines, made hunting her down a priority.
I received information respecting an Amazon named Tarerenore, alias “Walyer”, who was at the head of an Aboriginal banditti.
Why
Historians describe her as hating the luta tawin (white man) for the massacres, abductions, and enslavement of her people, and she wanted the invaders gone.
Outcome
She was captured in 1830 and died of influenza a year later, still in her early thirties. After her capture, Robinson noted in his diary:
Nearly all the mischief perpetrated upon the different settlements had been traced to Tarenorerer's warriors.
Tarenorerer was the leader of one of the first organised guerrilla campaigns on Australian soil.
