The Exiles

After running away from the Franklins, Mathinna hides in the forest. She is not scared to be alone in the woods—rather, she fears more “what await[s] her back at the settlement” (73). She remembers her mother telling her that, before she was born, a younger sister had been taken by British settlers and sent to the Queen’s Orphan School near Hobart Town, never to be seen again. Mathinna does not want to be kidnapped. She recalls how her stepfather, Palle, told her the story of the European conquest of Australia—how the Palawa were once a tribe who worked symbiotically with the land, giving and receiving as needed: They “coveted nothing and stole nothing” (75). When the European settlers arrived 200 years before, “strange-looking creatures with freakishly pale skin” (75), they immediately began pushing the Palawa further and further into the mountains, claiming to need the land for their sheep herds. A decade before Mathinna was born, the British annihilated the Palawa tribe, “hunting [them] for sport” (76) under the command of the British government. When most of the tribe was dead, the remaining people were rounded up and sent to Flinders Island under the promise that their land would be returned to them one day.