TRUGANINNI

$5.40 – $15.00

In her own lifetime, Truganinni lived through the devastating years of her people’s decimation and virtually sealed off her own bat the last chapter of the massacre of a unique race of people. She witnessed horrific personal and family-clan tragedy and the raw-boned racial society of the time… the killing diseases, the outright butcheries, the set-squares of despise that literally made her people prefer dying to living under the White colony. Yet Truganinni survived to become one of most recognisable and colourful characters. She came to enjoy her ‘Queen-Victorian’ walks through the town’s streets as much as her daily pot of ale. She was thought to be the last of her race after the reputed last male William Lanne, or King Billy, died an alcoholic and had his body mutilated in the name of science. It was little wonder she had such dread of dying and pleaded not to be carved up as he had been.

Truganinni was first performed at The Union Theatre, University of Melbourne, April, 1970

APT