LAUSR

occurring in the mixed-race communities on the other islands in Bass Strait, which would be the basis for the long-term survival and development of an Indigenous population in Tasmania. What do we make of the relentless population decline at Wybalenna, so that at its end, there were only ten children in a total population of fortythree? And what happened to these ten children? Stevens does not ask these questions, though we do glean that the number of births was very low, that some of the women opposed marriage, some preferred celibacy, and some seem to have used herbs to induce miscarriage. Stevens briefly suggests the last of these may help explain the very low birth rates at Wybalenna, but puzzlingly does not pursue the matter. If Stevens shows little interest in the very low birth rate, or in the child survival rate, many other historians and commentators have shown a great deal. They have wanted to understand why the Indigenous Tasmanian population on Flinders Island and the VDL mainland fell so drastically, and how and why on the other Bass Strait islands it managed to survive and eventually grow. In recent years, this quest for understanding has been enfolded in the larger debate over whether we can see Australian colonial history in terms of the history of genocide, as I explored some years ago in ‘Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea’. Stevens stands apart from these debates, for example ignoring Tom Lawson’s The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania, with its detailed discussion and highly critical account of Wybalenna. In avoiding the genocide question, Stevens has in my view lessened the impact and import of her valuable work.