Stories about the Royal Society’s implication in the robbery of Truganini’s grave are spoken of – albeit in hushed whispers. Just a generation after her death the Tasmanian Museum put on exhibition that perplexing montage that included Truganini’s skeleton, her death mask, various photographs of her, bundles of her shell necklaces – euphemistically hers if not hers in fact – and ironically one of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur’s famous ‘proclamation boards’ plus other Aboriginal artefacts. It’s legendary that there are Gothic resonances to most Tasmanian stories – even those to do with shell necklaces.
Strangely, it was reported in the Hobart Mercury sometime in May 1945 that four shell necklaces were stolen from The Tasmanian Room at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Interestingly, this was while Truganini’s skeleton was in ‘safe keeping’ elsewhere for the duration of the war and just three years before its removal from public exhibition altogether.
The potency of these shell necklaces famously worn by Truganini is palpable. For the colonials cum settlers cum ‘invaders’ there is almost no escaping these necklaces’ ‘trophy of empire’ status or the bleak cultural cargo that comes with them. For Tasmania’s Aboriginal community, clearly the necklaces are cultural property and cultural treasures invested with the continuum of their being; charged with connections to place; and endowed with linkages to elders and ancestors. In Tasmania there is nothing that is ordinary about a maireener shell necklace. Together these maireener necklaces evidence the continuity of Aboriginal Tasmanians’ presence and identity – while those that mimic them carry other stories.
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