My dear readers, I write to you from a Parisian cafe, well after my contributions to history's pages have ended, asking for your judgement as to whether criticisms of my past conduct are merited.

I first came out to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land in 1826, naught but a builder of humble class, although my true interest lay in the humanities and theology. My wife and children later joined me in Hobart Town, and I made a decent profit from my trade.

At this time there was open warfare between the black Aborigine and British settlers of the island, and it dominated the minds of all. It was a most brutal affair, a war of extermination marked by un-Christian atrocity - on the side of the black, from a sense of righteous anger and from desperation, and from the convict and his master a sense of fear and entitlement. Shepherds were ambushed and speared through, or burned alive in their huts, just as black women and children were taken and mutilated and abused by sealing men, their menfolk chained to trees and shot. Even the housing of hundreds of garrison troops across the great frontier did little to stem the tide of violence.

By the year 1830, an island that may once have been home to four thousand natives barely contained seven hundreds, yet bloodthirsty men of England still pressed the honourable governor George Arthur to extirpate these poor heathens. Lamenting the lack of formal treaty with the Vandemonians, the sympathetic Arthur decided upon a military action allegedly inspired by the ancient genius of the Athenians - a great line of men marching across the island end-to-end, in the hope of cornering the surviving natives on remote peninsulas. Enlisting and arming men of all sorts and qualities, this 'black line' was an undertaking of enormous logistical extravagance - yet the cunning blacks evaded the clumsy frontiersmen, and only two were killed and another two captured, with stealthy violence continuing almost immediately after the line was disbanded.

This colossal failure proved the necessity in the governor request for 'a man of good character' to manage a ration station on Bruny Island, its goal being to entice natives in and civilise them through Christian means. I was hired for this task, and it was from this settlement (admittedly a failure, for most of its inhabitants died of pestilence or absconded) that I learned the language and customs of the Vandemonian. I became convinced that I had found my true calling, and proposed to Governor Arthur that I embark on a 'friendly mission' to pacify the blacks of this land. We decided that should any surrender to us, that they should be temporarily relocated to Flinders Island on the Bass Strait, and allowed to live in peace and tradition until such a time as violence had ended and colonists could accept them as neighbours. In this task I was aided by my sons, some convict labourers and a band of trustworthy and deferential blacks.

In the following months I forwent comfort and safety on a holy mission of intercourse with the natives, preaching the goodwill of the colonists and offering escape from extinction. Many chiefs agreed to this offer, and several hundreds left their lands to live at Wybelenna. I fought for the right to administer this island, for only I had the skill and temperament to deal with the Aborigines, whilst the public protested every penny spent on these poor wretches - yet it was all for naught, for the great majority died on the journey to the island, and these survivors lived in isolated misery, dying in droves of disease and heartbreak. I pushed these children of the Lord into marriage, sedentary living, commerical activity and agricultural pursuits, but the blacks could never imitate a European life, and I could not afford to be associated with this failure not of my making.

Although unappreciated by the common settler, many of the gentlemanly class saw the benefit of my activities and wished for me to perform the same duty in the far larger and wealthier colonies of the mainland. I rejected an offer from South Australia, for it did not sufficiently reward my potential impact, whereas an offer as Chief Protector of the Port Phillip District would. Here I saw many atrocities unfolding as well, and endeavoured to end them before they escalated to Vandemonian levels.

This never came to pass, and my time in Victoria was uneventful in comparison. My knowledge of language and customs in Van Diemen's Land served me little outside of that colony, and my black associates from past travels proved to be useless and burdensome to say the least. Much of my work was in building and managing missionary settlements, and journeying across the frontiers of the colonies, and I can proudly proclaim myself the first in a line of many subsequent Chief Protectors, a position extant in all of the significant Australian colonies. By the end of my tenure I had accrued a small fortune for my services, and with this my family returned to London - we now live in Paris, in significant luxury.

However... There are those who would speak ill of my mission. They accuse me of profiting from the destruction of a race, of quickening their end, of being their gaoler and gentle executioner. Of the one hundred and fifty Aborigines to survive the Black War, only 47 survived Wyblenna to return to another settlement on their home island, and many of these were said to live in prisoner-like conditions. This is hardly a fair accusation, as it is well established by learned men that the native is doomed to die - I strived to save them from cruel treatment by conversion to civilised living, but it was a Herculean task that none could have succeeded in.

I am accused of being false in my piety and my commitments, a con man who peddled falsehoods to the Aborigines - yet I maintain that I conveyed all that was said to me by Governor Arthur, and ever acted in good faith and with love. The labyrinthine complexities of colonial politics and treasuries were beyond my control, and any falsehoods came from the changing policies of the authorities and the limitations imposed upon us by the Lord. I eagerly pushed civilisation on to the Aborigines in my charge, but did so only through gentle means for their own betterment, showing them a level of charity hither-to missing from their interactions with British men. My enrichment was only fair payment for a great undertaking that only I had any hope of accomplishing, and my journals contain great stores of knowledge that should educate generations to come.

Of my companions in the Friendly Mission, much is said of the woman Truganini - she is oft said to be the main reason for its successes, having been shrewd in diplomacy and skilled in bushcraft, brave and cunning. She was indeed all of these things and saved me from death on many occasions, and we were indeed quite intimate - but she was naught but a black woman in a dangerous landscape, where few would have paid her positive attention had she not been accompanied by myself, a respectable Christian man with clout. When I left Wybelenna she was one of several loyal followers I brought with me to Port Phillip, but her companions became involved in murder - I vouched for their characters, but their own actions and their blackened skin sealed their fate, and the inadequacies of the law cannot be laid at my feet. If I am to be accused to using this woman for my own purposes, then so too did she, for her own survival and betterment, and in this we both served a humanitarian purpose. When she died, she died in celebrity, the last of that most primitive of peoples, the Tasmanian Aborigine... We embarked on a truly historic mission in the name of the Lord, and it is my belief that, despite the inevitable end of the Vandemonians, it was a remarkable success.

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