Who is Waubadebar?

By Dr Shane Gould PhD The Culture of Swimming in Australia 2019 Victoria University

28th September 2024

Waubs Harbour in Bicheno Tasmania, in the Parradareme Nation, is named sometime around 1820 after a First Nations woman Waubadebar. She is famous for having rescued two sealers from drowning, whose boat overturned in rough seas near Waubs Bay before 1820. The date of the rescue is uncertain, as is when she died, but her feat was highly regarded by some of the local white people of Bicheno. They had a gravestone made for her in 1855. Waubadebar is likely to have come from tebrakunna country in the northeast, before her adult life as a mate of a European seafarer Campbell with whom she had a daughter Sarah Campbell.

Waubadebar’s headstone is enclosed with a fence in Lions Park Bicheno, with a history interpretation sign next to it, as part of the Bicheno history trail. There is also an information sign about her on the Seafarers memorial in Lions Park and one inside the Bicheno church on Burgess Street. There is also small bronze statue depicting Waubadebar, in the church foyer. Waubadebar’s body is not in the grave, which is managed jointly by Tasmanian Aboriginal Council and the local council.

Aboriginal women were typically the fisherwomen and divers for seafood, so they had swimming skills and ocean know-how that even the white men and women didn’t have in that era. Most Europeans could not swim and regarded the ocean with fear and suspicion.

The first nations womens’ aquatic skills were reported with surprise by George Augustus Robinson in his diaries collated by Plomley in ‘Friendly Missions’ 1966 ‘the women make the water their element’ 28th September 1829 Bruny Island p.86 Waubadebar must have been revered for her swimming rescue skills and other expertise such as guiding, for her to be honoured with a place name and a gravestone. Her death around 1820 was before Bicheno was occupied by the European farmers who erected her gravestone. Original diaries mention Campbells Black Woman being buried at Waubs harbour in 1820 after she died near Bicheno, leading an exploration trek up the east coast from Hobart.

Historical researcher Louise Zarmatti said that Waubadebar’s daughter Sarah came to Bicheno in 1838 and probably told the story of her mother to the people who later erected a headstone in 1855. The timing of the memorial headstone could also be related to the change from colony to state when Van Diemen’s Land was named Tasmania on 1st Jan 1856, a time when a sense of history and sovereignty stirred acts of commemoration. These white farmers would not have met Waubadebar though, even though it says ‘some of her white friends’ engraved in the stone.

“Here lies Wauba Debar. A Female Aborigine of Van Diemen’s Land. Died June 1832. Aged 40 Years. This Stone is Erected by a few of her white friends.”

The date of her death 1832 on the gravestone is probably inaccurate if it is the same person as ‘Campbells Black Woman’ who died in 1820. As is commonly recognised, history is written by the invaders, in this instance the white colonists. Stories of the past can evolve in the retelling too, as I believe is the case of Waubadebar, an instance of ‘shadow history’. There are no firsthand narratives about Waubadebar told by her own people or herself, so the mystery of Waubadebar relies on primary sources - colonial diaries, newspapers, government reports and later secondary sources in newspapers, books, pamphlets, history interpretation signage. Exact dates and events may be impossible to determine. Even the spelling of her name is uncertain was she Waub? Wauba Debar? Wauba de Bar? For this report, I will use the spelling Waubadebar.

Despite many uncertainties, she was a real person, a displaced aboriginal woman, who adapted to the colonising European invaders by living with them and doing good favours.

The name of the harbour at the Gulch is Waubs Harbour, used from about 1820. It was once called Stoney Harbour 1819 and Bicheno was called Old Fisheries until about 1850. The beach where the surf club stands at the end of Jetty Road is called Waubs Beach, but I’m told by locals that it was called Town Beach in the 1980’s.

Changing attitudes to water and the sea

As mentioned, aboriginal women were confident in water, diving for seafood, crossing rivers, catching swans, collecting swan eggs and traversing deep water to islands to collect mutton birds. For Europeans, the water was a frightening place, with a malevolent character. Multiple shipwrecks and beachside drownings fuelled these ideas of the sea. Throughout the 1800’s a new view of the water and the sea developed though. Cleanliness and disease management could be affected by ‘The Water Cure’. Women particularly embraced the water cure, taking control of their own health with hydropathy, a medical regime that also became a vision of society; self-determination through self-doctoring.

Allopathy was the established popular form of health treatments using practises such as bloodletting or toxic potions administered by male doctors. The water cure was a way to manage own health. It also opened doors for the first female doctors even though folk medicine was often the domain of women. There was a well-read Water Cure Journal in America and England in 1840 and Turkish Baths were built in Hobart and Campbelltown. Women began to wear looser clothing, get sunshine on their skin and partake in exercise including sea bathing, wash their skin and hair regularly, and so improved their mental and physical wellbeing. Fresh and sea water for both men and women took on a whole new meaning affecting attitudes that inspired respect for Waubadebar.

Other famous sea rescues by women.

Another reason for the memorial gravestone for Waubadebar, in 1855, years after her death, may be how the story of her rescue is related to Grace Darling’s 1838 famous ship passenger rescue in England. Local and travelling Tasmanians must have known about the Grace Darling’s celebrity rescue story, as a hotel was built in 1854 in Melbourne called the Grace Darling. It still operates. A much later heroic sea rescue by a local woman Mary Harvey occurred near Diamond Island Bicheno, in 1874. She rescued one of two teenage brothers of the local Allen family. Sadly, one died when his grip on their overturned boat slipped. This rescue is unrelated to Waubadebars story. As an aside, it’s remarkable how many stories there are in Tasmanian newspapers sourced from Trove, how ‘the boy clung to the boat’ when it overturned in rough seas.

In conclusion, I want to believe that Waubadebar was a good swimmer, a competent kindly woman who tried to adapt to the invaders’ world. Maybe her ghost looks over us when the local swimmers also using the water for hydropathy, seafood and pleasure, as we swim around in Waubs Bay.

By Dr Shane Gould PhD The Culture of Swimming in Australia 2019 Victoria University

28th September 2024