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🖤💛❤️ Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Commemoration 2026🗓 Tuesday 20 January 2026
🕛 From midday
📍 Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Monument
Corner of Victoria St & Franklin St, Melbourne
The colonisation of Australia was a brutal and violent process whose impacts continue to be felt by First Nations people and the wider community today. This undeclared war—waged through theft, rape and murder—was largely hidden from history. While most Indigenous Australians were poisoned, starved, shot, hacked to death or exposed to germ warfare, Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were publicly executed in Melbourne on 20 January 1842 for daring to resist colonisation.
Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Pyterruner, Truganini and Planobeena were five of sixteen Aboriginal people selected from the 88 survivors of the three-decade genocidal war in Tasmania. They were brought to Victoria by George Augustus Robinson under the guise of “civilising the Victorian blacks.” Their armed resistance in the Western Port region alarmed Melbourne’s settler society—and led to deadly consequences.
The establishment of the Frontier Wars Monument in Melbourne in 2016 acknowledges their sacrifice and represents a small but important step towards the truth-telling envisioned in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart—reconciliation grounded in justice, not charity.
The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee believes your participation can help re-ignite a stalled reconciliation process between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
🌿 After the commemoration, we will silently walk from the execution site to their last resting place at the eastern end of the northern wall of Queen Victoria Market, to honour their just struggle.
💐 Please bring flowers.
📻 Live broadcast:
The first hour will be broadcast live on 3CR Community Radio – 855 AM and streamed at www.3cr.org.au
🎤 Open microphone:
After guest speakers, attendees will be invited to share their reflections.
We hope to see you on the day.
Dr Joseph Toscano
Convenor, Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Monument, Melbourne, Australia
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