Poimena/WOUREDDY'S LOOKOUT
“A lot of the people could see kunanyi from where they lived. They stood on the Mountain looking down as the Hobart settlement grew, as they saw the boats come, as they saw the city develop, and they had to run and hide for their lives, and fight back for their lives against an irreversible tide.”
An image of Bowen’s arrival, not Collins. Lieutenant John Bowen and party arriving at Risdon [AUTAS001139592174]
The Muwinina lived below the Mountain; they were a coastal people, and they did not migrate as far as other tribes. Everything was available there for them. But they are known to have run up the Mountain seeking a safe lookout and refuge—the protection of its hidden depths—as well as because it offered a view of all that was happening below. Woureddy, a leader of the Nuennone band from Bruny Island, told George Augustus Robinson that:
“when the first people settle they cut down the trees, built houses, dug the ground and planted; that by and by more ships came, then at last plenty of ships; that the natives went to the mountains, went and looked at what the white people did, went and told other natives and they came and looked also.”
The place from which they watched the activity may have been the mountains whites call Mount Wellington but it is likely that Wooreddy’s lookout is in the foothills of Knocklofty, Mount Stuart or Mount Nelson—somewhere much closer to the scene of disturbance.
Janice Ross described a painting she made on the Mountain in 2018: “From the top of the mountain I look out across the waters and sense the story of kunanyi. Robinson's journals tell us our Ancestors thought the boats were white spirits in the distance, falling from the clouds into the water. The three distant white clouds that touch the water represent the first fleet of ships that arrived. We could be heard calling out on a quiet day to the cave across the water.