Poimena/WOOREDDYS 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 people lived below the Mountain; they were a coastal people, and they did not migrate. Everything was available there for them. But they are known to have run to the Mountain seeking refuge—the protection of its hidden depths—as well as because it offered a lookout on all that was happening below.
Wooreddy, 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 mountains from which they watched the activity may have been the mountains whites call Mount Wellington, and if that is so, it is likely that Wooreddy’s lookout is at The Springs.
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.