Fanny Cochrane Smith (December 1834 – 24 February 1905) was an

Aboriginal Tasmanian The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: ''Palawa'' or ''Pakana'') are the Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal people of the List of islands of Australia, Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th centu ...

, born in December 1834. She is considered to be the last fluent speaker of the Flinders Island lingua franca, a Tasmanian language, and her

wax cylinder Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to give low ...

recordings of songs are the only audio recordings of any of

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

's indigenous languages. Her recordings were inducted into the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

Australian Memory of the World Register in 2017.

Early life

Fanny Cochrane's mother Tanganutura and a man named Nicremeric or Nicermenic, sometimes reported as her father, were two of the Tasmanian Aboriginals settled on

Flinders Island Flinders Island, the largest island in the Furneaux Group, is a island in the Bass Strait, northeast of the island of Tasmania. Flinders Island was the place where the last remnants of aboriginal Tasmanian population were exiled by the colo ...

in the 1830s by

George Augustus Robinson George Augustus Robinson (22 March 1791 – 18 October 1866) was a British-born colonial official and self-trained preacher in colonial Australia. In 1824, Robinson travelled to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, where he attempted to negotiate ...

; according to

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. Life Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900. His family moved to Tokyo and lived ther ...

her father was Cottrel Cochrane, of European descent, and Nicremeric was her stepfather. She was born at Settlement Point (or Wybalenna, meaning Black Man's House) on

. No indigenous name is known; Robinson gave European names to all the Indigenous Tasmanians who arrived at the island as part of his attempt to suppress their culture. From the age of five to eight she lived in the home of Robert Clark, the Wybalenna preacher, and was then sent to the orphan school in Hobart to learn domestic service skills, after which she returned to Wybalenna. She served as Clark's servant until the station closed in 1847. In 1847 her parents, along with the survivors of Wybalenna, were removed to Oyster Cove. There is no evidence that Nicermenic was her father or that he was on Flinders Island in the 1830s. In June 1834, the year of Fanny's birth on Flinders Island, he was reported to Robinson as being involved in stealing a boat on the Leven River on the NW Coast with Probelatter.

Family

In 1854, Fanny married William Smith, an English sawyer and

ex-convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convict ...

, and between 1855 and 1880 they had 11 children. Following her marriage, Fanny and her husband ran a boarding-house in Hobart. After receiving a government annuity of £24 and a land grant of , she selected land near Oyster Cove to be near her mother, sister and brother and the couple moved there shortly before their first child was born. The Smiths grew their own food but derived their income from timber.

Final years

Following the death of

Truganini Truganini (also known as Lallah Rookh; c. 1812 – 8 May 1876) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman. She was one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian languages and one of the last individuals solely of Aboriginal Tasmanian descent. Trug ...

in 1876, Fanny laid claim to be "the last Tasmanian". While there was some dispute as to whether she or

was the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person, in 1889 the government of the

Colony of Tasmania The Colony of Tasmania (more commonly referred to simply as "Tasmania") was a British colony that existed on the island of Tasmania from 1856 until 1901, when it federated together with the five other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealt ...

granted her of land and increased her annuity to £50. She became a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

and gave the land needed to build a Methodist church at Nicholls Rivulet, which opened in 1901. Cochrane Smith died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

and

pleurisy Pleurisy, also known as pleuritis, is inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs and line the chest cavity ( pleurae). This can result in a sharp chest pain while breathing. Occasionally the pain may be a constant dull ache. Other sy ...

at Port Cygnet, from Oyster Cove, on 24 February 1905. In 1898, Henry Ling Roth published a paper in the ''

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute The ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' (JRAI) is the principal journal of the oldest anthropological organization in the world, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Articles, at the forefront of the di ...

'' examining Smith's claim to be a "full-blood" Aboriginal Tasmanian. He did not examine her personally, but compared locks of her hair with samples of earlier Tasmanians, and conducted a photographic comparison of her and Truganini. Roth concluded that Smith was actually mixed-race, as she had "Europeanised" facial characteristics, much lighter skin than Truganini, and hair that was "wavy" rather than " woolly".

Legacy

Smith is known for her

recordings of Aboriginal songs, recorded in 1899, which constitute the only audio recordings of an indigenous Tasmanian language. Five cylinders were cut; however, in 1949 a Tasmanian newspaper noted that only four remained, as the fifth cylinder, "on which was recorded the translation of the songs, was broken some time ago". Upon hearing her own performance, Smith had cried "My poor race. What have I done"; she believed the voice to be that of her mother. The recording of Smith's songs was the subject of a 1998 song by Australian folk singer Bruce Watson, ''The Man and the Woman and the

Edison Phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

''. Watson is the great-grandson of Horace Watson, who recorded Fanny in 1903.Musicological Society of Australia
A photograph of Fanny Cochrane Smith and Horace Watson is displayed in the collection of the

National Museum of Australia The National Museum of Australia, in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. It was formally established by the ''National Muse ...

References

External links

* Listen to Fanny Cochrane Smith's recording and read more about the first and last recordings of Tasmanian Aboriginal songs and language o
australianscreen online
* 'Fanny Cochrane Smith's Tasmanian Aboriginal Songs' has been added to the National Film and Sound Archive's

Sounds of Australia The Sounds of Australia, formerly the National Registry of Recorded Sound, is the National Film and Sound Archive's selection of sound recordings which are deemed to have cultural, historical and aesthetic significance and relevance for Australi ...

.
State Library of Tasmania Images
Photos of Smith, Fanny Cochrane {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Fanny Cochrane Indigenous Tasmanian people 1905 deaths 1834 births Deaths from pneumonia in Tasmania Last known speakers of an Australian Aboriginal language Australian Methodists 19th-century Australian women 20th-century Australian women