In 1834 one hundred and thirty five Tasmanian Aboriginals from the mainland were settled on Flinders Island, where as George Augustus Robinson said they were to be ‘civilised and christianised’. The settlement was called Wybalenna which means ‘black man’s houses’. They were forbidden to practise the old ways and were homesick for their lost country. Many died of respiratory disease, poor food and despair.

In October 1847 the forty seven survivors of this group were transferred to Oyster Cove, near Hobart. It was springtime, but even the warmer weather did not hide the fact that the former convict station was built in a cold, damp and depressing place. Their houses were little better than slab huts, and in poor repair.
For some, this move was a return to land familiar to them from childhood. Truganini was of the Nuenonne tribe whose country had been Bruny Island and the Channel area of the mainland. Truganini could have stayed in the straits and lived with Lucy Beadon on Badger Island but she chose to return to her country and stay with her companions from Wybalenna.

For many years the chapel was used as a shearing shed until, in 1973, it was purchased and restored by the Flinders Island Branch of the National Trust.

Cover: Written with the candour of hope, not the inertia of despair, 'The story of Wybalenna' tells of the restoration of a shearing shed to its proper use as a Chapel Meeting Place. Classified by The National Trust, 'to be saved at all costs', the classification seemed ludicrous to some and impossible to others when applied to a decayed building in the middle of a paddock on a remote island in Bass Straight. It is necessarily the story of the extermination of the Race of the Aborigines of Tasmania for whom the restored Chapel was originally built but for whom must now serve only as a Memorial.