Walyer, Aboriginal leader of the Tommeginne/North Tasmania people, was a young woman when she was abducted and sold to sealers on the Bass Strait Islands off the Tasmanian coast. Vicki maikutena Matson-Green in her biography of Walyer in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, (MUP), 2005 writes that ' [s]he became proficient in speaking English and took particular notice of the use and operation of firearms. In 1828 [Walyer] returned to her country in the north of Tasmania, where she gathered a group of men and women from many bands to initiate warfare against the invaders. Training her warriors in the use of firearms, she ordered them to strike the luta tawin (white men) when they were at their most vulnerable, between the time that their guns were discharged and before they were able to reload.'
Walyer was ultimately captured and confined to Gun Carriage (Vansittart) Island where she died of influenza. She '... had fought on behalf of her people with bravery and tenacity in a war for which there are no memorials.'
Matson-Green, Vicki maikutena, 'Tarenorerer (1800-1831)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tarenorerer-13212/text23923, accessed 8 August 2012.
