[1] Part of Putalina, Oyster Cove is an Indigenous Protected Area due to its history as a colonial holding facility for Aboriginal Tasmanians.

A timber mill was established by John Helder Wedge at Oyster Cove and convict wood-cutting teams resided in the area.

As a teenage girl, the famous Indigenous woman, Truganini, was held for sexual purposes by sawyers at nearby Birchs Bay.

The buildings fell into disrepair, the food supply was poor and mortality was high due to the area being exposed to cold winds and dampness.

[4] In 1855, an investigation by the colonial surveyor James Erskine Calder found that the Oyster Cove facility was in an almost completely derelict state with alcoholism and prostitution being pressed upon the fifteen surviving occupants.

Walter George Arthur and his wife Mary Ann were granted a 3 hectare block of land near to Oyster Cove to farm, while Fanny Cochrane Smith was allowed to move out after she married a local white sawyer.

In that year, the government shut down the Oyster Cove Aboriginal facility and Truganini was relocated to the Dandridges' home in Hobart where she died in 1876.

[4] Many of the corpses and skeletal remains of the Aboriginal residents who died at Oyster Cove and elsewhere were mutilated and pilfered by the colonists for so-called scientific reasons.