Wauba Debar

Her grave is a historic site located in the east coast Tasmanian town of Bicheno, which memorialises her rescue of two sealers, one of them her husband, when their ship was wrecked about 1 km from shore during a storm.

[1] Wauba Debar, as a teenager, was one of many Aboriginal women kidnapped and enslaved by sealers and whalers for sexual partners during the European colonisation of Tasmania.

She died in a boat off the coast whilst travelling towards the Furneaux Group and her body was brought ashore and buried.

Local settlers, including John Allen, raised funds in 1855 to erect the headstone on her grave, immortalising her act of heroism.

In 1893, elderly Bicheno residents said Wauba was buried 10 years before the date on the headstone, placing her death around 1822.

Wauba Debar's grave and headstone in Bicheno