We were taught in high school, ~15 years ago. I remember wondering how it was actually performed. The story was told as a long line of men walking from on end

We were taught in high school, ~15 years ago. I remember wondering how it was actually performed. The story was told as a long line of men walking from on end of the island to the other, killing any aboriginals they found in the process. Tasmania is a very large island, so it seemed like they would need an inordinate number of men to form a line that joined all the way across it, and it would take a very long time to walk the length of it. Turns out the line was a real thing, called the Black Line [1], and was part of a war called the Black War [2]. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided to remove all Aborigines from the settled areas in order to end the escalating raids upon settlers' huts. He was also concerned about preventing the settlers from taking the law into their own hands and launching revenge attacks. To accomplish this he called upon every able-bodied male colonist, convict or free, to form a human chain that then swept across the settled districts, moving south and east for several weeks in an attempt to corral the Aborigines on the Tasman Peninsula by closing off Eaglehawk Neck (the isthmus connecting the Tasman peninsula to the rest of the island) where Arthur hoped that they could live and maintain their culture and language. This action was only directed against Aborigines of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, since the conflict was only with these two tribes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War