I was in a bookshop today but they didn't have the book I wanted. So I went to the desk to see if they could order it. While I was waiting I looked at a book on the counter called A Field Guide To Tasmanian Fungi and I thought what a great book to help ID all the species I see about. I wasn't going to buy it, though, until I noticed that I knew one of the authors, who besides being a mycologist, is a keen chess player.
'Frontier of Space, Frontier of Mind: The British Invasion of Loonwonnylowe' by Don Ransom (PhD, U of Tasmania) is the winner of the SJ Butlin Prize for best thesis in Australian or NZ econ history 2020-2022, offered by the Econ History Society of Aux & NZ https://economichistorysociety.wordpress.com/news/
Historical evidence of disease, fertility decline, violence & resource loss inform a back-cast prediction of high pre-contact Indigenous population in Tasmania & subsequent fast decline, according to a new paper by Byard & Maxwell-Stewart https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12282
Today in Labor History January 26, 1808: Soldiers took over New South Wales, Australia, during the Rum Rebellion. It was Australia’s only military coup. At the time, NSW was a British penal colony. William Bligh was governor of the territory. This was the same William Bligh who was an officer under Captain Cook when he attempted to kidnap the King of Hawai’i. He was also the same William Bligh who was overthrown in the Mutiny on the Bounty, in 1789. It is questionable why the British thought he’d do better in charge of a bunch of prisoners and unruly soldiers, than he did with a bunch of sailors. Perhaps they were just desperate. One of Bligh’s commissions was to reign in the Rum Corps, which held a monopoly on the illegal rum trade in Australia. They also controlled the sale of other commodities. Bligh started to enforce penalties for the illegal sale and importation of liquor. He also tried to provide relief to farmers, suffering from recent flooding and price-gouging by the Rum Corps, by providing provisions from the colony’s stores. The monopolists didn’t like his looting of the stores, from which they were profiting handsomely, nor his enforcement of the liquor laws. So, they arrested him and deported him to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land. The military remained in control of NSW until 1810.
Landscape, Association, Empire: Imagining Van Diemen’s Land
This book tells a compelling story about invasion, settler colonialism, and an emergent sense of identity in place, as seen through topographical and landscape images by seven fascinating artists.
Today in Labor History November 4, 1839: The Newport Rising began. It was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. It began when approximately 4,000 Chartists, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport. When several were arrested, other Chartists, including coal miners, many armed with homemade weapons, marched on the Westgate Hotel (where they were held) to liberate them. Up to 24 were killed when soldiers were ordered to open fire on them. The Chartists were fighting for the adoption of the People’s Charter, which called for universal suffrage, the secret ballot, and the right of regular working people to serve in the House of Commons. Three leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death, but popular protests got their sentences commuted to Transportation for Life, probably to Australia or Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania). America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, supposedly participated in this rebellion. He was a known Chartist in those days, a physical force man who loved to battle cops and Tory thugs. Because of his history of street violence and vandalism, he had to flee Britain in the dark of the night, ultimately settling in Illinois, where he eventually set up the private detective agency that would go on to murder numerous union organizers, and set up hundreds more for long prison stints through the use of agents provocateur and perjured testimonies.
The riots were depicted in the following novels: “Sir Cosmo Digby,” by James Augustus St John (1843), “Rape of the Fair Country,” by Alexander Cordell (1959) and “Children of Rebecca,” by Vivien Annis Bailey (1995).
Today I’m at the Terror Australis crime fiction festival in Port Huon, Tasmania - kicking off with a masterclass with special guest Ann Cleeves (of Vera and Shetland fame).
If any of you are in Tasmania nearish the Huon Valley on 26 October, you're very welcome to the launch of Murder, You Wrote, an interactive mystery (to which I contributed a chapter).
The launch is part of the Terror Australis readers and writers festival, and the book will be launched by Ann Cleves (of Vera and Shetland fame).
I'm back in a farm-lit reading phase. I needed some space after writing/living in the genre - but so glad to have picked up two of the latest books by Australian authors. One hilarious, the other hauntingly thoughtful and beautiful. What are your favourite farmlit books? Are they funny or sobering?