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Articles on Tasmanian history

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Reminiscence of John Batman’s house above the Yarra Falls. A group of Aboriginal people camp at the lower right side near the river. Artist: WFE Liardet, 1875. Watercolour, pen, pencil and ink. Courtesy State Library of Victoria.

Eliza Batman, the Irish convict reinvented as ‘Melbourne’s founding mother’, was both colonised and coloniser on two violent frontiers

Eliza Batman has remained largely a footnote to her husband, whose dark deeds in the war over land are now well-known. How should we remember her today?
Though her brave acts were acknowledged after her death, Wauba Debar’s grave was later robbed in the name of “science”. Tirin/Wikimedia

Hidden women of history: Wauba Debar, an Indigenous swimmer from Tasmania who saved her captors

A grave stands in Bicheno, paid for by locals in the 1800s. It stands as a testament to the lifesaving ocean feats and tragic life of Indigenous woman Wauba Debar.
Lower Snug looking across North West Bay to Mt Wellington, Tasmania. Cassandra Pybus

Friday essay: lost and found in the Tasmanian bush

Alone and adrift in Melbourne, Cassandra Pybus returned on a whim to her childhood home of Tasmania. There, she rediscovered nature’s power, encountering the island’s difficult history as well as her own.
This pin cushion made from the jawbone of a thylacine won second prize in the handicraft section of the Glamorgan Show in 1900. Courtesy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

A fresh perspective on Tasmania, a terrible and beautiful place

A new book connects disparate objects and texts to tell the story of Tasmania. It is an inspired enterprise.
Detail from a reconstruction of a Tasmanian picture board by Simon Barnard (2015). Kristyn Harman and Nicholas Brodie

How picture boards were used as propaganda in the Vandemonian War

In the early days of colonial Tasmania, the British used threatening picture boards to communicate with Aboriginal people, giving them a choice between conciliation and death.

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