AustLit

'The best of the VAN DIEMEN HISTORY PRIZE 2022-2023 selected by Dr Kristyn Harman, Kirstie Ross, Tony Fenton and Chris Champion.

'The idea for The Van Diemen History Prize came out of a conversation with Associate Professor Kristyn Harman, of the University of Tasmania. Her idea was then honed to fit the underlying philosophy of Forty South Tasmania - high-quality writing on a Tasmanian theme, aimed at a general audience. The competition is for articles up to 3,000 words on any aspect of Tasmanian history prior to the 21st century.' (Publication summary)

'Set in mid-1820s Van Diemen’s Land, The Nightingale depicts a dark and disturbing Tasmanian past populated with redcoats, convicts, Aboriginal people, and a few free settlers. Controversial scenes include the repeated rape of a young female convict, the murders of her husband and infant, and the rape and murder of an Aboriginal woman. Uncanny parallels can be drawn between the on-screen experiences of the white female lead, and the violence visited on the bodies of Tasmanian colonial woman Elizabeth Tibbs, her husband, and infant in 1826. After situating the film within its historical context, this paper provides a mimetic reading through elaborating these parallels. It interrogates key points of divergence between these fictional and historical accounts of women’s lives to explore what they reveal about gender, class, race, violence, and justice in colonial Van Diemen’s Land and its depiction in twenty-first century Australia.' (Publication abstract)

'On December 26, 1847, a small group of Aboriginal people sat in the Lieutenant-Governor’s box at Hobart’s Theatre Royal watching a new pantomime. A local newspaper reported how “the natives … seemed gratified at their first public introduction to society in a place of amusement”. The Aboriginal spectators commanded as much, if not more, public attention than the performance itself.'  (Introduction)

'During the second world war, a young Aboriginal soldier, Private Clarrie Combo from New South Wales, exchanged mail with Mrs F. C. Brown from Loxton, South Australia — a white woman whom he had never met.' (Introduction)

'The intriguing image of an early twentieth-century English gentleman bicycling around Tasmania with his tent to collect Aboriginal stone tools and interview descendants of the island’s first people will likely capture readers’ imaginations. The man was Ernest Westlake, a learned and eccentric Quaker who travelled extensively in pursuit of his intellectual goals.' (Introduction)

'In November 1846 five young Maori warriors arrived in Hobart from New Zealand after being sentenced to transportation for life. Their arrival n the penal colony caused a sensation. Tasmanian colonists condemned their New Zealand counterparts for the treatment being meted out to local indigenous peoples, lobbied for the humane treatment of the men while they were in Van Diemen's Land, and advocated for their repatriation to their homeland. While consent to repatriate the men was being sought from London, the warriors were initially housed at the Hobart Penitentiary. During their first few days there, each man's portrait was painted in luminous watercolours by noted colonial artist John Skinner Prout. Hohepa Te Umuroa was perhaps the most compelling looking of the five. His portrait was also painted by Wiliam Duke, this time in oils. The afterlife of Duke's portrait, specifically the story that became attached to it, is the focus of this article and is situated within a wider debate about history and historical fiction.' (Introduction)

'Bulldog and Musquito, Aboriginal warriors from the Hawkesbury, were captured and sent to Norfolk Island following frontier skirmishes in New South Wales. Eventually, Bulldog seems to have made it home. Musquito was transported to Van Diemen's Land, where he laboured as a convict servant. He never returned. Hohepa Te Umuroa was arrested near Wellington in 1846, with a group of Maori warriors. Five of the men were transported to Van Diemen's Land where Te Umuroa died in custody. More than 140 years later, his remains were carried home to New Zealand. Booy Piet, a twenty-six year-old Khoisan soldier from the Cape Colony, was transported to Van Diemen's Land for desertion in 1842. After three years of convict labour, he died in Hobart General Hospital. These men are among 130 aboriginal convicts who were transported to and within the Australian penal colonies. They lived, laboured, were punished, and died alongside other convicts, but until this groundbreaking book, their stories had largely been forgotten.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Through a close reading of Kim Scott's Benang: From the Heart, this thesis interrogates what whiteness in an Australian colonial context looks like from an Aboriginal perspective. Its central proposition is that Scott's narrator, Harley, discovers whiteness as a consequence of discovering his Aboriginality...' (Source: Abstract)