AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

David Burn (1798-1875), settler and writer, arrived in Hobart in 1826 but was refused land grants after claiming assets that belonged to his mother, the first woman granted land in Tasmania. After living in New Norfolk, Burn returned to England and addressed the Colonial Society Club, London, in 1840, urging the need for a representative government in the colony, and he wrote a number of 'Sketches of Van Diemen's Land' for the Colonial Magazine (1840-41). He also published the pamphlet Vindication of Van Diemen's Land in a Cursory Glance at her Colonists as They Are, Not as They Have Been Represented (1840), before returning to Tasmania in 1841. Burn's pamphlet An Excursion to Port Arthur in 1842 was originally published anonymously in the Tasmanian Journal in 1842. In this sketch, Burn recorded his observations as a passenger on board a ship conveying convicts to various stations on the Tasman Peninsula, with particular attention paid to the natural beauty of the landscape and the harsh necessities of the convict system. Burn also accompanied Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin on their expedition to the west coast of Tasmania: an 1843 serialised magazine publication of this expedition was later edited and published by George Mackaness as Narrative of the overland journey of Sir John and Lady Franklin and party from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, 1842 (1955). Burn had literary interests, including writing Plays and Fugitive Pieces in Verse (1842) and a three-act play The Bushrangers (1829).