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Jack Thwaites – Pioneer Tasmanian Bushwalker and Conservationist – Simon Kleinig

Published by Forty Degrees South, Hobart in 2008. A very good copy of a hard to come by book.

Soft cover, perfect bound, 261 pages, illustrated throughout including images from hand drawn maps.

This is a different sort of biography. We have the background of Jack Thwaites born in 1902 at Kendall in the Lake District, England. Arrived in Tasmania with his family at the age of ten. Around 1928 Jack began his ambitious walking trips. He was three years ahead of Bert Nicholls who is famed for cutting the Overland Track between Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair .. the first genuinely up Frenchman’s Cap and likewise to the mountains in the South West.

This book is partly written around the diaries he kept during these long hikes, often written in pencil at the evening camp fire. Many diaries are missing … such a pity.

Simon Kleinig called on the help of many to produce this intimate and rewarding book not the least Jack’s grand children Anne and Bill Thwaites who also manged to find some memorable images of this pioneering walker.

Jack Thwaites – The First Real Tasmanian Bush Walker.

$50.00

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Shipwreck Archaeology in Australia – Michael Nash

A fine copy of Michael Nash’s all embracing Australian shipwreck book.

Published by the University of Western Australia Press in 2007. Squarish large octavo, 244 pages, very nicely illustrated throughout, end paper illustration of the dreadful goings on at the Batavia camp.

Pulled together by Nash with contributions from a number of other experts in the field, or the water really.

The fifteen wrecks dealt with in detail are presented chronologically starting with the Batavia (1629) .. then a leap to Hunter’s Sirius (1790) .. the Pandora (1791) all the way to the Tasman (1883). We say fifteen but the last is a place for wrecks Garden Island (1906-1945). Notes, glossary etc finish what is a really good reference or stand alone work.

The other dimension with this book is the back history of many of wrecks – First Fleet; Bounty Related; Slavers; Walers etc and for some another aspect such as Experimental Reconstruction (Zanoni 1867); Timber Shipbuilding techniques (Water Witch 1842).

Australian Wrecks – the way in to the subject – no better presentation.

$50.00

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The Convict Settlers of Australia – Robson

A first edition of this respected book on the subject. Published by the Melbourne University Press in 1965. Octavo, 257 pages, numerous tables of data included as appendices.

We are encouraged by the author to go through the tables in the appendices first before reading the book which is based up a statistical sample derived by way of the informative tables.

The body of the book seeks to define what sort of people made up the mass of the convicts transported and what sort of life they led in Australia. Conclusions that cannot be drawn from google search.

The Australian Convict population analysed and defined.

$30.00

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The Aboriginal / Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803-1831 – N.J.B. Plomley

Published in 1992 by the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, where Plomley was at the time an Honorary Research Assistant and the University of Tasmania. Described as their “Occasional Paper No 6”. Very hard to find a copy.

Printed internally on what A4 sized paper, one hundred pages, staple bound, binder’s tape, cream heavy card covers, image to front on a conflict ex Bonwick. Fine and clean.

The structure of the work is interesting, twenty-six pages of narrative, bibliography, tables of Aboriginal population, rather sad graphs of the decline and the level of incidents which peaked in 1830, numerous maps of Tasmania showing the location of clashes and a lengthy table of the nature of those clashed.

Sobering history not to be ignored …

$50.00

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Tasmania’s Struggle for Power – A.J. Gillies

An unusual little soft cover which for some reason commands higher prices than we would expect on the usual websites. We have not followed that route.

Published by Michael and Christine Lillas in Burnie in 1984. Octavo, 169 pages plus unpaginated appendix, some illustration, rather old-fashioned typesetting consistent with it effectively self-published style.

The title may be slightly tongue in cheek as we are talking about electrical power here not political, our preference, rather have the lights than the (insert rhyming slang).

The first good power in Tasmania arrived 1888 when the proprietor, Hogarth, installed a water driven turbine. The idea had come to him following a trip to Scotland. He only got enough electricity for the lights not the machines, but this was still a first on a number of fronts.

The bulk of the book is about the establishment of the first serious power generation at the great lakes and the building of dams and infrastructure to create the head of water. And the subsequent development of the zinc smelting industry which could not have arisen without the former.

The real power behind Tasmania

$30.00

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To Hell or to Hobart – A New Insight into Irish Convict History – Patrick Howard

Published by Kangaroo Press in 1994, a soft cover edition in fine condition. Octavo, 199 pages, illustrated throughout.

The author the great grandson of Irish convicts Stephen Howard and Ellen Lydon who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1843 and 1849 respectively. Stephen had stolen a gun from a landowner and Ellen and her family had been caught stealing a sheep during a time of high famine.

This book is a joy. We first get the “’back history” the situation in Ireland both generally and specifically to Stephen and Ellen. The offences, the trial, the jails, the transportation. Time in Tasmania as convicts and their eventual release or ticket of leave. There striving to survive, success and the successes of subsequent generations …

One Irish Convict family in depth but much deeper than that ..

$25.00

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All products

Jack Thwaites – Pioneer Tasmanian Bushwalker and Conservationist – Simon Kleinig

Shipwreck Archaeology in Australia – Michael Nash

The Convict Settlers of Australia – Robson

The Aboriginal / Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803-1831 – N.J.B. Plomley

Tasmania’s Struggle for Power – A.J. Gillies

To Hell or to Hobart – A New Insight into Irish Convict History – Patrick Howard

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