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Now in its ninth season, The Blackheath History Forum continues their 2017 season with a talk by Dr Nick Brodie from the University of Tasmania.

Australians are taught that Van Diemen’s Land was colonised in 1803 some years after Sydney in 1788.  But, also in 1788, Captain Bligh planted an apple tree on the future ‘apple isle’.  This is but a small hint that Australia’s usual story of ‘discovery’ and then ‘settlement’ is a bit too simplistic. Tasmanian history traditionally says that the warring Aboriginal Tribes in Van Diemen’s Land were ‘conciliated’ by humanitarian policies.  But, like in early New South Wales, ruling officials in Tasmania advocated terrorising Aboriginal people into submission.

This talk follows the story of British Tasmania from the 1770s through to the great tragedy of the Vandemonian War of the 1820s and 1830s, debunking some old myths, and setting the bigger story of British colonisation straight.

Dr Nick Brodie is the author of Kin: A Real People’s History of Our Nation (2015), 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia’s Beginnings (2016), and The Vandemonian War (forthcoming, 2017).  Qualified as both historian and archaeologist, Nick’s research interests range widely from medieval vagrants (his PhD topic) to Tasmanian manuscript traditions.

 

 

When: Saturday 12 August 2017, 4:00pm
Where: Blackheath Public School, Leichhardt St, Blackheath NSW 2785
Cost: $5
Contact: garyw56wserskey@gmail.com

Images courtesy Blackheath History Forum.