On Sunday morning, 4 October, 2026 I was on ABC Hobart radio, speaking with host Lucie Cutting about the history of coffee palaces in Tasmania. You can listen to the interview here – it start at 42:56. So far I have found evidence of these Tasmanian coffee palaces: 1880 Hobart Read more
Van Diemen’s Land had, in its first fifty years, three government chaplains: Robert Knopwood in Hobart (1803–1823), William Bedford (from 1823 into the 1850s), and John Youl in the north (from 1818). Collectively, they spanned almost the entire convict era and territory. None was simply a clergyman: all held substantial Read more
On 19 August 1830, after 108 days at sea, the convict transport David Lyon dropped anchor in the Derwent. She had left Sheerness in May with 200 male convicts aboard, drawn from the hulks Retribution and others moored at Chatham — men who had spent months, sometimes years, in Read more
George Arthur governed Van Diemen’s Land from 1824 to 1836 with a thoroughness that no previous colonial administrator had attempted. He built a system of surveillance and classification that tracked individual convicts through every stage of their sentence. He issued regulations covering almost every aspect of convict life. He Read more
In March 1825, the editor of the Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser sat down to write about what he saw as one of the most pressing problems facing the infant colony. His concern was not the shortage of labour, the violence of the frontier, or the Read more