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Tasmania elections: historical concerns match contemporary anxieties Tasmania elections: historical concerns match contemporary anxieties
(6 months later)
On an island continent comprised almost entirely of immigrants, questions of who should live where are paramount. In Australia, those issues reflect western concerns of culture and invasion, of defence and the indefensible. In Sydney last week, the call to boycott the 19th Biennale on the grounds that it is being financially supported by Transfield – the same company complicit in the government’s much criticised detention of asylum-seekers on Nauru and Manus Island – has been heard. And here in Hobart, capital of Tasmania, the microcosmic status of this even smaller island is forcing new decisions, with state elections that match historical concerns with contemporary anxieties.The banks of the Derwent, the sound which fingers its way up to Hobart, were once witness to the first westerners who settled in 1803. They followed the sealers and whalers, who quickly denuded the waters of fur seals and southern right whales so plentiful they were said to keep the governor awake with their bellowings. Soon came the ships bringing transportees from Britain – among them my own ancestor, James Nind, convicted at Stafford Assizes in 1830 for stealing 19 hens and a cock. His story stands for tens of thousands of others – people who did not seek asylum here, but were forcible deported.Last week, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, associate professor in humanities at the University of Tasmania, conducted me to a darkened, climate-controlled basement in the state library; a place whose confines echoed the gaols in which its subjects were kept. The room smelt of history: of human, of dust, of animal skin. From its antiseptic shelves, the curator pulled down a slim volume, dated 1831, recording the “passengers” on the convict ship on which my relative arrived in what was then known as Van Diemen’s Land.It showed that James was a repeat offender; his previous offence was to have stolen manure. What an extraordinary notion: that stealing shit could result in your removal to the other side of the world. Later records showed that his hope of remission – his “ticket of leave” – was severely endangered by the fact that he was found “making water” in the street and “exposing his person”. He settled down with a fellow convict wife, Sarah, and prospered in a modest manner.In further volume, also dated 1831, chosen at random and which may never have been read since some lowly convict clerk inscribed it nearly 200 years ago, Hamish and I read a letter to the island’s then governor, George Arthur, from a land-owner demanding one of his employees, a convict, should be returned to him from a “roving party”. The phrase sounds innocent, almost fun; until you realise that these conscripted gangs were sent into the bush to capture and, more often than not, kill Aboriginal people. No one knows how many died, says Hamish – although these as-yet-unconsulted volumes, filled with petty bureaucracy, may hold the clues. One wonders what future historians will find in our contemporary archives, should they survive so long.Maxwell-Stewart and his colleagues have also used these records to make a remarkable discovery about the post-transport lives of these convicts. They have analysed data from the detailed records kept of the convicts – which even note their tattoos – to discover that the offspring of transported criminals were statistically taller than their counterparts back in Britain. The conclusion is extraordinary: transportation was actually good for convicts, and their genes.It’s a given that modern-day Tasmania is both a microcosm and an anachronism. Hobart is an historical relic - it still seems a frontier town, more like a port city such as Southampton or Bristol were in the 1950s, although it also happens to host an extraordinary contemporary gallery, the Museum of Old and New Art, funded by its creator, David Walsh’s gambling skills and eclectic tastes. MONA’s aspirations are an extraordinary contrast to the end-of-the-world feeling to this island, hanging off the southern end of Australia, next stop Antarctica. Tasmania holds the greatest area of virgin temperate rainforest outside Alaska but as we were reminded last week, that same forest is a modern economic battleground, subject to the same inevitable forces that drove the island’s enigmatic marsupial, the Tasmanian tiger, to extinction (cursed by the stripes on its body which gave the mistaken impression of its ferocity) - in exactly the same time scale as the island’s Aboriginal inhabitants were decimated by a similar combination of disease, abuse and even hunting.Along the Derwent’s shores, where jellyfish and rays float through the clear waters, the city sprawls out into its waterfront suburbs of high-end real estate. The election placards placed firmly in their driveways stand blue for the Liberal government which has, many believe, demonised a statistically tiny number of illegal immigrants, a source of shame for those who believe this country should retain its openness to incomers.But some more compassionate activists believe Tasmania’s chequered history might even show the way to a solution; one which is inspired its past openness to incomers, voluntary or otherwise. Last year, prominent asylum seeker advocate Julian Burnside proposed that the country’s illegal immigration problem could be solved by sending all their asylum-seekers to Tasmania. He suggested that it would be a lot less expensive than the $3bn it is costing to deal with the issue; and that Tasmania would even benefit, economically, by the influx. After all, said Burnside wryly, it’s been done before.As I ride back from the beach, the low convict houses, now “heritage” properties commanding high prices, bear testament to a past and a present defined by appropriation and insecurity. Their blank windows look out to the sound, silent witnesses to an old-new problem, and the uncertain solutions of the future. On an island continent comprised almost entirely of immigrants, questions of who should live where are paramount. In Australia, those issues reflect western concerns of culture and invasion, of defence and the indefensible. In Sydney last week, the call to boycott the 19th Biennale on the grounds that it is being financially supported by Transfield – the same company complicit in the government’s much criticised detention of asylum-seekers on Nauru and Manus Island – has been heard. And here in Hobart, capital of Tasmania, the microcosmic status of this even smaller island is forcing new decisions, with state elections that match historical concerns with contemporary anxieties.The banks of the Derwent, the sound which fingers its way up to Hobart, were once witness to the first westerners who settled in 1803. They followed the sealers and whalers, who quickly denuded the waters of fur seals and southern right whales so plentiful they were said to keep the governor awake with their bellowings. Soon came the ships bringing transportees from Britain – among them my own ancestor, James Nind, convicted at Stafford Assizes in 1830 for stealing 19 hens and a cock. His story stands for tens of thousands of others – people who did not seek asylum here, but were forcible deported.Last week, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, associate professor in humanities at the University of Tasmania, conducted me to a darkened, climate-controlled basement in the state library; a place whose confines echoed the gaols in which its subjects were kept. The room smelt of history: of human, of dust, of animal skin. From its antiseptic shelves, the curator pulled down a slim volume, dated 1831, recording the “passengers” on the convict ship on which my relative arrived in what was then known as Van Diemen’s Land.It showed that James was a repeat offender; his previous offence was to have stolen manure. What an extraordinary notion: that stealing shit could result in your removal to the other side of the world. Later records showed that his hope of remission – his “ticket of leave” – was severely endangered by the fact that he was found “making water” in the street and “exposing his person”. He settled down with a fellow convict wife, Sarah, and prospered in a modest manner.In further volume, also dated 1831, chosen at random and which may never have been read since some lowly convict clerk inscribed it nearly 200 years ago, Hamish and I read a letter to the island’s then governor, George Arthur, from a land-owner demanding one of his employees, a convict, should be returned to him from a “roving party”. The phrase sounds innocent, almost fun; until you realise that these conscripted gangs were sent into the bush to capture and, more often than not, kill Aboriginal people. No one knows how many died, says Hamish – although these as-yet-unconsulted volumes, filled with petty bureaucracy, may hold the clues. One wonders what future historians will find in our contemporary archives, should they survive so long.Maxwell-Stewart and his colleagues have also used these records to make a remarkable discovery about the post-transport lives of these convicts. They have analysed data from the detailed records kept of the convicts – which even note their tattoos – to discover that the offspring of transported criminals were statistically taller than their counterparts back in Britain. The conclusion is extraordinary: transportation was actually good for convicts, and their genes.It’s a given that modern-day Tasmania is both a microcosm and an anachronism. Hobart is an historical relic - it still seems a frontier town, more like a port city such as Southampton or Bristol were in the 1950s, although it also happens to host an extraordinary contemporary gallery, the Museum of Old and New Art, funded by its creator, David Walsh’s gambling skills and eclectic tastes. MONA’s aspirations are an extraordinary contrast to the end-of-the-world feeling to this island, hanging off the southern end of Australia, next stop Antarctica. Tasmania holds the greatest area of virgin temperate rainforest outside Alaska but as we were reminded last week, that same forest is a modern economic battleground, subject to the same inevitable forces that drove the island’s enigmatic marsupial, the Tasmanian tiger, to extinction (cursed by the stripes on its body which gave the mistaken impression of its ferocity) - in exactly the same time scale as the island’s Aboriginal inhabitants were decimated by a similar combination of disease, abuse and even hunting.Along the Derwent’s shores, where jellyfish and rays float through the clear waters, the city sprawls out into its waterfront suburbs of high-end real estate. The election placards placed firmly in their driveways stand blue for the Liberal government which has, many believe, demonised a statistically tiny number of illegal immigrants, a source of shame for those who believe this country should retain its openness to incomers.But some more compassionate activists believe Tasmania’s chequered history might even show the way to a solution; one which is inspired its past openness to incomers, voluntary or otherwise. Last year, prominent asylum seeker advocate Julian Burnside proposed that the country’s illegal immigration problem could be solved by sending all their asylum-seekers to Tasmania. He suggested that it would be a lot less expensive than the $3bn it is costing to deal with the issue; and that Tasmania would even benefit, economically, by the influx. After all, said Burnside wryly, it’s been done before.As I ride back from the beach, the low convict houses, now “heritage” properties commanding high prices, bear testament to a past and a present defined by appropriation and insecurity. Their blank windows look out to the sound, silent witnesses to an old-new problem, and the uncertain solutions of the future.