Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world.

The statue of Abel Tasman stoically looks upon the Dutch flag on a sunny Hobart day. Of course, this morning it is raining yet again, and Abel is enjoying the chance to have the bird poo washed off his lovely Lutjegasti head.
Abel seemed like a good bloke, even if he was a bit of a suck. Upon being the first European to stumble upon this fine island, he promptly named it Van Diemen's Land, in honour of his boss – Anthony van Diemen – head honcho of the Dutch East Indies, a bloke with big dreams and deep pockets who had visions of a grand Dutch empire that would extend into the “Great Southern Land”.

So he sent Abel down here in 1642, a good year for most not named Charles I. Despite its obvious charms, the Dutch didn’t think much of the joint. Lazy buggers, the Dutch East India Company reckoned Tasman's explorations were a letdown: he had neither found a promising area for trade nor a useful new shipping route.

With no existing thriving communities to leach upon – the Dutch (and Portuguese and Spanish and French) way – they said “bugger it”, and for over a century, until the poms were looking for a place a long long way away to dump their human refuse, Tasmania and New Zealand were not visited by Europeans.

But that is another story...

Comments

smudgeon said…

I always found it kind of funny that Tasman came down the west coast in search of trading & shipping routes, failing to recognise one of the richest mineral provinces in the southern hemisphere...

9 September 2009 at 12:17

Kris McCracken said…

Me, that because the Dutch required a source of labour to exploit those resources.

9 September 2009 at 12:26

Roddy said…

Aren't we fortunate?, as we could now all be speaking a form Tasrakaans. Is this a corruption of Afrikaans?

9 September 2009 at 22:00

yamini said…

Nice tidbit of history of Tasmania though I became sad on hearing the exploitation stories, something similar happened in India too, although at a much larger scale, courtesy our own messy affairs and the East India Company.

10 September 2009 at 18:22

Kris McCracken said…

I for one am glad that I'm speaking English...

Maybe the Dutch should have concentrated more on wooing the Mughals?

14 September 2009 at 10:19

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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