History

History

Richard “Fat Dick” Holdbrook: the life behind the legend

by Martin Stone

16 Oct 2025

We’ve probably all seen him. He is the face that launched a thousand beers ...

History

When 6hp ruled the roads

by Jarah Weinreich

26 Jul 2025

I first became aware of the Finlayson Bros cars while leafing through a copy of Marjory Bligh’s Tasmania and Beyond ...

History

The Marion Sticht necklace

by Garry Sims

31 Aug 2024

The curiosity of a historian and the determination of a west coast woman led to the return of a Tasmanian treasure ...

History

The three Czech doctors of Penguin

by Daniela Svoboda Tymms

02 May 2024

It is a long way from Czechoslovakia to Penguin ...

History

Frank Simpkinson: the Tasmanian landscape and the depiction of eucalypts

by James Parker

21 Apr 2024

... the difficulty early European settlers had in seeing the Australian landscape objectively, and in depicting the genus Eucalyptus ...

History

Wilson of the Steppes

by Grace Heathcote

10 Mar 2024

“A visitor may almost imagine himself transplanted into some nobleman’s park” ...

History

Understanding Darwin

by James Parker

25 Jan 2024

Peter Grant writes beautifully about eucalypts and Charles Darwin’s disparaging comments about them ...

Environment

In the dinosaurs’ garden

by Fiona Howie

22 Jan 2024

On lunawanna-allonah/Bruny Island lies a garden of primordial plants ...

History

The roo economy

by James Parker

02 Jan 2024

Some people worry about eating Skippy, and others about killing an animal represented on Australia’s coat of arms ...

Tasmanian Voices

Jimmy Wright, and the day they moved the goal posts

by James Parker

16 Dec 2023

Jimmy Wright was 18 years and five days old on Sunday, October 1, 1967, when he woke up in his hotel room in Burnie and realised ...

History

From Kupang to Van Diemen’s Land, the sea is never far away

by Mark Heyward

16 Dec 2023

The sea and the mountain are never far from sight ...

Old-timers

End of an era

by Hilary Burden

27 Sep 2023

Ray Johnston, 83, has lived and holidayed on the Freycinet Peninsula since he was a boy ...

The Arts

Landscape-shaped thinking

by Jonno Blood

16 Sep 2023

Every second scene here is worthy of painting and prose, a collection of small events that gladden the heart ...

History

The graves of Deal Island

by Craig Searle

09 Sep 2023

Deal Island is a dot in Bass Strait best known as Tasmania’s most remote National Park ...