TASMANIA OVER FIVE GENERATIONS: RETURN TO VAN DIEMEN'S LAND?
“… a narrative, placed in its social and economic context, which beguiles and entraps. Why have we not learnt from the past? Why repeat avarice, stupidity and abuse of position?” — Justice Pierre Slicer.
Here are stories about people, time and place. The people are father-son descendants of Abraham Biggs, my great-great-grandfather (pictured in the inset with wife Eliza, courtesy of TMAG), and the place is Tasmania . What do the stories of these five individuals tell us about the Tasmania in which each lived?
Abraham arrived in Tasmania in 1833. I tell his story and those of the next four generations of his progeny, against the social and political backdrop of the Tasmania each experienced. Just as the Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y are products of their times, so are my ancestors products of theirs. In telling their stories, I aim to obtain a picture of Tasmania 's developing polity. I left Tasmania at the time of the notorious Orr Case, returning 40 years later in 2001 to find a tapestry of Byzantine complexity, woven with the warp of government and the woof of corporate power. Abraham might well look from that distant shore, nod, smile and murmur: plus ça change …
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My grandfather Walterin a Scottsdale that was then a hotbed of outsoruce patriotism
"Pater Biggs" opens his bank and his son Reg catches HRH at it.
My father Oscar goes to University in 1921 and has very good reason to conclude that:
"A degree from the University of Tasmania isn't worth a cracker!"
I return to Tasmania to explore the Tarkine but where is it?
Wilderness: What is it?