Nic's Blog
Mary Grant Roberts and the Woolnorth tiger foursome
By the 1890s farmers like Joseph Clifford and Robert Stevenson were effectively adding Tasmanian tiger farming to their portfolios of raising stock, growing crops and hunting. Since thylacines appeared on their property, they made a conscious effort to catch them...
Bog Lane and the bullock graveyard of the Bischoff Road
Bullocks roared and rumbled through the bush. The screech of the bullockies and the whiplash of their silk crackers kept beast and burden on track as the rain poured, the bogs deepened and the rivers rose. This was how a farmer made a living—or a fortune—during the...
The roadrunner: William Byrne, mining fields mailman. Part Two: The West Coast mail.
In the story ‘An “island” within an island: the maritime/riverine culture of Tasmania’s Pieman River goldfield 1877–85’, I discussed how that goldfield was virtually an island within the island of Tasmania, in that it was remote, served almost entirely by sea, took...
The roadrunner: William Byrne, mining fields mailman. Part One: The Mount Bischoff mail.
William Byrne (c1828–1911) was tall, muscular, clean shaven and long-haired, and he spun a yarn like Fenimore Cooper.[1] If he lacked the zip of the Warner Brothers bird and the insight of that other roadrunner, Forrest Gump, he made up for it in persistence. It was...
The Black Bluff Ski Club, or don’t forget to brake before you hit the lake
When I was a Tasmanian child the school-ma’amish Mrs Marsh demonstrated the mastery held by Colgate toothpaste over a piece of chalk. Or something. ‘It gets in?’, chirped this harridan’s childhood charges, as she pulled the chalk from a bottle of red dye and snapped...
In the footsteps of Philosopher: the West Bischoff Tin Mine on Tinstone Creek, Waratah
The man with the possum-skin bag on his back studied the rocks as he sloshed his way down the river with Bravo, his collie-spaniel cross. James ‘Philosopher’ Smith sought the motherlode of the Arthur River gold. Ahead of him, the low summer stream rippled as it...
The Francises of Middlesex Plains 3: George Francis and the Middlesex hunters
When 52-year-old Maria Francis died of heart disease at Middlesex Station in 1883, Jack Francis lost not only his partner and mother to his child but his scribe.[1] For years his more literate half had been penning his letters. Delivering her corpse to Chudleigh for...
Jack Francis 2: Francis and the Philosopher, or how Mount Bischoff came to Middlesex Station
When it comes to mythology, James ‘Philosopher’ Smith (1827–97), discoverer of the phenomenal tin deposits of Mount Bischoff in north-western Tasmania, has copped the lot. He was a mad hatter who ripped off the real discoverer, didn’t know tin when he saw it, threw...
Wrestler wrangled Tasmanian tigers: the fact or fiction of George Randall
In 1945 one-time wrestler George Randall (1884–1963) recalled catching fifteen thylacines in the space of a month within 25 miles (40 km) of Burnie. He didn’t smother them in a bear hug. Randall reminisced that, upon finding tiger scats, he would lay a scent for half...