Our second Van Diemen Anthology features articles from the eleven finalists in the 2020-2021 Van Diemen History Prize, as selected by Dr Kristyn Harman, Prof Stefan Petrow, Paige Gleeson and Chris Champion. 

Articles cover a range of pre-21^st century topics including the turbulent history of the New Harbour breakwater, “the Goldie incident” (Cooee Beach, 1828), the 1914 battle to save the lower Gordon River (70 years before the more famous Gordon-below-Franklin Dam blockade), and an intriguing search for the owner of an exquisitely carved whale-bone cane.

JOINT WINNERS 

Tony Fenton (TAS) Unsafe Harbour

Terry Mulhern (VIC) Insubordination and Improper Intimacy

FINALISTS (alphabetical order) 

John Beswick (TAS) James Scott: surveyor, explorer and pioneer of North-East Tasmania  

David Faber (SA) The Goldie Incident Revisited

Madonna Grehan (VIC) Embodied Charity in the Maternal and Dorcas Society 

Nic Haygarth (TAS) Original Gordon-below-Franklin dispute: Beattie, BHP and Marble Cliffs

Fiona MacFarlane (TAS) Beware of Mrs Browne 

Erica Nathan (TAS) The Forgotten Birdsmith

Rohan Price (QLD) The Eternal Return of Tasmanian Trauma

Danielle Scrimshaw (VIC) "Fiendish fondness for sin": homosexuality and the Tasmanian Gothic  

Bradley Wood (TAS) The Mysterious Journey of Captain Charles Bayley’s Cane