John Hawkins
Of all the misfortunes to befall the Scots the “Clearances” were probably the worst. They engendered great bitterness throughout Scotland, for between 1783 and 1881 a documented 170,571 Highlanders were ejected from their traditional lands, to be replaced by sheep.
I suggest, that John Howard and Eric Abetz, for the introduction and promotion of Managed Investment Schemes, a tax scam which has converted over a hundred thousand of acres of the finest dairy country in Tasmania into Nitens plantations, have acted with a similar Ducal disregard for the consequences. Their cohorts in this crime, Paul Lennon, John Gay and Robin Gray, by colluding in the promotion of a pulp mill that consumes annually 3.5 million tonnes of native forest, are performing an act of bastardry, for which they in turn will be hated by generations of Tasmanians to come.
Finally, in a peculiar quirk of history, the dispossessed Gunns of Caithness, cleared from the Sutherland Estates in the 19th century, to arrive in Tasmania in 1840 would have understood the import of this letter, for if still in control of their Company they would never have allowed their name to be so besmirched!
OF ALL the misfortunes to befall the Scots the “Clearances” were probably the worst. They engendered great bitterness throughout Scotland, for between 1783 and 1881 a documented 170,571 Highlanders were ejected from their traditional lands, to be replaced by sheep.
The instigator was The Countess of Sutherland, who with her husband the first Duke employed Patrick Sellar, a Lawyer, and James Lock, their factor, to carry out “these improvements.” From their Sutherland Estates in Caithness they cleared 15,000 Highlanders burning their crofts in order to make way for 200,000 sheep, as a result, to this day, the Sutherlands are hated in Scotland for their role in the “Clearances.”
Donald MacLeod, a Sutherland crofter wrote about these events “a dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day and even extended far out to sea… about 11 o’clock in the evening I counted 250 blazing houses… the conflagration lasted six days till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins”
I suggest, that John Howard and Eric Abetz, for the introduction and promotion of Managed Investment Schemes, a tax scam which has converted over a hundred thousand of acres of the finest dairy country in Tasmania into Nitens plantations, have acted with a similar Ducal disregard for the consequences. Their cohorts in this crime, Paul Lennon, John Gay and Robin Gray, by colluding in the promotion of a pulp mill that consumes annually 3.5 million tonnes of native forest, are performing an act of bastardry, for which they in turn will be hated by generations of Tasmanians to come.
In today’s Tasmania, substitute farm houses for crofts and sheep and dairy country for Nitens plantations and the effects are the same. All for the benefit of a few who are causing the demise and destruction of the way of life of an Island as distinct to a Highland people.
Finally, in a peculiar quirk of history, the dispossessed Gunns of Caithness, cleared from the Sutherland Estates in the 19th century, to arrive in Tasmania in 1840 would have understood the import of this letter, for if still in control of their Company they would never have allowed their name to be so besmirched!
John Hawkins
