This is about recognition of notable characters who helped mould the rich human mosaic of Tasmania’s colonial history.
The ABC recently screened a Film Victoria documentary on William Buckley, the convict who escaped from the Port Phillip failed settlement attempt of late 1803 and spent 32 years living with Aborigines – but rejoined fellow Europeans when John Batman’s party landed to establish what eventually became Melbourne.
Hobart author Michael Tatlow (Shady Characters of Old Hobart, and with Charles Wooley A Walk in Old Hobart) fired off an indignant letter to the Mercury complaining that the documentary failed to recognise Batman’s party was from Launceston and that the film inferred it was from Sydney.
He saw it as the Victorian Government fostering a “virtual conspiracy of denial” on Tasmania’s contribution. (The Big Vic ignoring the Small Tassie). He added that he couldn’t find any credit for our pioneers in many Melbourne articles celebrating the 150th anniversary of Melbourne’s establishment: “They are ashamed, it seems, that the founding fathers of their grand metropolis were piddling Tasmanians.”
Strong sentiments indeed, yet really close to home I failed to see similar outrage voiced over the media here failing to recognise a very significant milestone in Hobart’s history – last month’s 200th anniversary of the death of our founding father, the first Governor, David Collins.
There was a fitting celebration hosted at the Hobart Town Hall by the First Settlers Association on the evening of March 24. Yet it went unreported the next day by the people across the road. This was despite two “in memoriam” notices published in the Mercury on March 24, for Lieutenant-Governor Collins’ death that day in 1810 – one from the First Settlers, the other saying: “Remembered with gratitude by citizens of Hobart.”
As a descendant of a convict and several free settlers, I was invited to attend the anniversary event. And had a reporter been there as well there were points of public interest worth recording, in photos and words – from the raised swords salute for Governor Peter Underwood by two honour guards wearing appropriate early military uniforms, to the slicing of the anniversary cake by First Settlers descendant Richard Lord.
And then there was the speech by the Governor, with references to the capable administrative way David Collins ran the show in those fledgling colonial days despite numerous obstacles, and with an eye to David Collins our contemporary Governor’s light-hearted musings on events down the road at post-election Parliament House – that there might just be scope for him to pop in and take charge of things!
Thus I also noted the Mercury publishing a letter by a Glenorchy correspondent early April in which she wrote: “Imagine, Tasmania’s Governor Peter Underwood calls the three political leaders to his office and tells them in no uncertain terms to sit down and talk sensibly to each other like grown-ups and get on with doing the best job for all Tasmanians. I’d love to see that.”
But the recognition factor for David Collins does seem to be gaining wheels. A Campania correspondent wrote to the Mercury that it’s time he had a statue in the city:
“Without his decisiveness, exceptional management and dedication, the city of Hobart and even the state of Tasmania may not have eventuated, at least not in the way we know it. The citizens of Tasmania should demand our political leaders fund a statue located near to where Collins first stepped ashore” (in 1804 having abandoned Port Phillip as unsuitable).
Earlier on Tasmanian Times: Rodney Croome: The Great Victorian Denial
