Foreword

Tasmanian settlers were keen to change the Island’s name from Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania in the 1850s when the British government brought convict transportation to an end and the colony was accorded the right to establish its own parliament with wide powers of internal self-government. But a name change could not expunge the legacy of the turbulent and tragic events of the first half of the nineteenth century any more than Tasmanians born after 1850 could ignore the enduring presence of the imposing architecture of the convict era which was an everyday presence in town and country alike.