Congratulations to Janet as a joint winner of the 2022 Ernest Scott Prize for History for Vandemonians: The repressed history of colonial Victoria. (Joint winner with Lucy Mackintosh's 'Shifting Grounds: Deep histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.)

This prestigious prize is awarded by the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts and the Australian Historical Association.  It is a well-deserved award for an excellent book which tells us much about Tasmanian convicts, those who remained as well as those who moved to Victoria.

The judges called Vandemonians ‘a profoundly original and compassionate work of history that showcases new methods of collective biography to deliver fresh insights on every page about Australia’s colonial foundations. The Vandemonians were the generation of ex-convicts who crossed Bass Strait to lose themselves in Port Phillip and Victoria, seeking to escape their “demonised” past. … The convict experience is analysed in the full context of the life-course of individuals, singularly and in a crowd. This lucidly written historical study carries important lessons for our treatment today of the poor, the unwell and the disabled, the unprotected, abused and unloved.’   

For more see here.

We appreciate the support Janet has given the FCRC over many years.

TASMANIA v. BRITISH EMPIRE

THE BATTLE TO END CONVICT TRANSPORTATION

By Alison Alexander

The British government was determined to keep getting rid of its criminals to Tasmania; colonists had had enough of them. The Empire used all its weapons against the colonists – lying, intimidation, belittling, threatening, physical force – but in the end the colonists triumphed.

Publisher: Forty South

ISBN 978-0-6454382-3-9

RRP: $50

Available at bookshops or from the author