Just Tassie Books

In 1803, William Buckley escaped from a British convict settlement at Port Phillip Bay and disappeared into the Australian bush. He was found 32 years later — barefoot, dressed in animal skins, carrying a spear, and having largely forgotten the English language. In between, he had lived with the Wathaurong people of what is now Victoria.

Hobart buildings constructed by the Seabrook family from the 1830s.

The second volume of Nic Haygarth's collection of stories from the Tasmanian bush — 300 pages of tales drawn from the back blocks of the island, covering the people, places and ways of life that define rural and remote Tasmania. Haygarth has spent years researching and writing about Tasmanian bush history, and this second volume follows the same approach as the first — oral histories, anecdotes, characters and incidents from across the state's rural and wilderness fringes.

James Fenton emigrated from Ireland with his family in 1834, and from 1840 pioneered farming land on Tasmania's Forth River, clearing heavy forest by hand. After visiting the Yarra during Victoria's 1850s gold rush, he saw a market for timber and turned to lumbering on the Forth before retiring from farming in 1879.