Just Tassie Books

A glossary of words, phrases and expressions specific to Tasmania — compiled by Maureen Brooks and Joan Ritchie and published by Oxford University Press in 1995. Tasmania has its own distinct vocabulary, shaped by its convict history, its isolation from the mainland, its particular environment and the communities that developed here.

The story of Tazzie — a Tasmanian native hen who can't quite get her running right, even though running is what native hens do best. The Tasmanian native hen (Tribonyx mortierii) is a flightless bird found only in Tasmania — endemic to the island and one of its most distinctive wildlife characters.

The true story of ten convicts who escaped from Sarah Island — the Macquarie Harbour penal station on Tasmania's remote west coast, regarded as the most brutal of Van Diemen's Land's convict establishments — by stealing the brig they had helped to build, and sailing it across the Pacific Ocean to Chile without a map or a chronometer. The ringleader was Jimmy Porter, a resourceful and audacious schemer whose account of the escape became one of the most remarkable documents of the convict era.