OUT of PRINT

The Launceston and Western Railway Company was formed in 1867 to build Tasmania's first railway line, connecting Launceston to Deloraine to carry agricultural produce from the rich farmland around Perth and Longford to port for export. The 45-mile broad-gauge line opened in 1871 — but the company was almost immediately in financial trouble, and the government stepped in to take over its operations in 1873, though the formal purchase of its assets wasn't completed until 1904.

A 1967 facsimile reprint of James Bonwick's 1856 history of the early days of Van Diemen's Land - Michael Howe, Lemon, Pearce, Brady, Dunne, Jeffries, Britton Hunt, and other notorious bushrangers of Tasmania.

On 14 January 1834, the last ship built at the closing Macquarie Harbour penal station on Sarah Island — the brig Frederick — was seized by ten convicts led by James Porter, a former sailor with previous experience in Chile. Using only dead reckoning, with no charts or chronometer, they sailed the untested vessel roughly 13,000 km across the Pacific to Chile, before scuttling her off the coast and reaching Valdivia, where they lived under assumed identities as shipwrecked sailors for two years.