Author Peter Conrad is from Tasmania. One of the many books he has written is At Home in Australia. He uses all sorts of photographic material and it’s great to see such a collection of images out of the archive and onto the printed page.
In his rhapsody on Tasmania he says “At school we were all issued with plastic maps. Two were necessary where I went to school: one of ‘the mainland’, the other of its island appendix. Pleasingly, they were about the same size, which helped me to overcome my sense of inferiority when I thought of that land mass looming above us across Bass Strait.
“Whenever I see a map of the continent, I check the whereabouts of Tasmania, as you do when patting your pockets to make sure that you have not lost your keys, your wallet, your passport.”
| Educational plastic maps of Australia, detail |
A.D.Hope’s Australia poem likens Australia’s ‘five cities’ to ‘five teaming sores’. Conrad reckons Hope left Hobart out.
Tasmania will always be there for me.
Julia Ritson
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