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Thanks for sticking with us for Episode 002. We are very much in experimentation mode here, and will be trying out a number of different episode formats and seeing what works. This week was me rambling on about my area of expertise. Rather than answering any question in particular, I told a story I thought the audience would find interesting. Feel free to hit me up with follow-up questions about the episode topic. Other flaired users can also answer if they like.

Onto the supporting material!

I mention the phrase penal colony when talking about Port Arthur and Sarah Island, when I meant penal settlement. Port Arthur was a settlement within the colony of Van Diemen’s Land. It was not a separate colony itself. This has been bugging me ever since I recorded it.

I might have over-egged the pudding by stating that the convict who murdered another convict on Sarah Island to get the death penalty might have only had a few years left on his sentence. I don’t know for sure, but it’s far more likely that he was facing over a decade or practically a life sentence in the penal settlements.

The use of chain-gangs was extremely common, especially for the convicts who had no skills. If you were a carpenter or leatherworker or something, you probably worked alongside free tradesmen in very similar circumstances, just you know, not really getting paid. If you had no skills, you probably spent most of your time in a chain gang making roads or clearing forests. Unless you were a female convict, in which case you were almost certainly working in one of the appropriately named female factories or as some sort of domestic servant.

Here is a contemporary image of Sarah Island. Here are a couple of wilderness photos showing the sort of terrain that Pearce and his fellows would have had to cross on foot sans food. These pics are from my brother, and you should check out the rest of his South West Tasmania flickr album.

Here is a link to Google maps of Tasmania. As you can see, the South West of the state is still more or less completely undeveloped. I’ll be addressing the environmental struggle over the development of the South West of the state in a later cast, especially as it pertains to the creation of the first Green political party in the world.

Here is a copy of For the Term of His Natural Life. IMDB link to The Hunter.

Here is a link to the Tasmanian Government Heritage & History tourism site if you feel like seeing all this stuff in person. Please do, the Tasmanian economy needs the help.

As always, comments and criticism about the podcast format (aside from the content) are welcome. Do you have any issues with my accent? Do I need to slow down? Do you like this format, or prefer the more question & answer interview? How’s my tone? Was the episode interesting? Let us know.

Coming up next week: /u/TasfromTAS and /u/idjet read a series of questions and answers by /u/snickeringshadow on the role of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican culture.