Review of Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography, by Roslynn D. Haynes

Abstract

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the margin became the centre of attention. The shift to late capitalism ascribed new value to the local, the 'authentic' and the niche. In Tasmania this phenomenon coincided with the rise of a homegrown Green movement, and the return to prominence of the island's Aboriginal people, who successfully fought for possession of Truganini's remains at the 1976 centenary of her death. The confluence of these global and local factors altered Tasmania irrevocably. From being a place writers like Peter Conrad could not leave fast enough, it became one others gravitated to. The cultural life of Tasmania consequently became of increasing interest to scholars as well. Historians including Henry Reynolds, Cassandra Pybus, and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart have been some of the most visible working in this area, but those in a range of other disciplines, particularly English, Environmental Studies and Indigenous Studies, have become pre-occupied with the island, too.