Author(s): Guy Salvidge

Fiction | Tasmanian Fiction | Feeling Blue

'A cracking tale that closely follows the historical context' -Aunty Patsy Cameron'I am George Baggs, wrenched from the cradle of my birthing and flung across the sea to this infernal place at the mercy of a pitiless wind ¿ a place where the western winds howl ceaselessly and rain pours down in sheets from the maw of a black sky.'DIEMENS is a tale of Tasmania's origins like no other, a story of how two worlds collide, transforming colonial Van Diemen's Land.George Baggs, a young Englishman exiled from his homeland, is crewed aboard a Bass Strait sealing ship. Fleeing the cruelty of his masters, Baggs and friend Jimmy Brown are saved by the kindness of northeast Aboriginal Tasmanian clansmen. DIEMENS follows the colony's first decades told through the lens of a family destined to shape Tasmanian history.