Steps To The Scaffold The Untold Story Of Tasmania's Black Bushrangers

Description

Not many people know that the first two men publicly executed in Melbourne were Tasmanian Aborigines, Pevay and Timmy. Or that the spark for Tasmania's Black War of 1826/31 was an exiled mainland Aborigine named Musquito who had once worked for Lieutenant-Governor Sorell and other prominent colonists in Van Diemen's Land. Or that Black Tom Birch, a Tasmanian Aborigine who turned his back on the wealthy Hobart family that raised him and then cut a murderous swathe through southeastern Tasmania, was captured three times but astonishingly never punished - and then died in the service of the white settlers he had once persecuted. White Tasmanian Bushrangers like Michael Howe, Matthew Brady and Martin Cash are well known and well represented in the literature, but very few people know of the bloody exploits of Tasmania's black Bushrangers. Here, for the first time, their extraordinary tales are told.