True Tales of the Roaring 40s

Travel back to the 19th century for Tasmanian tales of:

A big-game hunter and explorer who travelled from the heart of Tasmania to the heart of Africa

Death masks of poisoners & preachers, criminals and politicians, and phrenology in Tasmania

A transported Irish political prisoner fired by injustice who escaped from Tasmania in the night and became a respected US politician and Civil War leader

Section titles and first paragraphs

The Big Game Hunter of Quorn Hall

As the sun sets on England’s Empire, Victoria’s sons become ever more distant memories in family archives. One such devoted Empire son, Thomas William Henric (TWH) Clarke, of Quorn Hall, Campbell Town, Tasmania, gave his home the distinction of housing the largest collection of trophy heads in the Southern Hemisphere. Let’s visit this colonial gentleman and hear about his adventures in his own words. After some background, we’ll delve into three of TWH’s safari diaries.

A Tale of Heads

Our journey begins at the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, Tasmania, in a dusty storeroom far removed from the museum’s timeless beauty. In the storeroom, staff work in white gloves over thousands of pieces of plaster of paris from a collection bequeathed by John Watt Beattie (1848-1920), Tasmania’s premier landscape photographer. When their work is done, staff will have assembled the shards into plaster heads which are death masks of the famous and infamous.

The Lost Years of Meagher of the Sword

Banish a dynamic Irishman to one of the world’s remotest backwaters and expect him to lead a low-key rural life, and what happens? How does he escape to lead the Irish Brigade in the U.S. Civil War and become Acting Governor of Montana?