Veronika Wild

I suspect that this is a statue of Errol Flynn, Tasmania's most famous 'pirate' having starred in no less than five pirate films - seen in the Hope and Anchor - Tasmania's oldest pub Argh me hearties! Perhaps it was passing the smuggler's pub in Sandy Bay today, but for some reason I am moved to write about pirates – no, not those who rip videos or those who attack pleasure craft or even oil rigs in the South China Sea, but the old fashioned swashbuckling kind. Though the Tasmanian ones may not have worn cocked hats or had parrots on their shoulders, they were nevertheless a big item in Old Hobart Town. As curator of the Australian Maritime Museum Dr Stephen Gapps wrote in his “ Pirate Tales ”  “If there was ever a scourge of piracy in Australian history, it was in Tasmania during the 1820s to 1850s, when Van Diemen’s Land was the repository of the largest number, and many of the most hardened and desperate, of convicts in the colonies. ‘Piratical seizure’ was ...

Getting too used to Broome Time I was really getting much too lazy. Here I was on my second last day in Broome and I hadn’t even seen it yet. Broome is a bit like that.   You settle in, slow down a bit and next thing you know, several years have gone by.   After an early morning swim and being savaged by sandflies* – it’s the little things that get you in the end, I set off to explore. Broome (permanent population around 14,776 and about 45,000 in tourist season), started out as a base for the pearling trade in the 1860’s.   Initially it was the Trepanger coming from Sulawesi, Timor and Kupang in search of beche de mer -sea slugs and sea cucumbers for Asian markets, who frequented these shores in large numbers at least as early as the C17th. While Abel Tasman had mapped the coastline on his way back from discovering Tasmania in 1642, it was English buccaneer, William Dampier, who is credited with being the first European to set foot in the area in 1688. He...