Richard Flanagan recently launched the history Van Diemen's Land by James Boyce. An edited version of the speech has now been published in "The Sydney Morning Herald".
How good it feels to read a history that is not politics, but an act of enquiry applying intellect, empathy and a fresh curiosity. We have possibilities in Australia with our unique land, with our indigenous people, with our own particular response to our world, that suggest our future might still be worth dreaming. This is a history that will be challenged, rebutted, and shown to be wrong in various places. All works of largeness and innovation invite such a fate. But its generosity of spirit exploring the possibilities of what we once were suggests all that we might yet be. It is the most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore. If it is not as rollicking a read as Hughes' masterpiece, it is perhaps more original.High praise indeed.
