In Tasmania: Adventures at the End of the World

By Nicholas Shakespeare

I read this book while I was in Tasmania in March, 2009, staying at my late grandparents’ shack at Marion Bay, so found myself in the places Shakespeare was writing about, up the East Coast and around Swansea.

I enjoyed its casual narratives in the way that it is fascinating to read about a place you know well but I remained distant from the narrator.

Shakespeare accumulates no end of contradictions, paradoxes, and missing pieces as he drives about the island exploring its history and gossip. Although he engages plenty of weathered, shrewd and atavistic locals in discussions, he doesn’t pursue to conclusion any of the hints they make about the facts behind their histories, but leaves the stories as they are, enigmatically colourful.

Ultimately the book is a vast collection of pithy observations and leading questions, which remain unresolved. After writing it, Shakespeare decided to move permanently from London to Tasmania, to a house in a remote location beyond Swansea on the south east coast. I wasn't really surprised to find that he remained a visitor and has since moved back to the UK

Anyone who grew up in Tasmania knows there actually are solutions to the riddles for which Shakespeare finds no answers and I certainly doubted that he would want to stay in Tasmania once he’d worked them out for himself.

March 2009