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In 1908 English gentleman, Ernest Westlake, packed a tent, a bicycle and forty tins of food and sailed to Tasmania. On mountains, beaches and in sheep paddocks he collected over 13,000 Aboriginal stone tools. Westlake believed he had found the remnants of an extinct race whose culture was akin to the most ancient Stone Age Europeans. But in the remotest corners of the island Westlake encountered living Indigenous communities.
Into the Heart of Tasmania tells a story of discovery and realisation. One man's ambition to rewrite the history of human culture inspires an exploration of the controversy stirred by Tasmanian Aboriginal history. It brings to life how Australian and British national identities have been fashioned by shame and triumph over the supposed destruction of an entire race. To reveal the beating heart of Aboriginal Tasmania is to be confronted with a history that has never ended.
Dr Rebe Taylor is a historian specialising in Tasmanian anthropology and archaeology. She first encountered Tasmanian Aboriginal history on a beach on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, hearing stories about the women who had been taken there by sealers. She has been trying to understand the history of Tasmanian Aboriginal diaspora, loss, rediscovery and endurance ever since.
– Winner of the Dick and Joan Green Award for Tasmania History
– Winner of the 2017 Tasmania Book Prize
– Winner of the QLD Literary Award for History
"[...] one has to admire Taylor's intrepid and creative research methodology, which sees her combine the biography of a high eccentric with an exploration of contemporary Tasmanian identity politics."
– Australian Book Review
"Into the Heart of Tasmania is Rebe Taylor's effort to reimagine his journey and, by doing so, to return us to a sense of the long and deep history of indigenous habitation in Australia."
– Geordie Williamson, The Australian
