Into the Heart of Tasmania

In 1908 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. Into the Heart of Tasmania explores WHO Westlake was and WHY he went to Tasmania. It is a biographical account of a journey, framed within the broader histories of science and colonisation. And there is a parallel journey in this book. I follow Westlake from the archives to Tasmania, and I meet the descendants of the Aboriginal people he met. I try to see that which Westlake could not: an enduring Indigenous people, who are the living, beating ‘heart of Tasmania’ of the book’s title. But my journey to write this history started far earlier. And assuming you know little about me, I thought I would tell you a little about myself, my previous work, and how I came to follow a 50- something year old stone collector to Tasmania!