Sarah's Sandwich Seminar

This map, taken from Lynette Russell's book Roving Mariners, is commonly called The Great Circle.  The map has been the best way for me to get my head around the movements of nineteenth century Southern Ocean sealers and whalers and is one of the images I'll be using as presenter at Thursday's Friends of UWA Sandwich Seminar:
'Reimagining the Breaksea Islanders. History and Fiction on the Eve of Colonisation'.

Before West Australia was colonised, a small community of seal hunters lived on the islands around Albany, where I live now. Their origins were diverse - African American, English, Maori and several men and women indigenous to Van Diemen's Land, New South Wales and South Australia.
Pigeon or Warroba, pictured below, was one such sealer.
(John Glover, 1833, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart)

 

When Major Lockyer arrived on the Amity to found the settlement of King George Sound, he wrote that there had been 'some bad work done here' and within a fortnight he'd arrested several of the sealers with charges of murder and abduction.

Part of my PhD thesis is a fictional account of this snippet of history.  On Thursday, I'll talk history first, of the characters and events that I've found by delving into explorers' journals and reports. Then I'll go into the process of writing historical fiction based on these stories.

Here are the deets:
12.30 - 1.30 pm, August 28th
in the function room at UWA Albany.
Entry by donation.
You can ring 98 420850 to rsvp
You can bring yer lunch! And eat it too!

I hope to see any interested folk there.
Please be nice.
I'll be nervous.