Book launch

A Very Secret Trade: Cassandra Pybus in conversation with Mary Knights

The dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania.

Author of the bestselling Truganini, Cassandra Pybus has uncovered one of the darkest and best kept secrets in Australian colonial history.

In the nineteenth century, collectors and museum curators in Europe were fascinated by the antipodean colony of Tasmania. They cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens, including skeletons of the thylacine and the platypus. But they were not just interested in animals and plants. The belief that the original people of the colony were an utterly unique race and facing possible extinction had the European scientific community scrambling for human exhibits.

Many eminent colonial figures were involved in this clandestine trade, among them four colonial governors, several key politicians and even Lady Jane Franklin. In Britain, Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Newcastle and Professor Thomas Huxley were among many eminent men who solicited human specimens from the colony. Worse still, the men responsible for the care and protection of the few original people who had survived the ravages of disease and the infamous Black Wars were prominent in the trade.

Cassandra Pybus has uncovered one of the darkest and most carefully hidden secrets in Australia’s colonial history. It is time we all knew the truth.

Cassandra Pybus is an award-winning author and a distinguished historian. She is the author of thirteen books including the bestselling biography, Truganini and has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King’s College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini’s traditional country of Bruny Island.

Dr Mary Knights has worked in the Australian arts sector for over twenty years. She was awarded a PhD from UTAS in 2011 and has held curatorial, management, and academic positions in SA, WA and Tasmania.

Join them for a discussion at the Hobart Town Hall. Tickets are $12; you can purchase below.