Starts 05:30PM
 RACV/RACT Hotel, 154-156 Collins Street, Hobart.

A population of proud indigenous people fight for generations to preserve their homelands against an expanding empire – an invasion justified as being necessary for ‘progress’. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community are destroyed. One of the far-flung parts of the British Empire? No. This is a British story.

All of this takes place in Eastern England, roughly between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period. The drainage of the fens is usually seen as a triumph of technology and progress: with the help of brilliant Dutch engineers the Fens moved from an era of flooding, hardship, malaria, and poverty to an enlightened age of drainage, flood control and economic and social development.

Yet there’s another side to this story. The drainage of about a million wild acres of marshland, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, largely destroyed an extraordinary ecosystem as well as the ancient culture of its custodians.

James will be joined in conversation by former Greens leader, Christine Milne.

Join them in the Collins Room at the RACV/RACT Hotel.
(Bar facilities from 5pm)

You can purchase tickets below.

 

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