#simon barnard

Okay so yes I did just read a dictionary almost cover to cover. I like colonial Australia, I like language and linguistics and I've read Barnard's other book on Australia as a penal colony. His writing is usually readable and well contextualised. Unlike his others which are aimed at younger audiences this one is aimed at adults, not researchers or academics (though they may get some aid from it) but more those that are interested in the period, the people and the language. It is well worth a read/browse even if just to see the origins of the Australian dialect.

What is interesting is how many of these words are still used in Australian English some 200 years later. Not just Australian English general criminal slang. Words like bolt, chiv, cleaned out, fence, nix, plant, out-and-out and yarn. Boned is kinda still used though possibly through a regain in popularity. Other words are still used but their meanings have changed. Even in this dictionary, you see the beginnings of dialect in the cant with the amount of the words for a single thing, ie watch Though watch is a homophone with the guard form and the timepiece of equal importance. Surprisingly or not quite a few of the words are derived from or are Romani/ Romany. They were called gypsies (viewed as a racial slur) while they were at the time and remain a global culture the Romani here are likely to be British. They like so many other cultures were ostracised at the time for their otherness and their unwillingness to conform. They are still treated poorly.

Barnard's paragraphs of facts and stories help modern readers to understand antiquated definitions. Conceptually none of them are difficult but there are nuances perhaps between the similar definitions. Anecdotes always help stories be told and understood. His cartoons add character to the book. They balance out well in what is in some cases some truly grim goings-on. References are made to some of the big names in Australian convict history/lore. Captain Moonlit (look I need to do more research on him, but damn that is walking a close line to labelling him queer), Kate Kelly, William Brodie (the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), Robert Callaghan and Thomas Jefferies.

The convict I had never heard of but might look into more because her story is young Mary Wade. Transported at 11 (or 13 stories differ) she is considered one of the colony's founding mothers. Some of these are people I think should be spoken about more. Like the roles convicts played in colonisation and our strong women. The entries remind me of why I love female convicts so much. There is a theory that the reason that Australians are the way they are as a culture, especially women, is that we come from those women like Ann Graham, Mary Wade and Mary Smith. Those convict women who worked hard, held their families together and gave birth in some of the worst situations. From convict women to convict brides to free settlers. Only amplified by those immigrants in the 20th century from matriarchal cultures.

To start with this is really only a book you read and enjoy if you have an interest. That interest would be in Australian's convict past, living conditions in that time or transportation. That said this could be an invaluable resource to a youngling doing an assignment on Port Arthur, convicts or early Australia. The intended audience is younglings but it could be enjoyed by an adult, could be informative to them. There is so much information in here that is not spoken about, that is hard to access in one place without visiting one of the convict museums (I'm so glad we are now honouring that part of our past).

A-Z of Convicts in Van Diemen's Land is written up as an encyclopaedia of life for transported persons in 1800s. Pleasantly it doesn't focus on Port Arthur Penitentiary (the most famed of the remaining sites) but looks at others such as Sarah Island, Hobart Prisoners' Barracks and the hulks. The book is quite wordy, but they not needlessly, each section tells a story. Using small sections of pure fact and small narrative of convicts, gailors, administrators and others from the time. The illustrations are gorgeous, pulling you into the time and going at least a vague understanding of what would have been endured at the time and giving you the opportunity to find the stories told in the illustrations. What is also nice is the variety of people talked about, the variety of their origins including American Linus Millar and Jamaican Thomas Day. It is complete from complete from Absconder to Zanyism.

This is book two of Simon Barnard's Tasmanian convict non-series. By age level Goalbird (a picture storybook, the biography of William Swallow) and followed by Convict Tattoos (cataloguing what tattoos convicts had, their significance and who some of them were, for high school students). I have read and enjoyed both immensely but one of my personal interests is transportation and convict life if it a topic that appeals they won't disappoint.

Gaolbird is a biographical picture storybook about the life and times of William Walker, known better as William Swallow convict and pirate. It tells an interconnected story of Popjoy fellow convict. The book focuses largely on the seizure of the convict transport ship the Cyprus in 1828.

The style is gorgeous. Double page spreads with plenty of detail tell the story of Swallow while small more comic style windows tell Popjoy’s tale. The copperplate writing which is becoming of the time isn’t the easiest thing to read, though it is only used for feature pieces.

This is another book using animals as a device to tell a story about humans to children is a way they may better understand. The violence is comedic. The convicts are made into animals, everyone else remains human. While all the convicts aside from Swallow and Popjoy are the same yellow birds they are individualised. All the humans are quite different, the more it is looked at the more detail will be seen. Particularly on the busy scenes.

Gaolbird is an excellent book if you are taking a child to Port Arthur Penal Colony or the Old Baily, given Sarah Island no longer exists. Particularly if going to Port Arthur Penal Colony and taking the Isle of the Dead tour, that is where William Swallow will be buried. It could allow for a reasonable introduction into the society that the locations came from.

Follow up with A–Z of Convicts in Van Diemen's Land (the second in Barnard non-series about convicts in Australia)