‘A brilliant book and a must-read for anyone interested in how land shapes people’ —Tim Flannery

Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen’s Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life.

In this multi-award-winning history of colonial Tasmania, James Boyce shows how the newcomers were changed by the natural world they encountered. Escaping authority, they soon settled away from the towns, dressing in kangaroo skin and living off the land.

Behind the official attempt to create a Little England was another story of adaptation, in which the poor, the exiled and the criminal made a new home in a strange land. Inseparable from this was a growing war against Aboriginal Tasmanians, which became ever more extreme.

This is their story, the story of Van Diemen’s Land.

With a foreword by Richard Flanagan

‘The most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore. In re-imagining Australia’s past, it invents a new future.’ —Richard Flanagan

‘Van Diemen’s Land is a fresh and sparkling account of the first generation of British settlement in Tasmania that also makes an important contribution to Australian colonial historiography.’ —Henry Reynolds