Introduction
Hello, I’m not a web designer, I just like writing books. My current genre is migrant stories. I am very interested in history and it is people who make that history. Tasmania can count many thousands of migrants who have settled over the years. (Weren’t we all migrants once?) There are many thousands more stories to be told.
Tasmania was short of workers and the government sent agents to Europe to encourage people to migrate to our state. During the post-war years, the Hydro Electric Commission of Tasmania desperately needed workers for their mighty construction schemes. From 1947 onwards, new and old Australians converged on the central highlands villages of Butlers Gorge, Bronte Park. Tarraleah, Wayatinah and Waddamana.
With hope in their hearts they set out for far away Tasmania. Some came with little more than a soldier’s uniform. They came to build a hydroelectric scheme and they stayed to build a community.
In 2004, Marilyn received an Arts Tasmania grant to travel the State and interview some of these migrants. Hydro Tasmania assisted in getting the book into print.
Echoes on the Mountain was launched in 2006 at Petrarch’s Book Shop in Launceston, the Hydro Tasmania building in Hobart and the Burnie Bowls Club on the North West Coast. The book sold very well and has had a second print run.
Encouraged by the demand for migrant stories her second book, Tasmania – an island far away, is now for sale. Read more about the book on this site – some stories are the result of some amazing detective work. The characters who have been included in this new book regard themselves as true Tasmanians.
These are powerful stories that define Tasmanian migrants. People from nine nationalities are represented in this second book. Many endured appalling trials to call Tasmania home and this records their place in Tasmanian history.
