Why a Booktrail?
1842: No one ever really wants to end up in Van Diemen’s Land….
The Night Flower
What you need to know before your trail
Miriam is a Romany girl drawn from freedom in the hills of the North-West to the city. There, she is expected to eke a living playing her tin-whistle despite living in a place where “her people” are despised. When her mother dies from ‘gypsy disease’ – she’s caught breaking-and-entering and sentenced to transportation.
Meanwhil, Rose also ends up on the ship – when her husband dies and her father is sent down for illegal slave-trading, she’s separated from her children and forced to take a governess’s job. When she’s caught stealing, the judge shows no mercy.
The two women barely survive the journey but after a few weeks, they arrive just after Christmas into the blinding sun of the strange new island: Van Dieman’s Land. They are sent to work in a nursery, where women of ill-repute give birth before being sent for correction. The nursery is run by a corrupt, debauched Reverend and his idealistic son, who soon takes a fancy to Miriam.
This Tasmanian frontier town where is a place where anything could happen and morality is made by monsters.
Travel Guide
Newcastle – Lime Street
Miriam’s start in life is not easy…
“There was a lotta folk without houses what lived on Lime Street. It was a kushti sorta place, because the River Ouse passed by there, what meant we could wash ourselves now and then if we was needing to, and there was also some bridges and if you folded yourself up tight enough you could spend the night tucked under their arches and they’d give you a decent enough shelter from the rain, and also from the wind, what wasn’t no laughing matter in Newcastle”
The wind might still be a problem in Newcastle but happily the slums are long gone. Here instead is a fantastic resource for literature – Seven Stories – so visit there and think about Miriam and how she would have loved it.”
Van Diemen’s Land
This was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The name was changed from Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania in 1856. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of the country in 1642 when he landed at Blackman’s Bay. The Dutch flag was later flown at North Bay, Tasman named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt, in honour of Anthony van Diemen,( Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies,) who had sent Tasman on his voyage of discovery.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Night Flower
Author/Guide: Sarah Stovell Destination: Newcastle, London, Hobart Departure Time: 1840s
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