Nick Brodie
Nick Brodie describes himself as a professional history nerd. He has a doctorate in late medieval vagrancy law, is a leading expert on the history of poor boxes, and is the author of acclaimed popular histories Kin: A Real People's History of Our Nation and 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings. His latest book is The Vandemonian War: The Secret History of Britain's Tasmanian Invasion, which uses a wealth of new archival material to re-write Australia's most infamous colonial war.
Nick Brodie

Cover story

by Nick Brodie
07 Feb 2021

With tattered spine and mottled hardback, its age was no secret. Spots of speckled mould lay on many a page between the aged covers, but I bought it anyway. The asking price was, after all, the equivalent of just a few coffees. Not bad for an object...

TASMANIAN VOICES

Hamilton’s windows on history

by Nick Brodie
27 Nov 2020

Cut from corrugated walls, these crude windows remind me of gun slits. Made by slicing three lines and folding out a thin rectangle of metal, they face an almost forgotten Tasmanian frontier. On a sunny day, full of birdsong and lush spring greenery, they repose in fading incongruity. These distinctive windows adorn a handful of corrugated sheds at the edge of a little town inland from Hobart named Hamilton. They house the apparatus of hydro-engineering, but thanks to their unique windows they resemble military pillboxes. By dint of their distinctive windows, they appear to guard the town from the floodplain and all that might lay beyond the distant hills.

TASMANIAN VOICES

The not-so-green South African man

by Nick Brodie
14 Sep 2020

His eyes tell of history. With yellow moss tucked under one brow and an orange spider nesting by his nose, he stares impassively. I’d like to say we locked gazes, but closer examination reveals that his pupils are off kilter. Neither eye looks...