The best book I have read in years: In Tasmania by Nicholas Shakespeare.

I knew Shakespeare as the biographer of the most celebrated travel writer of all time, Bruce Chatwin.

Shakespeare fell in love with Tasmania after a holiday hiking the Overland Track. He promptly moved there from England.

By chance discovery of family correspondence, Shakespeare learned he was related to the “founding father” of Tasmania, a con-man named Kemp.

His book — a fascinating, personal history of the island from Kemp’s penal-colony Van Diemen’s Land origins to modern day — has many parallels with the work of Chatwin. It’s eerie at times.

My conclusion: Shakespeare is an even better writer than Chatwin. This is a fantastic book.

In Tasmania

This is the last post on the Australia travelogue.