Of One Blood: the last histories of Van Dieman's Land - E-book - ePub

In the last year of his life, Jorgen Jorgensen sits alone in a darkened cell, writing his final life history. This time, he swears, it will be the truth. Of One Blood is a creative re-imagining of the early years of the colony of Van Diemen's Land in the mid-19th Century. It is told largely through the contrasting voices of two of the colony's most enigmatic characters - Jorgen Jorgensen and George Augustus Robinson - both men who invented their own histories.
Jorgen Jorgensen was a Danish adventurer who visited the very first settlement in Van Diemen's Land (modern Tasmania, south of Australia), as a sailor. Upon returning to Europe he ran into troubles and debt, coming back to Van Diemen's Land as a convict. He spent the remainder of his years there, and became renowned as an explorer, constable, author and teller of tales - primarily his own!George Augustus Robinson by comparison, was a missionary, who took it upon himself to range across the wildness of Tasmania and gather up the remaining indigenous people and bring them to a mission where they would be saved - both spiritually and physically.
However in forcing them into a mission they became more prone to diseases and the despondency of dislocation and many died in his care. In his writings he lionizes his achievements and plays down his failures. The Van Diemen's Land the two men inhabit is both a land of history and a land of possibility - blurring the boundaries between what did happen and what might have been, retelling history and myth.