With an uncharacteristically violent motion, she threw the painting in the wake of the ship. It dipped and rode the air as it fell. Then it smacked into the sea, tearing on impact. It quickly drifted away, face down. When she turned, Sir John was standing behind her, black streaks across his forehead as the wind blew his long greased hairs into writhing question marks.

Another punctuation metaphor — this time in a quote from Wanting, also by Richard Flanagan. The she in the quote above is Lady Jane Franklin, on her way back to England after six years in Tasmania with her husband, Sir John Franklin, who had served as lieutenant governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1837 to 1843.

Mathinna (1842) by Thomas Bock. Painting held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, Australia. Public domain.

Mathinna was the daughter of Towtrer, the chief of the Port Davey tribe, and his wife Wongerneep. The Franklins adopted her sometime after they visited Flinders Island, where the remaining Tasmanian Aboriginal people had been resettled by George Augustus Robinson. Mathinna’s naked feet were a source of considerable exasperation to Lady Franklin, who insisted on her wearing shoes. The striking portrait by Thomas Bock that inspired Flanagan shows Mathinna with bare feet, but her feet were only to be hidden again, behind a wooden frame.

When the Franklins returned to England in 1843, they left Mathinna behind. Unfortunately, not much is known about her life. After the Franklins left, she spent some time in an orphanage in Hobart, was then sent back to the Flinders Island settlement, from where she was moved to the Oyster Cove settlement on the mainland of Tasmania with the other remaining Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Unsurprisingly, her story doesn’t end well.

Listen to Richard Flanagan talk about Mathinna.

It’s not often that an author uses a punctuation mark as a metaphor, let alone the humble and often misunderstood apostrophe.

Hunched over […], a lost apostrophe in search of a word to which he might belong, he radiated little beyond the superior air of his self-appointed task that he claimed to be sacred.

I wrote down this quote while I read Richard Flanagan’s novel Gould’s Book of Fish some years ago. The book is a fictionalised and fantastic account of the years convict William Buelow Gould spent on Sarah Island and in Port Arthur, two penal settlements in Van Diemen’s Land (aka Tasmania). While he was on Sarah Island, Gould painted watercolours of fish found in Macquarie Harbour, now known as the Sketchbook of Fishes.

George Augustus Robinson (1838?) by Thomas Bock (?). Drawing held in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Public domain.

The quote above describes another historic personage, George Augustus Robinson. He was on a ‘friendly’ mission to broker a conciliation with the last 160 Aboriginal people of Tasmania. In 1833 he visited the penal station on Sarah Island and commissioned Gould to paint some portraits of Aboriginal people who were travelling with him as well as some views of the settlement on Sarah Island.

Sarah Island (1833) by William Buelow Gould. Watercolour held in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Public domain.