As we approach the annual Lemnos Gallipoli Memorial service in Albert Park to be held on 12th August, it was fortuitous that few weeks ago I had the pleasure to meet Elizabeth Connor, the daughter of Roland Newitt, an Australian veteran of both world wars.
Rare soldier s diary reveals secret massacre of Indigenous Tasmanians after almost 200 years
SunSunday 27
updated
MonMonday 28
DecDecember 2020 at 2:29am
McNally s diary is the only account by an ordinary soldier of life in the penal colonies, says Professor Sharpe.
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A soldier s diary disintegrating in Ireland s national library has revealed disturbing evidence of an undocumented massacre of Aboriginal people in Tasmania in the colony s early years.
The diary belonged to Private Robert McNally, posted to Van Diemen s Land in the 1820s, and records in gritty detail colonial life and encounters with settlers and a notorious bushranger.
But it s his account of his part in the cover up a massacre of men and women on March 21, 1827, near Campbell Town in the Northern Midlands, that stunned University of Tasmania history professor Pam Sharpe.