A sense of Tasmania: Post-war Tasmanian writers - their sense of place and analysis of the Tasmanian condition.

Considering the size of its population and cultural isolation, Tasmania has produced a singular number of talented writers, both of fiction and nonfiction. No generation of writers has been more prominent in the field of Tasmanian letters than that of the post-war generation, that is , those either born around 1945, or those born in the thirties, reaching their maturity in the post-war world of the fifties. This generation was the best educated and the most widely travelled since European settlement of the island in 1803. For these reasons, amongst others, no earlier generation had so plied itself with questions over Tasmanian identity and the Tasmanian condition. No earlier generation had so distanced itself from its formative childhood and from the island itself in order to undergo the catharsis of self-examination. This generation was perhaps the first to be concerned about its colonial status. Their parents had revelled in the Empire; it caused this generation only angst. They felt that they were victims of a colonial frame of mind and they knew that their role as artists was to create their own country and landscapes in their mind's eye; formidable and daunting tasks. For writers such as Koch and Conrad, the two most important of the group, the island had set the terms of their lives and despite their periods of \exile\" they had carried off inside them the home they could not return to Their role was to examine their society and its past and to rework it with new insights. thus to \"cast shadows into the future\". Tasmania's past was grim but not inescapable. Their artistic hope and optimism survived as \"Though the ghosts of Tasmania's past have not been laid to rest it is possible to go forward with hope.\" The task that this generation set itself was thus one of exorcism. This dissertation seeks to examine their attitudes to the -Tasmanian sense of difference; their reactions to the burden of Tasmanian history; their response to the Tasmanian sense of isolation and finally their varying responses to the Tasmanian environment. Despite their diversity there is a unifying theme. This generation of writers accepts Tasmanian difference and recognises that Tasmanians whatever the cost and pain must come to terms with themselves without the use of outside references. They must achieve some sort of spiritual autonomy. They must accept the challenge postulated by the Rev. John West in the last century and attempt to create a new society based on a new spirit of place. The selection of Tasmanian writers in this dissertation is by no means exhaustive. Limitations of space have demanded ruthless selection and for that reason the field has been limited to native-born Tasmanians with the single exception of Helen Hodgman. Her inclusion was initially in error but she remains as an interesting contrast to the sympathies of the native born. For the native-born even the highly critical the island retains a certain charm but Hodgman quite obviously detested the place. For although the island is no longer the principal place of residence for most of these writers it is clearly an ineradicable part of their psyche for \"We are like birds we human beings; in the end we fly back to where we come from.\""