I am an IntelliWhore.
The many ways I am a geek, stream-of-consciousness style:
I've had the Irish folk song, "The Black Velvet Band" in my head because I've been mulling over memories of my time in Limerick,
and there's a line in the song about the singer being sent to Van Diemen's Land so I decided to rent a movie about a famous Australian outlaw of Irish descent who lived there because he was born to a father serving penal servitude in that particular Victorian colony.
(so of course I looked up its history, and it is the island now called Tasmania after the man [Tasman] who found the place, but was originally named for the man who began using it as a dumping ground for British criminals, but even then people tried to be Politically Correct so they changed it from the original name that was a bit too close to 'demon' [but ha ha, Loony Tunes still won the un-PC prize by inventing the Tazmanian Devil, so there] and now I know more than is usually necesary about the penal colony of Australia, which coincidentally lasted from the 1830s until 1853.)
and let me tell you that Heath Ledger makes one hot Irish/Australian bearded man who is hung hanged.
So then I OBVIOUSLY had to research the historical basis for said outlaw, which led me to an original letter (hooray for primary resources!) that has since become 'one of the most extraordinary documents in Australian history.' And it made me a little bit proud to be Irish.
"Every torture imaginable more was transported to Van Diemand's Land to pine their young lives away in starvation and misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself all of true blood bone and beauty, that was not murdered on their own soil, or had fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day, were doomed to Port Mcquarie Toweringabbie norfolk island and Emu plains and in those places of tyrany and condemnation many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke Were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains but true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddys land." - Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw in his "The Jerilderie Letter"
Today's history lesson: Life in penal Australia sucked hard.
I've had the Irish folk song, "The Black Velvet Band" in my head because I've been mulling over memories of my time in Limerick,
and there's a line in the song about the singer being sent to Van Diemen's Land so I decided to rent a movie about a famous Australian outlaw of Irish descent who lived there because he was born to a father serving penal servitude in that particular Victorian colony.
(so of course I looked up its history, and it is the island now called Tasmania after the man [Tasman] who found the place, but was originally named for the man who began using it as a dumping ground for British criminals, but even then people tried to be Politically Correct so they changed it from the original name that was a bit too close to 'demon' [but ha ha, Loony Tunes still won the un-PC prize by inventing the Tazmanian Devil, so there] and now I know more than is usually necesary about the penal colony of Australia, which coincidentally lasted from the 1830s until 1853.)
and let me tell you that Heath Ledger makes one hot Irish/Australian bearded man who is hung hanged.
So then I OBVIOUSLY had to research the historical basis for said outlaw, which led me to an original letter (hooray for primary resources!) that has since become 'one of the most extraordinary documents in Australian history.' And it made me a little bit proud to be Irish.
"Every torture imaginable more was transported to Van Diemand's Land to pine their young lives away in starvation and misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself all of true blood bone and beauty, that was not murdered on their own soil, or had fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day, were doomed to Port Mcquarie Toweringabbie norfolk island and Emu plains and in those places of tyrany and condemnation many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke Were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains but true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddys land." - Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw in his "The Jerilderie Letter"
Today's history lesson: Life in penal Australia sucked hard.