Sunday 16 March 2025, 2 pm
at the Meeting Room, Queen Victoria Museum, Inveresk

Guest speaker Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart

will present the thirty-seventh lecture on

 Networks of resistance:

Mapping a convict road gang in northern Van Diemen’s Land 1829-1839

Abstract: In the early 1830s there were a series of strikes, go slows, mass escapes and attacks on overseers in Notman’s gang tasked with completing a road just south of Launceston. Collectively these form the largest protest by convicts in Australia since the Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804. This talk uses digital technologies to visualise this long-forgotten series of industrial protests, showing how they were linked into one rumbling action. In the process it identifies the ring leaders at the heart of this mass collective protest as well as the magistrates and other officials charged with bringing the gang to heel. While focussed on the local, the talk will use big data to put the struggle in Notman’s gang within the wider context of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land in the early 1830s.

Acknowledgments: This paper is drawn from a larger body of work co-authored with Monika Schwarz (Monash) and Michael Quinlan (UNSW)

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a professor of heritage and digital humanities at the University of New England and an associate member of staff at Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania. The author of over a hundred books and articles, Hamish has long been an advocate of the necessity of connecting cutting-edge research with heritage interpretation. His previous heritage collaborations have included the Lottery of Life visitor gallery at the Port Arthur Historic Site, viewed by over 2,000,000 visitors, and the Digital Panopticon website.

Listen to the City Park Radio audio recording:

37th John West Memorial Lecture – Notman’s Road Gang – Northern Tasmania Community Stories – Omny.fm

All welcome

Afternoon tea will be served

This is a free event for Launceston Historical Society members, visitors $5 

  Organised by the Launceston Historical Society in partnership with the QVMAG