Skip to content

Category Archives: Published

“See No Evil” Published

Photograph of a book sitting on a table. The book is titled "See no Evil: A childhoood mostly on The Glebe, Hobart 1946-1953". The book author is Peter MacFie. The book cover has a family photograph and a tartan background.Long before his death, Peter MacFie wrote of his early life on The Glebe in Hobart. However, he had trouble deciding when to call it completed. His brother Rob then encouraged him to ‘set it free’ by helping select family photos and Peter was able to approve a draft print before it was too late. Here, Peter tells how the war’s aftermath was not always happy for his parents, but gave himself the freedom for a (mostly) magic childhood running wild on The Domain in Hobart. He was also particularly proud of his assorted convict ancestry and concludes with a family tree.

Read more about this book on the See No Evil page, or buy it from the Shop.

“The Wesleyans of Port Arthur” Published

Book cover titled "The Wesleyans of Port Arthur" by Peter MacFie. The cover is filled with a photograph of church ruins at Port Arthur.With the aid of many friends and his editor, this remarkable story of the Wesleyan Chaplains who were appointed by the Government of the day to provide moral guidance to the convicts, military and civilians who lived at Port Arthur from 1833 to the end of 1843 has been completed.

Read more about this book on The Wesleyans of Port Arthur page, or buy it from the Shop.

“The Newsprint” Published

Photograph of book sitting on a table. The book is titled "The Newsprint - A Social and Forestry History of Maydena. An Experimental Logging Town in the Tyenna Valley, Tasmania. 1920-2020." The cover has a photograph of mid-century logging machinery, a silhouette of a forestry worker climbing a tree, and a newspaper article titled "A Forest Crashes into Newsprint".This book is the story of the forestry industry that fed the Australian Newsprint Mill at Boyer in southern Tasmania, the politics behind the enterprise and the people who worked there and lived in Maydena and the wider Tyenna Valley. Over a hundred people were interviewed for this wide-ranging book, from the General Manager of ANM to the whistle boys, and just about every job in between. These included the fallers and the first aiders, nurses and doctors who patched them up, the log measurers, loaders, road makers and the truck drivers who left their names for posterity on the tricky corners where they came unstuck. Plus so many more.

Read more about this book on the Maydena page, or buy it from the Shop.

Dulcot: A Rural Fringe Community in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley

Abstract

The European history of the people, properties, roadways and waterways of the Dulcot community in southern Tasmania, defined as between Richmond and Cambridge (Hollow Tree), and from the Coal River and Pitt Water to the Meehan Range. The original incoming (mostly white) emancipist families formed a close inter-related life on the sparse, thin soils of the dry slopes of the Meehan Range and eked out a living as day-labourers on the bigger properties occupying the better land in the valley but still within walking distance of their meagre homes.

These were the families whose children attended the old Mud School at Dulcot from 1869 to 1899, and then the subsequent Federation School before it was closed from the start of 1910.

Details

316 A4 pages, 79 images, 6 maps, plus footnotes, 2 appendices and a detailed index.

Front and Back Cover Design for Dulcot—A Rural Fringe Community in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley Christopher Cowles © 2026.

ISBN: 9781446151556

Purchasing this book

This book is now available direct from Lulu.com through ‘Print on Demand’ from anywhere in the world.

Buy this book through Lulu.com

If you want help in the process of buying direct from Lulu, click here.

Contents

Dulcot Table of Contents

Dulcot Sample Chapter

Chapter 04: The Early Colonial History of Dulcot. Click here.

Index

The Index from the book is provided here but not the page numbers. Click here.

Libraries Tasmania

Libraries Tasmania catalogue – coming soon.

Citation

MacFie, Peter, 2026, Dulcot: A Rural Fringe Community in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley, https://petermacfiehistorian.net.au/publications/dulcot/