- Museum number
- 1879,1109.54-63
- Description
-
"The Hobart Town Almanack, for the year 1830. With embellishments" (Hobart-Town, Van Diemen's Land, James Ross) 1829; a pocket almanack containing 9 plates etched by Thomas Bock, including 7 showing views in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), and 2 showing telegraph signals and maritime flags (the latter hand-coloured). Together with an engraved titlepage with vignette showing a pair of cockatoos, and additional titlepage for"The Hobart Town Calendar for the year 1830" with vignette showing a cormorant standing on a rock, also by Bock. The letterpress embellished with wood-engraved vignettes showing sites of interest, Aboriginal people, and explorers (see curator's comments). Bound in nineteenth-century gold-tooled leather binding, gilt-edged.
Etchings (one hand-coloured); wood-engravings
- Production date
- 1829
- Dimensions
-
Height: 79 millimetres (approx. sheet size of each page)
-
Height: 128 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Bock arrived in Hobart in 1824, initially engraving banknotes for the Van Diemen's Land Bank. The following year, he used Andrew Bent's "Tasmanian Almanack" to advertise his services as a "Portrait Painter, Historical and Writing Engraver."
James Ross's "Hobart Town Almanack" was a major source of employment for Bock in the years 1829, 1830 and 1835 (see Butler, p. 66).
For Bock see Jane Stewart et al., "Thomas Bock" (Ikon Gallery & Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), exh. cat., 2017. For the context of early printmaking in Tasmania, see Roger Butler, "Printed Images in Colonial Austraila 1801-1901" (National Gallery of Australia), esp. pp. 62-89. And for almanacs, see Ian Morrison, Marueen Perkins & Tracey Caulfield, "Australian almanacs 1806 to 1930: a bibliography" (Victoria) 2003.
This volume is an important record of early colonial life in Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania). The letterpress gives names of people in authority, describes the geography and excursions around Hobart Town, details of fees, duties, tolls and other rates, roads and bridges, laws and regulations, the post office, colonial produce, the military, schools, public institutions, religious societies, libraries, newspapers, ministers of the British government, and statistical information about agriculture, commercial and agricultural property, imports, revenue, and the settler and native populations.
The number of white male adults as of January 1st 1830 is given in these tables as 12,300, and females 5000. Aboriginal male adults are numebred at 500, and females 70. Bock himself would document members of the Aboriginal population in the early 1830s in a series of watercolour drawings, now in the British Museum (see Oc2006,Drg.56 to 80). The biographies of these men and women have been described by Gaye Sculthorpe in the Ikon Gallery catalogue (pp. 64-67).
"A Map of Van Diemen's Land, With the latest discoveries " (to be published early in February) is advertised in this volume after the table of contents.
The wood-engraved vignettes printed throughout letterpress are as follows:
- St. David's Church
- map of Frankland's Lagoon and surrounds
- St. John's Church
- "An Aboriginal Dinner Party"
- "A Breakfast in the Bush"
- (untitled) animal skin hung on tree branch with bending man and dogs
- "A singular Rock off the South end of Brune Island"
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
Associated Title: The Hobart Town Almanack
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1879,1109.54-63
