Book launch

Towns of Tasmania 2: A journey through time

Featuring Penguin, Hamilton, Zeehan, Campbell Town, Cygnet, Sorell, Fingal, Whitemark, Sheffield, Dunalley, Bicheno, Westbury and Oatlands.

Following the success of their first collaboration, Towns of Tasmania: A Journey Through Time (Forty South Publishing, 2018), Bert Spinks and Pen Tayler have created a second volume celebrating the unique style and spirit of Tasmania’s smaller towns. Tayler’s stunning photographs and the engaging, informative text by Spinks combine perfectly to showcase another 13 towns.

Bert Spinks grew up in Beaconsfield and is now, mostly, a resident of Launceston. He is a writer, storyteller and bushwalking guide, each of which feed and reflect his interest in the way human communities interact with place and landscape. He focuses especially on journeys and movement, and language and literature. His other interests include festivals and residencies, fine beer and, occasionally, writing poetry and fiction. Although based in Launceston, Bert Spinks spends spend much of his time without a home because he is in one of the world’s wild or interesting places pursuing local lore.

Pen Tayler grew up in Penguin and Sulphur Creek, completed a science degree at the University of Tasmania, and then spent more than 30 years working and travelling around mainland Australia. Her jobs included waitress, postie and computing and multimedia teacher at TAFE and university level. She returned to Tasmania in 2010 and rediscovered her strong connections to the island while on windswept beaches, enjoying solitude in wild places, and finding again the delightful nature of the state’s villages and towns. Through all this, photography has been a big part of her life. She remembers photographing the barren hills in Queenstown when she was about 11 years old. She has been carrying a camera ever since, and in 2014 completed a degree in Visual Arts at La Trobe University.

Towns of Tasmania 2 will be launched by David Owen, Tasmanian author of the acclaimed Pufferfish detective fiction series set in Tasmania and a series of non-fiction books which include Thylacine, Shark and Tasmanian Devil.

Bert and Pen will be in-conversation with Rayne Allinson, Assistant Publisher at Forty South Publishing and Reading Group Leader at Fullers Bookshop.

Join them at the Afterword Café.

You can purchase tickets below.