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BMHS Public Meeting and Talk – Saturday 4 November
October 23 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Blue Mountains Historical Society
Public Meeting and Talk – Saturday 4 November
On Saturday 4 November 2023, the Blue Mountains Historical Society will hold its next public meeting and talk commencing at 10.30 am at the History Research Rooms at 99 Blaxland Road, Wentworth Falls.
Our speaker, Mr Ian Burnet, will share with his audience the story of the Tasman Map. “Growing up in Sydney I visited the city’s Mitchell Library as a student in the 1950s. My memories are of a large and impressive reading room, but I must confess that I paid little attention to how I arrived in the reading room after passing through the front entrance. I now realise that to do so, I had to traverse one of the most remarkable sights in Australia: a mosaic of the Bonaparte Tasman map in the vestibule.”
Ian Burnet brings alive the many voyages of discovery that linked the exploration and Dutch conquest of Indonesia to a growing awareness on the part of the Dutch of the great, but at that time unknown to them, land to the south. Burnet documents the many voyages from Europe to the ‘far east’, by way of both the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, that managed to create in Europe a global awareness of the world.
He explores English and Dutch mercantile capitalism, and the subsequent decline of the Portuguese and Spanish feudal empires, the many ways that the ‘east’ and the ‘west’ interacted, the fortunes that were made, the horrors that many ordinary people experienced, and the way the foundations of the modern world were laid in our part of the globe.
Ian has spent thirty years, living, working and travelling in Indonesia and is fascinated by the diverse history and culture of the archipelago. This is reflected in his books ‘Spice Islands’, ‘East Indies’, ‘Archipelago – A Journey Across Indonesia’, ‘Where Australia Collides with Asia’, ‘The Tasman Map’ and ‘Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages’.
Come along on 4 November 2003 as Ian shares his story of the map which defined Australia with you.
Tea and coffee are available for $5.00 from 10.00 am. Entry to the talk is free to members, $5.00 for non-members.