Forty South Tasmania Magazine - Issue 102

In this issue

FROM THE EDITOR: Many years ago, new to Tasmania and barely able to spell Launceston let alone Freycinet or D’Entrecasteaux, I was contacted by an amateur science nerd named Fraser Johnston who wanted to write an article about a fish that lives in the murk at the bottom of the River Derwent, and gets around by walking rather than swimming. The spotted handfish, Johnston said, is one of the rarest fish in the world. I was hooked, no pun intended, and the story appeared in Issue 70. Recently I was contacted by a professional science nerd named Jemina Stuart-Smith who wanted to write an article about the spotted handfish’s cousin, the red handfish. To say the species is rare is ridiculously understated. The article begins, “A few handfuls of fish sitting in bags filled with seawater represent almost half the world’s known population. We have spent the past year carefully raising them from wild-collected eggs.”

History, as is so often the case, gives us some more compelling reading in this issue. Carol Freeman’s evocative telling of the story of the Ragged School, which was part institution and part sanctuary for the poor children of early Hobart Town, is both eye-opening and heart-warming. And David Faber brings the cold light of veracity to one of those dark stories of Tasmania’s early colonial years that history has for a long time tried to remember differently.

Finally, I was reminded while editing and preparing this issue that Hobart’s Mercury newspaper once described Forty South as “a lifestyle magazine with brains”. The memory was prompted by the realisation that seven people with a PhD contributed to this magazine. That’s a lot of doctors, and intelligence, in the house. If I say so myself.