Tall Poplars: Tales from Tasmanias fabled River Derwent Valley

(Hardback)

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Tim HurburghsTall Poplars:Tales of Tasmanias fabled River DerwentValleyprovides a fascinating fresh take from the murkier days of Van Diemens Land through to todays picturesque Apple Isle. Stories of extraordinary stoicism, heroism and entrepreneurship but, painfully also, violence and shocking betrayal. It is aTechnicolor vision with images by Matt Sansom, of Tasmania and its Van Diemens umbra seen through the eyes of an author who lives there. As lifelong architect published poet and from a sailing family who arrived in Hobart in 1826, Tims perspectives told with heart and humour expose the fissures and folds of the Islands exotic terrain. His words are replete withlove, mild admonitions and episodic astonishment, sharing delight, shame and dumbfoundedness at his island home and the motley crew that rub shoulders around it.

Author Bio

Tim Hurburgh (author)

Tim grew up on the Derwent River north of Hobart, across the water from the estate that all Tasmanians know today as internationally celebrated private art museum MONA. Following a period in the United States studying architecture on a Harvard University scholarship, Tim returned to Australia. After years of successfully running two of Australias foremost architectural practices in Melbourne, his passion for writing evolved. Inspired by the lush undulating farmlands on which he now resides and evoking remarkable personal episodes for Tim in our unique island state, his books provide vigorous life spectres of present-day Tasmania and its shrouded past.

Over recent years, Tim has been informally mentored by renowned Tasmanian poet and writer Janet Upcher and well-known Melbourne writer and editor Jack Taylor. Both have inspired him to develop his writing and poetry voice. His first book was Disruptions: Tasmania in Poetry. This collection of short stories is his second.

Matt Sansom (photographer)

Matt Sansom is an emerging landscape and architectural photographer from Tasmania with over a decade of experience capturing images of Tasmanias internationally renowned natural and constructed panoramas. He was born and raised in Hobart and trained as an architect. Matt graduated in 2014 with the final year prize. His interest in photography developed through bushwalking in Tasmanias remote and towering landscapes fractured by river ravines with notable and extraordinary names: Franklin, Gordon, Meander and Serpentine.

Matt has developed an understanding of complex architectural ideas which, together with his refined observations of the islands everchanging weather and lighting conditions, have coalesced to provide him with a unique ability to record scenes of the Tasmanian environment, interpreting the natural world through the lens of the man-made. His work has been published nationally and internationally in architectural and other publications.