Lake Echo - Field Notes & Research

Site research was undertaken during the development of The Guide To Remembering- The Colonial Amnesia project. Field notes, sketches, poetry and photography.

Research also included family history, old maps and journals. Focus region was The Big River Nation in central Tasmania with focus on Bothwell (maternal) and Lake Echo (paternal)

I was determined to explore the rugged Tasmanian landscape, mapping my convict ancestry and the parallels to British Invasion. Based on a historical map of the Black Line, I decided that Lake Echo was my destination. I would experiment and record the physical qualities of the landscape, looking for lines, creating them, exploring division in the landscape.

There is a sense of familiarity in Tasmania when you are Tasmanian. A feeling of safety and home. I had no issue driving in remote places alone, until I turned off on a road to Lake Echo. Frequented by fisherman, I thought it would be ok.

No reception. No maps. I finally found the road to the water.

The silence was deafening, it was quite overwhelming and I didn’t feel as though I should be there. I dont know if anything occurred here on the edge of this lake. It’s a dam now so perhaps it was the sorrow of the loss of culture and memory I was feeling.

Dead trees immersed, pushing through the surface of the water. It’s here that I felt the haunting, I felt displaced and began to see differently through the lens of a thief.

When I left, I looked in my review mirror and saw what looked like a scar tree that marked the passage to the water. I didn’t see it on the way in. It was as though I entered with Colonial ignorance and departed with Colonial guilt.

That moment resonated in the most powerful way. The experience of Lake Echo then formed the basis of my research for the Colonial Amnesia Project.

Looking for the parallels in my own family history. I always thought Blackwell family heritage started in Hamilton.

In Tasmania, no one wants to acknowledge their family history if it’s near Black Bobs, due to old myths of two headed families and the like. It turns out that my family heritage was in this region.

My convict 3rd great-grandfather Daniel Blackwell (1822- 1907) was pardoned from his crimes but could never return to England.

He was provided a parcel of stolen land near Lake Echo bordered by a river.