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  • Published: 23 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742533957
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

The Forgotten Islands




Michael Veitch has long been fascinated by the islands that lie between mainland Australia and Tasmania. The Forgotten Islands is an incredible, evocative read that will shine a light on this little known part of Australia and its extraordinary history.

'The more I learned, the more I realised this was an Australia I hardly knew. This was stormy weather Australia, an Australia of shipwrecks and sealers; of brutality and extermination; of folly and heroism; of wild weather and explorers in flimsy boats; of thousand-foot cliffs and amazing birds and strange vegetation; of places well-trodden and others believed never to have felt the impact of a human foot. This was a truly gothic Australia, as real and as valid as the gold and the drovers and the deserts, yet known to almost no one.'
Michael Veitch has long been fascinated by the islands of Bass Strait, between mainland Australia and Tasmania – a multitude of cold, dark isles, regularly pounded by atrocious weather and hardly visited, but rich in atypical Australian history. This is the story of his personal odyssey among them (plagued at times by appalling seasickness, airsickness and stinging nettles).
The Forgotten Islands is an incredible, evocative read that shines a light on this little-known part of Australia and its extraordinary history.

  • Published: 23 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742533957
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

Michael Veitch

Actor, writer and broadcaster Michael Veitch began his career in television comedy programs before freelancing as a columnist and arts reviewer for newspapers and magazines. For four years he presented Sunday Arts, the national arts show on ABC television, and has broadcast regularly across Australia on ABC radio. He has produced two books indulging his life-long interest in the aircraft and airmen of the Second World War, Flak and Fly as well as The Forgotten Islands in which he explores the little-known islands of Bass Strait. In 2015, he began touring a one-man stage version of Flak nationally.

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