Multi-talented. Tea drinker. Cartophile. Lecturer in History at the University of Tasmania.
'The coolest (possibly the only) historian I know.'
she/her
| Hometown | nipaluna/Hobart in lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia |
| Uni profile | https://discover.utas.edu.au/imogen.wegman |
| HCommons | https://hcommons.org/members/iwegman/ |
Ok Family Historians and Handwriting Nerds, what do we think someone's name here is?
...case of my female assigned servant Anna ???? ....
"My mother did not know until last year that you were married, much more that you had such a marvellous progeny; this as you may suppose astonished her, as during all your communications with her you had never informed her of such an event, altho' it must have been many years since it took place..."
And who had this man failed to tell about the family he had formed in a colony on the other side of the world? Only his own sister.
Classic.
If you haven't ever whispered "bingpot!" in an archive, are you even a historian?
After a teaching-induced hiatus, I'm back to writing my book and scouring the archives for inspo.
Today, rickety Tasmanian millhouses.
The Old Mill at Perth by Louisa Ann Meredith, c.1850
https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/LPIC147-5-263
Several years ago, I was invited to poke around an old farm by friends of family friends. The site is a mix of new sheds, 200 year old sandstone derelicts, and a few of the old buildings kept in use. "The land grantees brought out windows from Scotland in the 1820s, one of them still has the leather hinges!"
How could I resist?
The current owners gave me a quick tour then left me to it, not before making sure I knew to head upstairs in the shearing shed. "There's some scribbles on the wall that are quite interesting."
Three hours later I reappeared in their kitchen, much to their surprise. "Good grief, are you still here?"
I'm sorry, "some scribbles"?
Yesterday, I was looking at historic aerial photography of my neighbourhood. This morning it inspired my feet to take my morning walk back to the creepiest thing I've found in the bush near my house.
A dumped old car is one thing. It's the shoe that's been sitting there for decades that gets me. I check back every few years and there's a little less car each time, but the shoe just keeps going.
It isn't next to any old or new road and I've checked the newspapers for accidents in this area, nothing seems obvious, but without knowing the type or age of car it's a little hard to be sure. This land has never been built up but has had some farms, so this could well have been dumped.
Do we have a vintage car corner of mastodon yet?
As someone who grew up in an area ravaged by Tasmania's 1967 bushfires, I naturally went looking for them in the data. Here's my local brewery, looking like someone has peeled off its lid.
#Tasmania #histodons #bushfires #history #AerialPhotography #Photography
I really love the technical details that come with aerial photographs. The clock, the altimeter, the (not always) level.
#photography #AerialPhotography #histodons #history #HistoryOfScience
I went looking for a resource for a student, and ended up spending an hour down a rabbit hole of aerial photography.
I was thrilled to discover that sixty years of Tasmania's aerial photos have been digitised and put online. Last time I saw these was in the vaults of the department.
https://dpipwe-au.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=01018d8cffe449ba8ac4c569a40bf5fb
#Tasmania #histodons #history #AerialPhotography #photography #maps #cartography #HGIS #GIS
Giving myself a Friday afternoon pick-up by sticking a quote from a recent student evaluate to my screen.