Sealed Souls:
A Colonial history of Sealing and Whaling on the southern coasts of Australasia from 1798 to 1852.
By John Robertson.
$80.00 plus P&H. Available online at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or www.sealedsouls.com
A 540 page lavishly illustrated book with adapted depictions of locations, boats, scenes, people, and maps that will take the reader there, plus a glossary that’s extensive enough to captivate and refer to in years to come.
A new West Australian publication (2022) that pulls the curtain on the darker side of colonial life. Sealed Souls is an historic journey back to colonial times when every player was in it for themselves, from top bureaucrats to lowly escaped convicts, and everyone in between. It was a time when displaced people were forcibly transported half a world away, only to displace others.
This fascinating book chronicles many of the sordid activities of these expired convicts who, as intrepid sealers and sailors, cut a frugal existence on the wild frontiers of Bass Strait, New Zealand, southern Australia and across the broader South Pacific, in many cases surviving with the help of Aboriginal women they had either abducted or bartered for. In 1831, many of these daring characters were chased out of Bass Strait by the Protector of Aborigines and headed westward, island-hopping to the fledgling settlement of Albany in Western Australia where they resurrected a new life hidden behind aliases and deceit.
A thought-provoking history about the beginnings of a young colony on the other side of the world.
This is not a Hesperian Press book but it is highly reccommended to anyone interested in WA beginnings.