New book: Duck and green peas! forever! Finding utopia in Tasmania

In the 1820s a convict girl told her master defiantly that the free settlers should get out of Van Diemen's Land. It should be the convicts' land, they would rule and then it would be 'Duck and green peas! Forever!'

I love this description or getting your heart's desire, and I wondered who else had tried to find duck and green peas – utopia, a happy life, paradise, whatever you want to call it – in Tasmania. This book is the result. I studied everyone from Aborigines, convicts, free settlers, migrants, hippies, fishermen, greenies - everyone I could think of.