A Very Secret Trade
Title: A Very Secret Trade
Author: Cassandra Pybus
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Shortlist: Non-Fiction
In the 19th century, collectors and museum curators in Europe were fascinated by the antipodean colony of Tasmania. They cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens, including skeletons of the thylacine and the platypus. But they were not just interested in animals and plants. The belief that the original people of the colony were an utterly unique race and facing possible extinction had the European scientific community scrambling for human exhibits.
Many eminent colonial figures were involved in this clandestine trade, among them four colonial governors, several key politicians and even Lady Jane Franklin. In Britain, Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Newcastle and Professor Thomas Huxley were among many eminent men who solicited human specimens from the colony. Worse still, the men responsible for the care and protection of the few original people who had survived the ravages of disease and the infamous Black Wars were prominent in the trade.
Cassandra Pybus has uncovered one of the darkest and most carefully hidden secrets in Australia's colonial history. It is time we all knew the truth.
Judges’ report
The book’s spirit of ‘truth-telling’* derives from a family link to the shocking colonial history Pybus excavates. Gimlet-eyed yet compassionate, she delves relentlessly into ‘the dark story of the gentlemen [and one notable woman] collectors in Tasmania’.
What was it they collected? Skeletal remains of Tasmania’s First People. Graves were robbed, morgues raided, corpses squabbled over as patronage, prestige and trophy-taking masqueraded as ‘respectable’ science. That the trade was an open secret among elites is confirmed by source after source brought to light by Pybus. The sweep of her research is breathtaking, her findings even more so.
*'truth-telling' in this context refers to the endorsement from Thomas Mayo
About the Author
Photo by Peter Mathews
Cassandra Pybus
VPLA book photography by Sarah Walker
The 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are proudly supported by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund and Creative Victoria.