Tasmanian Gothic

«Just about anything Tasmanian can be Gothic: the landscape – Hells Gates, Cape Pillar, Dismal Swamp, Cape Grim, Fury Gorge and Mount Horror all suggest a Gothic toponymy, places named for their secrets and hidden histories; the history of flagellation, sodomy and cannibalism; the ‘feudal’ social remnants; the genetic devolution and loss of material culture; degenerate folk art (Tasmanian Grotesque); the haunting psychoses of a genocidal history; the fauna – especially the extinct tiger; decaying colonial buildings, infused with convict labour, but also ruined mansions and ghost towns (Judy Tierney and Bob Casey, Fonthill: a true story of love, luck, murder and scandal, 2015); the scary megafauna and ducking-box in the Hobart Museum; the horizontal scrub, or bauera, of the remote south-west – even the weather. Excess, intricacy, threat, haunting, darkness, eruptive trauma, uncanniness».