The swift parrot flew in its hundreds of thousands when the Mercury first hit the streets of Hobart 170 years ago this month.
The white gums on the Domain were alive with the now endangered forty-spotted pardalote and, over the river on the eastern shore, the Tasmanian emu dodged hunting parties across the coastal plains of Rokeby before becoming extinct.
The Mercury has been celebrating its 170th milestone and the replica pages produced by the newspaper have revealed how the world has changed since that first edition went on sale during the morning of Wednesday July 7th 1854.
Electricity, cars, aircraft and the miracle of modern medicine have brought changes the readers of those far-off times could never have imagined. Progress, however, has also brought a downside – nature has had to make way for the growth of the city.
Along with the Tasmanian emu, the biggest loss among the unique Tasmanian flora and fauna has been the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, which was still going strong in 1854.
I don’t consider the local emu to rank on the same scale as the tiger because it was a sub-species of the mainland bird, although a distinct species, the King Island emu, vanished from the Bass Strait archipelago.
There’s no mention of wildlife in the early editions of the Hobarton Mercury – as it was known – although the newspaper was to go on to establish a reputation for its coverage of the wild world, especially through the columns of Michael Sharland, who wrote as the “Peregrine” for 60 years.
The newspaper clearly had other priorities when it was launched and a replica of its first front page gives a wonderful account of daily life in the colony. The convict connection is revealed in an advertisement for a female servant “either free or ticket-of-leave” and a public notice issued by the Hobart Town Immigration Society promotes the recruitment of the “working classes” for the growing city.
Ornithologists were coming, too, after the exploits of John Gould whose books about Van Diemen’s Land’s birds alerted the world to the avian treasures here. Further study of Tasmania’s birds established the migration routes of the world’s only migratory parrots, the swift and orange-bellied parrots.
By coincidence, the first edition has advertisements for shipping services with the same destinations as our parrots. A brigantine, the Sword Fish, was leaving for Geelong on the Victorian coast where the orange-bellied parrot spends the winter and the Hobart Town and Sydney Steam Company Navigation Company also featured. The ironbark forests of New South Wales close to Sydney are sometimes a winter destination for the swift parrot.
Looking ahead to the Mercury’s next 170 years, let’s hope the critically endangered parrots do not go the way of the emu and Tasmanian tiger, together with forty-spotted pardalote, now largely confined to Bruny Island.