Jimmy Possum, the chair maker.........

[Lance]

....was he a real character....?
....was he real at all.............?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-08/j ... ry/8504768

This is what Australia is.

what a fascinating story

[Greynomad]

There's a furniture store using his name. They have a story in the home improvement mag ads. Not sure it's the same story... Didn't pay much attention flipping through the mags at Drs.
Check Wikipedia?

[native pepper]

To the best of my knowledge, Jimmy possum was a real bloke. Have relatives living in the area and they have many stories of him, along with a chair or two in not so good condition. There are quite a few jimmy chairs around the area and believe a bassinet or two he made, Tas has a wealth of unknown stories revolving around crafts and building.

Tasmanian indigenous lived in very strong big timber buildings, the christians after Sunday services, would have a picnic and the men would go on hunting trips to kill the natives. They took their buildings off them, used them for barns and early churches, or burned them to the ground so the indigenous had nowhere to stay in winter, so starved and froze to death.

[dream4red]

Native pepper, the story that you tell is so sad. It is just amazing how badly the earlier generations of white fellas, treated our real locals. Nothing that we can do today to repair the historical damage, but the whole country should think about the real stories of our past.

[native pepper]

G'day Deborah, sadly the history Of Tas since the christian invasion, has been very well suppressed and very few non Tasmanians are aware of the recorded facts. There was a determined effort to rid Tas of indigenous, head bounties, weekly church organised hunts and the final push to wipe them out and remove the remnants to uninhabitable islands, where most perished from hunger and introduced disease.

Convicts were treated almost as badly and again there are many real stories of the hardships and depravities the indigenous and incarcerated were subjected to. It's a very interesting history and one well worth being told in schools etc, but the churches are against revealing their history and so are opposed to Tas history being opened up and revealed. There was a big controversy a few years back when two writers produced books surrounding the invasions history, coming from different viewpoints. One was using the facts and the other, the constructed one by the churches and governments that buried the truth and denounced all who tried to bring it up. So to find out, you have to go through the stored records if you can get permission. However there are many stories passed down through families that reflect the truth and not the ideological propaganda and lies, that tell you lots.