Ken Gelder

And acclimatization societies are there to advise people on what species to introduce.

So they give advice on what species of fish to introduce to Australian rivers and so on.

And that's where we are today with a whole load of residues of introduced feral species that we can barely control.

Oh, he was massively read.

influential and important in colonial Australia.

And actually the Tom Keneally novel makes that very clear too.

So Dickens was everywhere.

He was in the popular press.

His novels were flooding Australia, being shipped out and being read en masse.

And his work was also being serialized here and also pirated.

I read some time ago, so I don't know if this is true, but the first

pirated edition of a Dickens novel came out in Tasmania.

Well, I think lots of things.

I mean, there was a lot of interest in character sketches.

So Dickens was a great character sketcher.

And his characters very quickly became memorable.

And the things they said also became memorable.

So people would read the speeches of characters.

And, you know, readings amongst groups of people, of course, was a very popular form of entertainment.

And Dickens himself was a