Cirrus@Austlit

'Remember when I was coming back from the Antarctic on that orange icebreaker, and a friend told me that he could smell home - Tassie. I told him that The Island just makes me feel so bloody sad and it rips up my insides and it's not my home. He looked at me for a while and then said, 'Tasmania's not like that at all. What you need is a welcome to country.'

'These lines are from a letter by author Favel Parrett. She's referring to the moment of return to Hobart from a journey made possible by the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship - she'd been researching the novel which would become When the Night Comes. The question of why a Tasmanian would feel this way about her home state is answered by the pages that follow, though the fact that the letter is addressed to Truganini - famously and erroneously considered the last Indigenous Tasmanian, who died in Hobart in 1876 - is explanation enough.' (Editorial Introduction)