“Performing the Ragged Garden” in Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture 68.3: 2025

In 2020 a guerrilla gardening project began in the corner of an apartment block adjacent to a hotel carpark. The Ragged Garden is planted with ‘uncultivated’ shrubs and rushes that grew on the site before European colonisation, and flowers that may have grown in the forgotten garden of the Ragged School that stood there later. In the present steel and concrete environment of the inner city, this tiny garden under the Gleditsia trees is a constantly transforming stage show where vegetal and interspecies dramas take place daily.

Read here

“Ten Days in 2020” in The Van Diemen Decameron, Forty South Tasmania

“It was the worst of times, it was the most creative of times.” With stories, essays and poems the Van Diemen Decameron, born from the hardship and creativity experienced in the current pandemic, creates a modern legacy in the spirit of Boccaccio’s original.

My story begins “Day one: It is 7.35pm on January 12 and like most other evenings I’m on the sofa casually glancing at the television, checking my phone, answering text messages and browsing Facebook”. . . . but this ‘normality’ soon transforms into the worst year of my life.

Read the full story here

“Blurring the Boundaries: Big Cat Diary” in Lives Beyond Us: Essays and Poems on the Film Reality of Animals edited by Sebastian Manley and Kirsten Irving (Sidekickbooks, 2015)

From the Introduction: “The contributors in this volume ─ writers, academics and poets, mostly ─ each offer a distinct way of thinking about the relation between animals and films, film genres or film history”.

“The Last Image: Julia Leigh’s The Hunter as Film” in Animal Death edited by Jay Johnston and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (Sydney University Press, 2013)

From the Foreword by the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG:

“A chapter in this book by Carol Freeman extends the story told in Julia Leigh’s novel The Hunter (1999). That work was recently adapted as a film (Nettheim 2011). It tells the story of a man, sent to Tasmania to obtain genetic material from the last Tasmanian ‘Tiger’, for use in bio-warfare. It explores the impact of technology on animal life and does so under the shadow of the danger of species extinction. Julia Leigh’s book is described by Freeman as unrelentingly ‘bleak’. Some may feel the same about this book. It is about two subjects that most people spend their lives trying to avoid, preferring not to think of them: animal welfare and protection, and death. Put the two together and one has a combination likely to upset, repel and distress many readers in Australia and abroad.”

“Feathering the Text” in Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts edited by Carolyn Van Dyke (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

From a review in The Medieval Review:

“Carol Freeman’s remarkable essay, ‘Feathering the Text’, intersperses a reading of that tale with an expose of what animals suffered in medieval book production. It would have taken 200 to 225 sheep or goats to produce a Bible, she estimates, and at least 58 calfskins to create the Ellesmere Chaucer. Every beginner in codicology should read her account of the beast within the book: not only sheep and calves, but the geese whose feathers furnished quill pens, the gall flies whose egg caches produced the oak galls required for ink, the burrowing worms and nibbling mice – and we might add the now-celebrated cat that left its pawprints on a manuscript in Dubrovnik. As for Chauntecleer and Pertelote, today we would call them free-range poultry, unlike the 20,000 unlucky chickens in factory farms, who would never be able to display such plumage.”

Barbara Newman, Professor of English, Religion & Classics, Northwestern University, Illinois

“Jill Symes: Landscape | Seascape | Escape” in Ceramics: Art and Perception 87 (2012): 92-95

A review of over 40 years of work by a Melbourne artist, focusing on her exhibition Fragments of Landscape at Kazari Gallery, Melbourne, 2010.

The impulse to create ceramic art can come from any number of sources. This review centres on Jill Symes responses to some of the unique land forms and vegetation of Australia – Cape Liptrap in Victoria, Lake Mungo in New South Wales, and the monoliths of Central Australia. “Symes escapes from the strictures of traditional forms, she creates or suggests quiet places to withdraw to: cave-like spaces, watery holes. She makes humble vessels that have the comfort of worn edges and curved shapes. The kind of objects and places that [Gaston] Bachelard feels satisfy a primal need for refuge”.

See Jill’s work here

“Reconstructing the Animal” catalogue essay for Reconstructing the Animal exhibition, Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmanian School of Art, 18 March – 15 April 2011

Exploring a re-thinking of animals and human-animal relationships through the work of contemporary artists: Adam Geczy & Jan Guy, Angela Singer, Harri Kallio, Kate James, Alicia King, Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir and Mark Wilson

Curator Yvette Watt

Online exhibition: Imaging Extinction from Trap to Laboratory curated by Carol Freeman

The web pages of a multi-media exhibition showing 200 years of thylacine images and how they were made. It includes early engravings in natural history books, old photographs, images in contemporary advertising and political cartoons, thylacine emblems on official and sporting material, taxidermy specimens and attempts at cloning.

View exhibition here

“Ending Extinction: The Quagga, the Thylacine and the ‘Smart Human'” in Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals edited by Carol Gigliotti (Springer, 2009)

Extract from a review in Genomics and Society:

“The final chapter, by Carol Freeman, addresses the biotechnological promissory around specie conservation and extinction reversal. It’s an impressive and multi-faceted chapter. For example Freeman shows how attempts to ‘bring back’ the Thylacine from extinction implicitly evoke cultural meanings informed by the film Jurassic Park. Whilst Freeman is rightly not wholly dismissive of the contribution genetic science can and does make to conservation, she effectively calls into serious question the ability of such extinction reversal projects to result in viable self-sufficient ‘rewilded’ populations. She leaves us wondering if they are better seen in anthropocentric terms, as vanity projects of yet more human control.”

Richard Twine, Department of Sociology / Cesagen – ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics, Lancaster University, UK.

“Imaging Extinction: Disclosure and Revision in Photographs of the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger)” in Society and Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies 15.3 2007
Access here

This essay focuses on the relationship between photographs of the thylacine and the process of extinction, between images and words, and between pictures of dead animals and live ones. The procedures, claims, and limitations of photography are crucial to the messages generated by these images and to the role they played in the representation of the species. It explains why the medium of photography and pleas for preservation could not save the thylacine from extinction.

“‘In every respect new’ European Impressions of the Thylacine, 1808-1855” in reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia 2.1 2007
Read here

When Tasmania was settled by the British 200 years ago, the thylacine, a shy marsupial carnivore with a striped back and a coughing bark, existed in small numbers on the island. By 1936 the species was extinct. This article focuses on the first published image of the thylacine in the Transactions of the Linnean Society in 1808, and traces its history over the following decades.

This paper was an entry in the National Museum of Australia Prize for the History of Australian Science in 2006.

“Extinction and Ethical Perspectives” in Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare 2nd edition. Edited by Marc Bekoff. Foreword by Jane Goodall (Greenwood, 2009)

Reviews of the book:

“A superb reference resource for students, general readers, researchers, or others wanting to learn about our relationship with the nonhuman world.”
– Booklist

“This encyclopedia shows why both animal rights and animal welfare matter around the world… As rightfully stated in the book’s foreword, ‘every time cruelty is overcome by compassion, we are moving toward that new and boundless ethic that will respect all living beings. Then indeed we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human evolution—the realization of our most unique quality: Humanity’.”
Library Journal, Starred Review

“Once Upon a Zoo” no 108

“It was pouring with rain as we toured the abandoned zoo – as if tears were falling from every animal ever confined there.”  This year is the centenary of Beaumaris Zoo’s relocation to a sloping hill overlooking Hobart’s River Derwent. Brendan Lennard, former Heritage Officer with the Hobart City Council, brings the empty space to life. Come with us on his guided tour – with original photographs and plan of the zoo.

“The Who’s Who of Trees” no 106

“What makes a tree significant? Plenty of things, according to Hobart City Council’s selection criteria”  They may be beautiful, historic, very old or rare. Read about 10 very different trees that are listed on the Council’s Significant Tree Register and see photos of them.

“The Ragged School” no 102

From the editor’s desk: “Carol Freeman’s evocative telling of the story of the Ragged School, which was part institution and part sanctuary for the poor children of early Hobart Town, is both eye-opening and heart-warming”

“The Suspension of Ordinary” no 89

“Imagine a workplace where egos are left at the door, where everyone works together and is constantly excited by their assignments, where projects are so varied and challenging that those who contribute to them are never bored, or overwhelmed” . . . . this is Liminal Design Studio, Hobart.

“Reframing History” no 91

“I’m sitting on a bench in a large room with deep blue walls. The colour reminds me of a Tasmanian sky at dusk, a sky that would have been noticed by countless Aboriginal people over thousands of years, perhaps when they gathered to eat what is now considered gourmet food ─ oysters and abalone fresh from the sea, wild cherries, or char-grilled wallaby”

“The Hedberg” no 87

“Hobart is abuzz with activity. At the corner of Campbell and Collins Streets, on the fringe of the CBD, a site in the old Wapping district is being excavated. An archaeologist chips away at brick footings and crumbling soil on the long-vacant block that is soon to be the University of Tasmanian’s Academy of Creative Industries and Performing Arts”

“Once Upon a Blue Gum” no 85

From the editor’s desk: “Carol Freeman knows a great deal about Tasmanian nature and has written compellingly about it in Tasmania 40° South issues past. Dr Jules Freeman, Carol Freeman’s son, is a molecular geneticist who studies blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus). When they get together to prepare a feature story on this most Tasmanian of trees, one doesn’t hesitate to publish it”

“The Thylacine: Gone is Gone” no 83

From the editor’s desk: “I am delighted to publish [a refutation of our feature article in issue 82] as our lead feature in this issue. It is not the romantic version of the thylacine story that some of us want to believe. It is, I say with icy certainty, the real one”

“Voices from the Theatre” no 80

“Sound is cardinal in theatre. Whether it’s a speech, music or dance, the murmuring of an audience or the enthusiasm of its clapping, or the thunder of complete silence, sound is an essential part of a performance experience “

“On the Collector’s Shore” no 77

“Searching for objects is about curiosity, seeking, finding and conserving things for the future. ‘Collecting is rescuing something,’ says Peter Clayfield” about his collection of Thylacine (Tasmanian ‘tiger’) memorabilia.