Wednesday 16 October 2024, 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Taiwhanga Kauhau — Auditorium, (lower ground) National Library Wellington. Entrance on Aitken Street or on Zoom.
At this month’s Friends of the Turnbull event, Dr Jennifer Ashton will discuss two former convicts, Charlotte Badger and George Bruce, who arrived at the Bay of Islands in 1806 and lived under the protection of rangatira Te Pahi. The talk will explore how they are remembered through the historical traces they left behind.
The records left behind
At first appearances, Charlotte Badger and George Bruce share a similar history. After being transported to New South Wales in the early years of penal settlement, they separately washed up at the Bay of Islands, living under the protection of the same rangatira, Te Pahi, in the same year, 1806.
Yet, what we know about them and their experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand differs because of the records they did, and didn’t, leave behind.
Shared experiences but a contrasting history
Charlotte Badger is commemorated in a variety of ways, most recently in the creation of a scholarship in her name at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington.
This talk looks at the contrasting histories of these two characters, how they developed and how what we know about Badger and Bruce reflects, not just the history of the early contact period in the north, but the way in which our understanding of the past itself is made.
About the speaker
Jennifer Ashton is an Auckland-based writer and editor. In 2012 she completed a PhD at the University of Auckland. In 2022, her book Thief, Convict, Pirate, Wife: The Many Histories of Charlotte Badger was published by Auckland University Press.
More information can be found here.