Tortoise Shell

About the Book

Aboriginal people inhabited Australia for many thousands of years before Captain Cook discovered it for the Europeans in 1770. The first British settlement was in 1788, a penal colony in the state of New South Wales. The northern part of the country lured free settlers from England and the state of Queensland was declared in 1859. In the 1860s the Tolls arrived from Bedfordshire in England. They were builders but Benjamin was also something of an historian and in his later years he wrote many of his memories. One of these he called ‘The memories of a Tortoise Shell’. His language was so poetic and the sentiments he expressed so profoundly human that his great granddaughter Mary Anneeta Mann wrote this little play TORTOISE SHELL, based upon his story. And your grandchildren’s children Will come with the artifice To polish the work of your hand And to joy in the splendor of the sun shining On their native land.

About the Author

Mary Anneeta Mann is descended from these early North Queensland pioneers. Frederick Toll and his sons Walter and Benjamin arrived in Bowen in 1863, helping to open up the land for new settlement and traveling to Charters Towers after Frederick was killed. Benjamin Toll’s story describes some of those years. Edmund Mann, a seedsman with global clients and his wife Mary Ellen Mann arrived in Charters Towers in the 1880s. Their son Willie Augustus married the granddaughter of Benjamin Toll. The two Mann sons were ANZACS fighting in the Great War where Fred was killed and Benjamin Toll’s only grandson was killed on Gallipoli at the beginning of that war. Mary’s books, ANZAC the Play and Anzac to Understanding are based upon the war letters and life of her father, Willie Augustus Mann. Her other books include two editions of The Los Angeles Theatre Book, 1978 and 1984, HUBRIS, The Construction of Tragedy, Aristotle in the Theater Today, TWO FAMILY PLAYS, Maria and the Comet and The Round Table, ThuGun and Natasha, moving beyond guns and violence, Science and Spirituality edited with Leland Stewart, Poems of Woman, Editor. Mentoring Poems, Four Centuries of Collected Poetry, and There Are No Enemies, a Practical Philosophy of Life.