Convicts and the lust for gold come to life at Her Maj

A MUSICAL journey based on true stories from Tasmania’s convict past will be performed in Ballarat on Saturday 24 May.

Vandemonian Lags will be staged for only the fourth time in 12 years and is locked in for a 7.30pm show at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

The show stars Brian Nankervis, Mick Thomas, Tim Rogers, Jeff Lang, Ben Salter, Sal Kimber, Darren Hanlon, Shelley Short, Van Walker and Claire Anne Taylor, backed by an all-star band featuring Weddings Parties Anything’s Jen Anderson, Mark Wallace and Michael Barclay, along with Craig Pilkington.

Vandemonian Lags was previously a centrepiece of the inaugural Dark Mofo festival in Hobart in 2013.

It last played at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 2019 and was the subject of a concert album and feature film.

The concert will also be staged in Bendigo, Melbourne and Frankston.

The basis of the show is that the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 gave rise to an exodus from Van Dieman’s Land, as it was then known, as convicts and former convicts crossed Bass Strait in their thousands to seek their fortunes.

Many of the ‘Vandemonians’ fell to crime and in 1852 the Victorian government passed the Convicts Prevention Act with the express aim of preventing any further introduction of the prison population to the booming colony.

The act was deemed a failure and the place became known as ‘the prison without walls’.

Writing in the Adelaide Advertiser in 2014, Patrick McDonald said Vandemonian Lags “deserves its own special place in the annals of Australian folklore.”

Earlier this year, Beat Magazine had this to say: “Far from being a dry historical tutorial or a clutch of warm and earnest folk songs, this is an extraordinary musical and narrative experience.”

Thomas, famed as the frontman of Weddings Parties Anything, serves as musical director and also contributes songs along with Salter, Walker, Liz Stringer, Hanlon and Lang.

Rogers and Nankervis are the narrators, producers are Steve Thomas and Catherine Pettman, and the director is Ian Pidd.

Tickets are available at ballarat.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/142321 .