Dr Anthony Page joined UTAS in 2002 as Lecturer in European History at the Launceston campus. Anthony’s research focuses on the Enlightenment and British culture in the age of revolutions, he is currently writing a book titled Britain and the Seventy Years War, 1745-1815: Enlightenment, Revolution and Empire.
“Being a historian is a great privilege – I often marvel at the fact I am paid to constantly read, write and talk about the nature of the past and present – paid to be a professional life-long learner!
“I grew up in Victoria and was keen to continue on the family dairy farm, which my grandfather started after the First World War near Ballarat. With low milk prices and high interest rates, unfortunately we had to sell the farm in the late 1980s. We couldn’t compete with the fertile high-rainfall regions of Southern Victoria and Tasmania and had our farm been in one of those regions, I’d probably be milking cows today rather than writing history.
“I tell you this because there seems to be many people in Tasmania who think that things can and should stay the same. But they never have and never will.
“There are various reasons I became a historian – one of them is the way it helps us understand change and continuity, and our place in the big wide world. Once people start reading history seriously, they tend continue throughout their lives. There is always more to learn, more questions to ask and it helps us to understand ourselves as beings in time and place. We can all look back, both as individuals and societies, and imagine things being very different given different events, decisions and circumstances.
“We live in a time of accelerating change and it is important that Tasmanians develop their ability to surf in the flow of history.”