A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose delves into her family's convict history

In the 19th century, Van Diemen's Land was considered a savage place at the ends of the earth, a brutal penal colony housed in an inhospitable wilderness where settlers scratched out a meagre existence.

As Australian author Heather Rose writes in her latest novel, A Great Act of Love, it was a colony that ran on rum, beer and sheep.

It was the last place one would expect to find a vineyard producing award-winning wine as good, or better, as that produced in the Old World.

But, according to local lore, an enterprising ex-convict by the name of Bartholomew Broughton established a vineyard in the 1820s on the banks of the River Derwent, with vines most likely sourced from France.

Other vineyards had failed due to the climate, damp and cold and given to extremes, but Broughton found success producing champagne (now referred to as sparkling wine due to EU-protected designation of origin regulations).

"The seasons can be very intense … but champagne loves that," Rose told ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

But, as Rose reflects, transforming those grapes into a world-class beverage is "a whole other alchemy".

The author first heard the tale years ago from Andrew Pirie, a renowned Tasmanian winemaker and viticulturalist.

"He told me the story of a vineyard in colonial Tasmania that made a sparkling wine that had apparently, although no-one had been able to prove it, been so good it had won a prize at the Paris wine show back in the early 1800s," she says.

It was a mystery that inspired Rose to write her first work of historical fiction.

"There are so many wonderful things to play with in history," Rose says.

"I didn't realise how rich it could be."

A surprising family connection

While Rose worked on other books — the Stella Prize-winning The Museum of Modern Love (2016), inspired by performance artist Marina Abramović, and the political satire Bruny (2019) — the story of the famed colonial wine stewed away in the back of her mind.

When she finally got around to researching the story, she discovered a surprising family connection.

"As children, our mother would tell us that we were descended from people who were beheaded in the French Revolution, and we made our way to colonial Tasmania," she says.

"When I looked into the history of the vineyard, I discovered that my family had settled very, very close to where that vineyard was.

But the story had a dark twist: Rose's ancestor was transported to Van Diemen's Land for murder.

"And it wasn't just an ordinary run-of-the-mill murder; it was a particularly vicious murder on the Battersea Bridge in London," she says.

Rose began trawling through the historical archives, including court records and letters, to form a portrait of a man who was descended from French nobility but ended up a convict in Van Diemen's Land.

She fictionalises his life in A Great Act of Love, including the terrible crime he commits.

Jacques-Louis, the character based her ancestor, murders a woman in a "seemingly unprovoked" attack on the streets of London.

Rose was horrified by his actions, but her research revealed a more nuanced picture of the tragic incident.

Like Jacques-Louis in the novel, Rose's ancestor was known to wear a large black hat to cover a prominent scar on his forehead (acquired by Jacques-Louis from a fall from a roof).

"He had had a frontal lobe injury, clearly … [which] can cause real Jekyll and Hyde aspects in people," Rose says.

"Of course, mental health … and especially traumatic brain injuries were not understood at that time."

Despite his violent behaviour, he was adored by his three daughters, who all travelled to Van Diemen's Land in the hope of reuniting with him.

"He was a person of mercurial aspects," she says.

A new identity

While Jacques-Louis is a central character in A Great Act of Love, the story belongs to his daughter, Caroline.

An intelligent and capable young woman, Caroline works with her father in the family business, an apothecary, and the pair form a close bond.

"He had taken her under his wing as a child, seeing her intense love of nature," Rose says. 

"He teaches her the story of plants … and how we take care of each other through natural remedies."

However, their relationship — like their future — is derailed by her father's misfortune.

"She doesn't know what to do with her love for him," Rose says. 

"She's very compromised in how she feels about him because he's been her best friend."

The notoriety of her father's crime means Caroline must change her identity to continue working as a governess.

She eventually falls within the orbit of her father's sister, the beguiling Tante Henriette.

"Henriette has her own way of surviving in London," Rose says.

"To all intents and purposes, she's a companion to ladies of nobility and in the background, she's a very good thief."

Under Henriette's influence, "[Caroline] becomes wily, very wily, and worldly", Rose says.

Eventually, Caroline realises she needs to leave her past in London behind and invent a new story for herself somewhere far away — Van Diemen's Land.

Despoiling paradise

When she arrives in Hobart after a long sea voyage, Caroline moves into a cottage overlooking Broughton's abandoned grape vines.

Descended from a long line of French winemakers, she sees its potential and sets about redeveloping the vineyard.

Rose's research took her to the earliest days of the colony when the whaling industry brought people from all over the world to timtumili minanya, also called the River Derwent.

"There was a constant passage of whaling boats between the Bay of Islands [in New Zealand] and the Derwent River," she says. "

"There were at least 700 people of all sorts of backgrounds living in what would become Hobart before 1804, when the British came and put a flag up, so it was a melting pot of global cultures."

But lutruwita/Tasmania was already home to an ancient culture, and colonisation had a devastating effect on the Indigenous population.

Rose's family has lived on the island for seven generations, a legacy she says is complicated.

"[There's the sense] we have come to this place and made a world on top of an existing world, and on top of an existing paradise, and that we've done many things to that paradise that have spoiled [and] despoiled [it].

A Great Act of Love is published by Allen & Unwin.