NaNoWriMo Day 18

I've reached just under the 40,000 mark today, yet as I scan what I've written so far I can see some where between 5,000 and 10,000 will be dropped off with the first edit. Still, this is part of the process of research and writing, getting it down and then separating the seed from the husks. 

Excerpt from NaNoWriMo Day 18

From the late 1790s, British and American seal hunters began visiting the northern and eastern coasts of Tasmania as well as the islands in Bass Strait with resulting contact between Aboriginal Tasmanians and Europeans. Sealers were regularly left during the sealing season on uninhabited islands in Bass Strait where they established semi-permanent camps or settlements on the islands. These were close enough for them to reach the mainland of Tasmania in small boats where they formed relationships with Tasmanian Aboriginal tribe, trading kangaroo skins for hunting dogs and items such as flour, tea and tobacco. A trade in Aboriginal women also developed as many were highly skilled in hunting seals and some Tasmanian tribes would occasionally the services of Aboriginal men to the sealers for the seal-hunting season. Other women were sold on a permanent basis, while others may have been given as ‘gifts’ meant to incorporate the new arrivals into Aboriginal society through marriage.

Sealers also raided to abduct Aboriginal women and were reported to have killed Aboriginal men in the process. By 1810 seal numbers had been greatly reduced by hunting so most seal hunters abandoned the area, however a small number of sealers, mostly renegade sailors, escaped convicts or ex-convicts, remained as permanent residents of the Bass Strait islands and some established families with Tasmanian Aboriginal women.