The man standing in the dock of the Supreme Court of Van Dieman's Land certainly didn't look like someone "laden with the weight of human blood, and believed to have banqueted on human flesh", as the 'Hobart Town Gazette' of 25 June 1824 put it. This was the first time that a self-confessed cannibal had appeared in court.
A year and nine months earlier Pearce and seven other convicts had escaped from the totally isolated prison-settlement of Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour on the far west coast of Tasmania. He was the sole survivor of their nine-week trek to what they thought would be freedom, a journey through some of the most difficult wilderness terrain in the world.
On the way five of his companions had been killed and eaten by their fellows.
'Hell's Gates' is a book about Pearce, but the Gothic, romantic and menacing Tasmanian landscape is as much a character in the book.
