In 2018 Gatherer received a coveted State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship to research Critchley Parker Jnr’s ill-fated proposal for a Jewish settlement in South-West Tasmania. 

The State Library's Creative Fellowship program provides support to artists and scholars with funding, office space within the library, and special access to collections and staff expertise. With access to Parker’s diary, photographs and related manuscripts Gatherer researched the ambitious proposal for Poynduk a city that was never built and uncovered the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Critchley Parker Jr, the architect of this ill-fated plan. 

In the interwar years a number of prominent Jewish leaders in London established the Freeland League with a goal to establish an alternative Jewish territory to that of the State of Israel as put forth by members of the Zionist movement.  The Freeland League considered a number of potential sites around the world including large parcels of land in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.  

During his visit to Australia, Isaac Steinberg of the Freeland League, received a proposal for potential site in Tasmania from a young man from Melbourne. Critchley Parker Junior was the only son of Frank Critchley Parker a journalist and publisher with mining interests in Tasmania. Independently Parker had devised plans for a settlement at Port Davey in South-West Tasmania.  

With preliminary support from Peter Cosgrove the Premier of Tasmania, Parker persuaded Steinberg to accompany him to Port Davey on an exploratory trip. Despite the remote location, Parker considered the trip a relative success. 

As Steinberg departed Tasmania, Parker, despite extreme weather warnings, returned to Port Davey to conduct further research. 

Parker died alone, huddled in his sleeping bag in the foothills of Mt McKenzie, Port Davey, a site he hoped would one day become the 'Paris of Australasia'. Parker's plans for Poynduk were extraordinarily detailed and thorough, and his descriptions of a city at Port Davey were vivid and illustrative.