St James' Church, Cooling was restored in the 19th century, when a vestry was added, and the porch was rebuilt. It was declared redundant on 19 November 1976 and vested in the Churches Conservation Trust on 31 May 1978. It is now cared for by a group known as the Friends of St James' Church. The church is open daily to visitors. The churchyard provided the inspiration for the opening chapter of Charles Dickens' book "Great Expectations", in which the hero of the story, Pip, meets the convict, Magwitch. In 2005 the musician Jools Holland married the sculptor Christabel McEwan in the church. St
Convicts in Australia heavily in Patrick White's take on the Eliza Fraser story, the 1976 novel "A Fringe of Leaves". Convictism is canvassed in Bryce Courtenay's "Australian trilogy": "The Potato Factory" (1995), "Tommo & Hawk" (1997) and "Solomon's Song" (1999). The title character of Peter Carey's 1997 novel "Jack Maggs" is a reworking of Dickens' Magwitch character. Many modern works of Tasmanian Gothic focus on the state's convict past, including "Gould's Book of Fish" (2001) by Richard Flanagan, a fictionalised account of convict artist William Buelow Gould's imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour. Kate Grenville based the novel "The Secret River" (2005) on the life