COUNTRY HOUSES

of TASMANIA
COUNTRY HOUSES
of TASMANIA
Behind the closed doors of our nest private colonial estates
Photographs by Alice Bennett
Text by Georgia Warner
First published in 2009
Copyright Alice Bennett and Georgia Warner 2009
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Allen & Unwin
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Australia
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Bennett, Alice.
Country houses of Tasmania : behind the closed doors of our nest
private colonial estates / Alice Bennett, Georgia Warner.
ISBN: 9781741756524 (hbk.)
Bibliography.
Country homes--Tasmania.
Historic buildings--Tasmania.
Tasmania--History.
Other Authors/Contributors: Warner, Georgia.
728.3709946
Designed and typeset by Stephen Smedley, Tonto Design
Printed in Singapore by Imago
Colour reproduction by Splitting Image, Clayton, Victoria
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Thank you to every one of the amazing home owners who have helped
make this book possible, and who made it so enjoyable along the way.
Thanks especially to Michael and Susie Warner, Sandy Gray and Richard
and Sue Bennett.
vi | vi
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Beaufront
10 Belgrove
18 Belmont
26 Bentley
34 Peppers Calstock
44 Cambria
52 Cheshunt
60 Dalness
68 Douglas Park
76 Dunedin
84 Egleston
92 Ellenthorpe Hall
100 Exton House
108 Forcett House
114 High Peak
124 Higheld
132 Hollow Tree
142 Lake House
148 Mona Vale
160 Old WesleyDale
168 Quorn Hall
174 Summerhome
182 Valleyeld, Epping Forest
190 Valleyeld, New Norfolk
198 Vaucluse
208 View Point
216 Further reading
You are usually getting warm when you spot the cluster of exotic treesthe towering oaks, liquidambars,
chestnuts, elms, poplars and pines. Look closely and you might spy chimneys soaring within.
Or, if youre lucky, you might nd yourself driving along a deserted back road of rural Tasmania, only for an
imposing Georgian mansion to appear from almost nowhere and take your breath away.
Tasmania is blessed with a rich cultural heritage. Lesser known than some of the states famous convict-built icons
are the colonial mansions that were constructed by the early settlers who braved this wild and untamed land.
As these adventurers laid the foundations of Tasmanias ourishing agricultural industry, they also created an
antipodean England in the lavish homes they built. Some of these homes are still in the same families today.
This book not only showcases some of those amazing houses but also the incredible people who have passed
through them over the years, and through those people gives a glimpse into the colonial history of Tasmania itself.
With only a couple of exceptions, the properties you will be granted entrance to on the following pages are
private family homes. Please respect the privacy of these homeowners and the generosity they have shown in
opening their doors to you via the pages of this book.
Alice Bennett and Georgia Warner
Introduction
2 | 3
Cashed-up and in the market for land, young English
solicitor Philip Smith could hardly have timed his
arrival in Van Diemens Land better.
It was April 1832, and ten days before a proclamation
had been issued to announce the sale of 32,000 acres
of government reserve at Ross, in the Tasmanian
Central Midlands. The grazing land was to be sold in
eight blocks of 4000 acres in order to fund a
government home for orphans in Hobart.
Philip bought seven of the blocks on behalf of
family and friends and these combined to become the
Syndal and Beaufront estates, later known just as
Beaufront. And it is still some of the best ne-wool
producing country in the world.
Beaufront is believed to be named after the Duke
of Northumberlands Beaufront Castle, not because
of its distinctive Regency bow front, created from
carefully rounded, dressed sandstone.
The homestead was built for Philips brother Arthur
and his wife, and a stone in the cellar carries the
inscription Dennis and John Bacon, stonemasons,
1837. The elaborate fanlight and half side-lights in the
portico were later but still classical additions, as was
the two-storey, pre-1900 stone extension at the rear.
Within are a very ne hall and impressive formal
rooms, and a new kitchen and conservatory area
have sympathetically adapted the home for modern
family life.
It is not only the Beaufront home and its impressive
stone outbuildings, including stables likened to a
Palladian mansion, that are important historically.
The magnicent Beaufront gardens are also on the
Register of the National Estate. They are described by
the Australian Heritage Database as follows:
[A] rare Australian example of the transition from
the Arcadian to the picturesque landscape styles
demonstrates features such as spaces articulated
by stone and brickwalling, garden ornaments with
classical detailing used for focii, and the utilisation of
Beaufront
4 | 5
distant views as enframed visual features. The garden
has historical value for demonstrating the separation
of the private pleasure garden from the utilitarian
vegetable and picking garden. Aesthetically, the
garden provides a high quality visual experience, with
enclosed spaces, mature plants, structured views and
a rich variety of colour and form.
Beyond the formal garden area is a stunning
sandstone sundial that it is thought may have been
originally carved for the Ross Bridge. This stone
bridge, opened in 1836 and still taking trafc today, is
not just a local thoroughfare but an astounding work
of art. Former highway robber and convict Daniel
Herbert is believed responsible for the 186 elaborate
stone carvings on the side of the bridge, depicting
animals, Celtic symbols and people involved in the
construction.
The carving at Beaufront portrays an eagle
clutching a lamb. How it arrived in the paddock
below the stables remains a mystery, but it has been
speculated that some of the overseers at work on the
bridge may have sold government time and materials
to construct local buildings. Though the practice was
forbidden, it was nonetheless fairly common.
When Arthur Smith and his wife returned to
England in the 1850s, Beaufront was sold to Thomas
Parramore of nearby Wetmore, and in 1916 Beaufront
and Syndal were acquired by William von Bibra, who
farmed them with his brother Charles. The von Bibras
acquired adjoining land over time.
Williams son Donald von Bibra was a luminary in
the wool industry and a founding member of the
Australian Wool Board. He took on the management
of the property at the tender age of twenty and
involved Beaufront in many cutting-edge agricultural
research projects.
Donalds son Kenneth and his wife, Berta, took
Beaufront in some new directions, including the
creation of Tasmanias rst wildlife park and one of
the states rst deer farms. They were among the
earliest to capitalise on the tourism potential of the
tiny historic town of Ross, population 400the
wildlife park attracted 25,000 visitors a year.
Both Kenneth and Berta were, and remain, leading
members of the local community; between them they
have been involved in everything from municipal
government to party politics, the National Trust and
a variety of other community organisations.
The couple rst met in Tasmania and were
reacquainted in England, where Kenneth was studying
at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. Berta,
meanwhile, had an intriguing role in one of the
greatest political scandals of the twentieth century:
the Western Australia-raised and Oxford-educated
lawyer had a watching brief for a person entwined in
the Profumo affair, to ensure they were not defamed
at the later trial of Dr Stephen Ward (who infamously
introduced the cabinet minister John Profumo to
showgirl Christine Keeler).
The tranquil countryside at Ross was a far cry from
all that, but Berta threw herself into sheep and cattle
breeding, raising children, and community life. She
and Kenneth have now retired to another historic
home at Longford, but their son, Julian von Bibra, and
his wife, Annabel, continue the family tradition today.
Julian and Annabel are deeply respectful of the
natural and cultural values of Beaufront and are
delighted with the opportunities their children have
growing up here.
Julian was encouraged to seek an education beyond
agriculture and studied economics at the University
of Melbourne, where he met Annabel who also
studied there. But, like his father, he went on to study
at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, and
then returned to Beaufront.
Farming wont be foisted on the next generation of
von Bibras either, but there can be little doubt that
they will share their familys strong sense of pride in
being custodians of this precious part of the world.
6 | 6
8 | 9
10 | 11
As Peter Bignell tootles around in the tractor on his
historic sheep, beef and strawberry farm, youd swear
you could smell hot chips or dim sims.
You wouldnt be far wrong.
The owner of Belgrove, in Tasmanias Southern
Midlands, near Kempton, makes a habit of visiting
fried food establishments in the area to collect their
used cooking oil, which he converts to biodiesel to
power his tractor, ute and even his homes central
heating. The original Aga stove in the kitchen is next
in line for biodiesel conversion, which is just one of
Peters many ingenious little modications to this
grand old sandstone home.
Belgrove was built circa 1888 for Arthur Newell
Corney and his family, who came to this property from
Lake House at Cressy, near Launceston in the Northern
Midlands, which was constructed for Robert Corney.
It was the third house at Belgrove, the rst being a very
early cottage of which only sandstone foundations
remain, and the second dating back to the 1840s, parts
of which (such as the meat-house, bake oven and
dairy) stand in what is now the back garden.
In about 1903, the Corneys sold Belgrove to Arthur
Drysdale, known as the man with the Midas touch,
who at times also owned several other pastoral
properties, including neighbouring Mt Vernon and
Kelvin Grove.
In 1938, Drysdale sold Belgrove for 22,000 pounds
to concentrate on building his lavishly appointed
Wrest Point Hotel in Hobart. He later owned Hobarts
historic Hadleys Hotel and became the sole licensee
and proprietor of Tasmanian Lotteries after George
Adams Tattersalls empire transferred from Tasmania
to Victoria in the 1950s.
The farm passed into the ownership of the Headlam
and then the Hawker families before it was put on the
market again in 1999.
Sally Bignell didnt even know Belgrove existed
before she noticed the for sale sign on the Midland
Highway property as she drove past one day, even
Belgrove
12 | 13
though shed passed it countless times before. She
went to the open house and instantly fell in love.
Coming from a sprawling old cottage in the nearby
Central Highlands town of Bothwell, it was the perfect
upgrade: sandstone, stately, open and light.
But there were concerns about capitalising so much
on a house, and when Belgrove and its 130 hectares
were sold to the owners of a shorthorn cattle stud,
Sally resigned herself to the fact that it just wasnt
meant to be.
Eighteen months of drought followed and, on
another trip down the highway, Sally once again saw
a for sale sign on the white picket Belgrove fence. She
wasnt going to let it slip through her hands twice and
the transaction was completed in 2001.
Having been well looked after throughout the years,
there were no structural problems with Belgrove, but
it was dated. The bathroom was turquoise, the carpet
brown shagpile, there were multiple layers of wallpaper
on some walls, a washing machine was in the kitchen
because a laundry didnt exist, and the only downstairs
toilet was outside.
Sally engaged Hobart designer Mirella Bywaters to
assist with a full makeover of the interior of Belgrove,
with instructions that it combine the old with the
new and, most importantly, be practical and liveable.
And how much fun both Mirella and Sally must
have had scouring Tasmania, the mainland and
overseas for the perfect furnishings to set off each
room, such as the copper bath in his section of the
bathroom, the Italian ceramic toilet and red chandeliers
in her part, ttings to match the gleaming green Aga
stove in the kitchen, and stunning antiques, ornaments
and artwork for every corner.
Where appropriate, new built-ins were added, such
as the jarrah bookcase in Peters hunting-themed
ofce, which is adorned with a zebra skin and dark,
masculine furniture. The ofce also has a secret
lift-up door in the oorboards, under which Peter
has installed a row of containers holding beer and
wine supplies which run on mini train tracks for
easiest possible extraction.
Arthur Drysdale added the sunroom at the back of
the home, where nine servant bells line the wall. In
their rst week of living at Belgrove, Sally tried the bell
for the master bedroom in the middle of the night. Her
husband woke with such a jolt that he went downstairs
and opened the front door. But, Sally laments, thats as
much of a response as the ringing of servants bells
generates at Belgrove these days.
Unlike many Georgian sandstone mansions,
Belgrove is light and airy, both in its outlook and its
Baltic pine joinery and kauri pine oorboards. The
home is surrounded on two sides by a wide, two-
storey sandstone verandah featuring intricate iron
lace work. On the second storey, French doors open
onto a hall-sized balcony area, providing expansive
views across the entire Southern Midlands farming
district and up to the Central Highlands lakes district.
Positioned on the verandah below are a number of
sandstone urn owerpots carved by Peter Bignells
own hand, a skill he discovered when they were still
living at Bothwell. Sally had mentioned to her hus-
band one day how much shed like a sandstone
birdbath for the garden. Having never seen one in a
shop before, Peter decided to try making one with
sandstone from the quarry on the family farm.
Using his cars front axle like a pottery wheel, Peter
kicked the sandstone block around with his foot
while wielding an angle grinder. Friends who saw
Peters rst effort started placing orders. Then more
orders began arriving from Sydney, and not just for
birdbaths: sandstone Pooh Bears, big and small, were
a favourite for Peter (some he would swap for paint-
ings in the local art gallery). Decorative sandstone
balls were also in hot demandthe biggest weighed
two tonnes and had to be lifted with a front-end
loader onto a truck-axle lathe for carving.
Before long, Peters acclaim grew and he was asked
to restore the sandstone sundial in the Sydney Botanic
Gardens and undertake sandstone restoration work on
several public buildings in Hobart. His biggest job
involved carving the three-tiered fountain that is a
centrepiece of the conservatory at the Royal Tasmanian
Botanical Gardens.
When a commercial radio station ran an ad about
a sand-sculpting competition on Hobarts Kingston
Beach, Peters interest was piqued. From there began
a long reign as the Tasmanian king of sandcastles.
The Bignell family would head to the beach for the
annual competition, and they regularly left with rst
prize for sculptures that included a two-metre high
church and a similarly sized lighthouse. The principle
behind sand sculpting and sandstone sculpting is the
same, Peter condes: start with a big block, and then
carve the shape out.
It was only a matter of time before he set his sights
on a new challenge, winning a snow-sculpting com-
petition at Hobarts Antarctic Midwinter Festival
with a sculpture of a seal.
From there followed an invitation to compete in the
Russian Cup in November 2007, a prestigious inter-
national ice-sculpting competition held in the depths
of Siberia. Peter had never carved ice before but
modied some old shearing combs into chisels and
practised at Belgrove for months, carving the ABC
logo out of bricks of ice hed made in the deep freezer.
In Siberia, his team of two turned four tonnes of ice
into a whale-shaped helicopter during ve and a half
days of work in minus-twenty-ve-degree-Celsius
temperatures and sixty-kilometre-per-hour winds. It
was Peters carved ice gearbox cogs that actually turned
which won over the judges and secured the mayors
sculpture prize and an ugly, but unique, trophy.
These days, Peter is working on a new invention for
permanently xing cracks in walls. Hes been experi-
menting on Belgrove; it works, and he hopes to patent
Wisecrack soon.
14 | 15
16 | 17
18 | 19
For years, Belmont stared down on John Pooley twice
a day, as he drove between his Coal River Valley farm
and Hobart business.
By chance one evening he and his wife, Libby,
enjoyed a glass of wine in the stone-walled courtyard
by Belmonts blue-tiled pool. They fell in love with
the house. When friends who were renting it
mentioned the house might soon be sold, the Pooleys
snapped it up before it went on the market.
Five years later, the Pooleys still cannot believe their
luck as their stunning renovation job takes shape.
And theres a sense of serendipity in that, from the
converted stone stables, they are now running a cellar
door for their award-winning cool climate wines at
the property that was rst built for Hobart wine and
spirit merchant Benjamin Guy.
Belmont is set on a sandstone hillside that is itself
heritage listed, because it is from here that all the
sandstone that built Richmond village and its famous
bridge was quarried.
Guy bought the land in about 1833, and around
four years later the handsome home was built for
his family, which included at least eight children.
Only three years later the home and its forty acres
were advertised for lease, as the family left to visit
Europe.
Belmont has since had several owners; strangers
frequently make contact with the current landholders
to recount their own tales of growing up in this ne
Georgian home, while many more nd a visit to the
cellar door a very pleasant excuse for a closer
inspection of the property.
What so appealed to the Pooleys that evening by
the pool was just how light, bright, liveable and
positively Tuscan this place felt, a sense that was only
enhanced by its glorious outlook over the productive
Coal River Valley.
The homes spectacular outdoor areas include the
walled courtyard that spans the width of the home to
the old stables, the centrepiece of which is a stunning
Belmont
20 | 21
solar-heated pool surrounded by sandstone pavers,
olive trees and lavender bushes.
Plans are afoot to create a large formal garden
around the front terrace of the home, which commands
views over Pages Creek and then to the township of
Richmond. Meanwhile, at the back entrance, a new
sandstone patio has been positioned to catch the
evening sun.
The house has always been in good structural
condition, but it had a distinctly seventies feel to it
when the Pooleys moved in. The kitchen is now the
latest in design and three elegant casement windows
face onto the delightful courtyard and pool area. It
also leads into a dining room that features immaculate
cedar joinery and built-in cupboards, and which
looks out onto Richmond through French doors.
Unlike a great many houses of the era, this one was
built to capture both the views and the sun; so much
so that when former owner Eric Gray lived here, a
crystal bowl apparently burned a hole in his dining-
room table, so intense was the sun shining through.
The sitting room, with its marble replace, is yet to
be redecoratedLibby is leaning towards bright
yellow and white stripes to enhance the lightness of
the room. Also on the lower oor is a small study, and
an old kitchen that has been converted to another
cosy sitting room. Its massive replace incorporates
an intact bakers oven that will be used to learn the art
of wood-red pizzas with the help of a local chef.
Upstairs there are four bedrooms and two ultra-
modern bathrooms, his and hers.
Outbuildings include an old laundry, stables and
blacksmith shop, now converted to toilets for the cellar
door which are, according to most visitors, the only
ones theyve ever used with a replace and lounge.
The Coal River Valley produces some of Australias
nest wines and the Pooleys are one of its longest-
established winegrowers. When Johns father, Denis,
retired in 1984 from the car business they had
established together, he felt lost. Action had to be
taken, and so Denis and his wife, Margaret, bought
land next to John and Libbys Coal River Valley farm.
A founding member of Hobarts Beefsteak and
Burgundy Club, Denis Pooley wasnt up for farming
beef but decided to give the wine a go. Half an acre of
vines were planted at the Cooinda Vale Estate vineyard
and they couldnt have grown better.
John says it added ten years to his fathers life
because every year there was another vintage to look
forward to. Margaret still runs the Cooinda Vale cellar
door and, aged ninety-three, is the oldest female
vigneron in Australia.
After he moved to Belmont, John also planted vines
on nearby Butchers Hill, and 2007 saw the rst vintage
of pinot produced. Pooley Wines consistently wins
awards; its rieslings and pinot noirs took home no
fewer than twenty-two medals and trophies at the
2007 Tasmanian Wine Show.
These days, as they enjoy an evening glass of wine
from their own cellar door in the beautifully designed
courtyard, John and Libby marvel at their good
fortune in living here. They also feel strongly that
they are simply caretakers of this magnicent property
for the next generation, in this case their son, Matthew,
who is now running Pooley Wines, and his wife and
children.
22 | 23
24 | 25
26 | 27
It was by chance that John and Robyn Hawkins
found themselves in the Chudleigh Valley, touring
on a back road between Deloraine and Cradle
Mountain. On passing through the narrow eye of the
needle entrance to the Chudleigh Valley they found
a stunning landscape laid out before them. So when
Bentley, one of the districts original land grants, came
onto the market, the memory of this beautiful vista
eventually lured the Hawkins from Moss Vale, in the
New South Wales Southern Highlands, to Tasmania.
They have dedicated the last ve years to the
creation of a splendid country house through
signicant additions to the original homestead, laying
hedges, building dry-stone walls, creating lakes and
restoring outbuildings. And apart from Government
House in Hobart, Bentley is also Tasmanias rst and
only heritage-listed landscape.
But this is of little consequence to John Hawkins
when what he considers the greatest threat to the
surrounding mountain landscape, the clear-felling of
native forest, is exempt from all heritage legislation.
John believes no other state or country would permit
such sacrilege, and he despairs at the visible scars on
the surrounding Tiers and the loss in the Chudleigh
Valley of some of Tasmanias nest agricultural land
to tree plantations.
Life has certainly become a little livelier in the sleepy
village of Chudleigh since the Hawkins arrival. But
more than anything, locals credit John with completely
recharging the valley and giving them a great sense of
pride and appreciation of its visual signicance as a
unique, re-farmed Aboriginal landscape overlaid by
European settlement.
Bentley was a land grant in 1829 to John Badcock
Gardiner who, it is assumed, named Chudleigh after
his local village in Devon. Along with a couple of
other early landholders in the district, Gardiner
struck paydirt by burning lime and sending it to
Launceston for building work. The whole valley is
home to the most important limestone karst in the
Bentley
southern hemisphere, which is listed as the Mole
Creek Karst on the Register of the National Estate.
More land was added to the Bentley estate by its
next owner, entrepreneur Phillip Oakden, who, among
other things, introduced blackberries to Tasmania and
brought Lincoln sheep to graze his land. A founding
member of the Launceston Horticultural Society and
the Union Bank in Launceston, Oakden was
responsible for planting more than six miles of
hawthorn hedge that is such a feature of the property
today. The hedges were admired as early as 1870 by a
passing traveller:
The road for a mile before reaching Chudleigh
passes through what is called the Bentley Estate and
is bordered on each side with the nest hawthorn
hedges that I have ever seen out of England, planted
28 years ago, standing from 15 to 20 feet high; the
smell of English grass hay which was then on the
ground lent a great charm to this part of the journey.
I could not help envying the lot of the residents of
such a delightful spot.
The property underwent further ownership changes
before it was sold to Donald Cameron of Nile, in the
Northern Midlands, to be farmed by his son, Donald
Norman Cameron, who represented Tasmania in the
rst federal House of Representatives. The Cameron
family built the Bentley homestead in 1879, an elegant
single-storey house based on a Melbourne town villa.
According to John Hawkins, the most famous
episode in his career in the federal parliament was
when it was being debated whether the federal capital
should be built at Canberra or some other site. The
decision lay with him. He kept silent for two weeks,
tantalising the people of Australia by refusing to say
which way he was going to vote; in the end he voted
for Canberra.
After Donald Norman Camerons death in 1931,
Bentley changed hands a few more times and was
subdivided along the way. When it was bought by John
and Robyn Hawkins, the acreage stood at 560 but this
has since been more than doubled, as has the size of
the villa to create one of the rst important Tasmanian
country homesteads of the twenty-rst century.
The original house is now one wing and its replica
another. Connecting the two is a conservatory which
is crowned with an elaborate cupola inspired by the
dome on the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. With its
eleven north-facing windows, the conservatory
captures the sun to warm the buildings core. And
with restoration of the old stables in progress and a
clock now installed in the clock tower, the property is
once again a large working estate.
Almost as breathtaking as the house is the new dry-
stone wall that surrounds itat 700 metres, it took
three years and 2500 tonnes of rock to build, with two
men from Deloraine receiving training from an
English dry-stone walling and hedge-laying expert,
here on a teaching holiday in 2003. The hawthorn
hedges have been correctly laid, pleached and staked
at blood horse height, and John Hawkins has found
that a tea-cutting machine from his Japanese antique
business doubles nicely as a hedge-trimmer, producing
the perfect curve.
Everything at Bentley has been done with the
landscape in mind. Robyn Hawkins, who created the
famous garden at Whitley in the New South Wales
Southern Highlands, is responsible for the design of
the grounds, the planting of 50,000 native trees and
the creation of the grass garden along the creek.
The history of the estate was in part described by
John Hawkins in the Australian Garden History
Society newsletter, Blue Gum:
The whole valley is presided over by the Gog range,
this features a natural rock formation that, in the
morning light, produces a perfectly formed human
face some 200 feet high. It was from this ridge that
the Aboriginals gathered their ochre; OConnor,
the Land Commissioner, called this area the City
of Ochre in his survey of 1828. Europeans, under
Captain John Rolland, of the Third Regiment, spent
nine days mapping the course of the Mersey River in
1823. On climbing the top, he named the ridges Gog
30 | 31
and Magog, the classical names for a King and his
supposed Kingdom Rolland must have been of a
literary and artistic bent for apart from the highest
peak, which he named after himself, the two peaks
to the west he named Vandyke and Claude, after the
great European landscape painter
The rural landscape is largely as created by
Aboriginal re farming and European settlement in the
nineteenth century. The land grants were taken up
over re farmed cleared oodplains created by Native
Hut Corner Aboriginals over thousands of years.
Not having to clear the trees made this land instantly
valuable and protable to European settlers. Their
landscape was to be contained by hawthorn hedges, the
native trees cut to copse, thereby protecting the ridge
lines so as to create a large, still-existing parkland, later
planted with European trees, all much in evidence.
On learning that the listing of Bentley and its land-
scape with the Tasmanian Heritage Register provided
no protection from the clear-felling of forests on
surrounding hills and mountains, John has lobbied for
changeso far without success. He believes the Tas-
manian government is too closely aligned to the
forestry industry, particularly in the matter of exemp-
tion of forestry from all heritage legislation.
In an exhaustive review of this legislation for the
Labor state government, it was recommended by
consultants that such statutory exemptions should be
removed and canvassed options for how to better
protect historic cultural heritage landscapes, which are
also exempt from protection under the legislation.
When pursued on the issue of exemptions, the
governments response was: These provisions will
remain at this time.
John Hawkins, a Sandhurst-trained former British
army ofcer, is determined to reverse this scenario
and is leading the charge in the valley for the
preservation of this historic and beautiful Arcadian
landscape into the twenty-rst century.
32 | 33
34 | 35
Few get the opportunity to laze about a stately
Georgian mansion and absorb all the grandeur it
evokes. The homes you enter in this book are private.
Unless you are part of their inner circle, you might
not have even known they existed. As for those who
live in themwell, theyre usually too busy running
farms, raising families and keeping on top of never-
ending maintenance to ever really get the chance to
sit back self-indulgently.
So thats where Peppers Calstock comes in, an
impressive home steeped in Tasmanian history
offering luxury accommodation and ne dining.
And yet its the placement of this magnicent
building in the landscape that is possibly its greatest
appeal. Deloraine, in Tasmanias Central North, is
picture-postcard stuff. Its a historic town on the
Meander River, where you can try your luck for trout,
surrounded by lush green farmland complete with
hedgerows. The rugged Great Western Tiers are on its
doorstep, and behind them the Tasmanian Wilderness
World Heritage Area. Black trufes, cheese and honey
are just some of the produce for which this area is
renowned.
Framed by giant oak trees, Calstock sits at the bot-
tom of the 1228-metre Quamby Bluff on the Western
Tiers. The mountain forms the spectacular backdrop
while the home gazes down over the farmland, river
and town.
Calstock was designed to take full advantage of
these views. For example, the original windows in the
main living areas sit atop panels that can be opened
like little doors; when the windows are right up and
the panels open, it is possible to walk straight out
from the lounge or dining room onto the wide
agstone-paved verandah, creating an indoor
outdoor entertaining area.
The rst owner of Calstock was Lieutenant Pearson
Foote. He received the land grant in about 1830 after
starting out as a settler in Western Australia but
nding the going too tough. Foote was forced to sell
Peppers Calstock
36 | 37
Calstock in the depression of the 1840s, and it
subsequently became a property of the Field family.
The family patriarch, William Field, had been
transported to Australia for receiving nine stolen
sheep as a butcher and made a fortune out of cattle
farming in Tasmania after he was freed. When he died
in 1837, Fields wealth was estimated at 1.238 per cent
of the countrys GDPbillions of dollars, in todays
termsand he owned one-third of all the land and
buildings in Launceston.
Westeld, Eneld, Easteld and Woodeld were
among the Tasmanian properties William Field
acquired. He built impressive homes on the land and
left them to his four sons. His third son, Thomas,
inherited Westeld and in the 1850s purchased
nearby Calstock. Thomas added the main part of the
present house complete with its wide verandah on
three sides and distinctive open balcony on top.
The Fields were keen on racehorses, and Thomas
turned Calstock into Tasmanias top racing stud from
where two Melbourne Cup winners were bred,
including the mighty Malua. Malua and his brother,
Stockwell, were bought by former premier of
Tasmania Thomas Reiby at one of Calstocks two-day
yearling sales. Reiby was determined that a Tasmanian
horse would win the Melbourne Cup, and Stockwell
did indeed lead all the way down the nal straight in
1882only to be pipped at the post. It is said the
dramatic second-place nish so frustrated Reiby that
he got out of racing then and there, selling Malua to
J. Inglis of Victoria.
The Australian Racing Museum describes Malua as
the most versatile of all Australian champion
gallopers; from sprints to staying events, and even the
steeplechase, he left them all in his wake. His many
wins in 1884 included the 1000-metre Oakleigh Plate,
then Australias richest race, the 2600-metre Adelaide
Cup, and the 3200-metre Melbourne Cupwon by
half a head in front of 90,000 people.
Maluas brother Street Anchor, also bred at Calstock,
won the Melbourne Cup the following year, while his
son Malvolio won the 1891 Cup and another son,
Ingliston, won the Cauleld Cup in 1900.
And Maluas racing career didnt nish when
he was put out to stud. At the age of nine he
was entered in his rst steeplechase, reportedly after
Inglis watched him clear a high fence in the yards.
Carrying Inglis himself, who weighed in at seventy-
three kilograms, Malua romped home in the
three-mile VRC Grand National Hurdle. His last
hurrah was taking out the 2800-metre Geelong Cup
as a ten-year-old.
In his home town of Deloraine, a committee is now
raising money to build a monument to the mighty
Malua, and as a guest at Calstock you are free to walk
through the legendary stables where he was reared.
Calstock remained in the Field family until 1971,
then was the focus of a couple of separate efforts to
redevelop it into a thoroughbred stud. It was pur-
chased by the current owners just before 2000, restored
and turned into a guesthouse.
In 2005 it became part of the Peppers chain, and in
September 2006 Linda and Daniel Tourancheau
moved in as managers, viewing Calstock as the per-
fect place to combine their skills and full their
long-held desire to move to Tasmania. Linda is the
highly trained hotel manager half of the equation,
Daniel the French chef classically trained in Michelin-
star restaurants.
With their sixteen-foot high ceilings, the rooms are
massive in proportion, each ornately decorated in a
different style. Read about William Field in the library,
take an aperitif in the lounge and then proceed to the
dining room for a three-course set-menu dinner that
is a drawcard in its own right.
The menu is dictated by what is fresh, local and in
season, from locally harvested black trufes to
venison, and zucchini owers from the garden. Even
if there are only two guests staying, Daniel is up at the
crack of dawn making the croissants for breakfast
and, later, the bread for the evening meal. Theres a
wine for every occasion on the list.
Peppers Calstock showcases the best of Tasmania
from one of its beautiful Georgian mansions, and
allows anyone the chance to experience one of these
properties in truly decadent style.
38 | 39
40 | 41
42 | 43
44 | 45
Early settler Louisa Anne Meredith was a prolic
illustrator and writer, and when she came to Tasmania
in 1839 with her husband, Charles, and their baby
son, they stayed at Cambria, regarded then as the
government house of the states east coast. Louisa
described it in her book, My Home in Tasmania:
The House at Cambria commands an extensive view
of large tracts of bush and cultivated land; and across
the Head of Oyster Bay, of the Schoutens, whose
lofty picturesque outline and the changing hues they
assume in different periods of the day or states of the
atmosphere, are noble adjuncts to the landscape.
Below a deep precipitous bank on the south side of the
house ows a winding creek, the outlet of the Meredith
River, gleaming and shining along its stony bed
A large, well-built cheerful-looking house, with
its accompanying signs of substantial comfort in the
shape of barns, stackyard, stabling, extensive gardens,
and all other requisite appliances on a large scale, is
most pleasant to look upon at all times and in all
places, even when tens or twenties of such may be seen
in a days journey; but when our glimpses of country
comfort are so few and far between as must be the case
in a new country, and when ones very belief in civil-
isation begins to be shaken by weary travelling day after
day through such dreary tracts as we had traversed, it
is most delightful to come once more among sights
and sounds that tell of the Old World and its good old
ways, and right heartily did I enjoy them.
The noble verandah into which the French windows
of the front rooms open, with its pillars wreathed about
with roses and jasmine, and its lower trellises hidden
in luxuriant geraniums, became the especial abiding
place of my idleness; as I felt listless and inactive after
my years broiling in New South Wales, and delighted
in the pleasant breezy climate of our new home
A large garden and orchard, well stored with the
owers and fruits cultivated in England, were not
amongst the least of the charms Cambria possessed
Cambria
46 | 47
in my eyes; and the growth of fruit trees is so much
more rapid and precocious here than at home, that
those only ten or twelve years old appear sometimes
aged trees
The orchard, with its ne trees and shady garden
walks, some broad and straight, and long, others
turning off into sly, quiet little nooks, was of great
delight to me the cultivated owers here are
chiey those familiar to us in English gardens, with
some brilliant natives of the Cape, and many pretty
indigenous owering shrubs interspersed.
Cambria, a twenty-seven-roomed Georgian man-
sion, was designed by Lieutenant George Meredith,
one of the east coasts rst settlers and Louisas father-
in-law. The building work commenced in 1830 and
Cambria took six years to complete, though Meredith
had been developing the gardens for the best part of a
decade, hence their well-established state when
described by Louisa in the early 1840s.
Cambria has an unusual colonial bungalow style at
the front with four sets of glazed French doors
opening onto the noble and wide verandah, which
has a colonnade and balustrade of wood and is paved
with square sandstone set on a diagonal.
From the front, Cambria appears to be only one-
storey high, plus a great deal of roof, but the back of
the house, which is cut into a hill, reveals its true scale.
Here three storeys are evident, the top an attic with
quaint dormer windows that face away from the
homes glorious views over Great Oyster Bay across to
the Freycinet Peninsula.
Marble replaces downstairs are complemented
upstairs by what is thought to be a rare example of
marbling wallpaper, or simulated marbling.
The front hall is unusual in that it has two cedar
fanlit doors concealing the stairs: behind one door
the stairs go up, behind the other, down.
The large drawing room was once the scene of
dances that George hosted for visiting naval ofcers,
their ships anchored just a short distance away.
Among the extensive outbuildings were a kitchen,
brick stables and timber barn, along with a toilet
building that boasted a three-seater loo, each one a
different size.
In 1841, Louisa and Charles set about building their
own place at Spring Vale, just north of Swansea, but
they then resettled at Port Sorell in the north-west, and
later lived in various other parts of the state.
George Meredith died in 1856 and Cambria stayed
in the Meredith family until it was leased, and later
purchased, by the Bayles family. Basil Bayles, a local
identity, lived in the homestead with his sister until
1949, although the upstairs section was never really
used in this time and started to show its years. A short
ownership by the Brettingham-Moores followed before
Cambria was sold to the Burbury family in the 1970s.
Nick and Mandy Burbury have now called Cambria
home for thirty years, longer than George Meredith
did, and theirs were the rst babies to be raised here.
The home wasnt exactly designed with a young family
in mind, but recent additions, such as a new kitchen/
conservatory area have made it an easier place to live.
Cambria has also been recently re-roofed, and other
restoration jobs are on the agenda.
The gardens at Cambria have, like the adjoining
5000-hectare farm, suffered from prolonged drought,
but still resemble some of Louisas elaborate
descriptions, notwithstanding the fact that she may
have been prone to a little poetic licence.
Louisa Merediths other writings include Some of
My Bush Friends in Tasmania, Tasmanian Friends and
Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned, Bush Friends in
Tasmania, and two novels. She took a great interest in
politics, was an early member of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and inuenced her
husband to legislate to protect native wildlife during
his many years as a member of the Tasmanian
Legislative Council.
Flora and fauna also feature heavily in My Home in
Tasmania, including the trials and tribulations of
trying to tame a possum, and her description of the
capture of a Tasmanian tiger:
I pitied the unhappy beast most heartily, and would
fain have begged more gentle usage for him, but I was
compelled to acknowledge some coercion necessary,
as, when I softly stroked his back (after taking the
precaution of engaging his great teeth in the discussion
of a piece of meat), I was in danger of having my hand
snapped off.
Her ora and fauna drawings also won many
awards, and in 1884, after her husbands death, the
Tasmanian government awarded Louisa a pension of
one hundred pounds a year for distinguished literary
and artistic services to the colony. She died in Victoria
in 1895, survived by two sons.
48 | 49
50 | 51
52 | 53
Of all the members of Tasmanias Archer dynasty,
William Archer has been described as the most
brilliant. The rst Tasmanian-born architect is
credited with designing some of the states most
magnicent buildings, from the elaborate Italianate
villa that was added to his fathers home, Woolmers,
to his pice de rsistance, Mona Vale at Ross.
Archer was also an acclaimed botanist who studied
at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, and he contributed
in such a way to Sir Joseph Hookers authoritative work
on Tasmanian botany, Flora Tasmaniae, that it was
jointly dedicated to him.
He was also noted for his engineering, mainly in
regard to surveying and designing irrigation channels
to provide water for domestic animals and for ood
irrigation.
It was at Cheshunt, in Meander Valley in Tasmanias
Central North, that he combined his passions. The
mansion is the home that William Archer designed
for himself; in its gardens he planted exotic trees, and
in the surrounding forest, wilderness areas and on
river banks he collected many native plant species,
some of which, such as the conifer Diselma archeri,
bear his name.
William Archer was the third son of Thomas
Archer, the founder of this great Van Diemens Land
dynasty, who arrived in Tasmania about 1813. Before
long, Thomas had established the vast estate of
Woolmers near Longford, south of Launceston, and
his success inspired his father and three of his brothers
to also make the move to Van Diemens Land. The
Archers soon owned tens of thousands of acres of
prime farming land throughout the district, Cheshunt
representing some 7000 acres on the western fringe.
At the age of sixteen, William went to London to
study architecture and engineering, and his rst job
upon returning home was aggrandising Woolmers.
The palatial Mona Vale, which he designed later for
his brother-in-law, Robert Kermode, has been
described as the largest private home in Australia.
Cheshunt
54 | 55
Mona Vale is also known as the calendar house for its
365 windows, fty-two rooms, twelve chimneys and
seven entrances.
Other building designs credited to Archer include
the old Hutchins School building in Hobart, the main
building of the former Horton College at Ross, and
the two-storey addition to his brothers home, Faireld
at Cressy.
Archers work is mostly Victorian in manner and
Italianate in style, although Cheshunt is considered
quite unusual. It has been described as an example of
architectural eclecticism, with its large Georgian
mansion, Victorian verandah and Italianate tower.
On the rst level of the exterior brickwork quoins
feature, while on the second level double pilasters
grace the corners. The chimneys are ornate, the
windows double-paned, and at the back a square
tower has narrow Italianate windows. Connecting the
two wings at the front is a two-storey verandah, with
the iron frieze, brackets and balustrade all boasting
different designs.
Inside are twenty-three rooms, including nine
bedrooms and an entry hall with a replace, which
was said to be a mark of distinction. Cheshunt also
has several brick-nogged, timber-clad outbuildings,
including stables, a carpentry shop, a butchery and
a blacksmith shop.
The foundation stone for the home was laid in
1850, and the centre and eastern wings completed
about 1852. A few years later, Archer set off to study
botany at Kew, where he also contributed to Hookers
Flora Tasmaniae. A stint in Melbourne followed where
he tried, unsuccessfully, to earn money as an architect
before he sold Cheshunt in 1873, the house still not
complete. William Archer died a year later at his
brothers farm, Faireld, broken and impoverished,
leaving an annuity of just one hundred pounds for
his wife and twelve surviving children.
The new owners were William and John Bowman,
themselves part of a pioneering farming dynasty from
South Australia. Williams son Frederick took owner-
ship of Cheshunt in 1879, and a few years later
married Gertrude Field from the nearby Calstock
estate. Also connecting the two colonial properties
was an early, direct phone line.
In about 1885, the Bowmans started work on
completing Archers design, employing a live-in
brickmaker who churned out 100,000 bricks in the
space of a couple of months.
Look closely at the faade and youll notice that the
northern and southern wings are different sizes. The
verandah posts in between have been placed off-
centre to balance the appearance.
Before Frederick died in 1929 he left Cheshunt to
his grandson Ronald so as to avoid paying death
duties. It would be another forty years before Ronald
moved in but for much of this time Cheshunt was
occupied by Ronalds grandmother and aunt,
Stephanie, a period in which they endured the Great
Depression and World War II.
Though Stephanie spent nine years in hospital
before her death in 1969, no one had the heart to
displace her from her long-time home, so it wasnt
until the early seventies that Ronald and his wife,
Leila, braved the move to Cheshunt.
The house was by now in a sad state, and rats, mice
and silversh had well and truly moved in. The roof
was leaking, plaster had fallen from the ceiling and
many of the wooden oors were rotten. The interior
was dirty, dusty and dampthree wheelbarrow-loads
of soot were carted away from the old slow-
combustion stove in the kitchen.
After completing the most urgent structural jobs
and cleaning the grime, the Bowmans restored a
room every couple of years and repolished the
antiques. This bit-by-bit interior renovation has
continued since the latest generation, Paul and Cate
Bowman, arrived in 1985. The bottom oor is now
basically complete; work on the upper level with its
six bedrooms continues, but it is only ever used when
guests come to stay.
In 1998 the Cheshunt exterior got a major new
lease of life. The roof and rotten verandah were
replaced, and the chimneys repaired with the help of
a crane. The exterior walls were pressure-cleaned and
then given three coats of paint, a process that took a
team of ve painters ve weeks to complete.
At one stage Cheshunt was painted in blood and
bandages stylered walls with contrasting sandstone
quoins. The Bowmans considered returning it to this
colour but ultimately opted for more muted tones,
although one outbuilding remains in blood and
bandages style.
Considerable preservation has also been undertaken
on the other outbuildings.
The renovation efforts at Cheshunt are limited by
time and funds. Its an exhausting and never-ending
task to look after a home such as thisit was built to
be staffed, for one thingand matters have not been
helped by adverse seasons.
It seems that life has always been a little bit harder
at Cheshunt than at the foundation Archer farm,
56 | 57
Woolmers. When William Archers oldest brother,
Thomas (II), died suddenly at the age of twenty-six,
followed a few years later by his father, Thomas (I),
Woolmers was left to his ten-year-old nephew,
Thomas Archer (III).
In his will, the elder Thomas bequeathed various
annuities that were to become millstones around the
necks of William and his other brother, Joseph, of
Panshanger at Longford. The collapse of a family
bank and the agricultural depression compounded
matters, and William was increasingly struggling at
Cheshunt. It appears that he was never paid a cent for
his architectural work, which he limited to doing for
the church, family and friends.
Back at Woolmers, the subsequent generations of
Thomas Archers (III, IV, V and VI) lived the life of
landed gentry, pursuing interests such as travelling,
golf and entertaining, before the last male heir died in
1994, having been a virtual recluse in the magnicent
homestead all his life.
Woolmers is open to the public and is also home to
the National Rose Garden.
Cheshunt is not quite the perfectly manicured
horticultural showpiece that its grander relation is,
but the old exotic trees that surround the homestead
are a reminder of William Archers important botanical
work. They include giant oaks, elms, chestnuts,
Japanese cedars, laurels and American cottonwood
trees. Botanists still call by Cheshunt today looking
for examples of Archers work.
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60 | 61
Clan Mackinnon was descended from royal Scottish
blood, and in its heyday controlled vast areas of land
on the Isle of Skye, in the northern Scottish highlands.
The clan was turfed off these lands for supporting
Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Jacobite uprising, which
had hoped to restore the House of Stuart to the throne.
During the clearances that ensued, tens of thousands
of highlanders were rounded up and forced to settle
on poor land by the sea, to make way for large-scale
sheep farming and to ensure the collapse of the old
clan system.
It was in this context that a young Allan MacKinnon
determined he had no future on Skye anymore, and
set off alone for Van Diemens Land, arriving in 1822.
With great difculty, Allan obtained a land grant
near Evandale in the Northern Midlands of Tasmania,
but he ultimately had to vacate it because of the
constant trouble he encountered with the original
Aboriginal occupants. Instead he ran the Launceston
prison until he had the means to buy Dalness, located
about one mile from his original land grant. Dalness
has been the home of members of the prominent
MacKinnon family ever since.
The 500-acre property was originally granted to a
Captain Donald MacDonald, who presumably had
connections to Clan MacDonald in Dalness, Scotland.
After he died in 1835, his widow sold the property to
Allan MacKinnon, although there would later be a
dispute over whether or not he had title.
In about 1839 MacKinnon built himself an ultra-
fashionable home for the era, Georgian Regency in
style with unusual red-face brick; the bricks were
made on the property in a paddock that has ever since
been called brickeld.
The home looks down over undulating elds and
across to Ben Lomond. Around it were planted at
least a hundred oak trees, an orchard and superb
gardens, in which a small summerhouse was built.
In contrast to the symmetry associated with Geor-
gian homes of this time, Dalness has an irregular
Dalness
62 | 63
interior plan; this style, in which rooms of different sizes
feature in a home with a traditionally composed faade,
would become more common in the Victorian era.
The main entrance to the home is framed by an
imposing Doric doorcasea design replicated over
one of the replacesand an intricate rectangular
fanlight. Internally, the outstanding cedar ttings
bear a remarkable resemblance to those at Woolmers
and Exton House.
The home is three bays wide, and the cedar staircase
in the hall is highly unusual as it appears to have
originally turned upwards to the left, but was at some
point switched to turn to the right.
The main homestead block was balanced by wings
at each side, however only one remains, and this was
rebuilt in the 1920s.
Allan MacKinnon married a Maclean girl from down
the road who had also emigrated from Scotland with
her family, and they had six children. Their male
descendants ended up farming signicant properties
throughout the district, including Vaucluse, neigh-
bouring Glen Esk, and Mountford and Wickford at
Longford. Their daughters married into other prom-
inent local families. With the exception of Vaucluse,
MacKinnons still run all these properties today. After
Allans success in Australia, his brothers followed him
out, as did many other related MacKinnons whose
descendants can still be found in all corners of the
country.
Every generation of MacKinnon has done its own
bit of tinkering with Dalness. In the 1960s the entire
southern wall of the main block had to be rebuilt
from the cellar up; the builder said he believed its
foundation was no more than a piece of two-by-four.
The house also sits on clay and every now and again
there is major movement and a crack, enough to jolt
current owner, Neil MacKinnon, wide awake at night.
But these are never worth xing, according to Neil,
because eventually they always shift back.
There are now four bathroomsfor a long time there
was only oneand the kitchen has been modernised.
In one room, pictures of the MacKinnon forebears
hang. None of the heirs has ever moved out of the
home unless they died, although Neil made a brief
exception to this when he leased Dalness for three
years to pursue business interests in the Bahamas.
These days he works in Sydney and commutes home
to Dalness on weekends, the 2000-hectare farm run
by a manager in his absence.
With its spectacular views across undulating hills,
its a piece of heaven to come home to after the hustle
and bustle of Sydney, and that sense is enhanced by
the fact that Dalness has always been considered a
comfortable home rather than a stately treasure.
64 | 65
66 | 67
68 | 69
Barbara Fields mother couldnt believe it when she
found out Barbara was moving straight into the big
house at Douglas Park upon her marriage to Robert
Jones.
You cant even keep your bedroom tidy, Mrs Field
said to the twenty-three-year-old who was about to
become the lady of a manor with seven bedrooms on
its second oor. And, said her mother, it was high
time she learned how to cook. If I can read, I can
cook, cant I? was this tomboys response.
Barbara was not the slightest bit overawed by her
impending move from a small family home, built
after World War I when materials were in extremely
short supply, to a mansion that at one time was
pictured on Tattersalls lottery tickets.
Douglas Park was built for retired army doctor
Temple Pearson, who arrived in Hobart from Douglas,
Scotland, in 1822 with 1300 pounds in goods and
cash and his second wife, who some have claimed was
the half-sister of navigator Matthew Flinders. They
lived in a weatherboard cottage on the property while
he practised medicine locally, completing construc-
tion of the main residence in the mid 1830s, just a few
years before his death.
Douglas Park is a two-storey home with a faade
and stately portico made of sandstone from nearby
Ross in the Central Midlands. The porticos entab-
lature details the Pearson family coat of arms and
motto, Dum spiro, spero, or While I breathe, I hope.
It is believed that master Irish stonemason Hugh
Kean designed and built Douglas Park. His Ionic
columns were complete with entasis, a slight curvature
at the base of columns to prevent the optical illusion
of concavity, used in ancient times by the Greeks.
Extravagant cedar replicas of the front portico and
columns frame every door to the rooms off the front
entry foyer.
It is thought that Kean also designed two hotels
in Campbell Town, as all three buildings feature
handcarved sandstone staircases that are something
Douglas Park
70 | 71
of an engineering and architectural feat. At Douglas
Park a single piece of cantilevered sandstone connects
the landing on the staircase to the second oor. With
no supports, it is interlocked into the wall to stay put,
and boasts cast-iron balusters.
The stairswhich over the years have been painted
lettuce green and brown, and have now been taken
back to their original sandstone colourlead to the
bedrooms (one of which was being used to store chaff
before Robert Jones grandfather bought the house).
Young boys have been known to slide down the
handrail after rst learning to walk up the steps, while
girls have loved gliding down the stairs in all fashion
of gowns. Friends and family members also remember
gathering on the stairs to watch movies.
When Barbara moved in, the entire stone wall on
the right side of the house was sinking badly and had
a number of gaping holes. Campbell Town man Jack
Lockett and his team of skilled tradesmen found the
burst pipe to blame and repaired the house perfectly;
they also replaced the mortar in the chimneys and
repaired the stone wall enclosing the courtyard. The
Jones family credits Jack and his team with the
maintenance of Douglas Park and numerous iconic
Campbell Town buildings.
Temple Pearson didnt have any children, and when
he died in 1839, aged forty-nine, the place was left to
his brother, John, of Bathgate, Scotland. In 1846 John
Pearson put Douglas Park on the market and it was
leased by various people until purchased by A.E.
Jones, grandfather of Robert, in 1912.
At the moment, Barbara is busy restoring a room at
the front of the house. Knowing how to read was suf-
cient for learning to cook, and she still plays tennis
with her grandson (in her gumboots) on the court
that was once a hub of Campbell Town social life.
72 | 73
74 | 75
76 | 77
The country at Dunedin, near Launceston, isnt
arable. Its so rough that mustering of cattle and sheep
still takes place on horseback, and the back run of the
farm is so rocky that its known as the goat hills.
Which only makes the hectare of gardens this
property is renowned for all the more remarkable.
For Annabel Scott, who moved to Dunedin as a
young married woman in the 1970s, gardening has
become an addiction. With every year her garden
beds have become bigger and better, more diverse, a
different colour or style. Gardening gets her up at
5.30 am every day to start the watering, and she is still
toiling away in the evening.
The Scotts Gothic revival home is always adorned
with freshly picked posies (visitors clamour for the
rare breeds raised in her potting shed) and there is
homemade, garden-grown elderberry Sambucus wine
or syrup on stand-by, should guests pop in.
International and national garden tours often
include Dunedin in their itineraries, if they are lucky
enough to be allowed in. A proper tour of the
botanical extravaganza that wraps right around the
nineteenth-century homestead takes a good two
hours.
From the main driveway entrance stretches a bog
garden. Here, among the rst spectacles are the
dramatic Gunnera tinctoria and Gunnera manicata.
These giant herbaceous owering plants, native to
South America, have leaves that grow up to two
metres long, resemble giant rhubarb and produce
large owering seed heads that resemble corncobs
and can weigh up to ve kilograms.
Below them purple irises bloom, as do Peltiphyllum
peltatum, also known as Darmera peltata or umbrella
plants. These too thrive in a bog garden environment,
growing up to two metres tall and producing bold
rugose, or rounded, foliage. The dense, rounded ower
heads of white to pink appear in spring.
The cool and wet climate theme continues past
Dicksonia antarctica, a handsome Australian native
Dunedin
78 | 79
tree fern that can reach heights of six metres, and
which here towers over roses and the dainty green
bells of Nicotiana langsdori (owering tobacco),
contrasted with blazing blue delphiniums.
Saunter on past striking Papaver somniferum, or
opium poppy. Their fragile pink petals last just a few
days, but the glaucous blue pods persist. Providing
shade and perfume to the garden tapestry from above
is a Catalpa bignonioides, or the Indian bean tree.
This may reach heights of up to 25 metres and can be
recognised by its large, heart-shaped leaves, white
owers and the (inedible) fruit it produces that
resembles slender bean pods.
Other trees throughout the garden, all planted by
Annabel, include the smaller Styrax japonica, or
Japanese snowbell, which produces pendulous white
owers in summer. Then there is a Manglietia insignis,
or red lotus, an evergreen tree from China aligned to
the magnolia. It produces glossy twenty-centimetre
long leaves and fragrant, white magnolia-like owers
in spring. Maple crimson kings line the western side
of the Dunedin homestead, their dark crimson leaves
deepening to blood-red in summer. There are smaller
Eucryphia or leatherwood trees, a Liriodendron or
tulip tree, a white owering chestnut Aesculus, a forest
pansy Cercis canadensis, and ve different types of
elderberry Sambucus.
It was with a few trees that this novice gardener
started out in the 1970s. At the time, the garden at
Dunedin was nothing but a bare paddock surrounded
by an old lambertiana hedge, a pin oak and a few elm
trees, and twenty-eight depressing macrocarpa pines
that were pulled down.
The soil was abysmal and, before anything could be
planted, the ground had to be poisoned to eliminate
all the twitch and grass. So Annabel mapped out her
proposed beds with garden hoses, and sprayed the
ground within.
Next came mulch. The rst layer of this was the old
navy carpet that Annabel ripped out of the homestead,
the second was old jumpers and other clothes. Manure
from the shearing shed was piled on top, then
newspapers, and lots of pea straw.
Mulch and water, says Annabel, are critical to any
gardens success.
As she started to ll in the garden beds she had
created, Annabel joined all manner of gardening
groups such as the Heritage Rose Society, the Royal
Horticultural Society of England and the US Rock
Garden Society, through which seeds and plants were
bought by subscription. The Heritage Rose Society
alone was the source of 150 different roses.
From there developed an interest in perennials,
such as Eremurus, or foxtail lily. Their tall spikes add
height and colour, and many different varieties are
grown in this garden.
As the trees grew over the years, more woodland
plants were added to take advantage of the shade.
Annabel grows many different type of Hostas, plants
native to the Far East, most species occurring in the
damp woodland areas of Japan, and propagates any
number of Trillium.
She loves the diversity provided by magnicent
foliage, particularly variegated leaves that can lift any
dark spot. Some favourites are the rare variegated
Canna, the Bengal tiger, and the Armoracia rusticana
variegata, or variegated horseradish, both imported
from America.
Twenty varieties of ornamental grasses can be
found in the Dunedin gardens, including: Miscanthus
sacchariorus, which can grow two to three metres in
a year and forms a wonderful windbreak or screen;
Miscanthus variegatus, a variegated grass; and Stipa
gigantea, a glorious semi-evergreen grass that can
grow to about two metres in height and is adorned
with oat-like inorescences above graceful fountains
of foliage.
Other not-your-average-garden plants include: Sym-
phytum uplandicum, or Russian comfrey; Watsonia
ardernei, or bugle lily, a native of South Africa;
80 | 81
Brugmansia, or angels trumpet, with small trumpet-
shaped owers, native to South America; and the
spectacular golden owers of Ranunculus cortusiora.
The picking beds boast peonies and climbing sweet
peas, to name just a few. Adorning other areas are
dahlias, pink lilium, salvias, many different varieties
of foxgloves, climbing clematis and a rare Clematis
Florida Sieboldii from Japan, owering Heucheras,
and wispy blue Nepeta subsessilis.
Sisyrinchium striatum, or satin ower, is old-
fashioned but handy, as it will seed itself, and then
there are Philadelphus, or mock orange, hybrid
Moyesii Geranium roses, bred at the Royal Horti-
cultural Societys home of Wisley, Surrey, in 1938,
and hydrangeas from the famous US plant hunter
Dan Hinkley.
A beautiful paved part of the garden features a
sandstone statue carved by Daniel Herbert, of Ross
Bridge fame, and there are two other statues, Poppy,
who stands ensconced in variegated deutzia, and Pan.
Annabels advice is to go with one or two beautiful
statuesthats all you need.
Theres also a tranquil sh pond, lined with lilies
and boasting a small frog water fountain.
While most of the time shes slaving away keeping
the gardens weed-free, dynamic and recharged, the
garden has relaxation areas for all occasions, and
thats a favoured pastime too.
Annabel had never gardened before she moved to
Dunedin as a young married woman from Hobart
the blind date with Angus Scott arranged by her
friends had gone exceptionally well.
They moved into the old homestead, but it was in
poor shape, having been deserted for twelve years. Its
aesthetics also were not enhanced by the two-storey
enclosed verandah that had been tacked onto the
front of the home some decades earlier. Annabel and
Angus pulled it down and, to their delight, discovered
it had been built entirely of top-quality Huon pine.
This they used to furnish a new sunroom, and create
benchtops and cupboards for the renovated kitchen.
There were six layers of wallpaper that had to be
removed from the living areas and the woodwork was
stained. The place was so lled with silversh that one
night, not long after she moved in, Annabel had a
dream they had eaten the entire staircase.
But the homestead was gradually restored, as were
outbuildings: a beautiful old dairy was turned into an
ofce, and the stables still come in handy for the
horses needed to muster sheep and cattle on this
8000-hectare property.
Dunedin homestead was built in about 1858 to
replace an original home on the property that burned
down. Its owner was Captain Samuel Tulloch, originally
from the Shetland Islands. He ran away to sea at the
age of twelve, and eventually captained several ships,
including the Halcyon, which was a regular packet
between Launceston and Adelaide. His daughter Alice
married Robert Steele Scott, and one of their eight
children, Samuel Tulloch Scott, established himself as
a leading breeder of Aberdeen Angus cattle and Merino
sheep at Dunedin. Angus is Samuel Scotts grandson.
After Annabels day begins at 5.30 am with the
hoses being turned on, theres any number of tasks to
attend to, depending on the season, from policing the
weeds to pruning, mulching and fertilising. Its a
never-ending battle against thistle, oxalis, and native
animals, but Annabel has the upper hand.
In her potting houses, Annabel propagates rare and
unusual plants, transplanting them into the garden
when theyre established enough, or giving them away.
She describes herself as something of a frustrated
artist; the owers are her palette, and the garden her
continually evolving canvas.
Her three top tips for a successful garden are: doing
it for the love of it; focusing on health (of self and
plants); and ample quantities of water and mulch.
Annabels recipe for elderfower syrup
2 large lemons
30 elderower heads
2 ounces citric or tartaric acid
3 pounds sugar
3 pints boiling water
Slice lemons thinly. Place in a jug or large bowl with
the ower heads (including as little stalk as possible).
Sprinkle with citric acid and sugar and pour boiling
water over.
Cover with a lid and leave for three days in a cool place,
skimming daily. Then bottle ityou can freeze it too.
82 | 83
84 | 85
The decision to sell their famous family estate,
Kameruka, was gut-wrenching for Frank Foster and
his wife, Odile. It meant severing ties with more than
150 years of a Tooth dynasty tradition, about 4000
hectares of prized beef and dairy country on the New
South Wales south coast, an 1834 verandah-lined
homestead and gardens that were a six-time winner
of the Sydney Morning Herald garden competition.
But it also led the couple to Egleston, near Campbell
Town in the Central Midlands, and they still cant
believe their luck.
They are now the proud custodians of a stunningly
restored Georgian mansion that is steeped in history,
with gently sloping gardens above river ats that
would bring a tear to any former dairy farmers eye,
and it is all just one hours drive away from the trout-
shing heaven of the Central Highlands.
The original owner of this property, John Headlam,
and his family arrived in Hobart in 1820 from the
English village of Eggleston, in County Durham.
They were the rst who built and established a
respectable Boarding School in Hobart at great
expense, Headlam wrote in a memorial to Governor
Arthur for land. They received 775 acres of land on
the Macquarie River, but didnt move to Egleston
until 1830, when Headlam retired as headmaster of a
government school in Launceston, reportedly amid
controversy over his teaching style.
His grand seven-bedroom brick and stucco Georg-
ian mansion was built about this time.
Son Charles Headlam took over Egleston upon his
fathers death and, in 1851, founded the Egleston stud
ock with ve Saxon Merino ewes and one ram. He
would become the biggest pastoralist in Tasmania,
with holdings eventually totalling some 80,000 acres,
on which he ran 60,000 sheep.
In 1852 Charles Headlam pleaded with the colonial
secretary for the continuation of convict trans-
portation as it was already so difcult to nd enough
workers for his farms.
Egleston
86 | 87
Tasmanias rst shearing machines were installed
in the Egleston woolshed, which established a
reputation for ne, dense, top-priced wool.
Egleston had several other owners before Launceston
sawmiller Stephen Kerrison made it his home. Kerrison
is credited with much of its restoration, which
included lavish use of wood, from blackwood parquet
oors laid in a 1980s addition to the home, to the
ttings in the modernised kitchen, and even the
authentically colonial-looking built-ins in some of
the formal rooms.
In 2003 Kerrison, aged about eighty, drowned at
Bakers Beach, in Tasmanias north. After his death, his
daughter lived at Egleston for a year before it was put
on the market.
The Campbell Town community was abuzz after
the October 2004 auction, when a mystery bidder
paid two and a half million dollars for Egleston.
Tongues were really wagging when, two weeks later,
Virgin Blue co-founder Rob Sherrard snapped up
nearby Lake House at auction and was revealed as the
new owner of the two. Mr Sherrard had his heart set
on Lake House, the auction of which was to take place
two weeks after that of Egleston. Not wanting to risk
ending up with neither, Mr Sherrard bid on Egleston,
and then Lake House, and ended up with them both.
While Egleston was already in good condition,
Mr Sherrard did some updating, adding bathrooms,
removing wallpaper and carpet, and polishing up the
cedar and Baltic pine oorboards, skirting boards
and other ttings.
Water that had lled the cellar was removed, and
a pump installed to keep it that way, and drainage
problems between the house and the outbuildings
were xed in a major operation that involved
correcting the ground levels to create raised lawn
areas, and then putting in stone retaining walls in
front of the old outbuildings and around some of the
ornamental trees.
Signicant work was also done to tidy up the
magnicent established gardens and orchard.
When his job at Egleston was done, Mr Sherrard
put it up for sale so as to turn his attention to Lake
House, which was in need of decidedly more work.
Having made the decision to sell the vast estate of
Kameruka, Frank and Odile wanted a home with
historic signicance to replace it. They scoured New
South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand without
success before it occurred to Frank that Tasmania,
where they had both enjoyed shing, might be just
the place.
A real estate agent insisted they inspect Egleston,
and the Fosters had not even set eyes on the homestead
when they knew they would buy itthe feel of the
place was enough as they turned off the road through
grand green wrought-iron gates and headed past
prime grazing country towards the Macquarie River.
It was a bonus that there was nothing to do to the
place but move in, which they did in November 2007.
Neighbouring farmers, who all have their own ne
historic homes too, have rapidly become great friends
and its emerged that some of them, also Fosters, are
quite possibly related.
Egleston does not have a modern heating system,
so winter could prove a challenge, however one of
Mr Kerrisons many legacies at this property was a
new open-plan living and dining sunroom area that
is much cosier than the grand formal rooms.
The formal dining room and drawing room both
have marble replaces with sandstone hearths at each
end, and two sets of French doors. These open out
onto a wide agstone-paved verandah with elegant
fretwork that looks down over the formal garden,
tennis court, and Macquarie River plains.
There is a blackwood-panelled library with open
replace and, upstairs, seven bedrooms with extensive
views across the countryside through delightful
twelve-paned windows.
In the cellar are four stone rooms that will
undoubtedly prove themselves useful in the future,
while a giant billiard room and granny at have been
incorporated into one of the old stables.
The outbuildings, which also include a stone barn
and blacksmith shop, form an impressive courtyard
at the back of the home.
Frank Fosters great-grandfather, Sir Robert Tooth,
made Kameruka famous after he acquired it from his
uncle in 1857. At one stage the property was about
500,000 acres, although that reduced signicantly
over time.
Sir Roberts family founded Tooth & Co., which
owned Sydneys inner-city Kent Brewery and later
several other brewing interests, and he was actively
involved in their management. At Tooth & Co.,
employees didnt just brew the beerthey apparently
drank it four times a day, with a schooner ration
provided at morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and
when they clocked off at the end of the day. Carlton
and United bought the brewery in 1983, and an era
ended when, twenty years later, they announced it
would close to make way for a new residential
development.
88 | 89
At Kameruka, Sir Robert established an entire
agricultural community. He built six-roomed cottages
for his tenant farmers, a school, church, meeting hall,
store, post ofce, golf course and a cricket oval where,
in 1885, the touring English XI took on a Kameruka
XXII and won by an innings and twelve runs.
English trees were planted on a large scale, a lake
was built and dairying was pursued, using Australias
rst herd of Jersey cows. From there came three
cheese factories and the production of the highly
popular Kameruka cheddar cheese, still manufactured
today, but by Bega.
In 1882 Sir Robert Tooth also built castellated
Gothic mansion The Swifts at Darling Point, to
specications that included its ballroom being bigger
than the one at Government House. In 1997 The
Swifts was sold for a reported twelve million dollars,
and its said an equal amount has since been spent on
its restoration.
Robert had divided his estate into thirds for his sons
to inherit, but all three were killed in World War I.
Kameruka passed to two grand-daughters, and then
to one of their sons, Frank Foster, who came out to
Australia from Scotland in 1975 to take on the estate.
By this time, Kameruka covered about 4000
hectares that were used for beef, sheep and dairy
farming. But with no children of his own to inherit
the propertycomplete with its village and twenty-
ve or so housesand no one else in the family line
interested in taking on the property, Frank came to
the conclusion that eventually the estate was going to
have to be sold, it was just a question of when.
By chance, an Englishman heard about the possible
sale of the property from two separate sources within
a week and it was sold before it even went on the
market.
The odd pieces of Kameruka memorabilia hang
proudly at Egleston in a fabulous fusion of history.
90 | 91
92 | 93
For almost fteen years, many of the most eligible
young women in Van Diemens Land could all
be found under the one roof at Ellenthorpe Hall.
For this period of time from 1827, the two-storey
sandstone mansion, sixteen kilometres west of Ross
in the Central Midlands, was regarded as one of
the most fashionable boarding schools in the land
where instruction took place in everything from
harp to French, useful and decorative needlework,
mathematics and dance.
It was the work of Hannah Maria Clarke (nee
Davice), who emigrated to Hobart in order to open a
school and then moved her successful establishment
to the country where both she and her husband,
George, had been granted land.
Exclusivity was the order of the day as Hannah
hand-picked her pupils from the leading families of
the colony. Reports vary as to how many young ladies
went to Ellenthorpe Hall; some records suggest
between thirty and fty at any one time, others claim
this is more likely to be the total number of pupils to
have passed through.
In any event, those who did attend are thought to
have included: Eliza Collins, the daughter of Tas-
manias rst governor, David Collins; her half-sister
Mary Watts, the daughter of wealthy Clarendon
grazier James Cox; Elizabeth Crowther, whose brother
became premier; and the daughters of Robert Bostock,
from Vaucluse.
Their board, washing and education cost about
forty pounds a year, more for music lessons. Mail was
censored and the girls rarely went home but, according
to the authors of The Life and Labours of George
Washington Walker, the school was an excellent
establishment which has, no doubt, contributed its
share in giving to the upper class of Tasmania the
renement for which it is distinguished.
Ellenthorpe Hall was also a serious farm, growing
under George Carr Clarke from 4000 to more than
44,000 acres and running in excess of 20,000 sheep.
Ellenthorpe Hall
94 | 95
So seriously did George Carr Clarke take his sheep
that he built the propertys striking shearing shed out
of superior dressed stone but the main house out of
mere rubble.
The homestead was built by convicts who laid the
foundation stone in December 1826, reportedly
making it the oldest double-storey stone residence in
the Midlands. Barely one hundred metres away are
soldiers barracks, as the convicts needed guards, and
later the property needed protection from bushrangers,
Aborigines and sheep stealers.
Ellenthorpe Hall was eventually carved up into a
number of substantial farms that were sold separately.
The barracks, shearing shed and mansion were
bundled up into one smaller parcel and also sold. At
the time of this rst sale, the house had become a
depressing and decaying site.
In 1999 the Dowling family, of the adjacent and
similarly named property Ellenthorpe, acquired the
157-hectare parcel. Over the next ve years, Ellen-
thorpe Hall was lovingly restored and the results are
stunning.
Ellenthorpe Hall is perfectly symmetrical, with a
central hallway and ve main rooms on the rst oor,
an exact replica on the second and six rooms in the
attic. Two giant chimneys service a total of ten
replaces, two of these elaborately decorated sandstone
courtesy of convict stonemason Daniel Herbert,
whose work on the famous Ross Bridge carvings
earned him his freedom and is still revered.
These priceless features had turned brown from
grime when the Dowlings took on Ellenthorpe Hall.
There was a metre of water in the cellars and it took
eighteen months to stop the roof from leaking. Every
room had holes in the walls and the sandstone
verandah had shifted off the front of the house.
All this was after renovations started by the previous
owner, Simon Brown. Recounting his restoration
work to the Examiner newspaper in 1978, he said it
had taken 120 hours to strip the paint off just one
door and its architraves. It had twelve coats of paint
and yielded 8.5 kilograms of paint, he said.
There were any number of people who told the
Dowlings they should bulldoze Ellenthorpe Hall and
do up the exceptional shearing shed instead. But, after
a ve-year repair and renovation job, John Dowling,
his wife, Sue, and their sons, Edward and Hamish,
nally moved in on 1 April 2005.
Aside from assiduously xing the shell, there was a
new state-of-the-art kitchen, lavishly decorated dining
and sitting rooms, ve bedrooms upstairs, six in the
attic, two ultra-modern bathrooms and a sunroom
overlooking a lake that was recently deepened and
stocked with rainbow trout.
Ellenthorpes centrepiece is its wide, agstone-lined
hallway that leads to a double-storey portico enclosed
by walls at the centre of the homes faade. Hallway
walls that were once covered in green felt are now
painted white and adorned with beautifully framed
original maps and designs for the Ellenthorpe
property that the Dowlings found torn and stuffed in
a paper bag.
Sadly, thats about all of the original belongings that
remain in the house; it was once lled with incredible
antiques and artworks dating back to its school days
but these were all sold by the Brown estate at a separate
auction in 2006 and interest was intense.
Sue did, however, recently nd an old inkwell in the
grounds that must hark back to the buildings school
days, along with ve butteries embroidered in white
lace. In the sitting-room window, on an original glass
pane, a student scratched her initials, ACV, with a
diamond and the engraving remains.
Two arched doorways on either side of the portico
open onto a wide, sandstone-paved verandah, with
slender cast-iron columns that supposedly suggest an
Egyptian inuence and which were a later addition to
the house.
It was these that bushrangers apparently tried to use
as scaffolding during a daring attack on the school in
1838. The story goes that three escaped convicts had
been terrorising the Midlands, committing mur-
der, until one day in May they surprised a party of men
digging potatoes near Ellenthorpe Hall, ordering them
to kneel down and be tied up. They refused, and one of
the men ed to raise the alarm at the school.
96 | 97
Every mattress, pillowcase and cushion in Ellenthorpe
Hall was piled behind its large Georgian windows,
and heavy furniture heaped behind that. The girls
were all ordered to lie on the oor in case a bullet
managed to make it through.
When the bushrangers arrived, the place was
barricaded. One was shot dead by a worker and the
other two bushrangers ed. All this time, with a
household full of vulnerable women, George Carr
Clarke was apparently hiding under his bed.
George Clarke was born at Ellenthorp Hall in
Yorkshire in 1789, and began his working life as a silk
merchant. He was also known as One-Eyed Clarke,
having lost an eye as a child when one of his brothers
shot him with an arrow. He emigrated to Hobart in
1822, followed a year later by Hannah Davice, to whom
it is believed he was engaged.
She set up her school in Hobart while he made
money from mills. They married in 1824. Ellenthorpe
Hall was built as the nucleus of adjoining land grants
they had both received, and the school opened there
in September 1827.
Between 1825 and 1836 six children were born to
the Clarkes, two girls, two boys and two stillborn
babies. Hannah left Tasmania for England in 1841 with
her four surviving children at the insistence of her
husbandironically, to give them a better education.
She died in 1847.
George Carr Clarke stayed in Tasmania until the
sight in his only eye deteriorated so badly he had to
travel to England for a cataract operation in 1863,
which he did not survive.
Ellenthorpe Hall was carved up and sold, and
Clarkes two sons moved to Queensland. The home
allotment was bought by wealthy coach proprietor
Samuel Page, whose daughter Julia Brown and her
descendants stayed there until the place changed hands
for only the second time in 1999.
98 | 99
100 | 101
If maintaining hedges that stretch for fty kilometres
sounds like hard work, try an eighteen-year home
restoration that is still continuing. But the results
certainly vindicate the massive effort.
When this propertys 170-year-old hawthorn
hedges burst into a haze of soft white blossom, its a
spellbinding journey down the long driveway they
line. It leads into an old, tree-framed lane that opens
onto a turning circle in front of Exton House in
Tasmanias Central North district, described in 1900
as one of the best-appointed estates in the colony.
After Harvey and Julie Gee bought the property in
1990, they spent an enormous amount of time and
resources restoring the homestead, surrounding
buildings, hedges and gardens. Eighteen years of
careful renovation has brought out the very best in
this Georgian estate, restoring not only the property
but Extons place as one of the jewels in Tasmanias
cultural heritage crown.
The interior of the ten-bedroom mansion is an
extravagant exhibition of original cedar, from wide
skirting boards to doors and their giant frames, built-
ins, staircases, and solid wood interior shutters that
bolt fast with iron, designed to keep bushrangers out.
The Reverend Samuel Martin named Exton House
in honour of his wife, Sarah (nee Exton), when they
arrived from England in the early 1800s.
The original home was destroyed by re and the
two-storey home that replaced it, built in the 1840s, is
attached to the 1820s walled courtyard and servants
wing, which is in turn surrounded by a convict stone
barn, lock-up, coach-house and large stables with hay
loft above.
From the 1830s to the 1860s, Exton House was a
famous Australian Shorthorn stud under the owner-
ship of the Bennett family. The property now supports
a large Angus herd and prime lamb ock.
Thirty miles of hawthorn was planted to mark out
the paddock boundaries. A remarkable feature of the
property is the twenty-metre-wide lanewaysa full
Exton House
102 | 103
surveyors chain width acrossbordered with hedges
that extend out of sight in every direction.
The hedges take around one month to trim, an
event that happens every winter, ready for the spring
growth. They are as much a feature of the property as
the house and the rich farmland they surround.
In return for their dedication, the current owners
have been rewarded by the property constantly
providing above-average seasons, even when much of
the state is in drought.
The Exton House property still springs to life every
September, as it has for nearly two hundred years.
104 | 105
106 | 107
108 | 109
Forcett House was the home of James Gordon,
farmer and magistrate, after whom Tasmanias
mighty Gordon River was named. Built in 1832 on
a sandstone knob that commands panoramic views
over Pitt Water in southern Tasmania, it was at the
time part of an estate of some 600 acres.
Forcett House has been beautifully preserved,
thanks in part to the dryness of the sandstone on
which it sits.
A unique feature of this convict-brick homestead is
its clerestory (pronounced clear-storey), a small upper
level rising above the roof. Its glass walls provide light
for the ve-bedroom attic that was originally servants
quarters, and it doubles as a 360-degree lookout for
unwanted guests.
The attic part of the home remains virtually
untouched since the 1800s; even the original grey
paint is still intact.
Dividing the lounge room and dining room
downstairs is a beautiful concertinaed cedar door,
which folds back to make the two rooms one. In the
middle of this is another door, enabling access
between the rooms when they are divided.
Allowing light to stream into the living areas at the
front of the home are magnicent Palladian or
Venetian windows. The home also features several
blind or dummy windowswindows that dont
have an opening, but even have the glazing bars
painted in.
Downstairs are just two bedrooms; James Gordon
and his wife never had children. However, at the
western end of an enclosed courtyard is a two-storey
convict-built section. This housed the original kitchen
and granary but has now been converted to self-
contained accommodation should extra guests arrive
to stay.
James Gordon was born in Forcett, Yorkshire, and
emigrated to Sydney to pursue a career in trade. He
was appointed naval ofcer at Hobart Town in 1814,
but left this posting a year later to focus on farming
Forcett House
110 | 111
his land grant. He was considered a highly progressive
farmer but is blamed for the introduction to Tasmania
of the spear or Scotch thistle, apparently doing so for
sentimental reasons.
Gordon was appointed district magistrate and
coroner in 1826, and principal superintendent of
convicts in 1828. From there followed stints as a
police magistrate at Launceston and then Richmond,
closer to home.
His failure to keep proper nancial accounts was
his downfall. After several complaints and a number
of inquiries that cleared him of fraud, he was forced
to resign as police magistrate in 1832, and in 1835 he
was also replaced as a member of the Legislative
Council, to which he had been appointed in 1829.
Gordon was a good friend of sealer James Kelly,
who later became harbourmaster of the Derwent
River. In 1815 Kelly set out in a whaleboat on a
circumnavigation of Van Diemens Land, on which
he discovered Port Davey, and Macquarie Harbour at
Strahan. It is said that Gordon had given Kelly the
whaleboat on which he explored the river at the
mouth of Macquarie Harbour, and so it was named
in his honour.
James Gordon died in 1842 and left his estate to his
wife for her distribution among relatives. Forcett
House was owned for a time by the Harvey family,
which was closely connected with George Adams
Tattersalls empire.
Forcett House was bought a few years ago by Robert
and Carmel Torenius. Carmel, the Mayor of Sorell,
had secretly adored the home for years and could
hardly believe her luck when the auction made her
and her husband its proud new owners.
112 | 113
114 | 115
When the Grant family made the move from their
Hobart city home to High Peak in the 1950s, their
friends threw a party to say a proper farewell. Which
was very Hobart when you consider that the new
location at Neika was only about fteen minutes
drive from the old one in town.
But situated high on the slopes of the spectacular
Mount Wellington, there is a sense of isolation in this
subalpine environment of forest and pristine creeks,
and this is what made High Peak such a perfect
summer retreat for generations of the Grant family
from the late 1800s.
Neika is about thirteen kilometres from Hobart
along the winding old Huon Highway that was once
the main thoroughfare between Hobart and the
thriving Huon Valley apple-growing district.
Charles Henry Grant, described as pre-eminently a
money making machine and successful speculator,
bought twenty-three acres of land here in 1888, and
in 1891 he engaged prominent architect George Fagg
to design him a chalet for his familys summer
residence.
Fagg remains highly regarded for his work on
church buildings, including the chancel and chapel of
Hobarts St Davids Cathedral. The mountain chalet
he designed is a grand, two-storey Victorian Tudor-
style building, with an asymmetrical roof featuring
gables of different sizes with battened ends.
The exterior woodwork is of rare King Billy pine
the trees were cleared on sitethe windowsills are of
Huon pine, the lower oor was built of rubble stone
collected on the property, and the upper storey features
stucco over timber lathes and wire mesh. The home,
one of only a few heritage Tudor-style buildings in
Tasmania, has a grand formal entrance hall, din-
ing and drawing rooms, childrens playroom with
separate entrance, a large kitchen, butlers pantry, seven
bedrooms, servants quarters, and a more recently built
conservatory/sunroom living area. From the upstairs
balcony, the views down over Kingston and the
High Peak
116 | 117
Derwent River are perhaps only surpassed by those
from the Mount Wellington summit.
Exquisite stained-glass windows brought out from
Belgium and featuring rare cranberry glass roundels
adorn the front door. The home is decorated with
Jacobean-style English oak furniture that was hand-
carved in France especially for this summer home.
The house and tennis court at High Peak sit at the
bottom of highly signicant gardens, which have
thrived in annual rainfall of over a metre (twice that
of Hobart) and rich volcanic soil. Some of its rare
species include monkey puzzle trees, or Araucaria
araucana, native to the lower slopes of the Chilean
Andes and so named because they would puzzle (as
much as severely injure) any monkey that tried to
climb them. It takes about eighty years before the
monkey puzzle trees even produce seeds. Those in the
garden of High Peak were bought by Charles Henry at
great expense about 130 years ago, and it is from High
Peak that the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens has
recently received a monkey puzzle seedling.
There are also sequoia trees or giant American
redwoods, yew (which can live for thousands of
years), other araucarias and conifers, yellow holly,
spruce, cedar, Norfolk pine and the common
macrocarpa pine.
The formal gardens are laid out with extensive
English box and pittosporum hedges, hydrangeas,
and the Grants stopped counting the different
rhododendrons at fty-two. Thanks to the possums,
the roses have to be kept in a separate area under
protective nets but, nevertheless, springtime ushers
in a carpet of owers.
The Duke and Duchess of York were entertained at
High Peak in 1901, as were departing Antarctic
expeditioners, and in 1902 High Peak hosted a garden
party as part of the Australian Science Congress.
Charles Henry Grant, a brilliant mathematician
and engineer, came to Tasmania in 1872 to oversee
construction of the Hobart to Launceston rail line.
After the rst train travelled the route in 1876, Grant
pursued a range of business interests; some of his
many directorships included Cascade Brewery,
Hobart Gas and the Hobart Coffee Palace. He was
returned unopposed twice as a Legislative Council
member for Hobart, and was the driving force behind
the Hobart Electric Tramway company.
Such was the esteem in which C.H. Grant was held
that when he died in 1902, ags on all public buildings
in Hobart were own at half-mast, and in 1914 the
locality of Granton was named in his honour.
118 | 119
His son, Charles William Grant, inherited High
Peak in 1912 along with the family tradition of
playing a prominent role in public life. In addition to
serving as a state and federal politician, C.W. Grant
was foundation chairman of the Hobart Bridge
Company, which built the rst pontoon bridge
connecting the eastern and western shores of Hobart
in 1943. He was also chairman of Cascade Brewery,
had involvement in Hobarts rst crematorium and
was a director of Davies Bros Ltd, publisher of the
Hobart Mercury newspaper.
In the 1950s, C.W.s son, Charles Henry, his wife,
Gwen, and their three young boys decided to move
from Hobart and make High Peak their permanent
home, prompting the farewell party from their
Hobart friends. Their son Jim and his wife, Annabelle,
live here today.
High Peak was lucky to survive the Black Tuesday
bushres that swept through southern Tasmania in
1967, claiming sixty-two lives. The res came so close
to the home that all the trees just below the formal
garden were lost, and a man had to spend the entire
day on the roof, putting out spot res as the sparks
landed. When High Peak was re-roofed in 2003, the
Grants discovered that the whole length of a barge-
board on a northern gable of the house was charred
through, so close did it come to being another casualty
of one of Australias worst disasters.
Re-roong is just one of the many updates that
have occurred at High Peak since Jim and Annabelle
moved here ten years ago from the property they
named Off Peak, just down the hill. They repainted
High Peak, laid new carpet, added a conservatory-
style living area, renovated the laundry and bathrooms
and have spent hours sorting through the heritage
stored in some of the old cupboards.
A clean-out of the linen cupboard uncovered
several elegant maids pinafores, cuffs and hats. In a
small brown paper bag lying among old toothbrushes
used for cleaning the silver was a stunning ivory silk
presentation dress, with intricate bugle beading; it is
thought Jims grandmother probably wore it when
she was presented to the royal court in England.
One of the biggest challenges is keeping the house
warm. Jim is experimenting with double glazing and
is so impressed with the initial results that plans are
afoot to double glaze everything, even the ne
stained-glass windows, to ensure that this grand old
summer home continues to have a bright future,
year-round.
120 | 121
122 | 123
124 | 125
From the King of Iceland, to a convict explorer for the
Van Diemens Land Company, with headquarters at
Higheld, north-west Tasmania: this was just one of
the many remarkable turns taken in the life of Jrgen
Jrgensen, both in Tasmania and abroad.
As a young Danish adventurer who idolised Captain
Cook, Jrgensen was rst mate on the Lady Nelson
when it berthed in 1803 at Risdon Cove, just north
of what was to become Hobart, where European
settlement of Tasmania started.
Back in the northern hemisphere six years later,
Jrgenson arrested the Danish governor of Iceland
and declared himself His Excellency, the Protector of
all Icelanda reign that was lavish for all of its nine
weeks.
There were stints in and out of London gaols, as
a prisoner of war and a petty thief, and a spell as a
British foreign ofce spy, until, in 1826, Jrgensen
was sent to Hobart for a second timethis time as a
convict, but one with impeccable connections.
Carrying letters of recommendation from two
prominent London-based directors of the Van
Diemens Land Company, Jrgensen soon scored
himself a job with it.
The company had to identify the 250,000 acres
of land it would take up for a ne wool-growing
enterprise in the colony, but there was a serious snag:
it had to be somewhere in the largely unexplored
north-west mountain and rainforest country. And so
the man variously referred to as the King of Iceland,
the Convict King and the Viking of Van Diemens
Land became a Tasmanian explorer for a while.
Neither Jrgensen nor any other explorer associated
with the company ever found the massive swathe of
grazing country it sought. Such land did not exist. So
wretched were the north-west wastelands that the
company, after many bitter battles with Governor
Arthur in Hobart, was eventually allowed to select
350,000 acres of land in separate parts of the north-
west, but not much of that was considered any good.
Highfeld
126 | 127
Today the Van Diemens Land Company is the last
Royal Charter company in the world still operating
on its original lands, at its Woolnorth property at
Cape Grim where it had selected 100,000 acres. It runs
one of the southern hemispheres largest dairying
operations and affairs are still handled in traditional
fashion by a governor and court of directors.
But in the 1800s, the company was regarded as one
of the most unfortunate capitalist ventures of its time.
The eleven wealthy London businessmen behind the
ventureformed with one million pounds as seed
capital in 1824thought they would make a killing
out of growing ne wool in the colony. It received
its Royal Charter in 1825 and permission from King
George IV to take up 250,000 acres beyond the
ramparts of the unknown in north-west Tasmania.
The Van Diemens Land Company set up
headquarters at Circular Head just west of Stanley
and based another major outpost at Cape Grim,
where there was some useful grassy land. But the rest
of its grant was unsuitable for just about anything
back then, and the expensive Merinos imported from
Spain and Germany were lost to a combination of
extreme cold and rain, marauding dogs, Tasmanian
tigers (the company employed a full-time tiger hunter
from 1830 to the early 1900s) and Aborigines.
Many surviving Aborigines had retreated to the
north-west coast as a last bastion of land untouched by
Europeans, but they came off second best in frequent
skirmishes with convicts assigned to the Van Diemens
Land Companys vast lands. The 1828 Woolnorth
massacre occurred when four convict shepherds shot
a group of thirty Aborigines and hurled their bodies
over the steep cliffs of Cape Grim.
In 1830, as the stock and nancial losses mounted,
the companys chief agent in Tasmania, Edward Curr,
suggested the court of directors withdraw from the
wool-growing enterprise, at least for the time being.
When they refused, he decided to build himself a
proper house.
Visitors to Higheld Historic Site today are stunned
by the outlook over wild Bass Strait, the position set
atop an old volcano stump called the Nut, as well
as by its preservation, the explanatory plaques and
interactive features for visitors and the many stone
outbuildings that surround it.
In the 1830s, visitors marvelled at the modern,
elegant Regency design of this home in its far-
ung location, quite distinct from the more robust
Georgian mansions seen on most farming properties
of the time.
The architect of Higheld was the companys
hapless chief surveyor, Henry Hellyer, and its thought
his drawings were based on the very latest in London
architectural designs. So even as the Van Diemens
Land Company bled, its stature was at least assured
in the form of the distinguished convict-built home.
According to the historic sites website, the home
was designed to allow the light of reason to shine
into the main rooms through large French windows,
as well as the unsurpassed views.
Higheld also features English-made joinery and
ttings (believed to make it unique in Australia),
newly invented tongue and groove oors, timber
tracery along the verandah, self-closing doors, marble
replaces and a geometric staircase. Next door,
the original wooden Higheld (which Jrgensen
visited in between his exploring adventures) became
servants quarters, and eventually other buildings
were added, such as a stone chapel, stables, pigsties,
slaughterhouse, barn, workers cottages and convicts
barracks for some of the two hundred prisoners
assigned to the company.
Before the home was even nished in 1835, the
company withdrew from ne wool and focused its
attention on breeding rams, cattle and horses.
In 1840 Edward Curr was dismissed and replaced
by a young farmer, James Gibson. Gibson knew that
so far as his companys land was concerned, Governor
Arthurs 1834 declaration that the entire Aboriginal
population had been rounded up and removed from
Tasmania was somewhat premature. As chief agent of
the company he asked that a special police constable
be stationed at Woolnorth to capture the natives that
were still there.
An elderly man, a woman and ve boys were seized
in 1842. William Lanney, or King Billy, was one of
them, aged seven at the time. In 1869 he was the last
tribal Aboriginal male to die in Tasmania (seven years
before Truganini) and the mutilation of his corpse
was a shocking scandal, even at that time.
By candlelight, surgeon William Crowther crept
into the hospital where Lanneys body lay and
removed his skull, which he sought for scientic
purposes. From the hospitals dissecting room he
took the skull of a white man and tried to insert it
under Lanneys skin to cover his tracks.
Unsurprisingly, it didnt work. When the hospitals
resident surgeon, George Stokell, discovered what had
happened, orders were given to amputate Lanneys
hands and feet to thwart any further attempt by
Crowther to obtain a specimen.
128 | 129
But after his ceremonial funeral, Stokell and others
dug up Lanneys body from its grave and performed
further horrifying dissections, removing the esh
from his bones. Lanneys skull was never found.
Back at Higheld, new chief agent James Gibson
also implemented a policy of bringing tenant farmers
onto company land to try to turn the companys
fortunes around, but by 1851 the directors had lost
enough, and the company sold all its stock, dismissed
its staff and put all its land up for sale or lease.
Higheld was leased and then sold and, after a
succession of owners, began to decay.
The companys holding at Emu Bay became the
City of Burnie, and land at the inland holdings of
Hampshire and Surrey Hills eventually became
prized for its timber, on which the regions pulp and
paper industry was formed.
But the Woolnorth property at Cape Grim couldnt
even be given away, so eventually the company
resumed farming there in the 1870s as surrounding
Crown land was cleared and successfully farmed.
Today the north-west coast is famed for its rich
red soils and intensive agriculture. The New Zealand
company Tasman Agriculture acquired a majority
stake in the Van Diemens Land Company in the
1990s, and has now turned the Woolnorth property
into one of the southern hemispheres largest dairy
operations. It is also home to Tasmanias largest
wind farm and, according to the United Nations
monitoring station, the worlds cleanest air.
Higheld was in a sorry state when acquired in 1982
by the Tasmanian government for preservation. Using
the original drawings by Hellyer, the homestead was
extensively restored and is now open to the public.
The ghost of Henry Hellyer is apparently a frequent
visitor to the site. He committed suicide in 1832, the
year work on Higheld commenced; some say he did
so because of the disaster that was the land he had
identied as suitable for grazing, others because of
salacious rumours about his sexuality.
As for Jrgen Jrgensen, he left the company in
1828 to become a ticket-of-leave police constable at
Oatlands. For a time he oversaw the construction of
the Ross Bridge, and it is believed that a prominent
carving on its northern faade is of him, complete
with a convict crown. He became a prolic writer
and was fully pardoned, but died at the age of sixty-
one in Hobart, a destitute drunk.
Higheld is open to the public seven days a week
between September and May, and on weekdays for
the rest of the year.
130 | 131
132 | 133
At Llanberis, in the sleepy little hamlet of Hollow Tree,
the next generation of Halletts is about to move in. But
beforehand, theres a little bit of work to be done.
Such as rewiringno easy task when youre dealing
with half-metre-thick sandstone walls. The unusual
Gothic-style home is being repainted and re-pointed,
and a chimney has been taken down, brick by brick, to
be reassembled more securely. There have also been
remarkable discoveries during the renovation, such as
masses of horse hair padding out the walls and
original agstones under the laundrys timber oor.
Just down the road at the former Montacute
homestead, on a hill commanding serene views of the
Clyde Valley, St James is also enjoying something of a
resurrection. The Halletts have taken it upon
themselves to be caretakers of this little stone church
since 1900.
As for Sherwood, the long-since-unoccupied four-
storey sandstone mansion is boarded up, waiting for
her turn to shine again.
Hollow Tree, near the Central Highlands town of
Bothwell, largely comprises Llanberis, Montacute and
Sherwood, all three owned by the Hallett family. In
between managing what seems like a never-ending
drought, they are faithful in tending to the wealth of
cultural heritage in their paddocks.
Although the drought has indeed caused some
decline of the landscaped Llanberis gardens, enclosed
by a giant cypress hedge. As Richard and Amy Hallett,
with their three young children, prepare to move into
this old family home, salvaging them is pretty much a
case of redesigning the garden landscape with a view
to the changing climate.
So far as the house is concerned, its the focus of a
busy Block-style blitz involving electricians, stone-
masons, painters, plasterers and plumbers, all at work
at once. And Llanberis has been kept in good shape,
with each generation doing its share of the upkeep.
Originally known as Calton Hill, Llanberis started
out life as a stone cottage built in the 1830s by John
Hollow Tree
134 | 135
Patterson as his matrimonial home, sited on a low
knoll overlooking the Clyde Valley. The two-storey,
twin-gabled front and timber verandah on three sides
were added in the 1850s or 1860s.
The property underwent a few ownership changes,
and a name change, before it was bought by the
Halletts in 1914. They had bought neighbouring
Montacute about ten years earlier.
Montacute had been a thriving pastoral settlement
established by Captain William Langdon on land he
was granted in 1823. As the operator of trading ships
between Hobart and London, Langdon is somewhat
dubiously recognised for introducing blackbirds to
Tasmania; he also brought out pheasants and
partridges. From Napoleons grave at St Helena
reputedly came willow trees that he planted along the
River Clyde. And by his door he planted a rose cutting
from Montacute House in his home town of Somerset,
regarded as one of the United Kingdoms most glorious
Elizabethan mansions.
Langdons Van Diemens Land version of Montacute
House was much more modest, although it boasted
an expansive slate roof. His settlement also included
cottages, barns and a garden enclosed by a high brick
and stone wall to repel Aborigines and bushrangers.
Langdon died in 1879 and the property passed to
his son.
When Michael Sharland, author of the 1952
publication Stones of a Century, paid Montacute a visit
as part of his research, the wife of a shepherd living
there showed him around and he admired its tall
French windows, front and rear, which opened onto a
verandah with graceful poles and joists. Inside, the
hall was agged, the staircase and architraves were of
cedar, and there appeared to be Huon pine doors to a
few of the many rooms.
However Montacute was apparently built of inferior
stone and rubble and over the years it declined. Vandals
heightened the indignity, taking off with everything
from the staircase to the cedar doors, replaces and
mantelpieces. Today it is a ruin, albeit picturesque.
However the Montacute family chapel, which cost
Langdon a small fortune to build in the 1850s, is still
in use today. Consecrated in 1857, St James is part of
the Southern Midlands parish of the Anglican Church
and used for services from time to time; Richard and
Amys children, nieces and nephew were all christened
there in the last ve years. The font was carved from a
single piece of sandstone, the original organ is behind
the back pew and many Hallett descendants rest in
its grounds.
The Halletts restored the church in its centenary
year, 1957, and have tended to it ever since; part of the
cost of the recent roof replacement was met with a
small heritage grant. The Anglican Church cant
afford to maintain some of its highest-prole heritage
churches in Tasmania, let alone little St James at
Montacute, and the amount of money, and skills,
needed to maintain cultural heritage throughout
Tasmania is a signicant challenge.
Sherwood is a good example of one of these
challenges but it has at least been fully secured to
guard against vandals, and is safe for now. Secreted
deep in a valley on the River Clyde, Sharland wrote in
Stones of a Century that its owner, John Sherwin, must
have been a recluse:
It was difcult to account for his taste so far as it
concerned the situation of his home. Here was a
stately house hidden in the depths of a narrow valley,
almost in the nature of a gulch, on the edge of a
river subject to ooding, and with access presenting
difculties for the transport of the day But if, like
[Captain William] Langdon, he expected the fertile
valley to bring further settlement and neighbours, he
was disappointed, for Sherwood has remained isolated
and concealed by the folded hills for nearly 120 years.
Sherwin was a merchant who moved to Van
Diemens Land in 1823 with his wife, daughter and
three sons, and initially established a log house on the
property that was destroyed by Aborigines in an arson
attack. When he set about building a more substantial
settlement, Sherwin did not scrimp on sandstone.
The main house is a four-storey classic Georgian
mansion (the cellar runs under the length of the
home), with a kitchen, bakery and meat-house at
the back. A coach-house and a barn are attached to
the home, there were several stone cottages, and the
ha-ha and dry-stone walls are considered excellent
examples of their type.
In 1843, notorious Tasmanian bushranger Martin
Cash spied Sherwood from a hill with his telescope.
He spent several days monitoring the comings and
goings down below before making his move. Cash
had already escaped twice from the supposedly
escape-proof Port Arthur penal settlement, the
second time with two bushmen, Kavanagh and Jones.
Cash and Co., as they became known, targeted the
well-to-do, and earned a reputation as the gentlemen
bushrangers because they didnt use unnecessary
violence.
136 | 137
Sherwin was in his sitting room, entertaining
guests, when Cash struck one afternoon, taking fteen
servants hostage rst and ordering them onto the
sitting-room oor.
In his autobiography, Cash recounted how one of
these servants motioned him a message that tobacco
was in short supply. And so Cash saw to it that tobacco
was seized and divided amongst the servants.
Cash continued:
So another gave me to understand by signals that
we could nd some grog in the cellar, upon which
I ordered a bucket of wine to be brought, and gave
a cup full to each, assuring them that they should
have no more in case they might get elevated, and
that by doing so, we might be obliged to shoot some
of them to keep the remainder in order. Mr Sherwin
now requested me in a kind of whine not to give the
men any more drink; I observed that when he was
master of the premises, he might act as he pleased,
but while I claimed the sovereignty, I would not be
dictated to.
Cash seized some of the guns kept in the house-
hold, and then turned to the possessions of Sherwin
and his guests, who included a founding member of
the Hobart Quaker community Henry Propsting.
Mr Propsting gave up some money, protesting on
his honour that he had no more in his possession,
but this, as we learned subsequently, was untrue,
he having concealed his watch and 70 guineas in
his boots; on being appraised of this circumstance
through the medium of the Press, we solemnly
resolved to trust no more Quakers in future, Cash
wrote. We collected a very respectable swag, however,
of both money and property.
Legend has it that Cash buried a bottle of gold
sovereigns on Sherwood Hill as he left, but despite the
very best of efforts, they have never been found.
Later that year, Cash was sentenced to hang for the
murder of one of his pursuers, but at the eleventh hour
was sentenced to transportation for life at Norfolk
Island, later returning to Tasmania a free man.
After a successful career in trade in Launceston,
Sherwins son Isaac retired to Sherwood in 1845 and
made his mark by installing an irrigation system that
is still regarded as an engineering marvel. A father-
and-son team were tasked with excavating a tunnel
through a sandstone hill above the River Clyde in
order to transfer water into a channel system to irrigate
the surrounding land. With only a pick and a shovel,
they started at opposite ends, and when the two halves
of the 150-metre long, one-metre deep tunnel met up
in the middle, they matched almost perfectly.
Isaac Sherwin was instrumental in lobbying the
government of the day to store winter water in nearby
Lake Sorrell and Lake Crescent to release into the
River Clyde in summer and irrigate the surrounding
crops. The Clyde River Trust, formed in 1857, still
operates today, but a summer ow from the lakes is
increasingly difcult to obtain.
The Halletts acquired Sherwood in 1921. The house
hasnt been properly lived in since the 1950s, save for
some rabbit trappers and farm-hands. In the 1970s
the Sandy Bay Scouts made the restoration of
Sherwood one of their projects, and they visited about
thirty weekends a year.
Since the scouts left, the Halletts have kept
Sherwood in good repair and they may one day
resurrect the propertys famous roast ox nights at the
homestead on the rst Saturday of spring.
When Llanberis is done and St James spruced up a
little more, their attention might turn to bringing
Sherwood back to life as a home.
138 | 139
140 | 141
142 | 143
When returned serviceman Bruce Wall won Lake
House in a ballot as part of the post-World War II
soldier settlement scheme in Tasmania, it was on the
condition that he knock the uninhabitable home-
stead down.
At the time, the austere Georgian mansion was
being used as a barn. Its heavy cedar doors had all
been removed, and possums and other wildlife had
moved in.
Mr Wall ignored the demolition order.
Later, a leading member of Tasmanias National
Trust, he set about quietly restoring the home in the
evenings, after his days farm work had ended.
Now, Lake House is about to get a major new lease
of life as a luxury boutique country hotel thanks to its
most recent owner, Irish-born aviation entrepreneur
Rob Sherrard.
Lake House was built for Robert Corney, who came
to Tasmania with his wife and seven children in 1821.
Corney was a wealthy London shipowner and
merchant but, like so many others, suffered heavy
losses in the depression that followed the Napoleonic
wars, and decided to invest his last 5000 pounds in a
new life in Tasmania.
By 1828, notwithstanding serious nancial losses
resulting from attacks on his stock by bushrangers
and Aborigines, Corney had built a log and
weatherboard house, brick kitchen and dairy, granary,
malt kiln, barn and other buildings on his land grant,
Lake Farm, near Cressy. His grand home, Lake House,
was completed in all its sandstone-rendered glory
about 1830, the same year that Corney died.
Lake House is described as being of true classical
villa design, possibly taken from an architects pattern
book. The simple two-storey main block is anked by
single-storey wings, where large dining and drawing
rooms are located. Each bay is accentuated by being
recessed and separated by pilaster piers.
One of the most recognisable features of Lake
House is its timber porch of pure Greek Doric order.
Lake House
144 | 145
The same Doric order in cedar makes a stylish
replace surround inside.
The following description of Lake Houses interior
is from Clive Lucas and Ray Joyces Australian Country
Houses:
Inside has a cruciform hall with bold arches at the
crossing. Originally the walls were painted in imitation
of slabs of granite. At the back, a geometrical stair rises
to the chamber oor above and descends to the ofces
in the basement. The transverse hall leads to the two
wings, which are handsome single rooms with high
ceilings and tall embrasured windows.
The joinery is all cedar, and the principal chimney-
pieces are, like the porch, in the Greek Doric order. The
room to the left of the front door was Robert Corneys
library and has elegant axed and tted bookcases
balancing the chimney breast.
Lake House is situated on a bank right above the
low-lying, meadow-anked Macquarie River, which
teems with trout and meanders through surrounding
agricultural ats. The home was built with its back to
this magnicent vista, although the lack of river
outlook will be addressed as part of its makeover.
The property also fronts the Lake River, which
claimed Robert Corneys life.
He and a servant were driving a team of bullocks to
Launceston when the force of the current as they
crossed the river swept the animals off their feet.
Their cart was sent hurtling downstream but the
servant was able to scramble to safety.
By the time assistance arrived from the nearby
settlement of Perth, two of the four bullocks were still
alive. But with no means to draw them out, and the
banks being too steep to allow them to escape, they
soon perished.
The body of Mr Corney was found oating a little
further downstream about two hours after the
accident occurred. A Launceston Advertiser account
of the tragedy on 11 October 1830 noted: Thus has
perished one of our most worthy, and most respectable,
settlers; a good father and a tender husband, he has
left behind him a large family, but we understand not
wholly unprovided.
The Corneys continued to farm Lake House for
about thirty years before it was incorporated into the
vast estate of nearby Connorville. For the next seventy
years it was used as staff accommodation, and then
as a barn.
Lake House was one of a number of Tasmanian
properties acquired post-World War II to establish
soldier settlement farms for returned servicemen,
and it was then that Bruce Wall received an 800-acre
farm and the dilapidated Lake House homestead.
Bruce Wall had a lifelong love of Tasmanian
heritage, and he served on the state council of the
National Trust continuously from 1961 to 1993. He
formulated the National Trust Register in the north
of the state, and oversaw the creation of the Register
of the National Estate, which had a signicant impact
on the recognition and conservation of Australian
heritage.
Having ignored the order to demolish it, Mr Wall
tended to the many restoration and maintenance
needs of Lake House. In 1963 it was named Mercury
newspaper and National Trust House of the Year.
Brendan Jordan now manages the Lake House
farm, and his father, Cedric, worked it before him.
They remember Mr Wall as a true gentleman, always
willing to help others out.
He never married or had children though, and Lake
House seems to have lacked a female touch. The
gardens remain undeveloped; there wasnt even a
driveway to the home until recently, it just sat in the
paddock with the livestock. And despite his care, the
bathrooms and kitchen remained extremely dated
and there was a great deal of other work needed inside
and out of the home.
146 | 147
When Lake House was auctioned in 2004, many of
the bidders were there for the prime farming land,
with its generous water rights from the Lake River,
and not the least bit interested in what was by now a
derelict and foreboding homestead once again.
Rob Sherrard was keen on both; so keen, in fact, to
purchase a ne historic Tasmanian property that he
acquired Egleston at Campbell Town two weeks
before the Lake House auction, just to make sure he
didnt miss out, and ended up with them both.
Rob Sherrard is probably best known for
co-founding Australias Virgin Blue airline. He and a
mate, Brett Godfrey, rst discussed the idea of
establishing a new, low-price Australian airline over a
few beers in a British pub during the 1993 Ashes
series. Godfrey had just started working for Sir
Richard Bransons Virgin Atlantic, having previously
worked for a Melbourne aviation company with
Sherrard.
Their idea was put to Virgin, but it went nowhere.
When the pair caught up again in the late nineties,
Godfrey had escalated through the Virgin ranks and
was well known to Sir Richard Branson. So they put
the idea to him directly, and the rest is history.
Virgin Blue took off in 2000 with two aircraft and
just one route, Brisbane to Sydney. It was the most
successful start-up aviation company in history, with
a load factor of 78 per cent in its rst hundred days,
and it now operates 2200 ights a week to twenty-two
Australian destinations.
Mr Sherrard got out of the business in 2005 to
focus on his young family and many other pursuits,
of which Lake House is just one.
Extensive planning has gone into the Lake House
rejuvenation, and the concept of a luxury hotel has
evolved over time. Under the guidance of Launceston
heritage architect David Denman, the interior will be
fully restored to an ultra-high standard, and luxury
bathroom facilities added to each of the ten
bedrooms.
An amazing extension will ensure that Lake House,
at long last, takes advantage of its river outlook. Two
new conservatory wings will extend out the back of
the home in similar shape and form to the existing
single-storey bays. These will form a morning terrace
and an afternoon terrace, with a courtyard in between.
The glass for the windows has been sourced from a
seventeenth-century conservatory in France.
A new portico will also be added to the austere back
of the house, and the kitchen will never be the same
again as it undergoes a conversion t for the very best
chef Lake House can nd, so that the food here will be
an experience in itself.
The shearing shed will be transformed into a
function centre, and therell be the sort of activities
that bet a ne country estate such as thisincluding
trout shing, clay-pigeon shooting and, for the
revheads, an opportunity to inspect Mr Sherrards
rather impressive personal collection.
Just a few of its pieces include a 1922 Delage
Roadster (with ghter-jet engine), the Monaro that
Peter Brock raced in his last win at Bathurst, a Sauber-
Mercedes C9 Le Mans car, and a few small planes and
boats for good measure.
The gardens will be completely developed, and
other improvements also being considered include
adding a lake and a small chapel to the property.
One of the most exciting plans is removing the
paint on Lake Houses faade. No one can remember
Lake House before its white coat of paint, yet under-
neath it is brick with a sandstone render. The paint
has given the homestead a more severe appearance,
and it is time for the walls to breathe. A sample of the
original render was sent to Melbourne to ensure a
new batch was mixed up in exactly the same
proportions as the old.
It is expected that Lake House will start taking
guests about April 2009, heralding an exhilarating
new era for this stunning homestead that nearly
didnt survive.
148 | 149
It has hosted royalty on more than one occasion, a
showbiz sensation and a famous World War I eld
marshal.
Yet its the simplest things, and what it is today, that
makes Mona Vale really shine: a family home, the hub
of a modern farming business, a home that ourishes
with ordinary day-to-day lifealthough its no
ordinary home. You need a cherry picker just to clean
the windows.
Mona Vale is sometimes called the calendar house.
It has a window for every day of the year, fty-two
rooms, twelve chimneys, seven entrances, and four
staircases for the four seasons.
It was designed by William Archer (architect and
owner of Cheshunt) for his brother-in-law, Robert
Quayle Kermode, and was completed in 1868, just in
time to host a visit by Queen Victorias son, the Duke
of Edinburgh, on the very rst royal visit to Australia.
This was a signicant moment for Mona Vale, and
indeed for Tasmania, as it was hoped that the royal visit
would lend a mark of respectability to the island and
assist in burying its maligned convict past.
So in addition to ensuring the palatial homestead,
extensive gardens, conservatories and exquisite chapel
were t for a queens son, Mr Kermode went to the
trouble of commissioning a royal bed, a four-poster
with the arms of Edinburgh adorning its cedar
footboard. People still sleep in this bed in the Duke of
Edinburghs room, one of ten bedrooms on Mona
Vales second oor. The Duke planted an oak tree in
the gardens while he was a guest at Mona Vale, and it
continues to thrive.
The impressive visitors book continued well into
the next century. In the 1920s, owners Eustace and
Alexina Cameron entertained the future King George
VI and Queen Elizabeth at Mona Vale. Even earlier
than that in 1912, the legendary Lord Kitchener paid
a visit to inspect the empires troops, as the light horse
regiment was based at Mona Vale for many years
(the Cameron family have a long military history).
Mona Vale
150 | 151
And then composer, actor and playwright Sir Noel
Coward played the grand piano in the Mona Vale hall
when he was in Australia raising funds for the Red
Cross during World War II.
Mona Vale was really quite the place to be and thats
exactly how Robert Quayle Kermode intended it.
His father, William Kermode, was granted land at
Ross in 1821, and it is thought the property was
named after Monaoeda, the Latin name for his home,
the Isle of Man.
As a merchant, William Kermode made many trips
to and from Tasmania before he settled on the land.
The wealth he accumulated aroused some early gossip
that he may have dabbled in the slave trade.
On one of his voyages, in 1822, Kermode took a
nine-year-old Aboriginal boy named George Van Die-
men back to England to be educated. In researching
her Kermode family descendants, Jean Reiss published
the following letter written by Governor Sorell to
William Kermode on 15 September 1821:
As you have expressed an inclination to take the native
Diemenese George to England, in which disposition
I most readily concur, it might be as well to tell you
his history.
About two and a half years ago, this boy, and one
much younger, were found in the woods about New
Norfolk, being at the time it appeared abandoned by
their parents.
They were both brought to Hobart Town and this
boy remained under my care. The other died of a
bowel complaint having been placed at nurse in the
country.
This boy who now goes into your charge has been
christened George Van Diemen, and has been taught
his letters, and his prayers, but although he has become
obedient and tractable, there is little expression of
intellect.
I believe he is sufciently impressed with the law
of meum and teum [mine and thine], and would
not take anything except to eat, with respect to
which I am afraid he is open to temptation. You are
of course authorised to leave him in any hands that
you consider t to insure his good treatment and
education, and he would of course be allowed by His
Majestys government a passage back to Hobart when
he approaches or arrives at manhood.
In 1827 Kermode returned to Tasmania with his
son, Robert Quayle Kermode, and a now fully literate
George Van Diemen, but it is believed the young
Aboriginal man contracted tuberculosis in smog-
lled Liverpool and died at Mona Vale not long after
his return.
Williams wife and daughters joined him at Mona
Vale in 1828. By 1834, Kermode had replaced a modest
timber house with a substantial brick building, and
many farm cottages and buildings were laid out.
Kermode was considered a highly progressive
farmer. Colonel Mundy, a soldier and author of Our
Antipodes, or Residence and Rambles in the Australasian
Colonies, wrote that Kermode must be the wealthiest
Manxman now in existence. Of his farming practices,
he said:
Mr K has nevertheless carried irrigation to a greater
perfection than any other person perhaps in the
Australian colonies. Here are 500 acres laid down
in English grasses, divided by English quick hedges
into convenient enclosures, along each of which are
water-ducts with dam gates, by which he is enabled
to throw the whole or part under water in the driest
season.
This valuable plot of ground, which will probably
feed as many sheep as 15,000 acres of the native
pastures, was originally a swamp, and was received
under ostensible protest but with a secret appreciation
of its real value by the proprietor. Indeed, if I
remember correctly, the worthy old gentleman who
has a hearty liking for a joke, chuckles complacently
and openly about the fact that some additional land
was thrown in by the authorities as a make-weight
for the boggy allotment that has helped to make his
fortune.
Robert Quayle Kermode rst lived at Mona Vale
cottagenow a glorious estate in its own right known
as Lochielwith his wife, Martha Elizabeth, and six
sons. Martha was the eldest daughter of Thomas
Archer, of Woolmers, and the marriage brought
together two of the colonys most distinguished and
wealthy families, but she died in 1853, a year after
William Kermode.
It was about 1854 that Robert Quayle Kermode
appears to have rst contemplated building a grand
new residence at Mona Vale and it seems that William
Archer, his talented brother-in-law and long-time
friend, had prepared some sketches by 1855.
In 1859 Robert remarried in England, and in 1865
work began on the magnicent homestead at Mona
Vale. It was designed to showcase both Roberts wealth
and Williams skill.
The stone was quarried on the property and it is
impossible to fathom how these heavy pieces of rock
were lifted to such enormous heights: the home is
three storeys high, and also boasts an Italianate tower,
from which are afforded magnicent views.
In the three years it took to complete Mona Vale
there was the occasional owner-versus-architect
disputethe verandah is one example.
Dr Cliff Craig, in Historic Homesteads of Australia,
wrote: The main objection raised has been that the
impingement of the verandah on the side of the porch
has diminished its dramatic value. As can be seen, the
verandah conceals the arches at the two sides of the
house. The architect, William Archer, did not want a
verandah, but he was overruled. The current owners
of Mona Vale are pleased for that, and believe the
verandah works very well.
Its unknown how much it cost to build Mona Vale,
but no expense was spared, inside or out. Again,
Dr Craig writes:
The main house is a magnicent specimen of its type
giving, without undue ostentation, an immediate
impression of splendour. It is in the form of a
parallelogram with two wings running back from
it, thus forming a court. Each storey is marked by
a moulded string course, and the whole house is
surrounded by a cornice, with carved trusses and by
a frieze of scroll work.
He also quotes Mr Gorton Willing, an architect
who made a special study of Mona Vale:
The dominant inuence in the three main faades
of the home is early astylar Florentine Renaissance,
without columns or pilasters, each course marked
by a moulded string course, the eaves in the form of
a cornice roughly proportional to the height of the
building, rusticated quoins at all angles and set backs,
and the windows framed by mouldings. However the
set backs and asymmetrical balance of the faades,
152 | 153
the tower, the porch and the curved bay window,
although Renaissance in detail, are all in the Gothic
tradition, as also are the steeply pitched rooves of
many of the minor buildings which otherwise are a
simplied version of the main building.
The home looks out over a man-made lake and
extensive gardens. An exquisite stone chapel was also
completed in time for the Dukes stay, and enormous
conservatories were lled with lemon trees, camellias,
pineapples and grapes.
A newspaper reporter who covered the royal visit
was able to provide a detailed description of parts of
the interior of Mona Vale as it appeared in 1868:
The walls of the [drawing] room are papered with
a very rich moir antique paper, white and gold,
bearing a small pattern in gold. The cornices and
centre ornament are of papier-mache, similar to those
in the dining room, and from the centre depends a
very elegant chandelier. The mantel shelf is of pure
white Carrara marble, richly sculptured, and the grate,
fenders, dogs and irons are all of the best Berlin metal.
The hearth and cheeks of the replace are inlaid with
porcelain
[The dining room] is a lofty and spacious apartment
lighted by large windows looking southward and
westward. The walls are decorated with a handsome
paper most curiously built up. Over the range of
panelling runs a frieze of very chaste and classic
patternabove this is an extremely rich cornice,
having festoons of fruits and owers, and in the centre
of the ceiling hangs a very handsome ornament, from
which depends a chandelier for kerosene lamps.
Of the entry hall: On entering by the portico, the
visitor is ushered into a spacious hall, the oor of
which is tessellated with Mintons caustic tiles, in
variegated colours, after a very beautiful design.
These rooms hardly look any different today.
An unusual and innovative feature of Mona Vale is
its laundry chuteeffectively an elevator moved up
and down with a rope pulley. It has landings on each
of the oors and, as well as laundry, was used to
deliver freshly polished shoes. It had a more recent
use delivering a young man with a broken leg from
one oor to the next.
There is a range of historically signicant farm
structures and outbuildings, including a glorious
two-storey sandstone home for the manager.
At its peak, about a hundred people worked on the
Mona Vale farm, most also living here. There was a
school for the children, and Sunday services took
place in the chapel, which is still used for Christmas
carol singing and the occasional wedding or
christening.
Robert Quayle Kermode unfortunately didnt get
to enjoy his lavish residence for long. He died in 1870
at Mona Vale from mis-assimilation of food.
His son, William Archer Kermode, inherited Mona
Vale, and other children received properties that were
part of the estate. But William closed the Mona Vale
homestead up and moved to England with his ve
children, two years after his own wife died, returning
in 1888.
In about 1905 Mona Vale was sold to Eustace Noel
Cameron, who lived there with his wife Alexina and
their six children. The Camerons, a prominent
Tasmanian pastoral family, returned Mona Vale to the
state of grace that betted it.
Over time, stylish modern touches have been
added, and essentials such as central heating.
While cleaning the 365 windows of this calendar
house is one heck of a chore, it looks as immaculate
today as it would have when it literally gleamed for
that rst royal visit so many years ago. In fact, far
from looking its years, the home almost seems to have
taken on a new vitality with a fresh generation of
children recently moving in.
The place really is at its best when children are
running down hallways, playing their music, or riding
their horses through the courtyard.
154 | 155
156 | 157
158 | 159
160 | 161
Chudleigh is a tiny village of roses in a picturesque
valley in Tasmanias Central North. It is possibly the
last place youd go looking for an old stone fortress
but, in the early 1830s, this area was the very frontier
of the known world. And a former Irish army ofcer
who, at the age of sixty-three, decided to go farming
on the edge would have needed some protection
from the powerful Aboriginal tribe that called this
area home and controlled access to nearby ochre
mines.
The stone compound that was subsequently built
in the bush has been described as the only extant relic
of the erce conict between Tasmanias early settlers
and the Aboriginal owners of the land, a conict that
eventually prompted the forced removal of any
surviving Aborigines to Flinders Island.
The compound consists of three-metre high walls
that surround a one-acre yard and outbuildings,
including a colossal stone barn complete with gun-
slit windows. The homestead was outside the main
walls and, in its day, this farm compound would have
been a place of frantic activity.
Macaw breeders Scott and Deb Wilson were driving
past Old WesleyDale one day in 1998 when they saw
the for sale sign out the front of the Georgian
homestead. They had been wanting to escape the heat
of their central New South Wales home, and even
their majestic South American birds seem happier in
the new climes.
Old WesleyDales historic feel and scenic setting
drew them in well before they had even inspected the
homestead, which was probably just as well, considering
the state it was in. A single-storey cottage adjacent to
the main home was totally derelict, while the main
house itself was dated and in need of maintenance,
and the garden comprised a few old elm trees and a
clothes line.
The Wilsons spruced up the homestead and
restored the cottage, in the process unearthing the
original cobblestone oor of what was once a dairy.
Old WesleyDale
162 | 163
The cottage is now self-contained accommodation
for tourists. The neglected gardens have been totally
transformed into a two-hectare oasis of owers,
hedges, fruit and vegetables.
The stone compound was built to last and has
always been in excellent condition, but there really
isnt much use for it nowadays.
Retired Irish army ofcer Lieutenant Travers Hartley
Vaughan was granted this land in 1829 and he built
the stone cottage that forms the back half of the
existing homestead. Accounts vary as to whether he or
the propertys next owner, the larger than life Henry
Reed, were responsible for the construction of the
fortress.
Those who favour Vaughan point to the distinctly
Irish stone columns at the entry to the compound;
round buttresses also feature on the single-storey
cottage. In A History of the Chudleigh Valley, John
Hawkins says the columns compare excellently to
rounded columns constructed by hand of stone and
slate at the entrance gates to Castlefreake Castle, in
County Cork, circa 1825.
Further, by the time Vaughan sold to Reed in about
1837, the vast majority of Aboriginal inhabitants had
been killed or removed, and the perceived need for
such a compound would have been considerably
diminished.
Sir Hudson Fysh, co-founder of Qantas and
grandson of Reed, had a different take on their origin
in his book Henry Reed: Van Diemens Land Pioneer,
where he wrote:
However it does seem that the compound device
and buildings were erected in Henry Reeds usual
fashion of doing something big and unique, a full-
blooded, no half-measures project Perhaps, after
all, Reeds idea was to keep his valuable stock safe
from bushrangers and cattle thieves, as these gentry
still abounded in the district, and for small stock, it
provided a protection against the Tasmanian tiger, or
marsupial wolf, and the snarly little Tasmanian devils,
both of which unpopular marauders abounded in the
rugged country bounding WesleyDale.
In any event, at three metres in height, and about
sixty centimetres wide, the walls of the compound
did the trick in terms of keeping the unwanted out.
They were constructed of dolerite stone quarried on
the property, with mortar of burned limestone from
the famous Mole Creek caves nearby. Sir Hudson
Fysh wrote that great use was made by his grandfather
of probationary convict labour from the government
depot at Deloraine.
According to Sir Hudson Fysh, one of the reasons
Vaughan was keen to sell up after only a few years was
because of frequent run-ins with Aborigines and so
that part of his grant known as Native Hut Corner was
sold to Henry Reed about 1837. A devout Wesleyan
Methodist, Reed renamed the property WesleyDale
after his spiritual leader.
Henry Reed arrived in Hobart as a twenty-one-
year-old emigrant from Yorkshire. With no money to
even buy himself a horse, he walked the 123 miles to
his chosen destination of Launceston.
He received a land grant near Deddington that he
named Rockliff Vale, after his mother, Mary Rockliff,
but so little of it could be cultivated that in 1829 he
commenced farming on a new grant near Longford.
From there, Reed branched out into a range of other
business activities that brought him massive success
and wealth, including shipping and whaling. His
ships were integral in carrying migrants, livestock
and stores from Launceston to the new settlement at
Port Phillip, Melbourne.
He was also fervently involved with the non-
conformist revivalist mission work of the 1830s, and
he began his forty years of preaching under a wattle
tree at WesleyDale one Sunday soon after he bought
the property, rustling up all the locals to attend.
Sir Hudson Fysh suggested that the vice and
depravity that reigned in the colony before the last
convicts were brought out in 1853 spurred Reed, and
others like him, to try to save them. Reed held pre-
dawn prayer meetings, summer and winter, preached
all over the north, and spent time with convicts in their
cells on the night before they were due to be executed.
Back in England, where he returned twice, Reed
assisted William Booth in founding the Salvation
Army, and, in Tasmania, founded the Launceston
Christian Mission Church.
He also helped his kinsman Henry Rockliff emigrate
to Tasmania, and made him overseer and manager of
WesleyDale. Rockliff s brothers followed Henry to
Tasmania and the family eventually settled further
west in the virtually untouched area of Sassafras, where
many descendants remain today.
After a twenty-six-year stint back in England,
during which he built two stunning homes in
Tunbridge Wells and Harrogate, Dunorlan Park and
Dunorlan Villa, Reed and his family returned to
Tasmania in 1871, buying Mt Pleasant in Launceston,
still one of the nest homes in northern Tasmania.
164 | 165
At WesleyDale, Reed also built a grand thirty-six-
room summer holiday home that he named Mountain
Villa, and the original homestead became known as
Old WesleyDale. Mountain Villa was completed only
shortly before Reeds death in 1880 and ended up in
the Cameron family, where it remains.
In comparison to both of Reeds later Tasmanian
homes, Old WesleyDale is modest; more country
cottage than colonial mansion, although it has two
levels and eleven rooms. Its believed that Vaughan
built the back half of the house, while Reed added the
front section. Reed also built a church on the property,
but only the foundations remain.
In between tending to the macaws, the garden and
B&B guests with his wife, Scott Wilson also works for
nearby heritage-property owner John Hawkins. After
buying Bentley ve years ago and performing an
amazing revival of it, coupled with his rich knowledge
and appreciation of Tasmanian colonial history, John
Hawkins has been credited with recharging the whole
Chudleigh district. For example, thanks to Hawkins
bringing out experts from England, Wilson has been
trained in the old arts of hawthorn hedge-laying and
dry-stone walling.
Wilsons handiwork is also starting to bear fruit at
Old WesleyDale, where he has built a new dry-stone
ha-ha wall. He has also shaped the row of box
honeysuckle hedges where the front fence once stood
into a row of marching elephants, a barrier that could
not seem more at odds with the fortress nearby.
166 | 167
168 | 169
A wapiti is a North American elk. And a wapiti can
be a very handy thing to have around, as Thomas
William Henric Clarke of Quorn Hall, Campbell
Town, discovered on one of his many extraordinary
hunting trips in the late 1800s.
Stranded in a blizzard, deep in Native American
Rocky Mountain country, T.W.H. gutted the large
wapiti hed shot and spent the night inside its carcass.
Its head is exhibit number sixteen in the Big Room at
Quorn Hall, in Tasmanias Northern Midlands.
One of three extensions to the 1830s U-shaped
mansion, this hall-like room was built in 1900 so
T.W.H. could showcase the spoils of his hunting
adventures, which included a four-year stint in North
America as a cowboy, and four safaris in the wilds of
Africa, accompanied only by teams of native porters
and bearers for company.
About 150 trophies, all catalogued, cram the Big
Room, which is thought to be the largest private
collection of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
They include three Ammodorcas clarkei, or Clarkes
gazelles, the new genus of gazelle T.W.H. discovered
on one expedition in Somaliland, which he claimed
to have been the rst white man to enter.
Theres a stuffed grizzly bear, upright and annoyed,
two of her tiny startled babies, heads of rhinoceros,
wart-hog, impala and hartebeest, the skulls of a
hippopotamus and a thylacine, candlesticks carved
from hooves, vases supported by eagles talons, and a
lions skin that represented one very close shave.
When the current owner of Quorn Hall, Thomas
Colin Clarke, was growing up, this was quite a
television room. Today its more of a museum, the
not-for-the-fainthearted end of a beautifully main-
tained mansion where the conservatory, drawing
room, freshly renovated kitchen and landscaped
gardens all make for easier places to relax.
Built in 1834 in Georgian style and of ashlar stone,
the then 10,000-acre Quorn Hall had three owners
before it entered the vast estate of William John
Quorn Hall
170 | 171
Turner Clarke, T.W.Hs grandfather, in 1844. The
lavish lifestyles of the two previous owners had sent
them broke, but there was no chance of that happening
to W.J.T. He was regarded as the richest man in the
country before he died in 1874 with an estate of 2.5
million pounds and 215,000 acres of freehold land in
Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand,
most of which he left to his rstborn, William
Clarke.
Sir William Clarke went on to build Rupertswood
in Sunbury, Victoria. One of that states most elaborate
homes, it was where the English cricket team spent
Christmas of 1882 following their shock defeat by the
Australian XI at the Oval Cricket Ground, in London.
On Christmas Eve, Williams wife, Lady Janet Clarke,
presented English captain Ivo Bligh with a small
pottery urn that she said contained a burned cricket
bail, and the Ashes urn came into being.
W.J.T.s second son, Thomas Biggs, inherited Quorn
Hall but died only a few years later, when T.W.H., his
son, was just eighteen. He leased out the farm to
pursue his hunting interests, not taking a more active
interest in the running of the property until 1894. He
was still hunting in Rhodesia at the age of sixty-six,
and documented all his trips in journals. Should
anything befall me out here, he wrote from Nairobi
in 1911, please forward all my things out to Quorn
Hall also all heads shot and ries. Also, to put a
plain solid stone in graveyard.
As it turned out, T.W.H. died at Quorn Hall, aged
seventy. He fathered ve children, and its thought
that while he was off hunting for many months at a
time his wife stayed with relatives in England, not at
their Tasmanian estate.
The current owners are the sixth generation of
Clarkes at Quorn Hall. They moved to the homestead
from a small but modern house on the same property
about eight years ago. While it was in good order,
theyve added necessities such as a heat pump, a
modern kitchen and up-to-date bathrooms. They
run sheep, beef and crops on the property, now some
7500 hectares.
For now the Big Room is entered mainly for
housekeeping and, as the trophies are cleaned, the
Clarkes can but imagine the tales their great game-
hunting ancestor could have told about each.
172 | 173
174 | 175
Moonah is a bustling working-class suburb ve
kilometres north of the Hobart CBD. Its an unlikely
location for an old Tasmanian country mansion.
But 170 years ago this was rural Tasmania, and its
where one of Hobarts most illustrious early entre-
preneurs, Henry Hopkins, took his family for summer
holidays.
The paddocks and bush that surrounded
Summerhome in the 1830s have long since given way
to industry and suburbia. But Summerhome has
stood still while everything around has changed.
Handpainted 1850s wallpaper from France still
adorns the walls. Original furnishings are intact.
And the Hopkins family have not left.
Hopkins came to Tasmania from Kent, England,
for the promise of a better life. He amassed huge
wealth as a particularly entrepreneurial merchant
and was credited with the entire export of wool from
the colony in 1822.
He also founded the Congregation Church in
Tasmania and Victoria.
His Hobart residence, Westella, was built in 1835
on the instruction that it be the grandest home in all
of Hobart, surpassing the Government House of the
day. By all accounts the builders delivered, and it is
now government ofces.
Summerhome was a former boarding school for
boys when Hopkins bought it for his summer
residence in about 1840. A two-storey building of
brick and stucco was added to the original stone
cottage.
When Hopkins died in 1870, his son-in-law, the
Reverend George Clarke, took on the property and it
has been a home for four seasons to their descendants
ever since.
The years are showing at Summerhome. Funds
raised from opening the gardens for weddings and
other functions will be put towards restoration works.
Summerhome
176 | 177
178 | 179
180 | 181
182 | 183
The sandstone homestead at Valleyeld was a bit of an
accident. The elongated 1838 building was designed
to be coach-house, granary and servants quarters,
but the Taylor family ended up moving in, and it has
been the main residence at this famous Saxon Merino
sheep stud ever since.
Valleyeld is therefore quite distinct from other
homes of its era. The low, two-storey structure more
closely resembles a military barracks than your typical
Georgian mansion, and the dimensions of the original
part of the home are highly unusual; thirty-ve
metres in length and just ve and a half metres in
width.
The northern side of the building, which faces onto
majestic gardens, has no fewer than twenty windows
and doors. A verandah that spans the entire length
was a later addition.
The southern side of the home is solid stone, with
one solitary window, although a modern sunroom/
living area has also been added to this side, bordering
formal English-style gardens and orchards that are as
magnicent as they are expansive.
Valleyeld was the rst Tasmanian home of the
Taylor family, who went on to become some of
Australias most revered superne wool producers.
Their Saxon Merino studs occupied vast swathes of
land across the northern Tasmanian Campbell Town
district, much of which remain in the Taylor family to
this day and still produce some of the exceptionally
superne wool for which Tasmania is so renowned.
George Taylor, sixty-two, arrived in Hobart from
Scotland in 1823 with his wife and children, and was
granted 800 acres on the Macquarie River that he
named Valleyeld.
His sons George Jr, Robert and David were each
granted 700 acres nearby, while a fourth son, John,
who emigrated a little later, received 500 acres and
also acquired nearby property St Johnstone.
With bullocks and wagons carrying all their worldly
possessions, the Taylors made the trek from Hobart
Valleyfeld,
Epping Forest
184 | 185
to their new land grant in the north of the state, a
difcult journey that would have taken several days
to complete. There they pitched tents not far from the
Macquarie River, eventually replacing these with huts
and cottages, and then the long stone building.
Valleyeld had more than its fair share of brushes
with bushrangers and Aborigines. Its said that in
1824 George Taylor Jr was perched in a tree, bent on
improving his mind by reading the bible, when he
was ambushed by a gang of escaped convicts-turned-
bushrangers, who were on the run from Macquarie
Harbour. He was taken hostage and forced to lead the
villains to the Taylor home.
As they got closer, George wrenched himself free
from the bandits clutches and raised the alarm to a
household that was apparently already on alert,
because the dogs had been behaving so uneasily.
The household repelled the bushrangers with a
barrage of musket re, the ladies of the household
assiduously reloading the musket nozzles.
Two gang members were captured by the Taylors,
another was badly wounded but escaped. The only
loss of life was the Taylor carpenter, who had
apparently cowered in an outbuilding during the
battle, only to pop his head out the door during a lull
in ring, whereupon he was promptly shot by one of
the outlaws. George Jr was seriously wounded, some
reports suggesting he lost an arm.
But the Taylors were lauded for the bravery they
had shown in defending Valleyeld. Governor Arthur
wrote to the family to express his appreciation, and to
assure them that should it unhappily be the case that
George Jrs wound proved mortal, every circumstance
of alleviation will accompany the mournful event
from the reection that you were struggling for the
common safety of your family.
Fellow colonists also wrote to Taylor offering their
congratulations and a silver plate, and George Jr
eventually received an additional 500 acres of land for
his efforts.
George Jr was also well known for his kindly dis-
position towards the local Aborigines; by all accounts
he endeavoured to communicate with them and
brought them gifts of sugar and tobacco. But in 1826,
he was speared to death by a group of Aborigines as
he passed by their camp while rounding up sheep.
Robert Taylor succeeded his father, George Sr, at
Valleyeld; John established himself at St Johnstone;
while David Taylor carried out a land swap with
Roderic OConnor, of Connorville, and started farm-
ing Winton. It was in 1835 at Winton that Australias
rst registered sheep stud was established, and this
then formed the basis of the famous Valleyeld stud.
The Taylors, and Tasmania, can largely thank Eliza
Forlonge for some of the purebred Saxon Merino
sheep that helped found the states superne-wool
industry.
This amazing Scotswoman decided her family
should emigrate to the warmer climes of Australia
after one of her two surviving sons started to show
signs of tuberculosis; four of her other children had
already succumbed to the disease.
But beforehand she did some homework, noting
rstly that wool was one product that appeared
capable of being successfully grown in the colony,
and secondly that Saxon Merino wool was quite
clearly the best and attracting premium prices.
The Saxon Merino is without peer in terms of the
quality of the wool it produces, and it is still sought
after by the textile industry for the most expensive
garments. The Merino was bred and developed in
Spain, and in 1765 their king gifted a ock to his
cousin, Elector Frederick August of Saxony, where
they were crossed with Saxon sheep and ourished.
The Saxon farmers took great care to protect the
purity of the line.
So Eliza Forlonge and her two sons moved to
Saxony, while her merchant husband stayed home in
Glasgow. There the trio learned German, one son
attended school and the other learned the ropes in a
Leipzig wool business. Then she set off on foot across
Saxony to select a ock to take to her new home.
Each sheep was hand-picked by Mrs Forlonge, and
payment made with gold coins that were stashed in a
bag sewn under her skirt. When one hundred sheep
had been selected, the Forlonges herded them to
Hamburg for shipment to England and then
Australia.
The Forlonges were destined for New South Wales,
but when their ship stopped en route at Van Diemens
Land, they were persuaded to stay with a 2500-acre
land grant near Campbell Town. Eliza returned to
Germany to select more stock.
However, the familys land grant had a major aw
in that it did not front water. So in 1835 they sold part
of their ock and leased their property to David
Taylor, of Winton, and eventually sold the property to
him when they moved to Victoria, where Mrs
Forlonge founded that states ne-wool ock.
The Valleyeld stud was formed in 1888 with ewes
from St Johnstone and Winton, both properties in
the Taylor family. Wool from Valleyeld would
frequently set Australasian and even world price
records, and it was easily regarded as one of the select
few top studs.
After the collapse of the wool industry in the 1980s,
it is one of many Tasmanian properties that turned its
attention to cropping. And in 2005 there was a major
break with Taylor family tradition when the property
was sold to local farmer David Downie.
He is securing water for irrigation, pursuing crops
and grazing and, with his family, relishing living in
such an amazing old home. David Downie is excited
about the potential for the homestead into the
future.
The kitchen looks out across gardens to a historic
stone wall. The sunroom area affords modern and
relaxed living, with the added bonus of being much
broader than the formal ve-and-a-half-metre wide
living rooms in the original homestead.
Upstairs, a hallway stretches the thirty-ve-metre
length of the home, with seven bedrooms and
bathrooms leading off it.
The living area downstairs comes to a stop about
three-quarters of the way along the house length,
where it is interrupted by a coach-house, now a work-
shop. Once the verandah went on at the front of the
home, there was no chance of a coach, or later a car,
getting through the verandah posts and under cover.
At the very end of the home is an abandoned two-
storey granary section, which is set for renovation
into another living area. It wasnt all that long ago
that this end room of the house was still being used to
store grain.
186 | 187
188 | 189
190 | 191
Trade journals of the late nineteenth century often
said the brewing industry was the most accurate
way to gauge economic times: people would drink
more beer when things were good, and less when
they werent. Which made for tumultuous times at
Valleyeld in New Norfolk, near Hobart, the birth-
place of Australias commercial hop industry and
where fortunes were in no small way linked to the
nations consumption of beer.
From the very rst days of colonisation of
Australia, huge importance was attached to trying to
get English hop cuttings to grow, so as to encourage
the more wholesome consumption of beer by the
early settlers and stamp out all the evils associated
with the rum trade.
There were many false starts in the harsh, dry
Australian climate, not helped by confusion over
which time of year to plant hops on the southern side
of the world. But, nally, paydirt was struck when
hops were planted in the fertile soil of Tasmanias
Derwent Valley and irrigated throughout summer
courtesy of an abundant supply of water from the
majestic Derwent River.
And so it was that Valleyeld became the rst place
in Australia to commercially produce the treasured
hop under irrigation in the 1850s.
Hops and orchards were the mainstay of this
property, and the Derwent Valley region, until the
1970s, when international hop and apple markets
collapsed and about 150 local hop growers were
pared back to just one major producer located at
nearby Bushy Park.
Located on the outskirts of New Norfolk in an
idyllic setting on the banks of the Derwent River,
these days Valleyeld grows the fruit for Cascade
Brewerys blackcurrant syrup. The bountiful supplies
of Derwent River water nourish a magnicent garden,
and two old hop kilns hark back to the days when this
property helped give Tasmania its reputation for
producing some of the worlds greatest beer.
Valleyfeld,
New Norfolk
192 | 193
From the bottom corner of the two-hectare garden,
which sweeps from the homestead down to the river,
you can cast a y for trout in water that starts at
Australias deepest lake, St Clair.
A succession of rose arches is modelled on those at
Claude Monets Giverny garden. And if you clamber
around old trees laden with pome and stone fruits,
you will nd yourself in an almost secret garden in
the middle, where exquisitely espaliered pear, apple
and crab-apple trees sit in lavender- and herb-lled
beds surrounded by perfectly manicured box hedges.
It has been said that the Valleyeld homestead is the
longest continually inhabited building in the southern
hemisphere. Whether thats true or not, owner Richard
Warner says its hard to say, but it denitely has been
inhabited since 1822, when it was the Kings Head Inn.
The intricate trelliswork on the Valleyeld verandah
dates back to the 1830s, when the Kings Head became
a family home for the rst time. This was the touch of
British army colonel Richard Armstrong, who retired
to Tasmania from the East India Companys Bengal
service, and apparently wanted a feature on the
building to remind him of his British Raj home.
But perhaps the most identiable, and certainly
most photographed, feature of this property is the
circular red-brick oast house in the front yard, used
for drying hops.
There was no shortage of hop-growing expertise in
Kent, England, from where the Shoobridge family
hailed, and where hop-growing had been an integral
part of the landscape since the fteenth century. With
the colony struggling to establish a viable hop industry,
William Shoobridge emigrated to Van Diemens Land
in 1822 with his family, including two-year-old son
Ebenezer. It was no easy task to keep alive the hop
plants that accompanied them during the voyage out.
Shoobridge had a hop garden at Providence Valley,
now North Hobart, but eventually gave up because of
the dryness of the soil. Attempts at growing hops at
Glen Ayr, Richmond, also met with limited success.
It was clear that to thrive in their strange new
environment, hops would need watering over the
summer, and so in about 1855 at the age of thirty-
ve, Ebenezer Shoobridge bought Valleyeld with
that aim.
The round oast house was built in 1883 by his son
Robert to complement the brick kiln that had burned
down while drying hops at the height of the previous
season. It was modelled on the very latest in oast
house designs in Kent but, thanks to the durability of
local eucalyptus wood used in the framing, was about
twice the usual size.
Robert and his brother William were also large-
scale apple growers, overseeing the rst export of
Tasmanian apples to London in 1887 and pioneering
new cold-storage techniques to preserve them during
shipment. With Valleyeld producing about 40,000
bushels (72,000 kilograms) of apples a year, this
property was also pivotal to Tasmania earning the
moniker Apple Isle.
A beer without hops is like a wine without grapes,
and the quality of a beer is directly related to the
quality of the hops. Tall climbing plants that grow as
vines, hops are very selective in terms of conditions
tolerated and succumb easily to elements such as
wind, heat and rain.
Hops must be dried on the same day they are
picked, hence the proliferation of oast houses, or hop
kilns, in areas where they are grown. The round kiln
at Valleyeld could dry 10,000 kilograms of green
hops a day on each day of the six-week picking season.
The hop cones would be laid on haircloth spread over
slats at the top of the kiln while, six metres below, two
oasties would keep eight coal res going for the
eight- to ten-hour drying time. Oast houses also made
for good fruit-storage areas when they were not being
used as kilns.
The Valleyeld oast house was still being used
commercially in the 1970s, and it was red up again
only recently when Mr Warner irted with the idea of
194 | 195
using it to dry malt for whiskey. But it seems barbecue
brickettes smoke an awful lot more than coal ever
did, and the res were put out before the re brigade
would surely have arrived.
New Norfolk is so named for all the Norfolk Island
residents who were evacuated there after 1807, when
it became clear that the British colony established on
the island in 1788 was not going to be sustainable in
the long term.
William Abel was one of those who relocated, and
its thought he was granted the land at Valleyeld in
1813. What he did immediately after this is unclear,
but in 1822 Abel was granted a licence to trade at the
Kings Head Inn. As this was before a hop industry
had been established, the ales he served are likely to
have been home-brewed from all manner of
ingredients.
Abels brick and rubble inn was long and slender,
comprising four main rooms on the lower oor and
three in the loft. The kitchen, with its enormous
replace, was added about 1832, and the rear skillion
section of the home about 1900.
Tragedy struck one night in 1826 when Abel heard
what he thought to be an intruder. In a time when the
threat of attacks from Aborigines and bushrangers
was real, Abel took his pistol and shot the supposed
intruder dead, only to discover that it was his young
son, Henry, sneaking in late.
Heartbroken, Abel gave up the Kings Head and it
was taken over by George Lowe, who built the
Valleyeld coach-house and stables, and started the
rst coach service between New Norfolk and Hobart
Town in the 1830s.
In 1835 the Kings Head was acquired by Captain
Armstrong, but he was penniless within ten years and
the property changed hands again.
It was Ebenezer Shoobridge who named the
property Valleyeld when he acquired it about 1855.
Shoobridge installed elaborate and innovative
irrigation schemes to water his hops, and in 1864
bought a second property at Bushy Park, a short way
upstream from New Norfolk.
Eventually the Shoobridges consolidated their
operations at Bushy Park, which today remains
Australias largest hop-producing area.
Valleyeld was sold to one of the young farm
workers, Hugh Ashton Warner. Hugh became a
leading hop and apple grower and chairman of
Tasmanian Hopgrowers for a time. His sons James
and Frank followed in his farming footsteps, while
Denis became a well-known war correspondent.
As the hop and apple industries ourished, so too
did Valleyeld, but things went awry after the 1960s
when the apple and hop export industries collapsed,
and the government acquired half the farm for public
housing.
When James son, Richard, took over Valleyeld in
1971, the hop market became difcult, causing a
rapid decline in the number of producers to just one
major grower. Valleyeld ceased hop production in
1985. Richard turned his attention to intensive high-
value agricultural products, such as seed production
and blackcurrants for juice.
Over the years, unsympathetic additions had been
made to the Valleyeld homestead, all of which have
now been removed. The historic outbuildings have
been stabilised and maintained, occasionally playing
host to weddings and conferences.
Inside, the homestead is in immaculate order, with
eucalypt oorboards and cedar skirting setting off ne
antiques and artworks. The original loft area is still
bedrooms, and the giant replace in the kitchen is
supplemented by central heating to ward off the cold.
The more recent skillion section overlooks the
romantic garden and river; in true Antipodean style,
the inn was built facing away from the river.
The future of Valleyeld lies in the commercial but
sensitive adaptive reuse of the buildings. Such a
philosophy will not only conserve the site but provide
an economic driver into the future. The Two Metre
Tall company specialises in the handmade production
of real ale using locally grown hops and barleyand
what better place for their brewery than the old
Valleyeld hop kiln.
196 | 197
198 | 199
The tables were turned on Robert Bostock when
he was convicted of slave-trading and sentenced to
transportation to Sydney Town, but it didnt set the
thirty-year-old back for long. Pardoned two months
after he arrived in 1814, Bostock got stuck into
trade, the family business he knew so well from back
home in Bootle, Liverpoolalthough this time,
minus the slaves.
The British Empire banned slave-trading in 1807
and based a navy eet at its colony of Sierra Leone to
enforce this. It was there that Bostock was caught red-
handed in 1813 and he was convicted by the Court of
Vice Admiralty in Freetown.
Bostock fought back. He argued that he had bought
his slaves across the border in Liberia, where British
law did not apply. By the time this appeal was
accepted, he had already been shipped to Australia.
In 1821 Bostock and his wife made for Hobart, and
in about 1826 Bostock acquired the Northern
Midlands property Vaucluse, near Conara.
After the MacKinnon family moved here in 1917,
Vaucluse became synonymous with success and social
status. A premier Corriedale sheep stud, Vaucluse clips
regularly fetched northern Tasmanian and Aust-
ralasian price records, and the grand house that Bostock
had designed tted perfectly with such prosperity.
Vaucluse is a four-storey brick and stucco mansion
built about 1840, itself added onto an existing two-
storey brick building that the Australian Heritage
Register says dates back to 1823. It has nineteen
generously proportioned rooms, and wide, elaborate
cast-iron Victorian verandahs on two sides. These are
paved with agstones and command spectacular
views over the South Esk River and across to the
magnicent mountain Ben Lomond.
The grounds feature large stand-alone cobblestone
stables and servants quarters, a stone blacksmith
shop complete with bellows, a large stone barn, a
croquet lawn, a swimming pool and an exquisite
glasshouse in a large, picturesque garden.
Vaucluse
200 | 201
There were no fewer than three pianos in the place
during the 1900s, and Vaucluse was reputedly also
quite the place for tennis parties. The court was
replaced by a swimming pool in the 1970s.
Hunts at Vaucluse were renowned, picnics took
place on the riverbanks, and the governor would stay
here when visiting the northern part of the state.
Michael and Susie Warner bought the property in
1997 and set about restoring it to its former glory.
Michael grew up at Valleyeld, New Norfolk, went to
Western Australia to farm in his twenties, and had for
years been looking for a good Tasmanian property to
which he could return.
Their renovation blitz took about a year. Everything
in sight was given a good lick of paint, carpets were
laid, heating installed, and layers of brown wallpaper
were removed with excruciating difculty.
The gardens were recharged and one and a half
hectares of new lawn laid. Even in drought they are
astonishingly lush and luminous, and never more
than half a week from being mown by Michael. The
glasshouse in the garden was restored, lined with
plants, and turned into an indoor/outdoor eating
and relaxation area.
Farming the 2600 hectares of land at Vaucluse well
has always been Michaels number-one focus, and
that is certainly evident. Having secured water for
the property, he has diversied into poppy, potato,
wheat and ryegrass-seed production, as well as wool
and beef.
But back to the beginning of this grand homes
story. When Robert and Rachel Bostock rst arrived
in Hobart, they took up residence at Vaucluse House,
in South Hobart. Its unclear exactly what the Vaucluse
connection was with Bostock, but it extends to the
grand Sydneyside estate Vaucluse House, courtesy of
his extraordinary mother-in-law, Elizabeth Rafferty.
In 1795, Elizabeth Rafferty was convicted in Dublin
of treason. She spent eighteen months imprisoned on
a rotting hulk at Cork before she was sent out to
Australia in 1797 on the Britannia II. This became
known as the hell ship for the appalling treatment of
its passengers, six of whom died as a direct result of
the punishments meted out by Captain Thomas
Dennett. One of those received 300 lashes one day
and 500 the next, while tied to the ships mast.
Elizabeth was shielded from the horror thanks to
the friendship she struck up with Captain Dennett,
and this saw her housed in the captains quarters for
the duration of the voyage. When she arrived in
Sydney, she was pregnant with his child.
Captain Dennett saw to it that Elizabeth was
pardoned soon after her arrival in Sydney, but
according to The History of James Ruse the Convict,
written by Bill Jocelyn, the pardon was worded in
such a way as to have Elizabeth stay away from Ireland,
where his wife lived. Jocelyn continues:
Before leaving, Dennett purchased a row of houses
at Sydney town and farms which are now the site
of Vaucluse House, an important historic building a
few kilometres from the city. These properties were
intended to provide income for Elizabeth and to
accommodate him during future visits to Sydney.
Unfortunately he did not make use of them as he died
before having an opportunity to return.
Back in England, Captain Dennett told his friend
Captain Robert Rhodes about Elizabeth Rafferty
when the two were exchanging stories about women
they had met on voyages to Sydney. When Dennett
died, Rhodes took it upon himself to deliver the news
personally to Elizabeth, and he quickly picked up
where his late friend had left off. In 1800 their
daughter, Rachel, was born.
Captain Dennetts will spelled out that Vaucluse
and the Sydney properties were to be left to the
unborn child conceived by me on the body of
Elizabeth Rafferty left by me pregnant at Sydney. But
the executors of the estate had different ideas and saw
to it that the Vaucluse lands were sold in 1803 to Sir
Henry Brown Hayes, for whom the original Vaucluse
House was built.
Elizabeth and her son, Thomas Dennett II, spent
years ghting that decision, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Elizabeths daughter, Rachel, met
Robert Bostock in Sydney and married him at the age
of sixteen. They had a brief stint back in England
before they moved to Tasmania, although it was
several more years before they settled on their land at
Vaucluse. Rachel died in 1837, giving birth to her
eleventh child.
Unlike most families of the era, Robert Bostock did
not leave his estate to one male heir when he died in
1847 but dictated that it be divided equally between
his nine surviving children. This led to Vaucluse being
sold for about 9000 pounds to John Bayles, of Rokeby
at Campbell Town, and he acquired the property
adjoining Vaucluse, Glen Esk, soon after.
His son, R.H. Bayles, a bachelor, was unsure of who
to leave Vaucluse and Glen Esk to. So one day he paid
a visit to his sister and brother-in-law, Charles
202 | 203
Headlam, at Egleston, to discuss the matter and it was
decided that whichever one of their boys was the rst
to open the gate for him as he left that day would
become his heir.
Robert Headlam succeeded his uncle in 1883. After
his death the property was sold to the MacKinnon
family and then, eighty years later, to the Warners.
It is said that Thomas Dennett II nally obtained
the evidence he needed to prove the Sydney Vaucluse
land was his when he returned from England in 1821,
with the deed for it in his hands, but he never prevailed
in his suit.
In 1822 Dennett boarded a ship to visit his sister,
Rachel Bostock, in Hobart and died on the way. One
month later, Elizabeth Rafferty is also thought to have
boarded a ship to come to Van Diemens Land to live
with her daughter, but she did not reach Hobart and
was never heard of again.
Its believed that none of Bostocks children or Tas-
manian associates ever knew of his slave-trading past.
204 | 205
206 | 207
208 | 209
When Andrew Gatenby arrived in Van Diemens Land
in 1823, it wasnt just with his wife and seven children.
Also crammed on board the Berwick were Gatenbys
wheelwright and blacksmith, millstones, cloth and wire
for mill sails and much moreall part of his grand
plan to build a our mill on a farm in the colony.
Granted 1500 acres on the Pennyroyal Creek, now
known as Isis River, near Campbell Town, Gatenby
and his sons didnt waste any time. By 1825 their
Penny Royal mill was grinding neighbours our for a
shilling a bushel and exceeding all expectations in
terms of demand.
The effort required of convicts to construct this
mill would have been colossal. It reportedly involved
some 6000 freestone blocks weighing more than 1800
tonnes, giant timber beams sawn by hand and many
other materials that had to be transported to the
riverbank site over very difcult terrain. A canal was
also cut and a reservoir built in the Isis River to supply
this breadwinner with water.
So impressed was Governor George Arthur with
the endeavour he witnessed at the property, which
had become known as Barton, that he gave Gatenby a
further grant of land as an example to other settlers.
According to Campbell Town, Tasmania: History and
Centenary of Municipal Government, the term
Gatenby farmer was coined to describe other farmers
who met the governors lofty standards.
Additional land in the area was granted to the
Gatenbys four times, including a 500-acre reward to
George Gatenby for shooting a bushranger on the
property.
As his prosperity grew, Andrew Gatenby also bought
up the properties of less successful neighbouring
settlers, to ensure there was sufcient land for his ve
boys to farm. By the time he died in 1848, his sons
owned seven estates.
View Point, along with adjacent property Bicton,
formed the nucleus of these, and today comprise
about 4500 hectares, still farmed by Gatenby brothers.
View Point
210 | 211
David and Louise Gatenby are ready to leave View
Point to make way for their son Nicholas, the eighth
generation of Gatenbys on this land.
View Point is a beautiful home, built in about 1860
by a grandson of Andrew Gatenby. The Australian
Heritage Database describes View Point as a very ne,
grand, transitional Georgian/Victorian homestead in
an almost original state. The main four-storey
homestead is built of 92,000 bricks, with four brick
pilasters that extend two storeys, large twenty-four-
paned windows on the ground level, and twenty-paned
windows on the second. Most of the materials came
from the property.
Adjacent is a two-storey rubble-stone former
kitchen wing and servants quarters. The two buildings
were previously connected by an open verandah but
have now been joined internally by the current
owners, giving the homestead an L-shape.
From the back agstone-paved verandah, the
outlook is of a series of stunning Gothic Revival
outbuildings, with the Western Tiers as their
formidable backdrop. The buildings include a large
two-storey brick barn and stables, with old side-
saddles still hanging inside. There are pointed
sandstone quoins at the corners and around the
doors, a gabled roof with a curved pattern open
fretwork bargeboard and a large ornate nial.
The skins of rabbits and possums used to be pegged
in the barn on the top oor, and the wires used for
doing so still hang on a wall.
Baltic pine ttings feature in the original shearing
shed, which is near an old sheep wash that David
would like to restore. Before scouring mills came into
being, sheep had to be washed before they were shorn
and washes like this would have been prevalent
throughout the Midlands.
Other outbuildings include a blacksmith cottage,
an old cookhouse, and a carpentry shop that was
converted to shearing quarters in the 1950s. It wasnt
all that long ago that during busy times on the
farm, such as shearing, there were thirty-ve mouths
to feed.
David and Louise Gatenby moved into View Point
in 1975. David had grown up at Bicton and View
Point had been occupied by workmen for the previous
twenty years, so getting it into a more liveable state
was a priority.
The hallway linking the homesteads original back
door with the front door created a tunnel for bitter
winds blowing straight off the Western Tiers, so much
so that there were ercely cold days when res
couldnt be lit inside because of all the smoke and
soot this would create. The wide verandahs around
the home also made it dark, and one of the most
overwhelming needs confronting the Gatenbys when
they moved in was for an area in the home that
removed the wind-tunnel effect, and was light,
comfortable and warm.
To the chagrin of the National Trust, the Gatenbys
added a sunroom to the back part of the home; this is
where they have predominantly lived ever since.
Theyre still amazed at how a sympathetic addition
that has made the home so much more amenable was
frowned on by the authorities; in any event, sunrooms
seem to be stock-standard later additions to homes of
this era since they were largely absent from the
original versions. The Gatenbys also opened up the
kitchen, and added three internal bathrooms.
Some of the homes interior features include
enormous brass curtain rods above the windows, and
Baltic pine oorboards on the rst-storey ceiling,
while a large cellar underneath includes shelves cut
into the sandstone, and a large pickling bath for meat.
View Point spans from the Isis River to about a
quarter of the way up the Western Tiers, where spec-
tacular botany and wildlife abounds. There have been
times when snow has covered everything in sight.
But its been a long time since it snowed at View
Point and since it rained. It was a sad day when the
last cattle left the farm recently, but it is expected that
cropping will be the way forward for future
generations of Gatenbys on this land.
The Penny Royal our mill that brought the family
its initial success thrived for fty years. It could not
compete when steam roller mills were established in
the 1880s, and it was effectively abandoned until 1971
when, in a surprise move, developers bought the
building.
Stone by numbered stoneall 3500 of themand
beam by giant beam, they disassembled the 1825 mill.
It was all taken to inner-city Launceston, where it was
reconstructed to within a quarter of an inch of its
original dimensions and turned into the Penny Royal
Motel.
212 | 213
214 | 215
216
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Further reading