Today we are heading for Hobart and our final stop on Tasmania, we left Freycinet in a light drizzle but luckily this didn’t turn into anything too bad on the way. The first part of our journey was along the same road as yesterday but this time we stayed on the Tasmania Highway which is basically the road that loops round the eastern side of Tasmania and runs from Hobart to Launceston, our first stop was in Swansea which is a small costal town, or rather one road, in the Municipality of Glamorgan! I am assuming that it was settled by the welsh as there is also a Llandudno near by! We went in the Heritage Museum which is housed in the old School that looks remarkably like a church but was actually the old School and Post office that was built in 1860 out of the stone and rubble from the old military fort on Waterloo Point. We looked round the museum that had some information about the people that lived in Swansea then had a walk up and down the road and looked at a few of the old buildings but they are all private houses so not open to the public. We drove on to Spiky bridge which is a bridge with bits of stone that look like spikes on to of it! This was built by the convicts as part of the ‘hard labour’ element of their sentence. After the Assignment system was curtailed prisoners had to serve a proportion of their sentence in hard labour which for men seemed to mean road building and for women was probably working in a laundry or a ‘factory’ where they either made things like bedding or socks. If the original sentence was for 7 years then 2 would be hard labour, and a minimum of 4 had to be served before they could receive their ticket of leave, this was the other side of transportation, which was further demonstrated in Richmond where we went to next and stopped to do a Heritage Walk. Richmond was a Georgian village pretty much built by Convicts. Starting with Richmond Bridge which is Australia’s oldest stone bridge, it was built by convicts in 1823, it is quite different to the Red Bridge we saw yesterday, from there we walked up Bridge street past the court house (also built by convicts in 1825) which was used as Council chambers from 1861 to 1993 when the Municipality amalgamated with Clarence City Council. Further down the road was the Congregational church which was built in 1872 after the original church was damaged in a storm, the original church is a few roads back and is where the grave yard is, but no convicts were buried here as they were all buried in unmarked graves. The old school house was built in 1834, again by convicts and is still in use today as the library for the Richmond Primary School. St Lukes Anglican Church was actually designed by a convict as well as being built by them. The designer was James Thompson who was granted his freedom as a reward for his work although I don’t think the labourers received the same benefit. We ended our walk with a visit to Richmond Gaol, in the early days of the colony, agricultural development in the Richmond district was swift. By the mid 1820s Richmond had become the third largest population centre in Tasmania – exceeded only by Launceston and Hobart. The rapid rise was due to the ready supply of convict labour – both men and women – sent from overflowing gaols in England to assist with establishing the new colony. Unfortunately it soon became necessary for a local gaol to be built to deal with those that committed an offence while ‘employed’ on public works. The gaol was built by convicts in 1825 and unusually held both men and women, they were normally kept apart. 20% of the convicts sent to Australia were women and most were sent to factories or assigned as servants, the majority of women held in Richmond gaol seem to have been charged with absconding and their defence was that they were being mistreated by their masters a very different story to the one we had heard yesterday! Each of the rooms had lists of people that passed through Tasmania, we checked the books and there seemed to be a few Barnes and even 2 Childs in one of the books! We spent a while going round this gaol as it had a lot of information about the people that served time in the goal, it really does seem that the punishment doesn’t always match the crime. We stopped for ‘afternoon tea and an ice cream then continued to Hobart. We are staying in the Henry Jones Hotel, named after the first Tasmanian to be knighted. It is right on the docks and is made up of a number of buildings, five of which were: a depot for immigrants, storehouse, general store, ship chandler and tavern, all were built by 1827, in 1850 George Peacock arrived in Tasmania from Kent and started selling home made jam in his grocery shop, by 1869 he needed bigger premises to make the jame and moved to the docks. Henry Jones started working for George rising to the position of foreman, in 1889 he joined forces with George’s son Ernest and they brought out George for the management and ownership rights of the jam company and the name was changed to H.Jones & Co. He received his knighthood for supplying jam to the forces during the Boer and First World Wars, he also donated an airplane to the british army which probably helped! He died in 1926 but the company continued running until 1972. When we checked in they handed us a piece of paper and on the back of it was the message ‘a lot of people visit Tasmania to research their convict history, we have searched your family name in the database of convicts transported to Tasmania and a selection of the results are shown’ There were five Barnes’ listed two fo which were called William and Frances names that have shown up in Chris’ family tree so who knows if they are related! Anyway the room is lovely with a great view over the harbour so we sat and relaxed before heading out for something to eat.
