History

The City of Clarence has a rich and varied history.

Through the Cultural History Working Group, we strive to invoke a sense of identity and place in the community through encouraging participation in the cultural history of Clarence in meaningful and relevant ways. This involves projects that promote the recognition, preservation, and promotion of the cultural history of a community encourages a sense of pride and participation in a community’s cultural life.

The conservation of cultural history includes not only the preservation of the old but also the need to acknowledge the evolution of the new. It is this balance between old and new that is the hallmark of a rich and productive culture.

Self-guided History walks

There are several historical walks in the City of Clarence to explore. A series of interpretive signs have been developed on some of these walks which contain links to oral histories of the land and its former use.

History Publications and Information

Ferry History – gallery

There is a remarkable waterway throughout the city which has had a wide range of purposes and uses for the people of Clarence. Many of these places still exist aand are used, council has funded signage projects to detail some of their hsitory.

Explore some of these below.

South Arm Jetty

Lindisfarne Ferry

The first regular ferry service to Lindisfarne began in 1890, when the O’May brothers began daily steamer excursions to ‘the new suburb of Beltana’ (now Lindisfarne). The O’May’s also built the first jetty. The promoters of the new suburb ‘Beltana’ (now Lindisfarne) set aside a large area of land for Picnic Grounds (now Anzac Park) which made Beltana a popular place for visitors, especially at the annual Regatta. The ferry services also helped promote sales of suburban allotments and provided a means for the tradespeople building the new houses of Lindisfarne to get to their work.

Ferries on the Lindisfarne run included the SS Endeavour, Beltana, Silver Crown, Rosny and the Kangaroo. One of the best known was the Derwent. Larger than any of the other Omay ferries, the Derwent was double ended, meaning she could steam both ways without turning around at the end, running on coal imported from Newcastle.

At its peak in the 1930s, ferries were running on the half hour. By this time, a large proportion of Lindisfarne residents were commuting into Hobart daily for work. But the age of ferries was soon to change; work began on a ‘floating’ bridge to cross the Derwent in 1941. The bridge, constructed from a series of concrete pontoons, opened in December 1943 and led to a new era of urban development on the eastern shore. It also led to a slow decline in the ferry service as more and more people opted to travel by car or bus. The 1975 Tasman Bridge Disaster reversed this trend for several years, during which ferries were vital in keeping the eastern shore connected to Hobart.

Lindisfarne Regatta ca 1910 (Tasmanian Archive & Heritage Office)

Rose Bay Ferry

Towards the end of the 19^th century, Rose Bay was becoming a popular picnic spot and was included on the Hobart – Eastern Shore ferry service.

Tea Rooms were established opposite the ferry wharf and in 1912 a new jetty was built, of which the footings remain visible to this day.

The jetty was built by the developers of a new subdivision of land at Rose Bay and Rosny (which was later promoted as ‘Sunnylands’). At the end of the jetty, the Derwent Ferry Company built a substantial shelter shed for waiting passengers, which was later used as a gymnasium and youth club.

ea Room opposite the jetty, built ca 1915 to cater to picnickers (State Library of Tasmania)

Rose Bay jetty under construction ca 1910 (Lindisfarne Historical Society)

Rose Bay’s more unusual claim to fame is that it was one of two landing places for the Ansett Flying Boat Service, which ran an air service between Sydney and Hobart from 1953 to 1970.

The ‘Flying Boats’ were built to be capable of both landing and taking off on water.

The Sandringham ‘flying boats’ operated by Ansett carried 42 passengers on two decks, and were quite luxurious by the standards of the day. The flight to Sydney took four hours and cost £15.

Take off and landings were sometimes nervous affairs, with spray reaching up to the planes ‘portholes’.

In Hobart, they landed either here at Rose Bay or near the Regatta Grounds, depending on weather conditions. Rose Bay was preferred in rough weather due to the protection afforded by the old Hobart Bridge (the ‘Floating Bridge’). Passengers were met on the water by a small tender, the Nancy, and ferried in to land.

Tea Room opposite the jetty, built ca 1915 to cater to picnickers (State Library of Tasmania)

Lauderdale history – gallery

Lauderdale was not officially named until 1959, but the name goes back much further than that.

Lauderdale Park

Robert Mather and his wife Ann emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land in 1821. Robert began a drapery business in Hobart Town and in 1824 was granted 2000 acres at Ralphs Bay which he named ‘Lauderdale Park’, after his birthplace Lauder (Scots Gaelic for ‘wash-place’) near Berwick-upon-Tweed in Scotland. He was particularly anxious to attain land by the sea, as it was thought that this would improve his wife’s poor health. But the return of good health Ann might have hoped for was entirely negated by the stress and anxiety of managing a farm in an isolated position. With Robert kept in town by the demands of his drapery business, Ann had to care for her young children, oversee the establishment of their farm and deal with her convict workers.

By 1826 the Mathers and planted 10 acres of turnips, 3 acres of potatoes, four acres of garden and built a simple timber farmhouse with three rooms and a dairy.

Ann’s letters to Robert chart a sad decline in her health as she faced enormous difficulties at Lauderdale Park, with the convict workforce ‘combining’ against her, and some of the convicts ‘not worth their victuals’. Robert had his own problems with the convicts, complaining of his overseer, Mr Lovell, that:

“He is now in partnership with Ratcliffe who is well known to the Police and whose House is a scene of Riot and confusion from Sunday morning to Saturday night….it is where the worst of characters, men and women runaways and others resort to where they may obtain spirits and such accommodations as they may desire for Clothing, or anything else taken there. These things are conveyed by boatmen and fishermen to Town to be disposed of and get a return in Rum.”

Despite these difficulties, Robert continued to pour money into ditching, banking and draining the swampy ground. Worn down by stress and ill health, Ann Mather passed away in 1831. Facing potential bankruptcy, Robert Mather moved permanently to Lauderdale Park until forced to sell up in 1834.

Letter from Ann Mather to husband Robert, 1825 (Royal Society Collection, University of Tasmania)

Robert Mather (Royal Society Collection, University of Tasmania)

Mather’s homestead at ‘Lauderdale Park’ ca 1890 (Tasmanian Archives & Heritage Office)

Crossing Ralphs Bay Neck

As early as 1822, the neck at Ralphs Bay was identified as a potential crossing point for small boats, enabling a shorter (and much safer) passage for travellers to Hobart. Seeing the need, Robert Mather constructed, at his own expense, a rough railway using bullocks to draw boats and small cargoes across the neck. Boats were drawn on a timber sled to protect their keels.

By the late 1830s, increasing numbers of people (free and convict) needing to travel to Port Arthur led the government to build a substantial timber railway across the neck. A gang of 18 convicts were stationed here in a ‘sod and bark’ hut, and had the railway finished by 1840, just in time for the whaling season. Eight years later, surveyor James Calder described crossing the isthmus on a windy day, when his party were able to put up the sail on their boat and actually ‘sail’ across the neck:

“The breeze being now fair for Ralph’s Bay Neck, we stood towards it, landed and crossed by the tramway, putting the boat on a truck. The wind was now harder than ever, so at the suggestion of one of the men in charge we put up the canvas again, and actually sailed over the isthmus, no manual force being used except to steady the boat as she moved along it, half of us walking on either side with our hands over the gunwhales”

For most, however, it was a slow ride over the neck, being pulled on the railway by bullock teams. The railway fell into disuse later in the century with the advent of steam powered vessels.

In the 1850s a canal had been planned across Ralph’s Bay Neck to complement the Denison Canal; the latter was built, but by 1910 there was still no sign of a canal across the neck. With an expanding fruit industry in the district, residents began to agitate at public meetings for the construction of the canal. Funding was approved in 1913 and dredging works commenced, but the outbreak of World War 1 saw the project put on hold. Another ten years would pass before substantial work recommenced on the canal.

The contract for cutting the canal was finally let in 1924, but the contractors soon discovered that this was going to be a very difficult job. Excavation was harder and heavier than expected. Most of the work was done with steam powered dredges which used bores to drill into the canal bed and create a slurry which could easily be pumped out. When they finally had the canal cut through to Frederick Henry Bay, a storm filled the mouth of the canal with sand. The contractors managed with great difficulty to cut through the sand, only to have an even bigger storm block the new opening with twice as much sand. “Training walls” (remnants of which are still visible) were erected in Frederick Henry Bay to stop the sand but nothing really worked. With the project over time and over budget, the decision was finally made to suspend operations. Despite all the effort and huge expense -around £50,000 – the canal never became operational, although legend has it that one boat may have passed through before it was abandoned for ever.

From Engineering Disaster to Holiday Shacks

By 1949, a total of 71 shacks had been built along both sides of the canal (North Terrace and South Terrace), including two shops. By the 1960s, many of these shacks had become permanent homes, as families faced housing shortages. With no water or sewerage connections, and mostly ‘jerry-built’ shacks, the area officially became a ‘depressed living area due to the indiscriminate erection of substandard dwellings’. A number of locals disagreed with this assessment, but the Clarence Commission (later Clarence City Council) took steps to gradually acquire and demolish the shacks. In 1956, portions of the ‘Clarendon’ estate around the Neck were subdivided, and people began to build permanent homes in the area. Three years later, in 1959, this new and developing township was officially gazetted as ‘Lauderdale’ in recognition of Ann and Robert Mather’s original farm.

With the canal project abandoned in 1927, Ralph’s Bay was left with a canal that went nowhere. But in the 1930s an entirely new use was found for the dead end canal – holiday shacks. By 1939 the canal sported some 17 shacks, with the area becoming known simply as ‘Canal’. With building materials difficult to come by after World War II, people built their shacks with whatever they could find, such as packing cases and flattened out iron drums; many shacks were built on footings of concrete filled kerosene tins.