Nic's Blog
The Mount Bischoff tin heist, 1903
In 1903 three Waratah men—Walter Penney, James Cobbing and Albert Tippett—were gaoled for five years for receiving tin stolen from the Mount Bischoff Company. Yet the court case looked more like a showdown than a trial—the culmination of a 25-year feud between Ferd...
Clem Penney’s stripy doormat
In 1924 seeing a thylacine was a rare event for most people. A few lingered in zoos. Tasmanian hunters like Luke Etchell occasionally took one in a necker snare set for wallabies, but their numbers were so few that the state government bounty scheme had long since...
The best three days of the year: growing up at Brittons Swamp, Tasmania
After a couple of years at Christmas Hills, in about 1912 the Brittons sold their little farm to Charlie Wells and moved to a vacant mill worker’s cottage about four kilometres away next to their mill at Brittons Swamp. This was their home for a decade as the business...
A 27-year itch: Ron Smith finally tramps the Overland Track in 1940
In May 1914 Ron Smith’s former Forth mate Ted Adams invited him to go hiking at Lake St Clair. Smith, who would be one of the major figures in the establishment of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, could not make the appointed time.[1] He had business...
The Middlesex Station huts 1901–20, or the twilight years of Fields’ highland run
In Historic Tasmanian mountain huts, written with Simon Cubit, I told the story of a visit made to the Browns’ hut at Middlesex Station by the Anglican Bishop of Tasmania, Henry Hutchinson Montgomery and the Vicar of Sheffield, JS Roper, in February 1901.[1]...
Building ‘Manuka’, Brittons Swamp
‘Manuka’, originally known as ‘Glen Valley’, was built by Elijah Britton for his family at Brittons Swamp, with the help of his cousin Fred Britton and a plumber, Jack Bailey. The blackwood and hardwood for the inside walls and floors were air-seasoned, then dressed...
Getting started at Brittons Swamp
The dolomite swamp that took the name of the Brittons Swamp is thought to be a polje, that is, a centrally-draining dolomite sinkhole. Dismal Swamp, the selectively logged hollow now operated as a tourist venue, is an almost intact version of the same sort of...
The hydraulic man, or how Teddy O’Rourke dried out in the wet season
Had Tasmanian miner Teddy O’Rourke been an interior decorator, he would have been a shoo-in for a colonial courtroom refit. His familiarity with magistrates’ chambers from Hobart to Deloraine, with dalliances at Kempton, Lefroy , George Town and almost a permanent...