St Marys

Not a lot of photos from here, because we just stopped to post something and get a milkshake.

Settlements were established in the Fingal Valley in the 1820s and 1830s for mining and farming, but access was unreliable due to flooding and there’s not much point mining and farming if you can’t get goods out (or in). So the government decided to build a pass through the mountains to connect the valley to the coast. In the early 1840s, a probation station was built near here, and another one on the coastal side and, from memory, about 400 men put to work building St Marys Pass. In the years that followed, a settlement grew up at the base of the mountains and eventually became a town that took its name from the nearby pass. In 1857, the tourist information kiosk in the photo says.

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Avoca

The Fingal Valley was a mining area, tin, coal and one large gold area. Now it’s just coal, that I’m aware of. There are a lot of mineral deposits through here, but nothing substantial enough to support a large scale mining operation. Despite the name, the river that runs through here is the South Esk.

The Esk Highway (A4) runs through here, connecting the Midlands to the East Coast. There are three towns along the highway, and the first of these is Avoca.

Avoca
I really should know more about this town than I do and I have lost my local history book so you’ll have to make do with looking at the pictures and making up your own descriptions.

Avoca was first settled in the 1830s. The population now is about 200 or less.

Hotel
The Union Hotel built 1842. You can see the typical Georgian hotel lines behind the additions.

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Fingal

(Note: the paragraphs that start with bold text are from the town’s visitor information panel. I take no responsibility for errors of fact. Errors of spelling or grammar are probably due to my typing though.)

The town of Fingal was established in the 1820s. According to the census, the population in 2006 was 450. It is a town that has obvious signs of being bigger and busier in the past than what it is now.

The town spreads out along the main road (the highway) so I thought I’d show it from west to east, starting here. So fire station and then an odd building on the corner.

This puzzled us. Mother thought it might be a lodge or something. I said my map just had it as ‘hall’ but looking at it now, it only has ‘War Memorial’ in that spot. Mother decided it looked like a council chambers, but I thought that was elsewhere.

When I went back to the car, I looked at the information board we’d parked in front of. (I took a photo of the information section but when I went to take a photo of the accompanying map, the camera decided it wouldn’t take photos when I’d zoomed in, so I had the information on me but couldn’t match it to whatever we were looking at.) Anyway, once I found the spot on the map, we found out it was:

Original Fingal Council Chambers c. 1882 Partially burnt down after being flood in 1929. Valuable municipal records prior to 1929 were totally destroyed. The building was the original Council Chambers with the Municipal Gaol being located underneath. It has been used as a Town Hall since 1974. The edifice is subject to rising damp.

[Especially when the river floods?]

The street that runs down the front of the damp council chambers leads to the railway and the railway station. When passenger services were stopped back in Tasmania in the 1970s, the stations were mostly removed. Those few remaining were converted to other uses. So I wasn’t expecting much when we went down there.

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Cullenswood

Christ Church, Cullenswood. Built 1847, I think by Robert Legge who owned the property of Cullenswood. There was a town here once upon a time, with a couple of churches, post office, hotel, shop and tenant farmers. It was the service town in the area. Then St Marys grew up, and took over that role. Now AFAIK there’s just this church, the cemeteries and the property.

The sign on the gate says “Catholic Cemetery. Church of St Mary 1859-1899.”