Tasmanians in History

Tasmanian history includes many significant people, all of whom influenced in some way the development of our Island. Here are just a few memorable personalities from our past.

Archer was born in Dublin, Ireland, and appointed civil engineer and government architect to Tasmania in 1826.

Archer designed many buildings, including neo-Gothic churches that are now historic sites loved by Tasmanians and admired by visitors. Later, Archer became police magistrate at Stanley, in the north-west, where he lived the rest of his life. You can find his grave in the little cemetery below The Nut.

Keep a look out for the lovely buildings that Archer designed:

• in Hobart: Anglesea Barracks, Parliament House, Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site, St Georges Church in Battery Point, and St Johns Church and Orphan School (in the suburb of New Town).
• Richmond: The Gaol.
• Launceston: the Court House and Launceston Gaol (now a school).
• Other churches: St Peters Church in Hamilton, Entally Chapel at Hadspen.
• Lighthouses and bridges: Cape Bruny and Low Head lighthouses, the sandstone bridge over the Macquarie River at Ross.

Bernacchi was a silk merchant in Italy before he came to Tasmania and became and entrepreneur on Maria Island, in 1884.

With great energy he founded a silkworm farm, marble and limestone quarries, a cement works, a timber company and a small town for workers. The Grand Hotel and a Coffee Palace, still standing today, were two of its many amenities and comforts.

In the light of modern industries perhaps his most important achievement was to plant 99 hectares (245 acres) of grape vines, reputedly cuttings from Chateau La Fit, and produce wines that won medals in Melbourne competitions.

His ambitious schemes, however, proved financially unviable and he moved to Melbourne where he died. The industries and settlement, named during this time as San Diego, declined and were abandoned.

Brady was born in Ireland and transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1820 for stealing. During his first four years he received 350 lashes for trying to escape and other crimes.

In 1822, he was sent to the infamous Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour on the west coast but in 1824 escaped to Hobart by boat.

He formed a gang of bushrangers who lived in the wild by stealing farm stock, robbing travellers and other criminal activities but whose code of behaviour forbade molesting women or injuring the helpless.

In 1825 the gang occupied the town of Sorell, east of Hobart, for a whole night, locking soldiers and the local police in the town gaol. Brady was arrested in 1826 and charged with stealing, arson and murder. The gang’s ethics stood him in good stead - the public petitioned for clemency, testified to his gentle treatment of women and brought presents to him in gaol. He was hanged in May 1826 and was reported to have died 'in the manner of an educated gentleman'.

Cash was born in Ireland. At the age of 18 he was transported to Sydney for house breaking.

In 1837, good behaviour earned him his freedom, and he came to Van Diemen’s Land with his de facto wife Bessie Clifford and settled in Campbell Town. Three years later he was convicted of larceny and sentenced to seven years in Richmond Gaol.

He escaped and worked in the Huon district until he was recognised, arrested and sent to Port Arthur Prison. He escaped again, this time into the bush around New Norfolk (in the Derwent Valley north-west of Hobart). He lived by bushranging (bushrangers lived in the bush and supported themselves by stealing and other crimes).

In 1843 he killed a constable who was trying to arrest him and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Norfolk Island. Ten years later he was released, married a convict servant, was appointed caretaker of Government House gardens, in Hobart, and later bought an orchard at Glenorchy. In 1870, he published Martin Cash, the Bushranger of Van Diemen’s Land and became one of Australia’s best known romantic robbers. He was buried at Cornelian Bay cemetery in Hobart.

Davis was a photojournalist. He was born in Nala, east of Oatlands, in the Tasmanian midlands.

From 1964 to 1975 he covered the Vietnam War, and one of his most illustrious achievements was to film North Vietnamese tanks crashing through the walls of the presidential palace in Saigon.

In 1975 he joined the American NBC and continued his work in South-East Asia, becoming the most respected war photojournalist of his time. In September 1985, while filming an attempted military coup in Bangkok, Thailand, he and William Latch (USA) were shot. Davis continued filming until he lost consciousness - he and Latch both died.

For 25 years Dombrovskis specialised in photographing the Tasmanian wilderness. He was born in Germany of Latvian parents and came to Tasmania in 1950 as a refugee.

Most of his photographs were published as collections in books, sometimes with accompanying essays. He also produced hundreds of calendars and greetings cards. His work shows the beauty and uniqueness of the Tasmanian wilderness. In 1983, during the campaign to prevent the damming of the Gordon River, he and Bob Brown published Wild Rivers. He died while taking photographs near Mount Hayes in the western Arthur Range.

Flynn was born in Hobart, the son of a professor of biology.

As a young man he spent some years in New Guinea as an island trader, patrol officer and tobacco planter.

In 1936 he signed a contract with Warner Bros in Hollywood and embarked on a film career, completing 55 films, and a notorious personal life - marriages, divorces and scandals conducted in a blaze of publicity.

Among his best films were Captain Blood, Robin Hood and Elizabeth and Essex. He was an accomplished writer, publishing two autobiographies, Beam Ends and My Wicked, Wicked Ways. He died in Vancouver of a heart attack.

Forrest is best known for his fine Tasmanian landscapes.

He migrated to Tasmania with his family in 1876, was granted 100 acres (40 hectares) of land in the north-east of the island and was appointed superintendent of police at Sorell in 1877.

He became associated with John Watt Beattie, who photographed the wilderness areas of Tasmania in which Forrest painted. Forrest’s work was frequently exhibited during his lifetime, both in Australia and abroad, and his pictures can be seen in larger art galleries.

Glover was one of Australia’s earliest renowned landscape painters. He was born in England and exhibited his work in London before leaving in 1830, at the age of 64, for Hobart Town.

His first Tasmanian paintings, which portrayed the distinctive Tasmanian bush in accurate detail, were exhibited in London, in 1832, and attracted much attention.

What made him unique among Australian landscape painters at the time, who painted from their imaginations, was that he painted from direct experience of the bush. His pictures were perhaps the first to portray the eucalypt in its bushland setting as a national symbol. In 2001, one of his paintings sold for the record price of $1.762 million.

In his old age his sight deteriorated; few of his works are dated later than 1840. When he died he was buried in the grounds of the Nonconformist Chapel that he had renovated at Deddington, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) south-east of Launceston. The chapel and his grave can be seen today.

His paintings can be seen in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Inveresk and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.

Read more about John Glover's mark on 21st century Hobart.

Knopwood was born in England where, as a young man, he squandered an inheritance in what would become a lifelong inability to manage his business affairs. He gained his MA at Oxford and became an Anglican minister in 1788.

At the age of 40 he was again short of cash, and to make ends meet he became a naval chaplain. In that position he arrived in Hobart Town in 1804, acquired land grants, ran up huge liquor bills, entertained grandly and became known as the sporting parson of Van Diemen’s Land.

He was an avid recorder of contemporary events, writing journals that later provided historians with invaluable information. However, by 1821 Governor Macquarie felt that Knopwood was doing more harm than good and retired him on a pension.

He was pursued by people to whom he owed money and died in poverty. The Knopwood Pub in Salamanca Place, Hobart, is named after him.

A teacher and politician, Enid Muriel Lyons (nee Burnell) was born at Duck River (now Smithton) in the far north-west of Tasmania. In 1915, at the age of 18 years, she married future prime minister Joseph Lyons and subsequently bore 12 children.

In 1943, four years after her husband’s death, Enid Lyons contested the seat of Darwin (western Tasmania) and became the first woman member of the Federal House of Representatives.

In 1949 she became vice-president of the Executive Council - the first woman appointed to Federal Cabinet. Illness forced her to retire in 1951, but she remained active, promoting family and women’s issues and working as a newspaper columnist and a commissioner of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. She also published three books: So We Take Comfort, The Old Haggis and Among the Carrion Crows. Dame Enid died in 1981.

Joseph Lyons was born in a tiny cottage in the village of Stanley on the north-west coast of Tasmania. In 1909 he was elected Labor member for the state seat of Wilmot and became premier of Tasmania in 1916.

In 1929, after two terms in office, he switched to federal politics. In 1932, as leader of the new United Australia Party, he became prime minister of Australia.

He was a devout Catholic, a pacifist and against conscription. While prime minister he cracked down on communism, introduced harsh censorship laws, retained firm imperial ties and placed little importance on social welfare.

Mathinna was a child in the Flinders Island Aboriginal community when Sir John Franklin became governor in 1837. His wife, Lady Jane Franklin, became fond of Mathinna, decided to bring her up as a daughter and took her to their home in Hobart.

When the Franklins returned to England, however, Lady Franklin’s motherly inclinations evaporated and Mathinna was taken to the Hobart Orphan School where she was extremely unhappy. She later moved to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, to even more unhappiness. She was found drowned in a creek and was believed to have fallen in when drunk.

The film actress Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson claimed that she was born in St Helens on the east coast of Tasmania and that when she was seven her family moved to India.

Merle was educated in Bombay and Calcutta and did her first work in drama with the Calcutta Amateur Theatrical Society. At the age of 17 she went to England and worked for London Film Productions for five years.

She starred as Anne Boleyn in The Private Lives of Henry VIII and in many other films including A Song to Remember, Wuthering Heights, and Love and Desire. She also starred in the television series Assignment Foreign Legion.

She married four times. When she retired she moved to California. Following her death it was revealed that she had not been born in Tasmania but had made this claim because she believed no-one would want to employ an Indian actress.

Piguenit was born in Hobart Town and eventually became a noted painter of Tasmanian landscapes.

In 1867 he published six lithographic views as plates in The Salmon Ponds and Vicinity, New Norfolk. Then, after visiting the south-west highlands of Tasmania, he became interested in painting. In 1871 he travelled overland with James Reid Scott from Hobart to Port Davey, painting many pictures along the way.

He later resigned from his job to devote his life to painting. He travelled widely, in Tasmania, England and Europe, painting all the time.

In 1887 the Tasmanian Government bought six of his paintings of the Tasmanian western highlands and presented them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Piguenit was a founding member of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales and held various offices until the society granted membership to impressionist painters such as Tom Roberts. Piguenit resigned from the society in protest.

Best known for the lavish interiors of London's Houses of Parliament, early-Victorian architect and designer Augustus Pugin also has a fascinating connection with colonial Tasmania.

Hobart Town’s first Catholic bishop, Robert Willson, was a close friend of Pugin’s and shared his passion for the Gothic tradition. Willson left England in 1844 carrying with him Pugin’s furniture designs, textiles and architectural drawings.

Willson and Pugin believed there was a direct connection between the revival of mediaeval-style designs and the improvement of social conditions in England. They now wanted to create a Gothic paradise in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.

Pugin devised the simple designs for the 'poor and unskilled' labourers of Van Diemen's Land at the same time as he was designing the ornate interiors of the Houses of Parliament.

Pugin died in 1852, after a short but brilliant career. Although he never visited Tasmania himself, Pugin's mark on Tasmanian ecclessiastical architecture and design can be seen today at St Pauls Church at Oatlands, Colebrook's St Patricks Church, and a spectacular stained-glass window in St Josephs, 65 Harrington Street, Hobart.

Truchanas was one of the first Europeans to realise the value of the primal beauty of Tasmania’s south-west wilderness. He was born in Lithuania and fought in the Lithuanian Resistance Movement.

In 1945, after Lithuania was handed over to the USSR, he fled to Munich. He enrolled at university to study law but was sent with other students to a camp for displaced people.

He migrated to Tasmania in 1948. Under an Australian law of that time he had to work for two years in industry or public works. He worked for the Hydro-Electric Commission but was dismayed by plans to flood Lake Pedder.

In 1958 Truchanas sailed in a kayak into Strahan, at the top of the vast Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast. When he appeared from the southern end of the harbour the people were stunned - they knew that the only road in the area came into Strahan, and that he had not left from there.

He had kayaked down the Serpentine and Gordon Rivers, a feat never before accomplished in the years of European settlement. He had no paddle, but had rigged a foot-controlled groundsheet as a sail so he could read as he sailed along. Truchanas had negotiated the narrow gorges, rapids, rocks and whirlpools of the Gordon River, reputed to carry more water than any other river in Australia.

Truchanas devoted his life to exploring and photographing the wilderness, bringing it to the notice of thousands of people who might otherwise have been unaware of its beauty and putting on public slide shows as part of the unsuccessful campaign to save Lake Pedder from inundation. He was mentor to the young Peter Dombrovskis.

During the bushfires of 1967 he lost his house and many of his photographs. Dombrovskis found him drowned in 1972, trapped in a kayak on the Gordon River.

Truganini was born into an Aboriginal band on Bruny Island. Her mother and, later, her fiancé and uncle were murdered by white men and her sister was abducted by sealers. She accompanied George Augustus Robinson on his mission to conciliate and protect Aborigines, acting as interpreter and peacemaker.

Truganini married Woorady and they were associated with Robinson’s travels around Tasmania. When the Flinders Island settlement was founded Truganini and Woorady lived there and later accompanied Robinson to Port Phillip in Victoria. Woorady died on the return journey to Flinders. Truganini returned to Tasmania and was moved with other Aborigines to Oyster Cove.

When it seemed that all the other Aborigines had died she went to live in Hobart with a Mrs Dandridge. By 1869, she and William Lanne were the only two of the original group still alive. When she died her skeleton was placed in the Hobart Museum. In 1976 her bones were cremated and her ashes were scattered on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

Gustav Weindorfer was born in Austria and arrived in Australia in 1900. Kate Cowle was born in Tasmania’s Fingal Valley, between the east coast and Ben Lomond.

Kate and Gustav were keen bushwalkers and were also interested in botany, music and singing. They married in 1906 and worked on Kate’s brother’s farm at Kindred, about 21 kilometres (12 miles) south of Ulverstone until they could afford their own farm.

In 1909 Gustav and a friend camped and walked in the area of Dove Lake and Cradle Mountain and were spellbound by the beauty of the terrain, the lakes and the vegetation.

In January 1910 both the Weindorfers and some friends returned to Cradle Mountain to climb it. The Weindorfers fell in love with Cradle Mountain and began to lobby the government to improve road access and protect the area as a park. They built Waldheim (German for forest home) and opened it as a tourist resort in 1912.

When Kate died Gustav lived on the mountain for another 16 years, becoming something of a legend. In 1922 the area from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair was proclaimed a scenic reserve. A replica of Waldheim chalet was built in 1976 using similar techniques and materials to the original.