Historical Australian Towns

Interesting Quotes

"The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred."
― Lucian (A.D. 120-200)

“We are all one in nature but our ideas separate us.”
― Marty Rubin

“Any system based on competition will inherently promote inequality, division, and conflict.”
― Joseph Rain, The Unfinished Book About Who We Are

“In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

"The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation."
―John Hope Franklin

"The past is always a rebuke to the present."
―Robert Penn Warren

"The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts."
―Henry Adams

"It is the essence of the poor that they do not appear in history."
―Anonymous

"We learn from history that we never learn anything from history."
―Hegel

"To look back upon history is inevitably to distort it."
―Norman Pearson

“All community is in some way imagined.”
― Stan Grant, Talking To My Country

"History, in a democratic age, tends to become a series of popular apologies, and is inclined to assume that the people can do no wrong."
―A. F. Pollard

"One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present."

―Golda Meir

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."
―William James

"You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise."

―Maya Angelou

“Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm.
But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world.”

―Hélder Câmara

“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own.
For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society”

―Alam W. Watts

An indigenous leader reflects on a lifetime following the law of the land in Australia.

“What Aboriginal people ask is that the modern world now makes the sacrifices necessary to give us a real future. To relax its grip on us. To let us breathe, to let us be free of the determined control exerted on us to make us like you. And you should take that a step further and recognise us for who we are, and not who you want us to be. Let us be who we are – Aboriginal people in a modern world – and be proud of us. Acknowledge that we have survived the worst that the past had thrown at us, and we are here with our songs, our ceremonies, our land, our language and our people – our full identity. What a gift this is that we can give you, if you choose to accept us in a meaningful way.”
―Galarrwuy Yunupingu, The Monthly Jul 2016

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

―George Orwell: "The Freedom of the Press", unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
―Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

―George Orwell

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
― Mark Twain

“History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
― Milan Kundera

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“It frustrates and fascinates me that we'll never know for sure, that despite the best efforts of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we'll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good.”
― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”
― Howard Zinn

“If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.

Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”
― Golda Meir, My Life

“All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.”
― Edward Said

"My main conclusion is that local heritage has many layers, and that understanding the first Aboriginal layer is essential to understanding the many other heritage layers."

― Barry Golding, Federation University Australia.

"And yet identity can also kill—and kill with abandon."

― Amartya Sen

“The good historian, then, must be thus described: he must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty; one who, to use the words of the comic poet, calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse; a just judge, so far benevolent to all as never to give more than is due to any in his work; a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.”
― Lucian of Samosata, Lucian's True History

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

"We are all born into families and cultures we didn’t choose, given names we didn’t pick, instructed in behaviour and values we might not have freely chosen, and too often we end up expected to live lives designed by others". — Sheldon B. Kopp

George Town, TAS: Third Oldest Town in Australia

George Town, Tasmania, is located in north-east Tasmania, 50 km north of Launceston and 249 km north of Hobart.

With its attractive sea and riverside location, George Town is the third oldest town in Australia after Sydney and Hobart.

Palawa Aboriginal People

43,000 BCE Tasmania (Trowunna) was joined to mainland Australia by a land bridge.

Aboriginal people were able to walk to Tasmania.

An ice age began about 30,000 years ago, which caused sea levels to drop about 120 metres, creating a large landmass that stretched between Papua New Guinea and Tasmania.

About 12000 years ago, with the rise in sea levels, Tasmania was separated from the mainland.

Tasmanian Aboriginal People were isolated for about five hundred generations.

In 1642, Abel Tasman noticed Aboriginal fires in southeast Tasmania.

Tasmanian Aboriginal people made canoes from bark or reeds, using them to travel and for hunting for animals, such as mutton birds and seals.

"Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians [With plates.] "Author(s): Bonwick, James, British Library, Date of publication: 1870

Aboriginal people of Tasmania also inhabited caves for short or long periods of time. The cave at Rocky Cape, north-west Tasmania, is a rockshelter that shows evidence of Aboriginal occupation.

Cave at Rocky Cape, north west Tasmania

Natives at a corrobory, under the wild woods of the Country [River Jordan below Brighton, Tasmania], ca. 1835 / John Glover, SLNSW

Despite the directive by King George III “to endeavour, by every possible means, to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”, clashes began.

Conflict

The Black War was a period of brutal conflict between the British and Aboriginal Australians, which occurred from the mid-1820s to 1832.

From 1825 to 1828, attacks on settlers by Aboriginal people were causing increasing panic. The escalation of violence in the late 1820s prompted Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur to declare martial law, which remained in force for more than three years.

Tanaminawayt was from Cape Grim/Robbins Island, in the nearby north-west of Tasmania. During the 1830 and 1835 journeys with Robinson, Tanaminawayt shared various Aboriginal place names throughout Tasmania. George Town was called Kennemerthertackenloongentare, meaning, "through which the river flows to the sea". (September 1830).

In 1846, eight Aboriginal people from Flinders Island petitioned Queen Victoria not to allow the return of Dr Jeanneret as commandant at Wybalenna. This petition precipitated the 1847 closure of the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment and the transfer of Aboriginal residents to Oyster Cove, near Hobart.

On 31 December 1831, George Augustus Robinson and a group of about 14 Aboriginal envoys persuaded the Aboriginal community of Tasmania to surrender, which resulted in the Aboriginal population being exiled to Flinders Island.

The Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island was called Wybalenna, or "Black Man’s House".

"Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians [With plates.]", British Library, Date of publication: 1870

Robinson, on his journeys through Tasmania, took an Aboriginal guide, a man named Tanaminawayt.

1700s

Captain James Cook sighted Tasmania in 1777.

On October 7, 1798, George Bass and Matthew Flinders left Sydney in the sloop Norfolk, of 25 tons, to attempt the circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land.

Bern Cuthbert's replica of the sloop "Norfolk". The Sloop Norfolk was built on Norfolk Island in 1798. The 25 ton sloop was constructed from Norfolk Island pine.

Sailing into Bass Strait and along the north coast of Tasmania, Flinders noticed On November 3, an opening in the land. The vessel rounded a "Low Head" (a name it has retained to this day) and entered a broad inlet, sailing some way along.

Passing a green island, the Norfolk came upon a harbour brimming with birdlife, which Governor Hunter called Port Dalrymple. Now George Town. Aboriginal people called the river Ponrabbel.

1800s

A French expedition commissioned by Napoleon to map the coast of New Holland (now Australia), led by Baudin to undertake scientific research, explored the entrance to Port Dalrymple in 1802. Baudin’s Voyagers 1800–1804 featured illustrations of Aboriginal people.

Fearful of French intentions, the British decided to create settlements in Van Diemen's land (Tasmania). Evidence now shows that the French explorers Nicolas Baudin and Francois Peron had a secret purpose, proposing the invasion of Sydney. Read more and here

George Town, named for King George III, was first settled in 1804 by Colonel William Paterson, who built his headquarters opposite the bridge. Two years later, Launceston, 50 kilometres to the South, was established.

Lieutenant Colonel William Paterson arrived on the Buffalo on 4 November and set up a camp at Outer Cove. However, as the area had limited water, infertile soil and poor-quality vegetation, most of the soldiers and convicts moved across the river to Western Arm in the following year to establish a new settlement called York Town.

Colonel William Paterson (17 August 1755 – 21 June 1810)

From 1804, flag signals (semaphore flags) were used to communicate shipping news from vessels in the Bass Strait to Low Head Lighthouse.

The Low Head Pilot Station was built by convicts in 1805 to guide ships into the hazardous Tamar River. This is the oldest group of pilot buildings in Australia and just like the Pilot Station lighthouse, are still used today. According to a newspaper report, "The lighthouse was erected by a man named Walmsley, better known as "Belting Jack".

One boating accident which occurred on 15 June 1808 occurred when the vessel, Hebe, struck a reef between Low Head and Western Head at the entrance to Port Dalrymple. The ship was wrecked on the rocks, which have since that day been called Hebe Reef.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie named George Town after King George III, to make it the third-established town in Australia. George Town rose to prominence in the early 1800s, as it became the most important port on the north of the island, for the Van Diemen Land Company.

Georgetown was the last stop for Governor Macquarie and his wife, Elizabeth, on his 1811 tour through Tasmania. After celebrations, Governor Macquarie declared that Port Dalrymple, now known as the Tamar River, would become the headquarters for Northern Van Diemen's Land.

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 7 February 1948

In 1812, Macquarie issued a plan of George Town, showing Regent Square and the streets as they are today.

A flurry of building activity began with convicts quarrying limestone and burning it for lime at West Arm, for the construction of Government buildings, such as barracks, courthouse and Commissariats store.

Under the government of Colonel Sorel (1816-1823l, roads were cut through the woods from the south to the north extremity of the island, from Hobart Town to Port Dalrymple.

First Government Cottage at George Town, TAS, Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Friday 27 December 1935

1820s

In 1822, the convict women of the George Town Female Factory were housed in a shed in the lumber (timber) yard. A report from the Sydney Gazette of 1822 states:

"Very considerable improvements have, we understand, been accomplished at George Town; and the convicts employed at that
infant establishment now, by the judicious measures
adopted for their classification and restraint, exhibit an
appearance of order and system very gratifying.

The building erected for a place of Divine Worship
and the Public School, we are happy to say, is nearly
completed.

In the Factory at George Town, cloth from the coarse
wools of the Colony, of very good fabric, is made;
as are leather and shoes, of excellent quality."
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842), Friday 26 April 1822

The George Town Female Factory operated from 1822 to1834, with Samuel Sherlock as superintendent and his wife as matron.

After the closure of the Factory, the inmates were moved to the newly opened Launceston Female Factory.

Originally the Female Factory building, overlooking Regent Square in Cimitiere Street, was the home of the first chaplain in the north of Van Diemen's Land, the Reverend John Youl, who moved into the residence with his family in 1821. The Youl family moved back to Launceston in 1825.

The Female Factory was located in Cimitiere St. across from Regent Square, George Town, TAS

Later the Female Factory building was used as the Police Office and Magistrate's Residence. The first magistrate to live there was G.S. Davies and, from 1867, James Richardson. The George Town Female Factory building was demolished 1889.

"There are at present 40 females in the House
of Correction at George Town, and 2 children,
none of the former were however assignable.
We must again take the liberty to impress
upon the magistrates both on that and this side
of the island, the propriety of brief sentences
on these poor misguided creatures."

Hobart Town Courier (Tas. : 1827 - 1839), Friday 26 April 1833

Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) officially separated from New South Wales in 1825.

The headquarters for northern Van Diemen's Land Company moved back to Launceston in 1825.

A more complex semaphore signalling system (communication with flags) was set up in the Tamar Valley in 1825 to provide news and other information, such as about the arrival of ships.

Vessels in the Bass Strait would communicate via flags to Low Head Lighthouse. From there, semaphore lines would relay information to George Town and nearby Mount George and then to Mount Direction and Launceston.

The semaphore system was replaced in 1859 by an electric telegraph system.

There are ruins of buildings believed to have been occupied by signalmen and their families, during the 1800s, at the Mount Direction semaphore station site.

Old ruins on top of Mt Direction at the Semaphore Station, TAS

The declaration of Martial Law in 1828.

1830s

Tara hall was built in 1830, it is believed by convicts. It was the residence of William Kneale. The land was granted to R. Q. Kermode.

27 Sorell Street, George Town, TAS, Tara Hall, the circa 1830 residence of William Kneale

The Low Head Lighthouse, which was built by convicts, first began operating on 27 December 1833. It was Tasmania's second lighthouse and the third built in Australia.

The oldest building on the lighthouse site is the terrace at Pilots’ Row, built to house the pilots and their families in 1835. Designed by John Lee Archer, the Colonial Architect. Earlier timber buildings had existed. The convict boatmen, however, continued to live in their wooden huts.

During the 1930s, shipping increased on the Tamar. During this time, there were eight pilots and more than twenty boatmen. The Coxswain's cottage was built in 1847.

Lighthouse Low Head, TAS, The Weekly Courier 26th. March 1930

Benjamin Hyron, a member of St. John’s Lodge, was from Worcestershire, England. He came to Tasmania as a convict on the Lord Melville in 1818. Hyron owned a cottage in Anne Street, George Town, and was Licensee of the Freemason's Inn, which later became the home of the Woodgate Family.

Old Freemasons Hotel, George Town, TAS, Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Saturday 13 December 1947

The Freemason's Inn was demolished and the Ambulance Station now exists on that site in Anne Street.

Benjamin Hyrons's cottage, Ann St, George Town, TAS

The Grove, circa 1835, George Town, TAS Marion Villa

The Grove, circa 1835, was owned by Matthew Friend R.N., Port Officer and magistrate.
In 1839, James Cox, a wealthy woolgrower and son of William Cox, the man who built the first road across the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, built "Marion Villa" for his family north of the present Taylor's Beach.

According to a newspaper article, Marion Viila was called the "Ballroom of George Town".

The Cox family owned a six-oared whaleboat for recreation and rode horses along the beach.

Cox died at Marion Villa, Low Head, his seaside home, on 16 March 1866.

Villa, Low Head, TAS, circa 1839

The Steam packet Tavern was constructed in 1839 and was later named Whitestones.

The ghost of John Batman, it is claimed, was seen at the top of the stairs (centre window). In later years, the building became a private school and is now a private residence.

1840s

Gold is believed to have been found at The Den (formerly known as Lefroy or Nine Mile Springs) in Northern Tasmania, near George Town in 1840, by a convict.

The paddle steamer Gypsy began a regular service between Launceston and George Town in 1843.

Thelmara Cottage, located Esplanade North, George Town QLD. Housing for staff of cable company, built circa 1840. The land was originally granted to Major Stewart, the location next to the Government Store, blacksmiths, nailmakers and a lumber yard. During the 1870's it was occupied by Capt. Sturdee, master of the Eastern Extension Cable Co's maintenance ship. The Co. operated the cable link with mainland Australia.

Augustus Wood was licensed to retail alcohol at the Steam Packet Tavern (later Whitestones), George Town, in 1844.

Whitestones. c. 1839. Originally the Steam Packet Tavern. George Town, TAS

Wrecked: On Monday 2nd June 1845, the Brig Tobago was wrecked on the reef near the Low Head Pilot Station.

The 15 boatsmen, many of whom were convicts, who were part of the Tobago rescue mission, were rewarded for their "Meritorious Conduct”.

Bushrangers: A bushranger named John Jamieson absconded from Ross and stole some property, through a window, belonging to William Archer Esquire's house in George Town.

"In January 1847, Leadsman Charles Hinton and convict passholder, John Mann apprehended the bushranger at the Boatscrew Hut on the Low Head Pilot Station. Hinton later said in evidence that Mann needed to be commended for his assistance in overpowering and securing the prisoner."
Cornwall Chronicle (Launceston, Tas. : 1835 - 1880), Saturday 9 January 1847

1850s

Convict System Ends: The last convict transport ship arrived in Hobart, 26th May 1853.

The British Hotel was operating at George Town in 1856 and was transferred to James Wilson in 1859. The hotel was also operated by David Petrie and later, his wife, Jean.

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Saturday 30 May 1936

The first payable gold discovery in Tasmania was found near Mangana in 1852. The area, to the north, however, would become one of the richest goldfields in Tasmania.A telegraph line connecting Hobart and Launceston was finished in 1857. Launceston was connected by telegraph to George Town in March 1858.

Courier (Hobart, Tas. : 1840 -1859), Wednesday 21 April 1858

Courier (Hobart, Tas. : 1840 - 1859), Saturday 30 October 1858

1860s

The Telegraph Station building was erected in the 1860s. It was later leased to the Catholic Church for use as a holiday home for the Presentation Sisters.

1870s

Cornwall Advertiser (Launceston, Tas. : 1870 - 1877), Tuesday 24 March 1874

Telephone: One of the first phone calls made in Tasmania was from the building at 1 Barrack Street, George Town, built for William Warren of the Bass Strait Cable Company, to the cable station at Low Head in February, 1878.

Thomas Hume Simpson was the Chief District Constable at George Town in 1878. In 1903, he was listed as a Clerk.

Tasmania, Reports of Crime, 1861-1883, circa 1876

1880s

In October 1881, Samuel Lefroy found gold on Specimen Hill near Nine Mile Spring and received a reward of £3000. The following year, one of Tasmania's most profitable goldfields called the Lefroy Goldfield, situated 12 kilometres east of George Town, was established.

1890s

George Town, TAS, 01 Jan 1890- 31 Dec 1939, Archives Office of Tasmania

1900s

In the early 1900s, many mines around George Town closed and the population dropped significantly. After the end of the Second World War, George Town only had a population of about 300, and many of the dwellings were used for holiday homes.

Xmas at the seaside, Low Head (Weekly Courier Newspaper - 21 Dec 1901, p1294), Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office:

Pier Hotel (2nd), George Town, TAS, built 1902

The original, single-story, Pier Hotel opened in 1856, managed by G M Ruttley, until 1892. Henry Weight was the licensee from 1892 until 1900. This building was demolished in 1902 and replaced by the two-story weatherboard building that exists today.

Mr G. W. Plank was licensee from 1900 to 1920. He also operated a horse-drawn coach service in competition with a Mr H K Harris.

Eden Holme struck the Hebe Reef, off the Tamar Heads, on 6 January. 1907 and began to take on water. The barque didn't begin to break up until later that month.

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Tuesday 8 January 1907

Gibson's Beach, George Town 1910, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office

Ship on the Tamar River, circa 1911 (Trainiac)

WWI

More Tasmanian Aboriginal people, per head of population, enlisted in the Great War than from any other place in Australia.

Thomas Henry Davies, World War I veteran, served as a minister at George Town, from 1934 until his death in 1942.

1930s

Examiner Newspaper 5.12.1936

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Wednesday 22 February 1939

1940s and WWII

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Tuesday 30 December 1941

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Monday 6 January 1941

1950s

An aluminium smelter was established at Bell Bay, operating from 1955.

To accommodate the growing population of workers coming into the area, a large new housing development was established at Bell Bay, near the historic old town.

Members of the official party at the opening of the George Town Methodist Church Women's Guild "Balloon Fair" on Saturday. From left: The Mayoress (Mrs. Thyne), the Launceston circuit superintendent (the Rev. A. Muller),the g ui ld president (Mrs. J. H. Jones), Mrs. Muller, the Mayor (Ald.Thyne), and the guild secretary (Mrs. J.Mart.Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Tuesday 21 October 1952

Mr. James Chung Gon, died on Saturday, aged 97. At one time, he had a market garden near the goldfields at Lefroy, TAS. Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Monday 25 February 1952

Aluminium Commission's project at nearby Bell Bay, TAS, Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Thursday 21 May 1953

150th anniversary of Col. Paterson's landing at York Cove Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Monday 8 November 1954

George Town School. TAS, Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Tuesday 26 January 1954

George Town Hospital, TAS, Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Saturday 30 January 1954

1990s

Palawa kani, the constructed Tasmanian Aboriginal language program began in 1992.

Around George Town

The Watch House at George Town, TAS, is part of the historic old gaol site. The present building was constructed in 1843

Anglican Christ Church, located in Low Head, just 7 minutes from George Town, circa 1877

The Grove, circa 1835, George Town, TAS

Low Head Lighthouse is in Low Head, Tasmania, about 7 kilometres north of George Town on the east side of the mouth of the Tamar River, built in 1888

Low Head Pilot Station, TAS, commenced operation in 1805 and was the 3rd station to be established in Australia. It has run continuously since 1833. Pilot’s Row built 1835, converted to a museum.