writer BERT SPINKS
photographer PEN TAYLER
At the southern end of the Central Plateau is Bothwell. Only 400 or so people live here but it’s built around an intersection of roads that make the centre of town feel like it’s upon a couple of broad boulevards. This is fine farming country, but the main drag connects the Midlands Highway to the central highlands. Tractors and boats are regular sights upon the crossroads at Bothwell.
Bothwell has a high percentage of buildings and properties of historic interest. Sandstone is everywhere: divoted and scored, stacked up to build churches and public buildings. Some of it is cream-coloured, some is more like nankeen cloth. All of it is beautiful. Significant architects from old Van Diemen’s Land are represented, such as John Lee Archer and Alexander North.
Bothwell also proudly boasts a claim to have the oldest golf course in Australia. It is said that the first round was played in the 1820s on the property ‘Ratho’, belonging to early settler Alexander Reid. Needless to say, this is a claim that is somewhat contentious. Purported dates for the first game vary from 1822 to the 1860s. Ratho Links is still operating as a golf course, and the property hosts the Australasian Golf Museum, which insists on the primacy of the round at Ratho: according to them, the Scottish migrant Alexander Reid had ‘hickory clubs and feathery balls’ amongst his possessions.
What is certain that, in 1821, a boatload of Scottish pioneers were granted land around the high country of Van Diemen’s Land. Many of them would have been highlanders, and perhaps were better adapted – or more romantically inclined – towards these landscapes. The distinct culture of Bothwell certainly came from these settlers, as well as from the conditions that were placed upon them by the environment itself. Today the Scottish heritage is recalled in a few different ways, including a tartan background on the street signs.
Not all graveyards are equal, but those that have been in place for nearly 200 years are worth a visit. The cemetery at Bothwell is a good one. Driving into town on a sunny day, you can see headstones shining like bleached bones. Some of the headstones wear their age, adorned with tufts of lichen, blue-grey and olive-yellow, and they carry, in the language of cemeteries, stories of Bothwell’s curious past.
The graveyard has another virtue. As some of the only uncultivated land in the region, it has become an important refuge for native grassland species which is otherwise hard to find nowadays. Sections of the graveyard are left untended, a healthy patch of weeds that puts out multifarious flowers in spring and summer, including flowers with quirky names like lanky buttons and showy copperwire daisy. Several uncommon orchids pop up here too. So the living systems of ecology intertwine with our memorials to the dead.
Another unlikely landmark in town is a sundial, vaunted as ‘the most interesting sundial in Australia’. (I am led to believe that sundial-lovers from all over the world make pilgrimages here, although I am yet to meet one on my own visits.) The sundial commemorates locals lost in World War I. And in directing our attention to the solar system above us, it also refers us to another fascinating local figure, the great Grote Reber.
Born on the outskirts of Chicago in 1911, Reber studied electrical engineering and soon after became a pioneer in the burgeoning field of radio astronomy. In the 1950s he was lured to University of Tasmania, finding our long winter nights, clear skies, and sparse population advantageous for his research – even very faint signals from outer space could be picked up here. Eventually he built a house at the historic estate of Dennistoun, just out of Bothwell, where he continued his research until he died at the age of 90.
This area’s source of life is the Clyde River, a gift from the highlands. As it burbles down to Bothwell from above, it picks up a number of tributaries with charming names: creeks like Bark Hut, Black Snake and Weasel Plains.
The aquatic theme is properly pursued at the estate named Nant, just off the Highland Lakes Road. In 1821, Welsh migrants established the property; Nant means ‘stream’ in the Welsh language, and today, it’s a producer of the Gaelic ‘water of life’, whisky.
At one stage, though, it housed two political exiles by the names of John Mitchel and John Martin. They shared a cottage at Nant, after having been kicked out of Ireland in the 1840s for fomenting a revolutionary mood there. They were among a handful of activists sentenced by the British for treason, and expelled; although technically removed to remote regions so that they couldn’t mingle, Mitchel and Martin were even able to meet up with two other Irish prisoners at nearby Lake Sorell. There, two police districts met, and each pair could rightfully remain in their assigned area, but still enjoy a good bit of banter.
Each of these Irish political prisoners were later repatriated, but John Mitchel was able to escape Van Diemen’s Land with the help of a mysterious foreigner with the codename of ‘Nicaragua’. That’s a story for another time, but it’s worth noting that Mitchel’s diary – later published under the title of the Jail Journals – raved about the beauty of the landscape around Bothwell. His phrases are coloured with romantic ornamentation, poetic in their praise of the island gaol’s highlands. Nant, with its ‘vast view of endless mountains, covered with wood’, was not such a bad place to wind up, for a few years anyway.
John Mitchel also wrote, ‘Tasmanian honey is the best in the world.’ He would have been be intrigued to learn that Tasmanian single malt whisky came, almost two centuries later, to be similarly regarded. Nant now produces several highly-lauded varieties of single malt, and you can head into the cool confines of the convict-era building that houses the distillery to sample a handful of delicious drams.
North of Bothwell, towards Great Lake (in which a sort of bunyip once lived, according to the shepherds of old), you will come upon the Steppes, a historic site and bush reserve. From the 1860s it was used as a residence by the Wilsons, a grazing family who moved stock into the high country during the summer months in order to rest and rejuvenate their lowland paddocks. Far from an old-school Scottish bothy (a hut or small cottage), though, the Steppes house is a charming piece of country architecture. No longer occupied, open days are occasionally held here, and it’s certainly worth trying to time your visit to the region with these. But even if you can’t get inside, the backyard of the Steppes reserve is incredible. A narrow path winds through tall eucalypts; currawongs soar through the upper storey, while skinks rustle around the undergrowth. Wildflowers unfurl in the warmer months. At the end of the 900-metre walk (or the start, depending on where you park you car), you’ll come upon a set of bronze sculptures affixed to a ring of big boulders. These beautiful artworks, depicting historical and ecological scenes from the plateau, are a local artist’s gift to the community, and are dedicated to those who have loved and cared for the high country over the years.
Bert Spinks grew up in Beaconsfield and is now, mostly, a resident of Launceston. He is a writer, storyteller and bushwalking guide, each of which feed and reflect his interest in the way human communities interact with place and landscape. He focuses especially on journeys and movement, language and literature. Although based in Launceston, Bert spends much of his time without a home because he is in one of the world's wild or interesting places pursing local lore.
Pen Tayler is a Tasmanian writer and photographer. She photographed 12 towns for Towns of Tasmania, written by Bert Spinks, and has written and provided images for Hop Kilns of Tasmania (both Forty South Publishing). She has also written a book about Prospect House and Belmont House in the Coal River Valley.
