writer BERT SPINKS photographer PEN TAYLER
In 1793, French ships turned into a wide bay and sailed north into it until they reached the well-wooded mouth of a dark creek. Bruni D’Entrecasteaux was already enchanted by southern Tasmania. The visiting captain had charted several new names on his map, and he would describe the forests he saw as being “as ancient as the world”. Looking upon black swans (which, for Europeans used to swans only with white plumage, were amazing), he called this calm and sheltered spot Port Cygnet.
Less than a decade later, the French returned in two ships, the Géographe and the Naturaliste. As the skipper of a rather ambitious expedition, Nicolas Baudin had a lot on his plate. He didn’t make it home, dying en route, but in the history of European science, there are few journeys that have had such a profound impact. Thousands of unknown specimens were brought back to France, and the little cove off the Huon Estuary, where today you will find the town of Cygnet, played a significant role in the Tasmanian stories that the French brought back.
At the mouth of the Huon, the Baudin expedition had an interest in collecting black swans. Henri Freycinet, François Péron and Charles Lesueur went ashore in mid-morning. “Of all the places I have seen during our long voyage,” wrote Péron, “this particular one seems to me the most picturesque and the most pleasing.” Aside from the local avian inhabitants, the French also met with humans.
Anthropological notes don’t age well, but the observations of those on the Baudin expedition were at least amiable, for the most part. The French engaged with Aboriginal groups in various parts of the island. They thought the locals they met had “a gentle, peaceful nature”. Péron recorded a lengthy interaction with the resident mob, a clan of the melukerdee, on that chilly January morning. They had a fire-torch at hand. Intimate contact was made when shirts were unbuttoned to prove the Frenchmen’s skin colour. When one sailor pulled off a fur glove, the locals were startled.
Shortly after their sortie up Agnes Rivulet, the French boats ventured over to another of the romantic coves in the estuary. Here, an even more vivid cross-cultural encounter took place. The French expedition met with another family and spent enough time with them to have a genuine cultural exchange, confused as it was. They noticed important elements of the locals’ toolkit, including stone scrapers, kelp water carriers and a wooden spatula used for harvesting seafood. A sailor played a musical instrument. François Péron was openly smitten with the young mother Ouré-Ouré (this, at least, is how the French rendered the spelling of her name).
Such stories are only partly told, and of course we have only the French accounts of these meetings. But these anecdotes stay in my mind whenever I travel towards Tasmania’s southern coastlines. It’s easy to see how it would have made abundant country for the melukerdee. I also find it instructive to read the French commentary; it remains the case that wherever we travel, we carry our own biases with us. François Péron’s notes tell us as much about him as they do about the families he encountered.
In some ways, Cygnet has familiar ingredients for a southern Tasmanian town. Fresh water meets salt water. Blue gums stand over blue bays. The land is hilly and fertile. Plovers and native hens play perilous games on the roadsides. Rosellas and cockatoos make havoc in the branches.
Somehow, though, Cygnet quickly became a hub for a range of commercial activities, including, to this day, tourism.
The country between Hobart and the Huon was a tough ask for the first colonists. Those of us with not-so-powerful cars still know how much gruntwork is needed as the highway climbs over a spur of kunanyi and into the Huon Valley. It must have been a trial to bush-bash that way. It was a lot simpler to sail, although seafaring was also risky at such latitudes. Perhaps that’s why not much land was allotted down this way for a few decades after the penal colony landed in southern Tasmania. Eventually, in 1833, William Nichols was granted 320 acres adjacent to Port Cygnet. Today’s township of Nicholls Rivulet is named after him, albeit with a minor spelling change.
Hearsay about Nichols’ big move south suggests that it was seen as risky. Having not seen him for weeks, the Hobart Town Courier declared that Nichols had met with “his untimely death”. But it was the announcement that was mistimed. Months later Hobart was informed that, “Mr. Nichols, supposed to have been murdered, is actually alive and well.” This was especially good news for Nichols’ wife and children, who would soon join him on the block that he was then clearing for agriculture.
A few years later these landowners were visited by Jane Franklin. The energetic wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, Lady Jane had also taken land down the Huon and presumably wanted to explore the neighbourhood. It hadn’t been all smooth going for the Nichols family; among other things, they’d had cattle stolen. Lady Jane made the point of mentioning that William Nichols “has a beautiful grant but a very melancholy family”. Her depictions of the Nichols family’s maudlin life could make a fine novel.
By 1842 there were 90 people spread between Port Cygnet and Petcheys Bay, but it seems that most of these were itinerant timber-workers who happened to be based in the district when the census was collected. The population was soon to grow, however. A string of convict probation stations was built in the mid-1840s, at Port Cygnet, Nicholls Rivulet, Lymington and Huon Island. By 1847, about 500 convicts were stationed in the area. That was the peak of the probation station era, but infrastructure came with that many convicts and so free settlers followed in the wake of the convict institution.
The census in 1851 shows 350 people living in the area, but they were well spread. Farms had been established amidst nearby forests, such as those at Deep Bay, Green Point and Wattle Road. There were still convict servants on some of these properties, and interesting characters mixed in these remote bush blocks.
It was this motley populace that made up the life of the town as it grew in the 1850s. It had a postmaster by 1853 and a school in 1855. It also produced a plethora of pubs: The Bush Inn, the Bird-in-Hand, the Friendly Inn, the Port Cygnet Hotel. “It is evident that this place will be a thriving town in a very few years,” noted an army captain posted to Tasmania in 1854. At that stage, though, the township had been proclaimed under the name of Lovett, which it would be officially called until the 1920s.
The 1850s also saw a horrific bushfire come through. The blaze burned through a huge amount of newly-built houses, and there were appalling stories of death. “For miles around the country is nothing but one charred mass,” described one witness. But the people at Port Cygnet were attached to the area. They stoically rebuilt.
For decades this region was built around fruit-growing. Apples were an international export from the late 1840s. Old-timers would boast about impressive quantities of produce, countless bushels of varieties that today we barely hear about. Apples were so central to Cygnet that an apple festival was initiated in 1952. There were competitions in apple-packing, case-making and case-milling – the latter two also representing the timber industry, another mainstay in the valley.
A speech at the first apple festival in Cygnet proclaimed, “We find mirrored at the Festival the life of the orchardist: his tools and his cultivation: his foes and his weapons: his harmony with helpful nature: his fruit and his triumph.”
To ensure the festival caught attention, it apparently produced the largest apple pie in the southern hemisphere.
Boat-building has also been part of life in Cygnet ever since John Wilson, the grandson of William Nichols, began work on the Huon Belle in the 1860s. Naturally, fishing has also been an associated industry, not to mention a favourite pastime, of many in this district.
On that note, it’s appropriate to mention Fanny Cochrane Smith. Many in the area rightly hold up Fanny as one of their heroes. Born on Flinders Island, Fanny survived to raise 11 children at Nichols Rivulet. Her parents belonged to the trawlwoolway and parperloiherner nations of northern Tasmania, but she evidently got quickly acquainted with the country in the south and subsequently taught her children traditional skills. Fanny herself was a keen hunter and diver, made baskets, and foraged medicinal plants. She kept culture alive and was a renowned singer. Many of Fanny Cochrane Smith’s descendants live in the area today. So too do her songs, recording on wax cylinders in 1899.
It’s done in a different way but driving into Cygnet nowadays, you get a sense of how many locals live close to the land. “Freshly dug potatoes,” the handwritten signs advertise, or, “Spray-free berries”, or “Tree-ripened apples.” Some seasons you see the pickers in fluorescent fleece jumpers, working rows of strawberries or spuds. Cygnet’s cidery, Pagan Cider, takes advantage of the local pomological tradition to put a variety of styles into the hands of consumers around the island.
At the other end of town stands the Port Cygnet Cannery, the site of a long-running co-op. In 1938, apple farmers called a meeting to demand fairer prices for their produce. Within days 100 farmers had chipped in with £10 pounds each; the Cygnet Co-Operative Canning Society was formed. The cannery’s fruit was sent all across Europe from the docks of Port Cygnet, and became the heart of the community. In peak season, it employed scores of people.
When it comes to growing, however, some techniques and attitudes have changed. Many orchards on the Apple Isle were cleared and subdivided, a side-effect of economic policies in the latter part of the 20th century. This brought about a further change – people moved from everywhere to savour the lifestyle of this beautiful part of the world. Today, there is a healthy mix of new and old, traditional and avant garde. It’s something you can see on the main street, peering through the window, say, while you down a fancy café breakfast. But it can also be seen at the Cygnet Folk Festival, which has been held since 1982. Aside from the eclectic music selections, the festival makes use of many of Cygnet’s more interesting buildings, which over the rest of the year have a range of other purposes.
“If anyone wants a cure for the ‘blues’, a week in Port Cygnet is about the best tonic I know of.” So wrote the “Travelling Companion” in the Hobart The Mercury more than a century ago, and for many travellers, the saying still holds (although the “Companion” did complain about muddy tracks). Cygnet, and the wider Huon Valley, are now a major tourist destination, offering attractions that Bruni D’Entrecasteaux and François Péron would understand.
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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.