writer BERT SPINKS photographer PEN TAYLER
When, in 2013, in northern California, my friend introduced me to her dad, he greeted me with an unexpected question. “Tasmania, hey? You’re not from Fingal, are ya?”
I’d never before been asked if I hail from Fingal and I haven’t been since. It’s not a major locality; the most recent census figures have it sitting at 431 inhabitants. There are probably plenty of Tasmanians who have never heard of it. But a well-known artist, Francis McComas, was born in Fingal, Tasmania, in 1875 and died in northern California in 1938, having established a reputation as one of the world’s great watercolourists.
Ever since this encounter, I’ve visited Fingal with a sense of anticipation. It somehow didn’t surprise me that such a prodigy should have appeared in the Fingal Valley, then ventured off and disappeared forever. Curious incidents seem to be the norm in Fingal.
The façade of Fingal is not always pretty and I suppose it has a reputation for being a bit rough. A bunch of my mates have strange stories about their passages through the valley. One bloke got left behind at a bush doof, for instance, and spent several days stranded in the town. An airline employee had a frightening incident at a house at which he was dropping off some lost luggage.
There’s a provisional feel to the shopfronts in Fingal. I never know which of the handful of shops on the main road will be open. Some places seem defunct then spring to life, like a shrub that remains dormant for seasons on end before finally emerging in a serendipitous moment of efflorescence. In recent times the local Neighbourhood House has had to step in and run a small supermarket, because the IGA shut up shop.
The old Fingal Hotel once boasted the biggest Scotch whisky collection in the southern hemisphere, and could claim the “the most substantial dog kennel in Tasmania” (according to architectural historian Eric Ratcliff). The has hotel had a patchy paintjob and a locked front door for as long as I’ve known it. I am assured that slow progress is being made, but when I visit, it always strikes me that it may be a case of one step forward, one step back. Originally licensed as the Talbot Arms in 1846, it was built upon a military building – the officers’ quarters – which existed from 1830.
Meanwhile, the area seems to be rife with eclectic and isolated tales, yarns with which you have to use your imagination to make it all coherent.
The Fingal Valley was surveyed by Roderick O’Connor and John Helder Wedge in the 1820s, ad a convict station was situated here in 1827. Its first burst of economic activity came when gold was discovered at Mangana, just north. Defined by the South Esk River, the valley was also quickly identified as a good farming district. Coal was found there in the 1860s, which prompted the construction of a railway line. The colliery still employs about 70 locals. Forestry was also, for a time, a significant field of employment.
Well-preserved convict cells and stone churches help the visitor keep track of the story of the past. But there is also, for example, the story of Malahide. This sizeable patch of land, running parallel to the South Esk, was granted to William Talbot after some confusion over other property he’d claimed on the east coast. In the end Talbot made a good go of it, having some success as a wool grower. The property was named after land his family owned in Ireland.
Generations later, Malahide was inherited by Milo John Reginald Talbot, the 7th Baron of Malahide. A devout gardener, the baron commissioned a book on Tasmanian flora, which resulted in a collaboration between the local botanical experts Winifred Jane Curtis and Margaret Stones. Talbot’s memorial plaque at St Peter’s Church reads, “He loved Tasmania”. That his story weaves through Fingal in this strange way seems appropriate both to the eccentric peer and the town itself.
Following the road past Malahide you’ll come to Mathinna. This is one of my favourite tiny towns in Tassie, all the more so because the pub there has been reliably open for the whole time that Fingal’s has not. It was also once a gold mining town, and it also has a strange assemblage of associations. For instance Eric Reece, a Premier of Tasmania, was born here. Its name is borrowed from an Aboriginal woman, the daughter of Towterer, who was born on Flinders Island. A local footy team at Mathinna was once called the Kill-and-Burns.
The neighbouring township of Mangana was home of what was probably the first lode of payable gold found in Tasmania. That was in 1852 and it was a crucial discovery: at around the same time that many Tasmanians were being lured to mainland due to its mineral wealth. Mangana attracted hundreds of prospectors to the area, but the population quickly diminished. In 1881, a traveller glumly noted that it had a dilapidated look. The town was ruined by floods in 1929, leaving families homeless and covering the township.
There’s apparently still a mineral lease on part of Mangana, and maybe some gold will be yielded there still. But Mangana already has a more curious claim to fame: the classic Australian film The Tale of Ruby Rose was partly filmed in the township.
Ben Lomond, which boasts the Tasmania’s second-highest summit, is ever-present above the Fingal Valley. The town looks up at its rugged, roadless south-eastern face. Stacks Bluff (1,527m) is perched high above, and so too are other peaks with colourful names: Denison Crag, Sphinx Bluff. Meanwhile, more unusual villages and boltholes lurk in the mountain’s gullies. Interspersed throughout are forestry plantations, much of it radiata pine. Mining activity is centred on the colliery further east along the highway. Sheep run in spacious fields.
While I have at times visited Fingal and left without anything really happening, I don’t travel for stimulation but to draw nearer to the meaning of different places, to understand how the mesh of geography and culture comes together. Most places give up their secrets all too easily – that’s the spirit of the times, I suppose. But I like the allure of Fingal, a tough, resilient little town which yields nothing easily. For me, that’s not a deterrent.
Some years ago, I came out this way on a road trip, following the photocopied brochure of a tourism enterprise called Valleys of Adventure. The project was perhaps a little underdone, or maybe the timing just wasn’t quite right – whatever the case, I don’t think the epithet stuck. But it made me wonder what might count as an adventure.
On one of my most recent visits to the Fingal area, late afternoon sun poured down the valley. It was about as pretty as I’ve ever seen it. The South Esk was a shimmering blue snake. Gum trees gave out long dark shadows. The stone facade of St Joseph’s Catholic Church greedily caught the light. On the main street, my punnet of hot chips glistened gold with chicken salt. It was all fit for a watercolourist’s brush.
I headed out of town and made myself a campsite on the South Esk. In the morning, I happily let myself get lost on the mazy backroads – through monocrop plantations, without a single landmark. Eventually I rolled into Evercreech Forest Reserve for the first time in years. There, 90-odd metres in the sky, a handful of white gums stand tall, having miraculously evaded the axe. Their upper branches were bathed in golden light. I took the longer route, up the hill, at the invitation of an official sign which read, in precisely the voice of a local ranger, “Seen them from below now see them from above”. Bassian thrushes scampered through the undergrowth and a mob of black cockatoos entertained themselves in the canopy. It was a truly beautiful morning.
The confusing roads contoured back into town. All around me were colourful place names, which hinted at interesting back stories: the clearing called Queer Street, for instance, or the cliff named Flitch of Bacon (one of my favourite Tasmanian toponyms).
I’d counted on finding a café open; there was not. But the op-shop was, so I rummaged through that instead and emerged clutching a vintage Beginner’s Greek textbook. The women running the till took the mickey out of me.
As I said, the stories are strewn around the Fingal Valley in a fairly patternless way. It’s like trying to spin sparsely scattered stars into a constellation. Perhaps that’s not what you’re after when you visit a place. But it’s my kind of adventure.
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.
