writer BERT SPINKS

photographer PEN TAYLER

“A road is not like a railway, built mile by mile, inching along to an inevitable goal. No, a road begins with tracks, either of men or animals; it is improved haphazardly as occasion demands.”

So wrote George Hawley Stancombe, in his self-published history of the Midlands Highway, Highway in Van Diemen’s Land (1968). Most Tasmanians have made innumerable journeys along this road, which is indeed somewhat quicker than in its first days: a Lieutenant Laycock hoofed it from the Tamar to the Derwent in February 1807, accompanied by four men and three weeks worth of provisions. Now it ought to take closer to two hours.

A traveller of even higher status came through shortly after. The colonial governor Lachlan Macquarie and his retinue traversed between the island’s main settlements in 1811 and again in 1821. To one of the villages he passed through he gave the name Ross, and upon the river which flowed through Ross he bestowed his own name – as he humbly did to innumerable landmarks in countless districts of Australia.

The placid waters of the Macquarie River glide beneath a beautiful bridge, one of the country’s oldest and perhaps its most intriguing. Designed and built by convict artisans, its sandstone arch is intricately marked with a ‘hallucinatory composition of Celtic carved motifs and gargoyle-like human faces’. Upon each visit to Ross, I carefully descend to the level of the river, in order to pay homage to one of these personages – not the erstwhile Lieutenant-Governor or his lady, but to the resident of Ross who was once the King of Iceland.

Jørgen Jørgensen was born in Denmark in 1780 and died in Van Diemen’s Land in January 1841. What happened in between spanned the whole globe, and a dazzling variety of careers. He sailed into ports in Brazil, South Africa and Australia. He whaled in the Pacific Islands. He was a spy in continental Europe. He wrote treatises about economics and religion, as well as fiction and plays. His friends were at times important historical figures, such as Sir Joseph Banks. He also frittered away his money in casinos and taverns.

Jørgensen did sort of reign over Iceland, for part of the summer of 1809, after sort of staging a revolution. He wound up transported as a convict on an island at the other end of the globe. Even in Tasmania Jørgensen bounced between vocations, including a stint with the colonial field police, which is what took him to Ross. No doubt a colourful character like Jørgensen would have made an impression in the town – so too his belligerent ex-convict wife Nora, who is also depicted on the bridge. (Nora is faring better than Jørgen – the latter’s nose has fallen off, regrettably and inaccurately making him look like he has suffered from syphilis.)

Situated close to the centre of the island, Ross became an important staging post for the arduous journey between Launceston and Hobart. Consequently, several inns were set up; handy stopping-points for victuals and accommodation on the old road. The Ross Hotel (previously the Man o’ Ross) has stood since 1831, outliving its original competitors, the Scotch Thistle Inn and the Sherwood Castle Inn.

Its situation in ‘the interior’ also made it useful for military and constabulary bases. Old barracks buildings and former police buildings can still be found there. Several streets are named after battles in the Napoleonic wars.

So too can you find the remains of former convict sites, including the female prison compound (generally referred to as the Female Factory). One-fifth of all convicts in Van Diemen’s Land were women – about 12,500 individuals. Although only one building remains intact, archaeological digs and historical research can tell us a lot about the harrowing experiences of these women and other convicts here. Significant archaeological finds include fragments from alcohol bottles, clay tobacco pipes and reworked iron – which convicts may have purposed as weaponry.

The countryside around Ross also made it an ideal early colonial farm village. This area is flat, the soil is fertile, and the Macquarie River provides water year-round. Being accessible from both the north and south settlements was an advantage as well. About 20,000 acres of this area were officially reserved for agriculture and (interestingly) for the breeding of draft oxen. In 1826 it hosted the first agricultural show in the Midlands.

Oxen may not be so commonly bred now, but the region still boasts a lot of pasture-based farming – primarily sheep and beef – as well as poppies, potatoes and other vegetables, and some cherries, stone fruit and grapes. The cultivation of superfine merino wool here is a major industry. World record wool prices have been fetched from Ross sheep. The exports contribute plenty to the local economy, but not all of it winds up in Europe or Asia: in downtown Ross, the Tasmanian Wool Centre showcases high-quality wool products, with blankets, craft and clothing among the items manufactured from local fabric.

One person to whom Tasmanians are indebted is Eliza Forlonge, who walked for the later years of the 1820s through the European province of Saxony, selecting fine merino sheep before bringing them to Kenilworth Station in the northern midlands. Eliza is memorialised with a statue ten minutes from Ross, in the town’s Midlands Highway neighbour Campbell Town. She stands with the horn of a ram gripped firmly in her hand.

Ross sits just shy of being at a latitude of exactly 42 degrees south, but must remind many British visitors of their own homeland many degrees of latitude away. Driving in from the north, crossing Tacky Creek, the streets are lined with English elms, which blaze an almost fluorescent yellow in the autumn months.

Autumn is thus a good time for visiting the town: the cafés and eateries on the main street sit under a leafy canopy, the season’s colour tones fit in with the surfeit of sandstone, and the Ross Hotel has its fireplace blazing on the chillier days.

In the earliest of colonial times, Van Diemen’s Land was separated into two districts, with the 42nd parallel forming the border. This line of latitude is of course one of the planet’s many imaginary demarcations, but as far as representing the division between Tasmania’s north and south, it’s as good as anything. This is a long-standing rivalry, which has a somewhat practical basis. Both ends of the island had geographical reasons to claim that it was the most important town, but only one could become the capital and receive the rewards and resources that came with that.

Whilst I make my pilgrimage to a figure on the Ross Bridge, many other visitors make theirs to a bakery. It is said that the Ross Village Bakery was the model for the setting of Kiki’s Delivery Service, a popular 1989 anime film. A ‘cult geography’ has formed around it, as one Tasmanian academic put it (his enjoyable thesis is titled A Japanese media pilgrimage to a Tasmanian bakery).

The point is that we each have personal geographies, and places of passage like Ross, or the other towns on the Midlands Highway, wear capes of many colours in the sense that each person sees its own aspect of the town and finds their own meaning there. The bakery guest book confirms this. ‘I never forget that I watched a movie in Kiki’s room’ says one entry. ‘That was the best pie I’ve ever had’ says another.

For the Tasmanian resident, it is fortunate to have these historic villages in which to pause, to stretch the legs, to grab a bite or a refreshment (especially because Tasmanians still find a two-hour journey by car a relatively large undertaking). We return to these towns again and again, layering our own histories upon that already laid down; we etch our own shapes into the place, like the inspired grooves of a convict stonemason into sandstone blocks. For the visitor, a place like Ross offers a rare opportunity to glean an insight into the country’s colonial and convict past, to peep through a crack in time, but also to encounter the diverse range of feelings and meanings in the Tasmanian present.

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.