Launceston – State Library and Tasmanian Archives Blog

Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2021

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania.

Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue and Tasmanian Names Index or visit us on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram.

In this blog:

Photographs of Tasmanian Cricket Teams – Ref: PH40/1/3625-27
Photographs of Launceston and Perth– Ref: NS7193/1/5-8
Artwork of Launceston Mechanics Institute – Ref: LPIC41/1/1
Artwork of Hobart Town, on the River Derwent, Van Diemen’s Land by W.J. Huggins (Allport)
Photograph of Twin Ferry Kangaroo, Hobart – Ref: PH30/1/3269
Advertisement for Weaver and Co, Wellington Bridge Hobart by T Midwood – Ref: NS6760/1/7
Glass Plate Negatives by A Rollings of Sorell Area – Ref: NS1553/1/1010-1099
Register of Convicts B, M-Z 1835-47 – Ref: CON22/1/4
Register of payment of salaries to officers of the police, 1855-57 – Ref: AUD45/1/1-3
Journal of a voyage from Liverpool to VDL, 1833 – Ref: NS5739/1/1
Copies of Wills Recording Granting of Probate – Ref: AD960/1/6, AD960/1/7
Film of opening of Launceston library after refit – Ref: AG279/1/2
Film of the Launceston children’s library – Ref: AG279/1/1

Recently Digitised Material: July-September 2021

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania.

In this blog:

Richard Simson Photographic Collection – Ref: NS6351/1/1-95
Albums of Gladys Midwood – Ref: NS6759/1/2-3
Photographic Albums by Margaret Smithies, Ernest George Record and the McDowell family
Tasmanian Government Railways
1920s aerial view of Hobart city block bounded by Murray, Harrington, Liverpool and Melville Street looking North from behind His Majesty’s Theatre and Hobart Rivulet – Ref: NS892/1/61
Artworks of Launceston
Emu Bay by Thomas Unwin
The Pests of the Prince by Henry Manly
TGR Williams glass plate negatives – Ref: NS1409/1/46-48
Judges notes on capital offences committed at Norfolk Island, 1846 – Ref: CSO20/1/449
Burial Plot Maps, Cornelian Bay Cemetery 1915-16 – Ref: AF86/1/1
Wills from AD960/1/5
1829 journal written from London to Van Diemans Land by John Owen Lord – Ref: NS301/1/2

Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2020

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this post contains images and voices of deceased persons.

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania. Each year, we place items online to help promote and preserve our rare and special collections. These images and films are just a tiny sample of an amazing treasure trove of Tasmania’s heritage. From colonial artwork to convict records, fragile glass plate negatives to rare films, private letters to government records, our collections (including the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and the W L Crowther Collection) tell millions of stories from Tasmania and around the world.

Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue or visit us on Flickr and YouTube.

In this blog:

Peter Laurie Reid Carte-De-Visite Collection, c1860 – Ref: NS1442/1/1 to 53
Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 – Ref: NS6607/1/1 to 14
Stereoscopic Photographs of Emu Bay Burnie, c1890 – Ref: NS6664/1/1 to 5
Stereoscopic photographs taken by George Benjamin Davies for submission to the Postal Stereoscopic Society of Australia, c1921 – Ref: NS6538/1/1 to 33
Tasmanian Government Tourist Bureau photographs – AA375
Photograph of Fanny Cochrane Smith and Horace Watson recording Tasmanian Aboriginal Songs: NS1553/1/1798
Illustrated Travelogue July 1919 – Ref: NS6853
Fountain in Governor’s garden, Port Arthur – Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
Drawing of George Meredith, Senior – Ref: LMSS12/1/72
Photographs from the Trustees of the Tasmanian Public Library – Ref: SLT23
Wills Image Replacement Project: AD960/1/1
Diary of Police Duties kept by Charles H. Brown, District Constable, Coal Mines, Tasman Peninsula 1853 – Ref: CON129/1/1
Index to General Correspondence, 1836-7 – Ref: CSO4

Continue reading “Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2020”

Recently Digitised Material

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania. Each year, we place items online to help promote and preserve our rare and special collections. These images and films are just a tiny sample of an amazing treasure trove of Tasmania’s heritage. From colonial artwork to convict records, from fragile glass plate negatives to rare films, from private letters to government records, our collections (including the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and the W L Crowther Collection) tell literally millions of stories from Tasmania and around the world.

Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue or visit us on Flickr and YouTube.

In this blog:

Glass Plate Negatives of Sea Captains, c1920 – Ref: NS6192
Stereoscopic Views of the ‘Franklin Relics,’ 1860 – Ref: NS1155
Mt Biscoff Tin Mine Photographs – Ref: NS6719
Gentleman Jim, 1942 – Reference: Ref: NS4264/1/5
Hobart High School Photos – Ref: AG162/1/6
Charles Street School Register 1902-08 – Ref: AB753/1/1
Return of Convicts Embarked for Port Arthur by the Ships Tamar, Isabella, Shamrock, and Lady Franklin (1834-1855). Ref: CON126/1/1
Return of Money Forfeited by Prisoners at Port Arthur (1864). Ref: CON132/1/1
Letter from the Colonial Secretary to the Commandant, Port Arthur (1834). Ref: CON86/1/2
Film: Timber Makes News, 1947 – Ref: AC672/1/219
Film: Les Skelly talking about Tiger Hill, 1986-9 – Ref: NS1391/1/1
Film: Burnie Mill, 1956 – Ref: AC672/1/1

Continue reading “Recently Digitised Material”

Esther’s Story, Part Three: The Cascades Female Factory and Brickfields Invalid Depot, 1870-1877

In 1870, a horrific assault took place at the Cascades Female Factory. At eight o’clock in the morning on the 13th of July, a woman named Eliza Osborne beat an elderly woman named Ellen Conway with the iron dinner bell. She hit her in the head so hard that the bell cracked. Ellen Conway was a 73 year old ex-convict who had been sent to the depot for begging. One of the people who rushed to her side to help her was the nurse, Mrs Cecilia Eliza Paul. A few kilometers away (about 25 minutes’ walk), the nurse’s daughter ten year old Esther Mary Paul was also a witness – to her uncle George’s marriage at the family home at Cross Street, Sandy Bay.

This week in Esther’s story, we break away from the whaling logbook where we first found her as a five year old girl. Now we’ll trace her and her parents through two institutions which housed the most vulnerable people in Hobart in the 1870s – the Brickfields Invalid Depot and the Cascades Establishment. To piece that story together, we have to jump forward and backward in time a little bit, but I promise it is worth the journey!

Esther’s Story, Part One: The Whaler’s Log

In November of 1865, a five year old girl named Esther sat in a house in Sandy Bay, writing lines in a small, leather-bound book. Some days, she had geography lessons. Some days, she was in trouble. Some days, she just needed to memorize her new address. Two months came and went, and the little girl wrote line after line. Her notebook had once belonged to her Uncle William, and recorded his whaling voyages to the Pacific Ocean and the Timor Sea. In the spaces in-between the stories of whales and gales, little Esther did her school work. So did her Aunt Charlotte, who copied out poems and ballads for the little girl to memorize. Aunt Charlotte knew that logbook well, for it was the record of her own honeymoon at sea, nine years earlier. Now it became a part of a different family story – of tragedy, loss, love, abandonment, and survival.

Esther’s Story is actually the story of three nineteenth-century women: Esther Mary Paul (Lithgow), her mother Cecilia Eliza (Rowland) Paul, and her aunt Charlotte Ann (Rowland) Jacobs. Over Family History Month, we’ll follow these women through three blogs and fifty years of their lives, using digital collections together with library and archival resources. It’s a tale of adventure, improvisation, and resilience, but it’s also something else. It’s a reminder – of how our own historical present can change how we think about the past. Read on to discover more.

Tasmania’s Area Schools

In the 1930’s, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, Tasmanian educators came up with a bold new vision to transform rural schools. They wanted to teach the latest in agricultural science, to instil a lifelong love of learning, and to help Tasmanian rural children develop into informed citizens of a modern democracy. They ended up creating a model that was admired around Australia and the world: the Tasmanian Area School.

A History of Play: Early Childhood Education in Tasmania

Firstly, a confession. I have struggled to write this blog, to gather references and to find a quiet space to write an intelligent, interesting, engaging and informative piece on the history of early childhood education in Tasmania. My first effort was informative, but it seemed to lack something, and I wasn’t happy with it.

Then, one day, I had an epiphany while walking after work. I feel an immense pride in the public education system in Tasmania. I send both my boys to public schools on the Eastern Shore in Southern Tasmania. My father was a well-loved, enthusiastic and dedicated Physics and Maths teacher in both public and private schools in Northern Tasmania. I still recall him enthusiastically telling me, “Tasmania has the best public education system in Australia.” When I studied at University, I was constantly meeting his past students whose choices were in some way inspired by his teaching methods.

This is how education began in Tasmania – with inspired, talented people dedicated to improving the lives of Tasmanian children.

While researching this blog, I discovered one such person, Joseph Benson Mather, who was determined to provide an education to Tasmania’s poorest children. I and my colleagues went on to find dozens of stories of devoted parents, dedicated teachers, and generous communities who believed that young Tasmanian children deserved high quality early childhood education. Together, they laid the groundwork for early childhood education in Tasmania today, where amazing teachers encourage little children to learn through play, to be curious, and to love school.

Teaching in Tasmania: three teachers’ lives, 1868-1945

We can only imagine what it must have been like to be the first teacher in Tasmania. Jane Noel was a Sydney schoolmistress who began a private school in a hut in a lane off the lower end of Collins Street in Hobart Town in 1806. What follows is a brief look at the lives of three of Jane’s successors between 1868 and 1945. It is also a research journey, investigating the sometimes dark nooks and crannies of the collections of the Tasmanian State Library and Archives. What you think you will find on these journeys is sometimes very different than what you begin looking for, but it is always illuminating.

House hunting in Launceston

Do you recognise these historic houses from your neighbourhood?

We have recently digitised a series of photographs of houses around Launceston. They were taken by Stephen Spurling III in the early twentieth century, but not all of them have been identified.

Continue reading “House hunting in Launceston”