____________________________________________________________________________
Harriet (my wife) and I jointly share a spirit of adventure. As we have no mortgage, we are free to travel the world financially. We built a handmade house in 1981 on five acres of land 35 kms. out of Brisbane, Australia for minimal money.
See the house / land posts:
OUR HOUSE …. An Overview
OUR HOUSE ….The Actual Garden See the photos of the house and garden and the history of how we obtained rejected materials like from the Supreme Courthouse stone (where the Law Courts are now in Brisbane) …. two loads for nothing in 1980. They dumped 100’s of cubic metres as fill and built a school over the top. The stone was cut out of the Kangaroo Points Cliffs in 1877.
See these travel posts:
- Ken and Harriet’s Travel posts from 2003 to 2018. I wrote this in April 2020 even though this New Zealand Travel Blog May 2010.
- An International Perspective ….. Ken and Harriet’s Travel post from 2003 to 2018.
______________________________________________________________________________
Sarah Island: see the website ….
Sarah Island was established in the remote reaches of Macquarie Harbour in 1821. The island was used as a penal settlement where convicts laboured under the harshest conditions in the rainforest, felling Huon pines for boat building.
Of all the possible sites to choose, Macquarie Harbour would have been the most windswept and barren but it was also the most secure. Any convict trying to escape Sarah Island had not only to get across the harbour but to hack their way through the impenetrable rainforests of the west coast.
Today, the convict ruins give a chilling insight into the cruelties of convict life and are especially unsettling given the overwhelming beauty of the surrounding wilderness.
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
HAMILTON, TASMANIA
From Hamilton Rural Central Highlands
Hamilton is a charming village with historic buildings and views of the Great Western Tiers. Scottish farmers settled the area and you’ll still find crofter cottages and grand old farmhouses alongside cosy bed and breakfast homes.
Although the town is a lot quieter these days, it still has the atmosphere of a village in the 1800s with many of the town’s shops dating back to convict times.
Keep an eye out for the Old Schoolhouse, a large two-storey building built by convicts in 1858 and originally constructed so that the Headmaster lived in the room above the central staircase and the children, according to their sex, entered the school from different doors.
Also of interest is St Peter’s Church, completed in 1837. The church has only one door to prevent the congregation, which in the early days was about 50 per cent convicts, from attempting to escape.
You can learn more of the town’s lively past at the Hamilton Heritage Centre.
Nearby is Prospect Villa and Garden, with its early Georgian sandstone home and a garden with a series of romantic garden ‘rooms’ abundantly planted and set in a classic design with long vistas through the garden to focal points and panoramic.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
