Deloraine – the gateway to the Lakes
A view over the Great Lake on the Central Plateau. This photograph was taken by Stephen Spurling some time in the 1930s. Today, the road from Deloraine to Hobart via the Great Lakes and Central Highlands is still unsealed in places, but is an important alternative route to the Midland Highway.
Photograph courtesy of the National Library of Australia
By Michelle Blake
In a winning essay published in The Mercury on Monday 18 June 1928 Deloraine was mentioned as one of the many attractions that Tasmania has to offer.
At the time a prize was offered by the ‘Come to Tasmania’ committee to children on the mainland to write a letter to children in Tasmanian on ‘Why I would be desirous of an Easter holiday in Tasmania’.
The winner of the essay was Gordon Robson of Station Street, Katoomba in NSW. He highlighted and described many of the attractions of Tasmania at the time.
‘This is a land which is wrapped in natural beauties, scenic attractions, appealing to one as a place resembling the Old Country, with its quiet rural scenes; a place where enthusiasm and wonder are raised to a keen pitch by all that is of historical interest; a health resort of mild seaside temperature or bracing mountain air; a land of mountains, lakes, plains, orchards, primeval forests, of myrtle or clematis-loaded slopes, heavy with an atmosphere of native flora; the veritable ‘Apple Land,’ or appropriately termed ‘the Mineral Island.’
Reading this today, the description is still an accurate reflection of Tasmania. Deloraine is mentioned in the essay as the ‘western centre of agricultural lands and is at a very convenient distance for tourists to leave for the famed ‘Lake District’.
The area of the Great Lakes became popular from the 1890s with the introduction of trout to Tasmania. Small dams at the outlet of the Great Lake were constructed by the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Power and Metallurgical Co around 1911. A multi arch dam was built at Miena to increase the Great Lake storage and the power station was expanded in the early 1920s when the Hydro Electric Company became government owned. More and more people were attracted to the area for work or recreation and interest in the road to be improved increased.
The feat of driving from south to north via the Great Lake was achieved by Mr WH Davey of Launceston on an Indian with a side-car. The trip was made during the Easter Holidays in 1920, taking the road from Bothwell.
The trip across the lake was taken by motorboat though there was not a lot of room for the motorcycle with a sidecar and every breeze caused Davey to imagine his outfit at the bottom of the lake. He then took to the bush for a few miles as no road yet linked it to the Lakes. Once he reached the end of Pine Lake Road he was able to continue through to Deloraine.
This accomplishment generated much interest in developing a better road not only to the Lakes but through to the West Coast.
Today the road, still unsealed in places, is an important alternative route to Hobart via the Great Lakes and the Central Highlands.
The beauty of Tasmania’s environment is widely marketed to visitors to Tasmania. As locals, we have such beauty at a convenient distance in our ‘land of mountains, lakes, plains and primeval forests’.
As we are gradually released from our quarantined isolation perhaps it is time to rediscover our own local attractions and imagine Mr Davey on his motorcycle with sidecar bumping through the bush before the road between Pine Lake and the Great Lake was built.
https://stors.tas.gov.au
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/29775052
Spurling, Stephen,1876-1962. The Great Lake, north end from road, Tasmania. PPIC/13001/3009 LOC Box PIC/13001 Spurling box 8/nla.obj-145480524
About Trove
Inspiration for this story came from searching Trove.
Trove is an online service created by the National Library of Australia.
It is a search engine that brings together digitised content from libraries, museums, archives and other collecting organisations.
Through Trove it is possible to search for books (it will tell in which libraries in Australia they are located), photographs, items, Government Gazettes and newspapers.
There are 104 Tasmanian newspaper titles that can be accessed through Trove including The Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, the earliest newspaper available, published from 1810, to local newspapers such as the Western Tiers, published between 1980-2004. The major papers that are still in circulation including The Mercury, The Examiner and The Advocate only allow access to view up until 1954, due to copyright restrictions. Later editions can still be viewed on microfilm at a major library location.
Searches on Trove can be filtered by date and location. For this article, the search was for Deloraine, limiting the search to May 1920. Terms such as ‘Deloraine tourism’ were also searched, limited to 1920–1929. Searchers can also assist Trove to improve the accuracy of search results by correcting the transcription of the text.
Michelle Blake – Historical Research can assist with historical and general research and help readers access information and break through brick walls in their own research.
www.mbhistoricalresearch.com/contact
