24/08/2026
Those who know me, know of my deep, I suppose you could call it a love, a passion or a fascination; I’d almost call it an obsession, for Tasmanian history, in particular early colonial history through until maybe the 1910s-30s.
I feel energies in places, sense the lives once lived within the walls, place myself in the times, trying to feel what it was like to live then, as I wonder the spaces once occupied by those who paved the stones for me to exist in my form today.
I feel the character & personality of the architecture, the energy in the walls, the furniture, the artefacts left behind.
If able, I like to run my hands along to feel the bricks, wood & stones, the ground, & stand still absorbing smells around, & of the trees and flowers. It might sound strange, but it gives you a good grounding of the place you’re in.
I’ll count the stones if convict made, to see how many helped to build a building.
The most simple of things brings awe & fascination, & somehow a familiarity that I can’t quite understand, or explain.
If it speaks to me, I try to capture the essence of a place wherever I go, in hopes I can somehow share its story with others.
This is the Officers Quarters at Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania.
A remnant of a world long past.
Built in 1832 & is believed to be one of the oldest Military buildings in Australia with the oldest said to be the Anglesea Barracks in Hobart. The Quaters was a part of a small military settlement which also had the notorious Dog Line which was formed on the small bottle neck of the peninsula.
Once described as by Lt. Bunbury as “A rickety little wooden house at the foot of a gloomy thickly wooded hill”, this settlement formed an import part of the security system built to stop convicts from escaping the peninsula.
There were around 12 buildings in this settlement which also contained a Military Barracks, Sentry Box, Jetty, Guardhouse, Semaphore & store. The Military abandoned the site in 1877 when Port Arthur closed.
Both Soldiers & their wives lived in the Quarters, children were born here, & Governors entertained within its wal
