MOT Tour Day 21 - Entally House & Tamar River Cruise

On the Tamar River

So many things to do, including trying to catch up with a former Tamworthian, so we spent the day juggling around the one commitment we had for the day, a cruise down the Tambar River.

A large part of the morning was spent at Entally House, one of those old, early white overlords houses that are dotted about the place. This one is just a few kilometres away from us and we arrived there not long after it opened for the day.

Built in 1818 - yes, that’s 200 plus years ago - that places it’s construction during the time Lachlan Macquarie was doing things in Port Jackson that would lend his name to streets, bays, public toilets and mountain pass all over Australia. The original owner was Thomas Reiby, son of renowned early Sydney businesswoman and ex convict Mary Reiby and the first Thomas Reiby. Young Thomas came to Tasmania with his wife Richarda, the daughter of King George IV’s physician and the great grandmother x3 of lady who gave us our talk this morning. Thomas II received a land grant at Hadspen and called it Entally after the town his father where his father had served in India.

Entally House

A special wing was added to the house called the Governor’s wing, so that powerful political visitors would have their privacy. That was the circles they mixed in. Thomas III was born in 1821, one of three. He and his brother were sent to England for an education, which culminated in Trinity College, Oxford but they both returned to Australia before finishing they theological training, when Thomas II died.

Thomas III married Catherine McDonald Kyle in Plymouth on his way back to Australia. Soon after arriving, he was ordained and began his ministry locally, using his own money to begin the building of a dolerite, blue-stone church in nearby Hadspen. However controversy descended on him, when he was accused of trying to seduce the wife of a member of the local aristocracy. He withdrew from society, taking his money out of the many local organisations which relied on him, including the church in Hadspen which had to stop the building.

When he eventually resurfaced, it was to accept the nomination to stand for the state electorate, winning the election handsomely and every election that followed, over the next 29 years. Early in his political career he became Premier and finished as speaker of the House.

The Good Shepherd Church at Hadspen

He restarted the building of the Church of the Good Shepherd when elected and both he and his wife are buried behind it. A visit to the church, which was sold by the church to pay for reparations for victims of child sexual assault, reveals a clear line of demarcation between the first part of the build and the second.

We had a morning tea of scones and jam and I stupidly and temporarily forgot I was allergic to gluten. I don’t know why.

Not returning to the van, we did a few chores and then headed to Home Point and our afternoon cruise with Tamar River Cruises.

It was a fine afternoon and the commentary was informative and occasionally funny on the way down the river. The Tamar is actually an estuary - a very long one - which is fed by the south and North Esk Rivers at their junction very near to where the cruise commences.

Click here for today's photos

We covered 40km down and back and finished with a short detour up the Cataract Gorge on the North Esk. A spectacular cleft, it has a walking track, mainly tacked onto the wall. There used to be an aqueduct running along the opposite wall, high above the waterline and held there by iron posts driven into the hard volcanic rock by convicts suspended in wicker baskets. It could take up to a week to drill and drive a post into the rock.

After the cruise, we picked up our click and collect from Woolies and headed home.

A full day.