MOT Tour Day 64 - Brickendon

A wet start but not much to pack up after just one night.

We swung by the Ross Uniting Church again this morning to allow Sue a viewing. She was impressed.

Campbell Town lies only twenty or so kilometres north of Ross, so naturally it took half an hour. Yes, roadworks again. By the time we got there the rain was consistent but being the committed tourists we are, the umbrellas were out and we hoofed it along the main street.

Book Cellars is a wonderful bookshop in the cellar below The Foxhunters Return Inn. Selling new and old books, its the sort of place Sue and I could spend a week and be disappointed we had to leave. Everything you could imagine is on the shelf here. In the end, Sue had to be content with "Infidelity and Other Affairs" by Kate Legge and I picked up Les Murray's last collection, "Continuous Creation". We could have gone on and on.

Emerging from the cellar we had a wet look at the Red Bridge, built by convicts in 1838. It is a curio in that it was a bridge built over a non existent river. More than a million hand made bricks were used in the three arches designed by the convict architect James Blackburn and when the bridge was finished, convicts then dug a passage to divert the Elizabeth River under what they had made! On a nearby footpath, the first of thousands of bricks creates a continuous line up the main street and back down the other side to the bridge again. Each brick has the name of a convict who worked on the bridge, their transportation date and the boat they came on. Brilliant idea.

To cap off the experience in this one spot, we learnt that those convicts were locked up each night in those same cellars under the Foxhunters, where knowledge and entertainment not lay.

After a walk to admire some old buildings and a coffee, we hit the road again. In the process, we changed our accommodation booking as we were headed for the mountains and snow is predicted. Deloraine was the new choice.

The Pillar Granary, constructed on
staddle stones to keep vermin out

With lunch approaching and for no account or reason, we took a diversion to try and find a spot to eat near those mountains and by accident discover the Archer family and the division that split a family two hundred years ago and saw them occupy neighbouring estates. After parking and being given an overview of the Bickendon side of the dispute, we ventured out into the estate village, first developed 199 years ago. Pretty disappointed with this venture. It has so much potential to be a really interesting, really important window on the settler past of Tasmania. The story of family fall out between Bickendon and the other arm of the Archers at Woolmers Estate is a fascinating one and worthy of thorough telling. As some time in the not to distant paste, the Bickendon Archers made the decision to open up the farm village, which included convict workers, to the public and at various stages, they have done some good things - signage and even scannable code which throw up videos on your phone. However, the thinking is being wasted by neglect. The buildings have been left and not maintained, even kept clean and well lit so that visitors can see inside buildings and understand what they are looking at. There is a difference between old and run down. In the one building where this has been done - the Dairy - the result is excellent but of all the remaining buildings, it’s really the only one worth entering. They need to have an external set of eyes come in and consult. By all means retain rustic - a point of difference with Woolmers - but present the buildings, inside and out, they way they were when they were used, not the way they were when they were abandoned.

Click here for today's photos

I communicated these concerns and observations to them. Not sure my candour was appreciated but then if you ask my opinion, there is a fair chance I'll give it.

On to Deloraine and a beaut spot on the bank of the Meander River for the next three nights. We have a place on the tour of Mole Creek Caves for Saturday and just have to decide if we are game to drive up to the Great Lake Hotel for lunch tomorrow, high up in the Central Mountains at Miena, where snow is predicted.