By MALCOLM RYAN
My family harks back to the Hampshire Settlement, which was the first inland settlement of the Van Diemen’s Land Company (VDL). Henry Hellyer was their chief surveyor and established the settlement in the late 1820s believing the rolling plains suitable for sheep grazing.
It’s also where my great, great grandmother was born in 1841. Annie Carty was the first white woman born in the settlement. Annie’s father, Michael, and his wife Margaret, along with their four children, were bought out from Ireland as the farm manager by the VDL in 1839.
The Tasmanian nomenclature board has seen fit to honour Hellyer with many significant and longstanding recognitions as per the list below:
- Hellyer College
- Hellyer Regional Library
- Hellyer Avenue
- Hellyer Gorge
- Hellyer Mine
- Hellyer Beach
- Hellyer Road Distillery
- Hellyer Community Choir
- Hellyerite (Rare West Coast Mineral)
One can only begin to imagine the enormity of what Henry Hellyer achieved in the early days of British settlement in Van Diemen’s Land. Having said that, the fact that so many places, almost 200 years later, still bear the name Hellyer, is a sneak preview into the significance of this one man.
Henry Hellyer was part of the VDL Company party that included six men and a few wives and children who were earmarked by the VDL Company to set sail to Van Diemen’s Land and set up an agricultural and sheep enterprise. They departed The Isle of Wight on October 12th, 1825, and landed at Stanley, Tasmania, in May 1826.
Hellyer trained as an architect in England but was made the chief surveyor with the VDL Company. He still used his architectural skills to design Highfield House at Stanley as the headquarters for the VDL. Hellyer was thirty-six when he arrived in the hostile and rugged environment of what we now know as North West Tasmania.
In 1826, the rainforest was almost to the coast, rainfall was around sixty inches per year, there were indigenous habitants with spears, and Tasmanian Tigers lurking in the bush. Hellyer describes in his diary writings that eight miles from Emu Bay there was a Myrtle downer, (an old Myrtle tree that has fallen over) big enough to drive a bullock team forty yards up it, being his description of how large the trees were here. He talks about spending months never drying out as the canopy was so thick the sun did not penetrate the forest floor for months at a time. Think of the little pockets rainforest where you can find fungi these days, the whole coast was one big fungi forest back in the time when Hellyer was trying to find sheep grazing pasture for the VDL Company’s proposed farming operations.
Hellyer found St Valentines Peak, and this was the compass point for him. From the top, where he sought solace, he found the plains at Hampshire and set up a small hamlet with his living quarters and cottages for the convict workers who worked the brickworks. The hamlet was on the bank above the Emu River. The remains of the original hawthorn hedge surrounding the site is still partly growing today and, due to its significance in Tasmanian history, the site is heritage listed along with the brickworks footings that are on the west side of the river.
The Peak, St Valentines Peak, was Hellyer’s safe place, a place he could be alone with his compass. From the top of “The Peak,” on a clear day, you can see half of Tasmania, from as far as the Nut in the far northwest, to Launceston in the North, and Cradle Mountain in the Central Highlands. The top of St Valentines Peak is instrumental as the surveying mapping point of Hellyer’s surveying records.
The year 1832 was a sad time for the VDL Company as the mental issues that Hellyer had endured for years came to a tragic end. Hellyer’s health issues were hastened by the harsh environment in North West Tasmania with rain, snow, ice, severe winds, aborigines with spears, and Tasmanian tigers all taking their toll.
Also, as a single man, he had been chastised by some as being homosexual, and probably the final straw was when he was given a promotion by the VDL Company for his six years of professional work on the North West Coast and moved to Hobart. This all culminated in the early hours of the 1st of September 1832, with Hellyer putting a horse pistol to his head and ending his internal demons.
The settlement at the Hampshire site that Hellyer had established continued in his absence and reached the point where it needed a farm manager. The VDL Company sent for Michael Carty and his wife Margaret from Baltimore in Ireland. Michael and Margaret, along with their four children arrived in late 1839. and in 1841 they welcomed their fifth child, Annie, the first white woman to be born in the Hampshire settlement.
From 1832 until the mid-1970s, Hellyer and his surveying data had languished in la-la land, until one Brian Rollins started his journey as a surveyor with Peacock, Darcy & Anderson in Burnie.
One of the early jobs that Peacock, Darcy & Anderson threw to Brian involved him searching through the archives to find all the old surveying notes for the particular job. Brian came across some of Hellyer’s paperwork and surveying notes, and, at the time, being a young surveyor, recalls, “My thoughts of him at the time were quite uncharitable”, along the lines of… “what an idiot, who in their right mind would explore in country like this.”
However, “I have moved on since then, and with thirty odd years of surveying experience behind me, and half as many years in research, I have long since realised that it wasn’t Hellyer, after all, who was the idiot! In fact, he was far from being anyone’s fool.”
Brian’s journey as a surveyor, working on the same ground as what Hellyer had done some 170 years prior, and reading copious plans, notes, and diaries of Hellyer’s, is, in part, what injected the “Hellyer bug” into Brian.
Later in Brian’s working life, he went back and started doing some more general homework on Hellyer’s documentation and the VDL story. The more he read the more it magnetised him to Hellyer and the VDL. So much so that in recent years, while enjoying his retirement, he has spent a lot of time researching. The incredible work and achievements of this young Englishman, given the extremely hostile environment of the Northwest Coast of Tasmania in the early 1800s, on the other side of the world from an established England is nothing short of extraordinary, to those other than the Tasmanian Natives/Aborigines.
Brian Rollins beginning in surveying was the first time in 150 years that anyone could interpret Hellyer’s unique documentation style. Brian’s surveying and recording style was very similar to Hellyer and he was able to interpret it like his own. Brian was able to jump into his car and drive up into Surrey Hills, where Hellyer had done it on foot or horseback, and find all Hellyer’s camps and fireplaces.
Tasmania will forever be indebted to the work of Hellyer, but I feel Brian Rollins should be elevated to honorary Hellyer status for his work researching, documenting, and presenting the history of Henry Hellyer and the VDL Company. In fact, I believe that Brian has immersed himself so deeply that he knows more about the VDL than Edward Curr, the VDL Manager, did.
As you can see, my great-great-grandmother, Annie Carty, was born in a very significant time and place in regard to Tasmania’s white history and thus my history. It is disappointing that with the significance that Hellyer seems to have had, and the many names that we still use today, his early 1800s settlement at Hampshire is a disgrace to both Hellyer and Annie Carty, and to my heritage.
Regarding my family, Annie Carty went on to marry George Woodward, who was the first white man born in the Ridgely settlement. George and Annie had a daughter Martha, who married James Franks.
James and Martha had a daughter Myra, who married Keith Ryan. There were four siblings to Myra; Violet and Lillian, and George and Pearl, who were twins, (DNA in 2021 confirmed that George and Pearl were not James Franks’ children. Yes, Martha had illegitimate twins!).
Myra and Keith were blessed with four children: Reginald, Gwen, John, and Thelma. Reg married Beverly Reeve, and they had Patrick, Cecily, Donald, Malcolm (myself) Martha and Sarah. I went on to marry Teresa Rutherford and we raised three sons: Matt, Bradley, and Dermot.
Dermot and his partner, Sarah, gave birth to Maggie on September 23rd, 2024. Maggie, of course, is not the past. She is the future, and I look forward to the day when I can tell her the stories of her ancestors and this beautiful island, Tasmania.
Fascinating history, Malcolm. Ur roots in Tas go way back!
Yes, I am deeply rooted here Marianne and proud of it.
Thanks for sharing this important Tasmanian history. A wonderful read.
Thanks very much for your comments, Robyn.