Wed, 13th May, 2015 Triabunna RV Stop to Darlington, Maria Island

Rain and strong wind during the night. Clear sky and 9.3 degrees in van at 8am.

At 8.30am it was only 6.5 degrees outside so in no rush to go anywhere.

Packed up for our night in the Darlington Penitentiary cell on Maria Island. Put in two blankets, food, utensils, toiletries, water etc into our backpacks. We are wearing thermals, trackies then waterproof pants and 4 layers and big coat, beanie and gloves. There is a fireplace in the cell so hopefully we won’t freeze as it is supposed to be near 0 overnight!!

Checked Facebook as I uploaded my blog and Kerry had posted the Storm Chasers alert for severe weather conditions (marked red) and it covered all of Tasmania! Cynthia posted a photo of the snow on Mt Wellington which I downloaded. Will be able to compare it when we head there in a couple of days.

Went for a walk along the marina but the wind gusts are so strong the sun’s warmth just can’t reach us so back to the van for hot pumpkin soup and toasted sandwiches.

Walked across the road with our bags to the wharf and the lady had just arrived so we could get straight on. She gave us a discount of $10 on the trip therefore $70. As on June 1 it will be free as the Government/NP&WS will provide a subsidy for them to take people over to Maria Island in the winter months. A few men boarded – backpackers from USA, Spain, Netherlands etc, then the 30 students and 3 teachers from Hellyer College who are studying tourism. Another lady was going to the island to work with the NP&WS doing a count of the kangaroos, wallabies etc. She is doing a PHD on how these animals have been affected by the introduction of the Tassie Devil onto the island. They originally released 15 devils on the island in Nov 2012, then 13 more in Nov 2013 and now there are 89 adults. She said that the Forester kangaroo is actually the same as the Eastern Grey on the mainland.

Headed off for our 40 minute ride down Sandy Bay then Prosser Bay then over Mercury Passage to Maria Island. The wind has whipped up the water but it was a comfortable ride across. Zoomed in on the lighthouse on Point Home.

We all had to help unload the baggage so formed a line and passed all the baggage off the boat onto the wharf. There were trolleys for the group to take their baggage up. We just grabbed ours and headed off. The NP&WS lady greeted us and explained some things about the accommodation etc. Picked up a walking brochure. As we headed up the road to the Penitentiary, Wally Wombat came to greet us and show us the way.

Nearly right to the door too!! No, there were lots and lots of wombats and Cape Barren geese so between them we were dodging poo all the way.

This chap was very friendly and just wanted to eat so we all got a pat and a photo.

We dropped our gear in Room 7 then headed off to explore before it got dark. There are dark clouds to the west so we mightn’t have sunlight for too long. An info board on the ground explaining about each building.

Turned around and read the other plaque. Only got the quarters in the photo.

Down the road to find the Fossil Cliffs before we run out of light.

First up was the site of the 12 Apostles cottage sites from around 1888. Nothing left but a few bricks.

Lots of wallabies and kangaroos as we head along the road.

Stopped at the Engine House circa 1888. There was a board with the history of this area which was adapted from “Maria Island Brickfields Precinct Conservation Plan 1997”. The Engine House sits at the heart of what was the major industrial area of Maria Island from 1820s to 1920. The valley surrounding this building contains remnants of brick making – including some of the oldest evidence of brick making in Australia – plus reservoirs, roads, clay pits, houses, railway lines, quarrying, drainage, mining, geological exploration, sawmilling and kilns, just to name some. It’s also thought that the convict burial ground is located nearby. The engine house was built by Diego Bernacchi in the late 1880s to house the machinery – most likely a steam engine – that would drive a number of industries on the island, including brick making, lime manufacturing, cement making and timber cutting. The vaulted ceilings and buttressed walls suggest that the building was designed to support heavy machinery, while the discarded grindstone now lying on the ground outside, shows evidence that it was a flour grinding stone converted to be part of a steam driven machine for grinding cement. When it was first built, the engine house would have been in the middle of all the activity and excitement about Bernacchi’s early plans for the island. Across the valley there was the manager’s house and a worker’s cottage. Closer, on the flat land around the engine house, there was a large weather board building (15 x 18m) to store lime and possibly cement. There was a water tower, plus a kiln – possibly for brick making, of for making small samples of cement - on its southern side a stone crusher. On the hill behind the engine house, where the convicts also had kilns and quarries, there were new quarries, and kilns made of brick and stone and used in the manufacture of lime (a product made from limestone). Beside the creek was a sawmill. The most historically significant of Bernacchi’s industries during the 1880-90s was the production of Portland cement (a stronger and more practical product than the previous type). Successful cement making was extremely rare in the 1880s, but in this valley Thomas Adkins pioneered a process for making cement that used blue lias (a type of stone), and a few years earlier examples of Maria Island cement had been sent to the 1888 Melbourne exhibition and considered a triumph. In 1891 Bernacchi and Thomas Brewer patented yet another new method of producing Portland cement. Although these early attempts at cement manufacturing on Maria Island were never commercially successful, Bernacchi and his associates can rightly claim to have been pioneers in the field. During the twentieth century the cement making moved to a waterfront site and the majority of quarrying on the island occurred at the Fossil Cliffs. After 1907 the large kilns were partly demolished and the engine house became known as “The Stables”, reflecting the quieter pace of life in the valley, and the continuing story of ‘reuse’ of buildings and materials on Maria Island.

The kilns.

Looks like this was where the railway lines went.

Walked along the lovely ‘mowed’ grass till we climbed up onto the cliff’s edges. Looking to peaks of Bishop and Clerk.

Looking across to Freycinet Peninsula.

Straight down to the water.

The sun has set in the west so just a glow in the clouds.

Heading down the hill overlooking Cape Boullanger, Bird Rock then Ile du Nord with a lighthouse on it.

Looking over Mercury Passage to Prosser Bay.

Further around we walked down to fence on the edge of the cliff - looking back over the cliffs.

Then around to the point.

Starting to run out of light but we walked down to the Fossil Quarry. My fabulous camera was still able to take great photos.

We had our headlamps so Steve shone his on the fossils on display.

There was information about the fossils but it didn’t come out well in the photo. “In the cliffs behind you and in the large rocks around you, lie the fossilised remains of millions of sea creatures. It is difficult to imagine what this place would have been like when they were alive, about 290 million years ago. By studying the rock and the fossils, geologists can tell us that the sea creatures lived in a very cold, shallow marine environment, when it was part of a large land mass called Gondwana. After millions of years, the Earth’s crust rose and changed the shape of the land over a long period of time. The uplifted land was then eroded by the sea over many thousands of years, forming these dramatic cliffs and revealing ancient secrets embedded within their walls.

We followed the road around the point passed the airstrip. The chap from the Netherlands caught up with us on his bike then walked for a while chatting. It is dark now with just a couple of stars behind us and a big dark cloud ahead of us. Glad we have all our layers of clothes on as it is very cold and the wind was very strong that it is nearly pushing us backwards. Passed the picket fence around the cemetery then down through the area of the cement manufacturing area around the wharf. Will come back and check it out tomorrow. Polly Possum was out but he wouldn’t sit still for a photo!!

Stopped at the Museum which is in the old Coffee Palace which is on the site of the second prison cells that were built during the second wave of convicts to Maria Island. Lots of information, photos and personal stories that were on a recording.

In the end room was the dining room. A voice invites us to sit down when we entered and then the lady who ran the boarding house for many years tells us the stories of the island and Bernacchi’s industries. Diego Bernacchi was an Italian entrepreneur who had grand visions of establishing vineyards, orchards, cement works and even a silk industry on Maria Island. All failed but some of the buildings survived.

There was a brochure about the Coffee Palace – they were created in opposition to the public house or gin palace. With the emergence of the temperance movement, coffee houses sprang up everywhere. They began as café-like venues but later became much more sophisticated, offering accommodation and including a reading room, church services, meals and access to daily papers. It is a great coup for a temperance organisation if they were able to transform a pub into a coffee palace, particularly one in the midst of a working class suburb. By the late 1880s coffee palaces were becoming almost as common as cafes are today. It is unlikely that the Maria Island Coffee Palace was embraced with the same temperance fervour as those in the suburbs. After all, Bernacchi was trying to establish a wine industry. Darlington, or San Diego as Bernacchi had renamed the settlement, would have had a coffee palace to serve the growing population just as most large towns had similar establishments. It may even had been a politically astute move on Bernacchi’s part to have a coffee palace in order to gain the support of politicians and the wider community for his enterprises.

There was a great book explaining the different eras of Maria Island.

First Convict Era 1825-1832. Today the only remaining buildings from the first convict period are the Penitentiary and the Commissariat Store. There were a number of buildings grouped around the Commissariat Store, including officers’ quarters.  A stone jetty was constructed during this period. The Penitentiary overlooked a considerable factory complex where manufacture and trades were carried out.

Second Convict Era 1842-1850. The buildings from the first convict era were generally re-used , although the insubstantial log and bark constructions were replaced. A number of brick buildings were erected near the old Penitentiary providing accommodation for military personnel and convicts. The largest of these was the Separate Apartments. The settlement was a well-engineered and sophisticated development with a brick vaulted sewerage system and open stormwater drains. Fresh water was supplied from the main convict dam 2-5 kilometres from Darlington. The Barn, Windmill and Miller’s Cottage were built on the hillside, overlooking a farm that had been developed to the north of Darlington.

Bernacchi Era 1884-1896. Bernacchi changed the old prison compound to an open settlement very similar to what to see today. The greatest single impact he had on the convict buildings was to demolish the Separate Apartments. He built the Coffee Palace over the foundations of the Apartments and used the bricks to build the Terraces and several other buildings around Darlington. Acres and acres of vineyards flanked the hillsides around the settlement which he named San Diego. The Grand Hotel was built on the hillside behind Bernacchi’s house. This was intended to be part of a health resort modelled on the famous spa hotels of Europe. In the ‘Brickfields’ area, where convicts in both periods had made the bricks used to build Darlington, Bernacchi developed the first cement works. These were serviced by a tramway to jetty.

Cement Works Era 1923-1930. The National Portland Cement Works brought to Maria Island a huge infrastructure, expanding the built environment of Darlington considerably. A network of tramlines wound across the hillsides to carry limestone from the quarries to the main industrial plant – a complex of reinforced concrete buildings of which today only the Cement Storage Silos and Clinker Store remain.

Grabbed our food and headed into the Mess Hall to heat up it up. The others had the fire going down one end of the hall. We went back out then to see if we could find a Tassie Devil. Unfortunately we didn’t but there was a lot of other wildlife happily feeding on the grass.

Steve got the fire going and we put the mattresses on the floor in front of it. We put one blanket down and the other over us. We took off our top layer of weatherproof coat and pants and were snug even though the wind was howling outside. The toilet is in another old building across the lawn so hopefully we won’t need that during the night!!