Cornelian Bay

 Cornelian Bay is a small bay on the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania.  My tennis club is due to lunch down there. I am lucky enough to give a small talk.

 

Hobart was settled by the British in 1804. When was Cornelian Bay named?

1793: River was called Rivière du Nord by the French admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. A couple of months later  John Hayes named the river after the River Derwent in England. The name Derwent is Celtic for valley thick with oaks.  

1793: Lieutenant Hayes: Carnelian stones.

Carnelian is a brown-red mineral coloured with iron oxide. Colour is between pale orange and intense black.

Cornelian Bay is not named after a person who never came here or a foreign place.

1804: Collins started a Government Farm at Cornelian Bay (north side) to supply the rest of the colony with food. Manned by 30 convicts.

1807: 23 acres of wheat.

13 acres of barley.

153 cattle.

301 sheep.

1813: Land granted to Andrew Whitehead. 

1818: Governor Sorell bought Whitehead’s farm and leased the farm back to Whitehead. 

1810: Governor David Collins was buried in St David’s Cemetery. 

1804-1872: People were buried next to churches or under vacant land. Some of this land is now schools.

1872: Cornelian Bay cemetery opened. All other cemeteries were closed.  900 people were buried in St David’s Cemetery which is now St Davids Park. Some were reburied. Some left under the garden beds and lawns. Some in memorials.

Cornelian Bay cemetery was designed so that there should be a separate section for Roman Catholic, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Jewish or Quaker. Today there are other special sections including War Graves, Garden of Remembrance and the Crematorium Gardens.
A separate pauper’s burial area was reserved for the poor, where up to eleven bodies could share one unmarked grave. This section was closed in 1935 but it is estimated that about 5000 people are buried there.Through the years, there have been about 100,000 burials at Cornelian Bay – today, plenty of sites remain available,Famous graves: bushranger Martin Cash; George Adams, founder of Tattersalls; and Tenis Sterio, the king of the world’s gypsy communities, who died in Hobart in 1943.

 

1892: The first boatshed was built by Sir John Stokell Dodds.

Attorney General, treasurer, judge of supreme court, chief justice, lieutenant-governor, chancellor of UTS.

1895: Rev Palyfreyman applied to build the second one. Unlike Sir John he had to get permission. He spent years writing and meeting with the Hobart Marine Board (controlled the water), and Hobart City Council (controlled the land).

Eventually he received permission.

1913: Marine Board of Hobart ‘Regulation Type of Boat Shed’

10 x 12 feet (3.05m x 3.66m).

Timber construction, to have a shallow-pitched gable roof clad in corrugated galvanised iron, with exposed rafter ends, a timber finial and bargeboard,

1913: Six boatsheds existed.

By the 1930s there had been 38 successful applications to build a boatshed.  

Most of the boatsheds were built in the 1920s or 1930s.

The early boatsheds were mainly owned and built by Tasmanians living inland as a place for recreation and relaxation. 

Fishing from the sheds used to be common.

Today fishing is infrequent. People are reluctant to fish. The story is that toxic metals in the river make the local ground dwelling fish unsafe and unhealthy to eat. Fish passing through are safe to eat. Seals and dolphins can be seen eating the local fish.

When you buy a shed, you do not buy the land beneath it. It is water.

Initially the council provided 99-year leases.

The council changed it to annual leases. This resulted in no maintenance done on the sheds and continual talk of the end of the boatsheds and the need to demolish them all.

Currently the sheds have a 25-year lease with Hobart City Council.

 The boatsheds are on the heritage register. They cannot be demolished.

Any maintenance or change to the boatshed has to be within guidelines.

Heritage register guidelines are:

External cladding to be weatherboards in bull-nosed profile.

Paint to be a strong color with no uniformity.

Window replacement should be in painted timber.

Doors should be simple timber.

Roofs maintained with corrugated iron

No additions outside the envelope of the building.  No satellite dishes, solar panels and water tanks.

 Next to the boathouses baths, changing rooms and diving board were built by the Hobart City Council in the late 1800s. and given to Cornelian Bay Aquatic club in 1978.

1927: a slipway built next to baths.

Swimming carnivals at the baths.

 1999: Boatshed Restaurant was built.

 2009: The baths and diving board were destroyed by a fire.