Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Farmland by the river.
An introduction to the farmland around Longford, where Woolmers and Brickendon face each other across the Macquarie River.
On this page
Read the farmland
Woolmers lies near Longford in Tasmania’s Northern Midlands, about 20 minutes from Launceston. Brickendon, founded by Thomas Archer’s brother William, stands across the Macquarie River, and the two estates are linked by the Convict Farm Walk.
A guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice how the buildings are grouped by use, how the paddocks and drains shape the land, and how the river sets the boundary between the estates.
Timber, brick and convict labour
The first house at Woolmers was built of weatherboard from timber logged on the property, and convicts raised the cottages and farm buildings around it.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made, repaired and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who sawed a board or laid a brick, or the conditions in which they worked.
A Woolmers chapter
Woolmers shows one side of Tasmania’s colonial history: a free settler’s farming estate, worked by assigned convicts and kept by one family for nearly two centuries.
Look at the meeting of the two: the family’s Italianate homestead, and the plainer buildings where the convicts lived and worked.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the estate’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their conservation or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Woolmers Estate: History
- Brickendon Estate: Convict Farm Walk
- Wikipedia: Woolmers Estate
- Wikipedia: Brickendon Estate
Links lead to the original publishers.
