My home town of Ulverstone, on Tasmania’s north-west coast, was always known for its potatoes. However, in the late 1940s there was another contender for the town’s most valuable export product….. CANNED RABBITS! But before I continue with that I must share an earlier venture with rabbits
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Tasmania’s Advocate newspaper provides incredibly detailed information for social historians and those researching family history. It has recorded daily life along the state’s north-west coast for generations. How it missed the story of the backyard lion is beyond me. In 1893 Esther Powley of Cressy married Alfred
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Cabinet maker Tom Piper arrived in Ulverstone from Victoria in 1921 and set up business in Reiby Street. What an asset he proved to be. If I were asked to describe the furniture showroom of Mr. T.H. Piper, cabinetmaker, Ulverstone, at the main entrance to which is
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While visiting Tasmania a few years ago, I bought a miniature barrel (circa 1940s), made from Tasmanian Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon). It’s a very tactile object, but more importantly it reminds me of my childhood in the island state. On the lid is a tiny, silver map of
Read more →When I was growing up in Ulverstone in the 1950s & 60s there was a house at the bottom of South Road with the large vertebra of a whale sitting on its verandah. It was one of those childhood curiosities I longed to know more about, but
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Potato growing has long been important around Ulverstone, and never more so than in the early twentieth century, when exports of new ‘spuds’ to the Sydney market began. However, a problem with government regulation led to the following letter being sent to the Advocate, the regional newspaper
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The thing I remember most about the Ulverstone Hospital is taking eggs to school in the 1950s for their annual Egg Appeal. Each was wrapped in newspaper by my mother and packed into an empty Weetbix box. I was fascinated to read a report in The Advocate
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Joseph Aloysius Lyons was four years old in 1883, when his father Michael moved the family to the Tasmanian seaside town of Ulverstone. Mr Lyons Snr. opened a bakery and butcher’s shop, but unfortunately he fitted the description of ‘feckless’ rather well, and lost everything betting on
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In 1903 there was a public vote to determine whether Mr F.H. Furner’s new hotel in the seaside Tasmanian town of Ulverstone should be granted a liquor licence. Surprise, surprise….the ayes were in the majority. The old Queen had died the previous year, but the design was
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