Highfield: Potential Port Arthur
The historic Van Diemen’s Land Co. estate at Highfield, at Stanley, could become a tourist drawcard to rival Port Arthur.
That is the claim of many of the 4000 visitors who flocked to the Circular Head Arts Festival. And there’s a good basis for their enthusiasm.
Another recent visitor was Dr Miles Lewis, Reader in Architectural History at Melbourne University, and Australia’s leading authority on the subject.
Dr Lewis was delighted with Highfield, which he described as unique. “There are no other old houses of this importance in Australia which have not been over-restored,” Dr Lewis said.
Highfield and Port Arthur are two major historical sites in Tasmania and comparable in many ways. Settled withing four years of each other – Highfield in 1826 and Port Arthur in 1830 – they are important examples of Australia’s early colonial development.
Port Arthur has long been recognised as representative of a ‘model’ penal colony, and well before the present tourist development was a drawcard for people with a curiosity about the State’s origins.
However, Highfield has been locked away in an obscure corner of the State, with few, other than locals, knowing anything of its history and the important part it played in the development of pastoral land in Tasmania. Part of the challenge ahead for those involved in the restoration of Highfield will be publicising its importance as the first large building in the North-West of the State – the centre of government and the cradle of all deevelopment along the Coast.
As Mr Frank Bolt, historic sites and planning officer for the National Parks and Wildlife Service says, “Traditionally we have emphasised the convict origins of this State. What most people don’t realise is that this State was not built by convicts, but by hard-working farmers and freemen.”
Mr Bolt stressed that restoration of the estate - the main house and outbuildings, including the stables, chapel, shearing shed and agriculturalist’s cottage – would be “a pioneering effort, a new interpretation of the past to show the everyday lives of the early settlers of the VDL Co.”
At its peak in the 1840s, the Highfield estate housed between 130 and 150 people, about half of them convicts assigned to the company by the Government. The convicts lived in the two-storey stone barracks now in ruins across the road from the main buildings. Among the indentured servants working for the VDL Co were some 30 farm labourers, three shepherds, a carpenter, a millwright and a blacksmith.
The 70ha of land on the Green Hills was fenced off with 17km of post-and-rail fencing, and was used for cropping, beef cattle, dairy cattle and sheep grazing. By the mid 1830s, Edward Curr, at the time chief agent of the VDL Co, was able to write proudly back to head office in London of the settlement’s near self-sufficiency in food.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service has owned Highfield since 1982. During that time, the NPWS has carried out a maintenance programme on the outside of the house and some of the outbuildings. Consultant architect to the service, Ted Woollan of Hobart, is pleased with the handling of the project to date.
“What the service has done on a limited maintenance budget is effective. If they were to be restricted to a similar budget, it would be at least 30 to 50 years before deterioration of the house got out of hand.”
Ted Woollan is involved in the restoration plan for the estate. Both he and Dr Lewis stress the major importance of the estate in Australian history. When restoration is completed, he says, the VDL Co’s headquarters will once more be seen to be of national significance. As well as extensive pastoral leases stretching from Cape Grim to Burnie, the company also took up land at Westernport Bay in Victoria in the 1840s.
One of the interesting aspects of the beautiful old house is its untypical appearance. The style of architecture – obviously Regency-influenced – differs from the English Georgian houses of the colonies built in the early part of the 19th century. The building has a lightness, an almost frivolous look to it, and its high verandah, French windows and tall chimneys distinguish it from the rectangular Georgian buildings seen in other parts of the State.
Restoration of the house and outbuildings will be thorough, and will take several years to complete, Frank Bolt says. Much of the planning for restoration involves technical ‘sleuthing’ to get the details right.
Painstaking and tedious scraping of many layers of paint has been necessary to reveal the original décor, which appears to have been the typical military colours of the time – black, cream and Brunswick green. Most of the original wallpaper has long since been removed or rotted away. But the architectural detective knows how to discover its pattern.
By removing the architraves of more recent doors knocked through the walls, it is possible to see a pattern of mould exactly recreating the embossed pattern of the original wallpaper. Other secret techniques reveal whether the tongue-and-groove flooring in the bay window room are the original floorboards, and show the method of ‘nogging’ the internal wall with lumps of bluestone.
The full restoration of Highfield will take many thousands of dollars and several years to complete. The Circular Head Bicentenary Committee is confident their submission for $50,000 for work on the stables will be approved by the Federal Government.
A figure of just over $1m has been quoted for the complete restoration of the house and outbuildings. The house, which has lain derelict for some years, will once again ring to the sound of voices – first of architects, supervisors and workmen, and later of thousands of visitors who will come to experience an important part of Tasmania’s past.
