Our disappearing heritage...
206. Dover Settler's
Cottage
This tiny cottage at Dover in Southern Tasmania, built in the late 1800s, was taken down in 2009
Our heritage is what our forebears left us - the gifts of history. For me, heritage is wide-ranging, and often concentrates on sandstone 'castles' that wealthy landowners lived in,
while ignoring the more transient
humble rural cottages in which our forebears
lived and struggled to bring up their families.
Those humble cottages appeal to me most of all.
"We lived in a little cottage like that," a man well into his
eighties reminisced, pointing at one of my photos -
"Me, mum and dad - and six brothers..."
I just had to ask him how they could possibly
have fitted into such a tiny two-roomed cottage.
"Well," he began, pointing to its right-hand side "that was mum and dad's room" and then, pointing to the left half - "and that was where we cooked and ate."
He stopped there, so I asked him
"Where on earth did you boys sleep?"
He must've sensed my tangible stupidity and simply said:
"us boys just slept in the barn"...
Times were different then...
Already, a number of the heritage cottages I've stumbled on have disappeared without a trace - finally flattened by the wind, burnt, or simply demolished - like this tiny cottage that once stood in Dover. Their disappearance is very much our loss. Larger buildings that have intrigued me, and that have generally survived better, are the Oast Houses of the Derwent Valley - large mostly timber buildings in which hops were dried for the thriving brewing industry of the time. There are also images - amongst others - of convict ruins on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour, of a well preserved water-powered mill at Bothwell, and two light-houses - there's even one of an historic sandstone, shingle-roofed 'sheep dip' - carved into the sandstone it was built on, within its walls a little mustering pen, the 'bath' carved into the sandstone that the sheep were pushed into for their curative 'dip', and leading out of it, the sandstone steps they climbed to stand and drain the dipping solution from their saturated fleece. Herring-bone pattern drains carved into the natural sandstone floor allowed the drainings to return to the 'bath' - all ingeniously built. And there's so much more to see...
To view card titles and numbering:
Just hover your pointer over any image for its TITLE and NUMBER to appear. If this does not work immediately, please CLICK on the image
To ENLARGE the image, LEFT-CLICK it.
Please use those numbers for ordering.
