Avoca - Places to See

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This was published 15 years ago

Avoca - Places to See

Attractive town on the road from Launceston to the East Coast.

St Thomas' Anglican Church

There is an attractive riverside park as well as a pleasant park in the centre of town. The town has a number of significant historical buildings. St Thomas' Anglican Church, built in the Romanesque Revival style to a design attributed to James Blackburn (the architect who built the beautiful church at Port Arthur), was consecrated on 8 May 1842. The church dominates the town from its position on the hill at the top of Blenheim Street. It is well worth a visit. Notice that some of the pews still carry their original numbers and that up the back of the church is a large pew which was built for a particularly large church warden.

Historic Buildings
Other buildings of note include the former Rectory and Marlborough House (1845) in Blenheim Street, the Parish Hall (built around 1850) and Union Hotel (1842) in Falmouth Street - the town's main street, and the Bona Vista, a superb stone residence (off Storys Creek Road) which was built for Simeon Lord Jr. The son of the great entrepreneur, Simeon Lord Jr was a noted Tasmanian and Queensland pastoralist who founded Victoria Downs station and was the father of two members of parliament. The Bona Vista, with its basement cells and its sandstone terrace, is a fine example of Georgian architecture. It was built around a courtyard and would have been the centre of social life in the district in the 1840s and 1850s.

In 1853 two bushrangers held up the homestead and shot a local constable. They were subsequently caught and both were executed. A nice irony is the fact that Tasmania's most famous bushranger, Martin Cash, worked as a groom at the property.

Rossarden
20 km to the north is the tiny village of Rossarden which lies under Stacks Bluff which towers 1527 m above sea level. Rossarden was once one of Australia's major tin producing towns but it closed down in 1982.

Views of Ben Lomond Range
The road which passes through Rossarden and joins Avoca and Fingal offers superb views of the rugged Ben Lomond Range which rises to the north of the village.


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