At the Crossroads of Salvation, Temptation, Damnation and Recreation - by Katherine Johnson
ISLAND | ISSUE 161In a collaboration between Island and the ‘Ten Days on the Island’ festival called ‘If These Halls Could Talk’, ten selected Tasmanian writers were paired with ten halls or notable buildings around the state, responding to place through creative literary works. This piece is one of the ten, which are all published in full on this site.
She leant over her corner of the stone laundry tub and with cold-blunt fingers scrubbed the land-owners’ shirts until they were properly white. There were dresses, too, among the consignments, some very fine with ribbons and lace as delicate and clever as spider web. If none of the overseers were looking, she would hold the dresses to herself before washing them. Let the other convict women sneer. She might even rub the collars across her neck to make use of the remaining perfume. It would be gone in the soapy water anyway, no harm in that.
And then there were the children’s clothes, the frocks of the girls, so sweet, and the boys’ jackets and trousers, already so much like the clothes of men. What futures awaited those children from the wealthy wool-growing families? No doubt they had been schooled in grand visions for the new town, already blessed with inns and churches, but not yet a hall where people could gather in their finery for concerts and to dance. She had heard the gentry talk of such a place, but it seemed a distant dream, and remote for the likes of her, elbow deep in soap scum, the women beside her and opposite singing away their resentments in voices brittle and sad.
It would be the wool-growers’ and other land-owners’ children who, having outgrown the clothes she now tended, might one day realise such ambitions as a town hall where all would be welcome. There was rock enough, good sandstone quarried from the hill beyond the graveyard and carted to town in rows of square block like giant back teeth.
She washed a slim, blue gown, the colour of the sky over Ross on a good day when, in spring, lambs frisked on paddocks the luminous green of home. She stopped, hearing one of the babies crying. Not hers. The blue dress was a mess of tangled cloth in her hands. It was just fabric, she told herself, wringing it hard.
She placed the soap in the hole carved for it at her corner of the sandstone tub, her hands red and raw, the tips of her fingers white, and doubted the three frowning women working alongside her ever had such thoughts.
But she owed it to her child to harbour hope. Already the year was 1854, and there was rumour that, of the hundreds of women who had passed through this godforsaken prison in six and a half years, they were last in line.
—Fictional musings at the side of the stone laundry tub
relocated to Church Street, Ross,
from the Ross Female Factory site
And here it stands, in the heart of Ross (makala), in the heart of Tasmania (lutruwita), a neo-Classical town hall, built in 1891, 37 years after the Female Factory closed, its surviving women long since pardoned. It is indeed possible that some of these women were among those welcomed at the opening of the hall, for all those residing in Ross were invited.
ROSS TOWN HALL — THE FORMAL OPENING
Our correspondent reports: Tuesday, the 15th inst., was the occasion of the formal opening of the Ross Town Hall. Our popular warden (Mr. W. H. Bennett) had issued an invitation to the residents in this municipality to attend an ‘at home’ at the Town Hall from three to five on the day mentioned. In response nearly 300 residents attended ... On the stage a long table was laid, covered with delicacies, which were soon handed round by ladies and gentlemen, and every one was soon made to feel at ease by the sociable manner in which all classes met.The Tasmanian Times, 19 Sept 1891
Two-hundred years (in 2021) after Governor Macquarie named Ross after the parliamentary seat of his friend HM Buchanan of Scotland, the town is still a common meeting point for those travelling from the north and south of the state. Roughly halfway between Launceston and Hobart, Ross is bypassed by the Midland Highway, and, it seems, by time.
“Roughly halfway between Launceston and Hobart, Ross is bypassed by the Midland Highway, and, it seems, by time.”
Ross local Christine Robinson, a member of the town’s bicentennial committee, showed me the Town Hall on a research trip I made to the historic village after heavy rains in October 2020. The Macquarie River was full. Neighbouring paddocks, renowned for producing some of the finest merino wool in the world, were waterlogged. It had rained too, the afternoon the hall was opened.
Christine pointed out the sandstone blocks at the Town Hall’s entrance, where visitors could mount their horses, and the badminton court marked onto the hall’s wooden floor more recently at the request of a former councillor, but never played on. Adjoining the hall are the old council chambers, a wooden building with a sandstone façade dating back to the 1830s.
Built largely of Ross sandstone, the Town Hall sits at the intersection of Church and Bridge streets, known locally as the Four Corners of Ross. The landmarks on each corner have been humorously dubbed: Salvation (the Catholic Church), Temptation (the Man O’Ross Hotel), Damnation (the old jail), and Recreation (the Town Hall). And recreate, the hall has. Greek-architecture inspired, the hall sits on the ancient land of the Tyerrernotepanne people. It has seen world wars come and go, and members of the Ross community with them, yet it continues to serve the town’s population of about 300 in ways old and new.
I had visited the hall once before, attending the undercover market, where locals gather to exchange news and welcome tourists every third Sunday over tables brimming with woollen rugs and garments, soaps and baked goods.
Stallholder Freda Pearce, a local of Tunbridge but regular at the hall, says the market at the Town Hall serves an important function. ‘Quite a few locals come in to say hello and see how we are. They buy their cakes and eggs and things; it’s a gathering point for the community.’ Christine Robinson agrees. ‘The Town Hall is the main meeting place. If there’s an important meeting, that’s where it’s held. It’s the focal point of the village.’ And so it has always been.
In the Tasmanian Times article written to mark the official opening, the reporter writes that Councillor Blyth:
spoke of the advantages to be obtained by the use of the building, stating that instead of having to use the state school for meetings and entertainments they had a noble hall. The residents of Ross had not been able to hear professional talent without journeying to other places, but now the hall was opened no doubt professional troupes would visit them. He hoped to soon see the reading-room and library in full swing.
*
The hall was built in a year for the sum of £1000, not quite enough for the library and reading room, although fundraising for those continued. One such benefit provides a window into the times, with attractions including:
a physical drill by a squad of girls under Lieutenant Priestley, which was very well done, also a nail driving competition for ladies. There were 35 entries, and after a splendid contest the prizes, which consisted of a pair of silver salt cellars and spoons, presented by Mr. H. I. Davis; handsome album, given by Mrs. Standaloft; and bound volume of ‘Cassell’s Saturday Journal’, presented by Messrs. A. W. Birehall and Sons, were won by Mrs. P. Fisher, Mrs. Pulford, and Miss M. Towns respectively.
Examiner, 26 February 1902
Fundraising in general has been a common function of the hall, drawing in townsfolk and those from the wool-growing properties of the midlands. Fairs, shearers balls, dances, and euchre tournaments persisted through hard times and good, raising money for the local school, the public library, the Red Cross, the football club, and the Australian Comfort Fund (ACF), an organisation set up to distribute free goods to men fighting in the first and second world wars.
A 1934 report in The Mercury also talks of a ‘hat trimming contest for men’ (won by Mr Jack Ewart, 1, and Mr Max Blades). In old images and news articles, hat-trimming competitions appear to involve decorating hats with trimmings, not cutting them to size as I first imagined. The past is indeed a different place. The hall also hosted novelty dances, competitively it seems. There were chocolate waltzes, which my father-in-law tells me were something like musical chairs but with dance. Couples who were in a certain place on the dance floor when the music stopped had to vacate the floor; the last couple standing was the winner. There were film nights, with health department permission granted for a ‘cinematograph cabinet’, a fire risk at the time, to be installed on the hall’s porch in 1938.
What stands out from historical newspaper articles is the space given to naming everyone who took part in events at the hall, from the pianist and the person who decorated the hall, to the winners of competitions, and the various stallholders at the fairs. An example is this piece from 1934, at the tail end of the Great Depression:
FAIR AT ROSS — ST JOHN’S CHURCH OF ENGLAND
The annual fair of St. John’s Church of England, Ross, was held In the Town Hall on Saturday afternoon. The rector (the Rev. P. A. Carr) introduced the Warden (Mr. A. E. Bennett), who, in opening the function, congratulated the stallholders on the fine display. The hall had been well arranged, and the stalls were very attractively decorated. A feature was a Christmas tree loaded with toys. The sale of afternoon tea and strawberries and cream was in the hands of Mrs. Alfred Bennett and Misses Barbara and Mollie Bennett, and the stallholders were: Fancy, Mesdames Aubrey Bean, and Headlam, Misses A. Dowling, Woodford; cakes, Mesdames Frank Dowling, George Brown, and Perkins; ice cream, Misses H. Riggall, Mary Gillett, Marie Dowling; jellies and cordials, Mrs. Pearsall and Misses Marjorie and Beatrice Pearsall; produce, Mesdames E. N. Cameron, G. H. Keach, and H. B. Goss; Sunday School (toys), Mrs. Pulford, Miss Joyce Garwood, and Pauline Cairns. Hoop-la was conducted by Messrs. H. Gillett, W. Dowling, Dodd, Tribe, and Mrs. Seddon was in charge of the Christmas tree ... The proceeds amounted to more than £40.The Mercury, 12 Dec 1934
I list the names here, for I am told many will still be familiar to Ross locals, and because it is rare today that volunteerism is so recognised. It is also possible that the community needed cheering, having endured five years of economic depression.
Humour was a key element of events at the hall, although this article from 1893 suggests there was a line that comics needed to observe:
The Surprise Club gave their second concert here in the Town Hall on Thursday evening ... It was a most pleasing affair and a credit to all who took part in it, and shows how, with good feeling and management, a most enjoyable entertainment can be got up by locaI people ... The comic element was in the hands of two such capable artists as Messrs. Fielding and Dale, and though highly amusing was free from any vulgarity, so that the most fastidious could enjoy a hearty laugh.
Daily Telegraph, 16 May 1893
The same names appear in newspaper reports about activities at the Town Hall and those at the local churches. The surnames surface again in the mentions of young men home on leave from war and attending events at the hall:
The opportunity was taken to welcome home three local men who have been in active service abroad and have been home on leave. They were Signaller K. Gillam, Privates E. Goss and Private A. Pulford. Major Hawker who was introduced by Miss Bevan secretary of the ACF, extended a warm welcome.
The Examiner, 28 April 1942
Outside the Town Hall is a war memorial, which includes a cannon from the Boer War, and I was relieved not to see the names of Signaller Gillam and privates Goss and Pulford on the list of those who had died in WWII.
Also held at the Town Hall were shearers balls, somewhat rowdier events I am told. According to Christine Robinson, it was ‘all on between the local lads and the shearers’ those nights as the two groups vied for the attention of local girls.
*
Hunkered under umbrellas, Christine and I walked from the Town Hall, north along Church Street, past the Man O’Ross Hotel and its, I am told, otherworldly residents – among them a ghost named George and a young girl who, according to the hotel’s website, has been spotted at the foot of the stairs. In the hotel’s grounds are knee-high freestone milestones engraved with Roman numerals to mark the distance to Hobart and Launceston.
Outside the old Sunday School of St John’s sits the convict-era washing tub. Somehow transported from the Ross Female Factory to this location, it is now a hefty flowerpot, a showy display of mauve blossom against rough grey stone, midway along the street. Hidden in plain sight, I had passed the tub several times during my weekend in Ross without giving it a second thought.
“Hidden in plain sight, I had passed the tub several times during my weekend in Ross without giving it a second thought.”
In my defence, there are many historical distractions: the three churches that gave the street its name, the hotel and post office with its verandah and twin cast-iron columns, the convict-built cottages, the Holden car sales and service shed and the red phone box where, pre-COVID, you could listen to the recorded stories of the town’s older residents. But, once the washing tub has been pointed out, it would be a hard heart not to be moved by the thought of the many hundreds of convict women who strained their backs over the midlands’ laundry.
Ross is situated on the 42nd parallel. It was this line of latitude that, from 1804 to 1812, divided the state into north and south administrative regions: the county of Cornwall to the north and Buckinghamshire to the south. Even now, entering the small town feels like entering an English village.
The town’s history as a centre of the wool-growing district, as well as its convict past, are well documented at the Tasmanian Wool Centre’s museum. Museum coordinator Margaret Young commented to me that, ‘For such a small place, whichever aspect you choose to look at, there is a multilayered history hiding there.’
The museum offers a map that leads me from the historic bridge, carved by convict stonemasons Daniel Herbert and James Colbeck, along the Macquarie River and up past the old stables built into the rock face to the Uniting Church, formerly the Methodist Church. Beyond the church is the original graveyard, the most prominent grave being that of Daniel Herbert and his wife and infant son. The table-top tombstone is crowned with a replica urn of classical design, designed by Herbert for his son Ernest Henry who died in 1846, aged two. It features a stylised flame on the top, thought to signify the soul rising from the ashes.
Herbert and Colbeck were promised conditional pardons if the bridge was completed, and they didn’t disappoint, delivering within 15 months what is now recognised as one of Australia’s finest historical monuments, complete with 186 carved arch stones featuring Celtic symbols, animals and leading personalities. Indeed, the entire village of Ross received recognition on the National Estate before that program was superseded in 2007.
Alongside the old cemetery, sheep still graze and lambs impatiently butt their mothers’ udders.
A demand for fine merino wool in England and land grants to settlers meant that by 1819, there were 172,128 sheep in Van Diemen’s Land. ‘The wool industry underpins the prosperity of the area and has long contributed to what you see,’ Margaret Young says. ‘The landholders have always been such strong supporters of the community, putting funds into public buildings, and they in turn are supported by the community. There is a real circularity.’
But the first function of Ross was as a military station, one of three such stations between Hobart and Launceston. Significantly, the Wool Centre’s museum does not shirk from the more uncomfortable parts of the region’s story. In 1828, Aboriginal people were banned from entering the region’s settled areas and, the display reads, ‘within two years a bounty was put on every Aboriginal adult caught’. Such efforts culminated in the 1830 Black Line intended to round up the state’s Aboriginal population. Superintended by police magistrates, 34 men from Ross took part.
Also at the museum are records of the bushranger Martin Cash and his raids on the nearby property Somercotes, where bullet holes are still visible in the walls of the residence.
I was slightly concerned, I must confess, when offered the opportunity to write this feature that I might be seen as a blow-in from Hobart, but it was the opposite.
I was invited to the local community gathering at the sports club, which is held every Sunday afternoon, and there found myself among other blow-ins – people who had moved to Ross from northern states, fleeing temperatures of 40 degrees for gentler climes. The hotel manager was there, too, offering to pierce my ear for free. I’d mistakenly walked between him and the dartboard he was aiming for.
‘I think Ross is trying to reinvent itself,’ Christine Robinson told me. ‘There are new businesses, new people are coming with more children – we’re on an optimistic curve. I think Ross is on the way up.’
But it is always with a respect for the old days and what gives the town its charm.
Christine showed me the home of Mrs Mary Keach, one of the first female sheep breeders in the midlands. Her white cottage, The Sheiling, stands freshly painted in Church Street, decorative antique dinner plates on display in windows framed by blue-grey shutters. Its new Hobart owner is determined to preserve it in its original state.
The town still gathers in the Town Hall for weddings, parties and wakes, for Anzac Day services, meetings and of course the third-Sunday market days. Back in the day, when discussions were playing out about building the Town Hall, one unnamed local resident wrote of his displeasure at the idea:
I see it proposed to have a town hall erected here. Well, I fail to see what we want with a town hall. Would it not be more to the credit of our Council if they went in for improving our streets, sewers, etc., for their present filthy state is anything but a credit to them? Look at the filthy state of the large open drains in the streets which is enough to breed a plague in wet weather. Why not have the town properly drained by means of piping? And why not have that ancient and motly edifice known as the Ross watchhouse removed from its present conspicuous site, as the building is said to be unfit for human habitation and a disgrace to the Council! These are the matters that want attending to before we talk about a town hall. Why not have the water laid to the various dwellings by means of a cheap pump? Why do our police not wear uniform? I thought it was a rule they should do so. The way our police conduct the cases at our Police Court has been causing a good deal of surprise and comment, and wants looking into. It is said we are now fast drifting back to the notorious old times.
The Tasmanian, 22 March 1890
One hundred and thirty years later, it seems such concerns have been put to rest. So, to end where we started, at the opening of the Town Hall and the reporting of the speech given by the town warden:
Shortly after 3 p.m. the Warden ascended the stage, and said that there were moments in a man’s life when he could honestly congratulate himself on a good action performed, and he felt as he stood in the completed Town Hall that he was in that position today ... Every person who had visited the building had been highly pleased with the way it had been finished, and the gentleman who had been sent by the Government to inspect the building informed him that the hall was the finest in any township in Tasmania and a credit to the district. He hoped the building would be used and appreciated by the persons for whom it was most intended, the residents of the township, and that the hall would be used as often as possible. Some people said that the floor would be worn out; so much the better, as when it fell through the Municipal Council would provide another, as it would be a sign that the building was in constant use.
The Tasmanian Times, 19 Sept 1891
Looking at the Town Hall from the street outside – the crossroads of salvation, temptation, damnation and recreation – I can’t help but conjure a blue swish of dress fabric, a ghostly image swirling past the arched windows. I hear the sound of many feet. ▼
This article appeared in Island 161 in 2021. Order a print issue here.
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