writer Bert Spinks
photographer Pen Tayler
“I will proceed with my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities of men no less than of great. For most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time. Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike.”
So wrote one of the first travel writers, Herodotus, about 2,500 years ago. Like most travel writers, he got plenty wrong, but I like this little piece of wisdom. Even then an insightful traveller understood that they would arrive at each location in a specific historical moment – that all places are dynamic and in flux, that shifts in politics and culture will leave nowhere unchanged, and that those who went on journeys would be granted no guarantees.
The restaurant that was once recommended may not exist by the time the hungry traveller arrives at its doorstep.
This promise of impermanence is familiar to any of us these days. By now we’re used to be tossed about in the gusts of global events, and although Tasmania has been somewhat sheltered from much of the tumult of the world, we have each been at least dipped in uncertainty, if not entirely baptised in it. And if we expand the focus a little, to include a longer timeframe – which is what Herodotus encourages – we will see that tumultuous changes have been an unavoidable element of our island’s story.
The words of Herodotus have returned to me whenever I’ve visited Sorell these past few years. In that time, Sorell has become one of Australia’s fastest-growing municipalities; data suggests that the population has more than doubled from 2006 to 2021. Anyone who has driven around the area in the past few years can tell you that the place is changing, a fact made plain by the ongoing roadworks if nothing else.
Change is not new to Sorell, however. The current urban expansion mirrors a pattern set two centuries ago. Within a few years of colonisation, Sorell became a satellite settlement of Hobart Town. Farms were established and convicts were assigned to them, and it quickly became an important region for grain production. Ultimately it was named after the third Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, William Sorell (who, among other landmarks, also has a mountain, a port and a lake named after him, all in different quadrants of the island). Buildings from the 1820s, including the barracks and St George’s Anglican Church, remain standing.
Yet at that point in Vandemonian history, living in Sorell was perhaps a tough sell. The east coast hinterland was essentially uncharted, and Sorell’s first homesteaders were exposed to depredations. The bushrangers Mike Howe and Matthew Brady both attacked properties around Sorell in the early days. And the pioneers also kept an eye out for the region’s first inhabitants, being supplanted by the colonising process. In 1820 a local magistrate James Gordon, based at Lewisham, noted a number of burn-offs further inland; from this evidence he reported there were “a good many” Aboriginal people still in the region. You can sense a nervousness in his dispatch; at that stage there was tension all around the island, which would soon develop into the Black War.
In this case, again, Sorell encapsulates Tasmanian history. In establishing farms, the first settlers disrupted traditional land use. Middens on nearby Steeles Island, south of the town, leave a clear picture of how replete with resources this locality was. It’s easy to imagine Aboriginal families camped down by the water, pulling seafood from estuary, and hunting in the lightly-wooded hills in the area. Even still, if you’re paying careful attention, you might note smells wafting over town from Orielton Lagoon – as long as you’re not standing too near the fast-food outlets. But the town often feels somehow distant from the water, estranged from its ecological underpinnings, and even remote from the agriculture that still surrounds the town on three sides.
Herodotus made his remark about the fluidity of “human prosperity”; we also know there are changes to the fortunes of other critters, some of which are very much struggling to prosper. Under the causeway connecting Sorell to Hobart and the world, we see another snapshot of our changing island. These are wetlands and salt marshes of high conservation value, supporting an array of shorebirds and seabirds, as well as rare flowering shrubs such as lemon beauty heads and New Holland daisies. This area also provides an important nursery for gummy sharks and is home to the rare and rather quirky Parvulastra vivipara, the Tasmanian live-bearing seastar. Two decades ago, volunteers manually relocated the local population of live-bearing seastars – 21,368 of them, to be precise – during roadworks on the causeway. Not a bad effort, considering their full size is 15mm in diameter. But it’s yet another reminder of how growing human populations put pressure on their non-human neighbours, and it is a matter that will need to be considered again and again as Sorell continues to grows.
The nature of human prosperity is also worth thinking about carefully. In the former shack towns of Lewisham and Dodges Ferry – not far beyond Sorell – house prices have increased dramatically, pre-empting a significant shift in demographics. I’m not trying to suggest it’s all bad. A few months back I went to an open mic night at the Lewisham Tavern; the locals mingled happily with newcomers, and the quantity of talented performers present was a credit to the kind of creative community that can develop in such conditions.
(Amusingly I was reminded of an excerpt I’d found in an edition of The Mercury from 100 years earlier, a report from an event in the nearby Forcett Hall. “A dance took place in the evening, when the floor was full, and an enjoyable night was spent. At intervals songs and recitations were given, and one gentleman gave an exhibition of a new Jazz dance and turkey trot, to the amusement of the onlookers.” I’m not sure what a turkey trot is, but I suspect that I witnessed it when happy hour was extended at the Lewisham Tavern that night.)
Frivolity at the tavern aside, not all is happy in Sorell in the 2020s. It is well documented how perilous and preposterous the housing market has become, and what’s happening in the Sorell municipality is only part of a complex problem caused by demographic upheaval bringing changes in attitude and lifestyle. Increased mobility and wealth have altered local perceptions, so much so that even some Tasmanian-born drivers have stopped believing that a 30-minute commute is outrageous. Some acquaintances even expressed surprise that we have included Sorell in this collection of Tasmanian towns. As a woman blurted to me at a late-night bar in the city, “Isn’t it just a suburb of Hobart?”
The very next day I went for an early ten-ounce at the Pembroke Hotel. The only other customers were two women, perhaps in their late 60s, who struck up an intriguing conversation on the next table over. The more garrulous of the pair gave her autobiography, beginning with the anecdote that she’d just sold her car, “for the last time”. Living on a nearby farm when bushfires swept through in 2013, her children had urged her to move into Sorell; she now felt she had everything she needed within walking distance, including, of course, the pub – and its pokie machines, which she was about to play.
Today’s values are indeed becoming history. Flicking through the three editions of the Pitt Water Chronicles, an occasional publication of the Historical Society of the Municipality of Sorell, I’m drawn to the down-home reminiscences. There are stories of shacks and markets, wholesome birthday parties and hardy farm work. Of course the past can be transformed into quaint kitsch; our nostalgia quickly turns sickly-sweet. But these are stories within the living memory of many locals around Sorell. As much of the physical world around us is paved over and suburbanised, it would be good to keep these yarns close to us, to leave a trace of them behind, to bring them with us through the changes.
Not that this is a new take on things. The 20th-century Tasmanian writers Roy and Hilda Bridges, siblings, grew up and lived much of their lives together on a property just north of Sorell called Woods Farm. A most prolific author, Roy’s finest work was perhaps his family memoir, poignantly titled That Yesterday Was Home. Returning to Woods Farm after an absence of some time, you can hear him sigh at all the changes to come. “We did not visualise the years of nervous overstrain and the destruction of our peace,” Roy writes towards the end of his account, “or the losses of so many friends of the old days, whom we loved and revered.”
So we proceed with our history as well, hopefully a little bit better attuned to the changes as they come.
Bert Spinks grew up in Beaconsfield and is now, mostly, a resident of Launceston. He is a writer, storyteller and bushwalking guide, each of which feed and reflect his interest in the way human communities interact with place and landscape. He focuses especially on journeys and movement, language and literature. Although based in Launceston, Bert spends much of his time without a home because he is in one of the world's wild or interesting places pursing local lore.
Pen Tayler is a Tasmanian writer and photographer. She photographed 12 towns for Towns of Tasmania, written by Bert Spinks, and has written and provided images for Hop Kilns of Tasmania (both Forty South Publishing). She has also written a book about Prospect House and Belmont House in the Coal River Valley.
