Discovering SoHo

The Discovering SoHo exhibition is a community-based photography portraiture exhibition proudly supported by The South Hobart Progress Association, the South Hobart Sustainable Community and the Hobart City Council through a Creative Hobart grant.

The goal of the multi-venue art trail exhibition and the accompanying book is to promote the values, lifestyle and heritage of the South Hobart community.

The portraits and stories

Guided by SoHo community members, over a two year period, experienced SoHo photographer and writer Paul County selected then photographed a diverse range of 46 SoHo locals and listened to their fascinating stories. Through the local histories we hear first-hand local’s memories of SoHo’s early days contrasted with stories from new arrivals who now call SoHo home. We also hear from SoHo foodies and its artists and how they respond to the suburbs unique natural environment.

It is these powerful stories and portraits that have captured SoHo’s spirit and celebrates its strong sense of community.

The accompanying Discovering SoHo book also includes many SoHo street scenes taken throughout the seasons which show off the suburb’s fascinating character and significant built heritage. The high quality beautifully designed 160 page hard-cover book will be launched in December 2024.

The 37 high quality portraits and stories will be exhibited throughout various SoHo cafes over summer 2024/25.

The ongoing Discovering SoHo online exhibition

The Discovering SoHo online exhibition will continue with more portraits and stories being added throughout 2025 through the kind generosity of the South Hobart Progress Association.

You can purchase the images from the exhibition or Discovering SoHo 160 page hard cover book through the paulcountyphotography.com website.

Any queries to

The Discovering SoHo Project Coordinator
Paul County
@email
0400 822 678

David Halse-Rogers

What do I like about South Hobart? Well, almost everything! I moved here in the late 1980s from a Sydney that no longer resembled my youth. Looking for a dry city, we settled on the second driest city in the Commonwealth.

Almost on the first day in our rental home at 4 Weld Street, I found a local newsletter in our letterbox – a South Hobart newsletter produced by the local Progress Association. Next month I found another and I decided to go along to a meeting to see what it was all about.

Coming from Sydney, the concept of community was alien to me. I quickly discovered a group of like-minded individuals, who had the best interests of the suburb at heart.

The South Hobart Progress Association has since provided me with over thirty years of pleasure. 

Such a wonderful band of people, young and older, whose aim was to ensure that South Hobart retained its unique qualities – a community village within 20 minutes’ walk of the Hobart CBD.

Over nearly three decades, the Association has fought a number of battles with developers, councils and government, along with organising and promoting many local community events, including thirteen years running the annual bonfire and fireworks night, in conjunction with the Mt Nelson Volunteer Fire Brigade. This event attracted thousands of eager families for a night of magic for all ages. It was only abandoned after public liability insurance became prohibitively expensive.

In March 2015, with a grant from the Commonwealth Government of $1.63 million, the former Macquarie Street State School was purchased by a community-based organisation, following a successful and prolonged campaign by the South Hobart Progress Association Inc. to keep the historic building in community hands. Local member for Denison (now Clark) Andrew Wilkie negotiated the deal with the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. The South

Hobart Living Arts Centre was created. The Centre, now known as SoHo Arts, is a home for a wide range of artistic groups and endeavours.

In 2010, the Association collaborated with the City of Hobart and The Tasmanian Community Fund to completely renovate and overhaul the South Hobart Community Centre in D’Arcy Street. The process to effect the renovations were lengthy and due to cost over-runs, modifications had to be made. The South Hobart Progress Association made a considerable financial contribution to the works. In fact, the Association has contributed more than $30,000 over the years to worthy causes, including the heritage works and All Saints’ Anglican Church and the restoration fund for the heritage River Derwent ferry Cartela, to mention a couple.

An important milestone for the association occurred when my suggestion for a history of South Hobart was approved. Well-known local historian and writer Dr Alison Alexander was commissioned to write the work. Beneath the Mountain – a History of South Hobart, a 365-page hard-cover volume, was produced with the financial support of the Hobart City Council.  The HCC underwrote the entire $75,000 cost of the work, which the association repaid in full within several years. We printed 2500 copies, of which fewer than 400 copies remain. The book was launched at Cascade Brewery in 2015 by the then Governor, Her Excellency Prof Kate Warner AM, who was a former resident of South Hobart.

The Association continues to battle against forces bent on changing the essential character of South Hobart. 

In recent years, in conjunction with the Sustainable Community Group, the Association engaged a professional planner to create a series of Specific Area Plans to attach to the City of Hobart’s Draft Planning Scheme. The plans have recently been lodged with the Tasmanian Planning Commission.

The Association gives two annual awards. The Citizen of the Year is awarded to a resident or business owner who, in the community's eyes, has made a significant contribution to enhancing the life of South Hobart. The SHPA Annual Streetscape Award is presented to the property owner who has made a significant contribution to the enhancement of the appearance of South Hobart.

Probably the single most important aspect of the Association’s impact on the local community has been the monthly publication of A South Hobart Newsletter, which is delivered to over 2800 households in the 7004 postal code area by a group of enthusiastic volunteers. 

The newsletter was created by President Bob Gordon in 1986 and has been produced each month since then. I have been the Editor for the past thirty years. In August 2024, I resigned as Honorary Secretary of the Association, a position I have held for three decades. I’ll maintain my connection to the association by continuing as newsletter editor.

Peter Carpenter

The hands on Peter Carpenter’s clock move slowly – and that’s just the way he likes it!

Peter is one of SoHo’s longest residents – he’s been living in the same house for 70 years

His parents bought the two conjoined cottages in Macquarie Street in 1947. After returning from active service in World War II, his father worked at Peters Ice Cream in the 50s and 60s at 441 Macquarie Street, not far from the family home.

‘The place is around 170 years old,’ Peter explains. ‘Two ex-convicts name Mure once lived here.’

I’m amazed when I’m invited inside – it’s a time warp experience, going back many decades. There’s a tiny ladder leading to the upper bedrooms and some rooms still have the original wallpaper. The two cottages are connected by a lean-to at the back. Today, Peter estimates that the properties are worth around $1.4 million. I ask him if he had thought about living in one and renting the other.

‘Well maybe – but it wouldn’t be the same, would it?’ he reflects.

We’re chatting in the attractive backyard with its lovely sunny aspect. I’m nearly drowned out by the raucous of the local parrots screeching overhead.

Cautiously I ask ‘What about the cable car?’

He points at the mountain view over his shoulder.

‘Why would you want to ruin that?’ he exclaims. ‘Besides, there’s enough traffic on Macquarie Street as it is.’

I soon realise that the traffic is a major bugbear for Peter.

‘The only drawback to SoHo is Macquarie Street,’  he says. ‘For 10 years I’ve been complaining about the road damaging my house. They either need to make the street a 40km zone or get rid of the trucks that travel up to the tip. Some of those B-doubles weigh 40 tones when fully loaded. At peak time in the morning I can feel the vibrations through my bed!’

Peter has many great stories and memories of growing up in SoHo.

‘I went to Macquarie Street School, then Elizabeth High. I used to catch the old electric trolley bus home from Franklin Square, then I went into the army like my Dad.

‘I remember after the ‘67 bushfires, men were crying – because after the Cascade Brewery burned down, they had to drink Boags!

I love Cascade Pale Ale myself. During the 70s Cascade delivered Huon Cry soft drinks on the back of a truck and they’d collect the empties a week later. I still like the Cascade blackcurrant juice.’

One of Peter’s childhood memories goes back to times when the Hobart Rivulet supported industries like leather tanneries.

‘I fell in a tannery pit when I was young,’ he recalls. ‘My sister and neighbour put me in the rivulet to try to wash me down. Mum said she had to wash my clothes three times then burn them because she couldn’t get rid of the stink! On a good day you could smell the tannery from our house.

Peter has noticed a change in the weather.

‘When I was a kid, the mountain was blanketed with snow most of the winter and the westerly wind would cut through you like a knife,’ he says. ‘These days, the winters are very mild. ‘And I’ll never forget the 1960s flood. It was huge! The rivulet broke its banks and the South Hobart Primary School sports grounds were covered. A lot of local gardens were flooded and that was bad because most people grew their own fruit and vegetables. I remember foraging for walnuts, bartering with neighbours for vegies, apricots, lemons, limes and greengages. I used to love scarlet runners beans and they’re still my favourite.’

I ask Peter about the most memorable personalities of SoHo.

‘Alan Williams the newsagent was a great SoHo character, ‘ Peter says. ‘He was funny and so relaxed. He’d lived here all his life so he had a wealth of knowledge of South Hobart. Late in  the afternoon he’d be tying up all the unsold newspapers in bundles to return to The Mercury – but there was always a can of Cascade Pale Ale underneath the bench! His mates would also be there enjoying a chat and a tipple. Alan worked there well into his eighties.’

Peter is a well-known local figure and he is often seen sitting outside his house meeting locals and selling some of the plants that he propagates.

‘I love the SoHo village atmosphere,’ he says. ‘Everybody knows everybody else when you’ve been here a while. I do spend a lot of time out the front chatting – it’s a very laid-back place with a friendly atmosphere. I only go out of SoHo once a fortnight into the city on the bus – I don’t need a car here. And after my city trips, I’m always pleased to get back home.’

Stan and Veronica Mather

Affectionately known by some as the Mayor of Grayling Avenue, Stan was the first person to build there, up on the hillside overlooking SoHo.

At 92, Stan and his wife Veronica both have vivid memories and a deep affection for their almost lifelong home suburb.

Stan worked for many years as an engineer with the Hydro. Both have been involved in the South Hobart Progress Association for 60 years. At 85, Veronica still works as a local tour guide, which she says keeps her physically and mentally fit.

‘My uncles and aunties had farms and orchards in the district,’ Stan says. ‘My father owned the Grayling Avenue land and when he subdivided it in the late 1950s, I purchased the pick of the blocks, the ones with the best views, a double block for £700 pounds each. It had some power and sewerage but no water and only a small section of road.’

Stan would work on extending the track at night by the headlights of a borrowed car.

‘I could do about 20 feet each night with pick and shovel, cutting the trees with a bow saw,’ Stan says.

Veronica explains that they cleared the block and dug the house foundations by hand before the road was finished.

‘It was a long job because we had no power tools,’ she says. ‘We hit sandstone so we could only dig three or four barrowloads a day.’

The house was completed in 1962. They designed the open-plan modernist home to make the most of the wonderful north-facing views. The rooms have generous ceiling heights and an expansive living space with highly-polished Tas oak floorboards, myrtle timber wall features and a lovely curved sandstone fireplace. The convict-cut sandstone used as garden steps comes from an old house in Victoria Street.

The views from their house are glorious, looking out over SoHo to West Hobart, the city and the river down to Sandy Bay. Large gums which have grown up in the last 50 years add the feeling of being nestled in the bush.

The side of the house facing the mountain is double brick and there is a double brick wall running right through the middle of the house, which also has double brick foundations. They used convict bricks in the walls and foundation piers because they were cheaper than new bricks! The house backs onto the bush, so using the double bricks meant that in the event of a fire, the house could be blocked off into sections.

And how prophetic that action was, because in 1967 the mother of all bushfires hit.

Veronica recalls being at Sandy Bay beach in the morning but she decided to leave around 11am because of the smoke.

‘I drove up Cascade Road to see the Cascade brewery on fire,’ she remembers. ‘Driving up Hillborough Road, houses were bursting into flames around me.’

Sensing a catastrophe, Stan drove up Lynton Avenue but was stopped at a police road block at Davey Street.

‘The officer said You can’t pass mate, all the houses up past this area are lost,’ Stan says. ‘But then he was distracted by another car for a moment and I pushed through.’

Stan, on a mission to save his house and family, drove around the police barrier and roared up Huon Road, into the dragon’s fiery mouth.

What he faced was truly harrowing. The further up he drove up Huon Road, the more disastrous things became.

‘The smoke was thick and choking,’ Stan says. ‘The winds were hot and fierce, it was hard to breathe. There were houses burning up along Huon Road and red hot embers were raining down hard against my windscreen like bullets.’

Grayling Avenue climbs up steeply from Huon Road. Stan arrived home to find that Veronica had filled all the baths, buckets and the kids’ paddling pool with water. Trees around the house were on fire.

Stan has vivid memories of that terrifying day.

‘Veronica was shuttling buckets of water outside to me as I put out spot fires.  I tripped over the pool because I couldn’t see it through the smoke. Having a bad hip didn’t help either! The chook house was on fire. There was a large pile of timber at one end of the house which was alight and was threatening the house. Even though it was brick, burning embers could still get under the eaves.’

Stan and Veronica battled the fire together – and they saved their home.

Southern Tasmania’s worst bushfires on record destroyed 1293 houses and killed 64 people.

Veronica recalls taking the children to school the next day without sleep, dishevelled, unwashed, with matted hair and charcoal-stained clothes.

‘The other mothers were so sympathetic,’ she says. ‘One consolation was that after all the trees burned, our view was improved and we could see right down to the mouth of the river.’

Another major natural disaster that had occurred a few years earlier was the great flood of 1960.

‘It rained and rained for days and the rivulet burst its banks,’ Stan remembers. ‘The school grounds flooded and many houses were inundated. After this event they built timber traps in the rivulet.’

In the early seventies Stan had an idea for a home swimming pool, so armed with a jackhammer he dug it straight out of the sandstone bedrock. 

He then designed and patented a roof-top solar water heating system, which has since been installed in more than 100 locations around Australia. Stan’s original prototype still works today, heating the pool to a lovely 28 degrees.

Stan is famous for organising the annual fireworks that were held in the brewery grounds. Veronica says it was a wonderful community celebration, with school students carrying lamps in a street procession.

‘It took a lot of organisation,’ Stan says. ‘As well as ordering the fireworks, you had about eight major things to do – organising staff, toilets, fire brigade, council permits, police permission, advertising and signage.’

Unfortunately, after 16 years Stan couldn’t get enough support and sourcing the fireworks became problematic, so the event ceased.

But something that hasn’t changed is the strong sense of community that remains among the people who live in Grayling Avenue.

‘We enjoy organising a yearly catchup with all our friends and neighbours in the street,’ Stan and Veronica say.

Noel Williams

At nearly 92, Noel Williams has an amazing ability to recall his early life growing up in SoHo. He was born at 37 Anglesea Street and recalls many of his teachers, especially Miss O’Rourke.

‘How could I forget her?’ Noel laughs. ‘Every time I used the rubber on the end of my pencil, she’d rap my knuckles with a ruler!’

He attended kindergarten on Anglesea Street then went to the ‘top school’, which today is the wonderful sandstone building you see when travelling up Macquarie Street.

Noel recalls that in Anglesea Street, where the Collegiate Junior School is today, there was a flock mill, which made stuffing for furniture. Nearby on the rivulet was Andersons Dairy.

‘Andy Anderson used to drive the milk cart around SoHo,’ Noel recalls. ‘Sadly, he died in an accident when the horse bolted.’

The Williams boys were hard-working entrepreneurs from an early age. From nine years old they made washing poles and sold them for two shillings.

Before the days of the Hill’s Hoist, people hung their washing out on long wires held up by the poles. Noel recalls he had two long poles in his backyard.

‘My brother Alan and I used to pick and sell blackberries and buy vegetables from Mr Brundell’s large garden at 106 Cascade Road, where the Badminton Centre’s carpark is today,’ Noel says. ‘We’d go up Huon Road and get some red gum tips from Dr Butler’s place and bundle them up to put in vases instead of flowers. We would go door-to-door with a small cart, selling our wares.’

‘We always had a bit of pocket money and I loved to spend some of mine on Oscar Smith’s cordial,’ Noel remembers. ‘They used to sell it in large demijohns that you could refill. The factory operated till the 1940s.’

Back then, each town had its cordial factory with its own brand and range of flavours. The factories were often run as family businesses and people were loyal to their local products. The bottles were specially moulded for each factory and some bore heavily embossed trademarks. At the turn of the 20^th century the bottles were sealed by a glass marble imprisoned in the neck. To open the bottle, you pushed down the marble with a pencil or stick. Later the much cheaper crown seal took over.

Noel remembers SoHo in those days as a fun and exciting place, with many colourful characters and lots of busy local retail stores.

‘When I was a lad, there were around 30 small family-owned shops between Molle Street and the Cascades – and they all made a living,’ Noel says.

Along Macquarie Street was Charlie Dare the hairdresser,  a cake shop, Snowy’s grocer shop, the newsagency and the chemist on the corner, where Tom and Molly Stevens would mix the medicines to order. A pharmacy is still operating in the same location after 100 years.

On the corner of Weld and Macquarie, Mr and Mrs Hawkes sold tuppenny ice blocks.

Over the road was Wood’s grocery shop. Michael Kents’ parents had a grocery shop at Wynyard and Macquarie Street – Michael later established Purity Supermarkets. The Coffmans had a popular corner shop at Belton and Wentworth Street near the soccer ground. Miss Monroe’s at 435 Macquarie Street, which is now SoHo Wholefoods, would sell you a tray of goodies for a penny. Next door was Crows the butcher.

‘I liked the pies and cakes from Griffiths Bakery in Molle Street. Two of my school friends, Billy Guest and Maxy Bennett, worked in Lowe’s shop on the corner of Antill and Macquarie Streets. They had to wear fancy white aprons,’ Noel chuckles.

Noel is a man of many talents. A pianist, footballer and judo instructor, he was the president of the Australian Judo Association. He completed his cabinet-making apprenticeship at Smith and Campbell in Harrington Street Lane. He had a milk run for 17 years, working seven days a week. He would also collect 500 gram blocks of ice cream from the Toppa ice cream factory behind the Tasmanian Milk Company in Macquarie Street and sell them throughout the suburbs.

Noel’s grandfather, father and brother all worked at the Cascade Brewery.

‘Dad would come home every night with a couple of bottles clinking in his Gladstone bag,’ Noel says. ‘He also delivered the Herald newspaper and would stop into the SoHo pubs on his round, often getting home rather late! He was a good gardener, too. He used to buy 1500 onion plants and grow them in our garden at 37 Anglesea Street. He’d make pickled onions from the smaller ones and the whole onion crop would do us for the year.’

Noel’s brother Alan was a workaholic, who often had three jobs on the go at once.

‘I had a paper run and when the newsagent asked if I knew anyone else who wanted a job, I suggested my brother,’ Noel recalls. ‘He ended up purchasing the business in 1942 and ran it for 55 years! When he retired, his children Craig and Di took it over. My brother was a great salesman.’

Noel used to love catching the trams to SoHo from the city.

‘I noticed that the trams that went to Sandy Bay were a bit more fancy than ours,’ he says. ‘They had upholstered seats, not wooden ones. The fare from the GPO was a penny. The line went up to the Cascade Gardens near the cordial factory, then turned around. The conductor came to know every customer by name and you also knew most of the other passengers.’

Noel also recalls that the double-decker trams tended to be top-heavy.

One of those trams rounded the corner of Molle and Liverpool Street so fast that it teetered precariously then toppled over,’ he says.

The line to South Hobart was opened in September 1893. In 1937 it was a double track to Antill Street and then a single line before stopping just short of the Cascade Brewery at the Tea Gardens. There were two crossing loops, one at Gore Street and the other at Darcy Street. The last regular service ran in August 1942 with the trams being replaced by electric trolley buses.

‘They were quieter and simpler times, long before the busy roads and traffic congestion of today,’ Noel remembers.

Hilary and Christopher Haeusler

Hilary Haeusler says they moved to Tasmania because of a house.

‘We’d been trying to buy an 1800s-era house in Millers Point in Sydney, but we couldn’t find the right one,’ she says. ‘Our daughter moved to Hobart and when we visited we saw a house at 384 Macquarie Street and loved its potential, with the huge stable out the back and the little cottage. It’s a fantastic location, over the road from Bear With Me café and Hill Street Grocer and a two-minute walk to the rivulet.

Hilary explains that although the owner didn’t really want to sell, they eventually agreed on a price and the move was made.

‘We received valuable advice from heritage architect Graeme Corney,’ she says. ‘We wanted to retain as much of the original character as possible. Pulling off the render was a wonderful process of exploration!’

The Haeuslers spent four years slowly removing the interior and exterior render, hoping there was sandstone underneath – and indeed there was.

‘The walls were 70 centimetres thick so the electrician had to go away and buy a longer drill bit,’ Hilary laughs.

The original cottage comprised three small rooms facing Macquarie Street, with a small extension added in the 1880s.

‘During excavation behind the barn, we found a huge sandstone water trough and a blacksmith’s pit, some tiny horse shoes and another pit full of old medicine bottles and pipes,’ Christopher says.

In 2018 historian David Young compiled a fascinating history of the house and barn, which were built by two ex-convicts.

The first European to hold a secure title to the property was former convict George Lawrence, who was granted land in the area in 1852. He and his ex-convict partner Frederick Moore operated a cartage business there, so the stables at the rear were much larger than the house.

‘These fellows were real characters,’ Hilary says. ‘One of them was a bit of a rebel and ended up doing hard labour on a road gang. Maybe that’s where he learned his stone masonry skills!’

George Lawrence was far from being the first European to own the land, although previous owners often claimed titles that were less than secure. Like all early land owners in Van Diemen’s Land, holdings relied upon the work of surveyors who were frequently inept, corrupt or both. Conveyances were also often recorded with scant regard for legal rigour, with subsequent time-consuming and costly disputes occurring regularly.

By 1832 Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur established a Claims Commission to settle disputed claims. If the commission determined that a claimant was bona fide, it awarded a secure title in the form of a grant. Claimants were required to furnish evidence of how they came by the land they claimed and the process of verification also included the making of an accurate survey. Many property owners took advantage of the new service and before long it became very difficult to sell land if its ownership was not confirmed by a grant.

The land at 384 Macquarie Street first came into European hands in January 1806, when it formed a small part of a location order of 100 acres made by the Governor of NSW, Philip Gidley King, to Marine Lieutenant Edward Lord.

Lord had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in February 1804 with David Collins’ party, which established the township of Hobart. In December 1805 Lord received his land grant. His sheep must have bred prolifically – by October 1806 Lord was the largest stock owner in the colony.

A prominent citizen of early Van Diemen’s Land, Edward Lord built Hobart Town’s first private house in 1804. Sometime between 1808 and 1811, he made over his 100-acre block to Private John Folly (or Foley) of the marines. Folly, an uneducated bricklayer and stonemason, had sailed to NSW with the First Fleet. On 22 February 1811 Folly sold it to Dr Thomas William Birch.

George Lawrence’s grant was considerably larger than the present title of 384 Macquarie Street. The frontage is exactly the same length as the frontages of the present 384 and 382 Macquarie Street combined. The original title stretched all the way south-east to Adelaide Street, whereas the boundary of the current title only reaches half that distance. As well, Lawrence’s grant was for 2 roods 36½ perches of land (2946m²), while the current title occupies only 937m².

Lawrence was a 26-year-old groom or coachman when, in September 1831 at Middlesex Assizes, he was found guilty of stealing a looking glass and sentenced to seven years transportation. A married man with three children, he lived in St Pancras, London. He sailed from Britain on the convict ship Lord William Bendinck and arrived in Hobart on 28 August 1832.  He was short, just 5ft 4in in his stockings, but with a large head. His convict record notes that he had no scars, but did sport a number of tattoos including ‘an anchor, a half-moon, sun and stars, a mermaid and the bust of a woman.’

Lawrence was not well behaved. A mere two months after he arrived in the colony, a drunken spree at Kangaroo Point (where he had no permission to be) resulted in four days on bread and water. Two months later, drinking on a Sunday morning and ‘very disorderly conduct’ led to fourteen days on the treadmill. A month later in January 1833, he absented himself from work for an entire day without leave. For this he received twenty-five lashes.  Soon afterwards he was given another thirty-six lashes for being drunk after hours. The following month he again absented himself from work for a day, this time in possession of four pounds of beef that didn’t belong to him. For this offence the punishment was increased to fifty lashes. Further drunkenness and absenteeism earned more time on the treadmill and in August 1836 he was sentenced to six months’ hard labour in a road party.

Ex-convict Frederick Moore also lived at the property. Moore, a 17-year-old drover from Surrey, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for fourteen years for ‘stealing from the person’. He arrived in Hobart in April 1829 aboard the Georgiana. He was 5ft 3¼in (1.62m) tall and had a number of scars. His previous offences included stealing a purse and cruelty to sheep.

In 1852 George Lawrence sold the property and both he and Moore left Van Diemen’s Land for Victoria – Lawrence to Gippsland and Moore to Geelong.

Over the decades, the property had many colourful owners. During the 1960s and 70s, Leonard Carver used the lower level of the barn as a motor mechanic’s workshop and the upstairs area for boxing training.

Hilary was told by an expert that the sandstone used to build the house and barn came from the East Coast near Orford.

‘I guess that the two ex-convicts who ran a cartage business would have brought the stone up from the Hobart waterfront,’ she says.

Hilary and Christopher have recently added another large room to join the front cottage to the barn. Designed in industrial style with a glass atrium over the dining area, it’s a light and comfortable space with some quirky features such as the excavated horseshoes embedded in the new concrete walls.

Christopher and Hilary are surprised that the house and stables, built by ex-convicts with no training, are so solid and still standing after 200 years.

‘The mortar was full of shell fragments and horse hair,’ Hilary says. ‘In colonial times they used shells as a lime substitute. Lime, or 'quick lime', is the product obtained by burning shells and coral. This lime is used to make the mortar.’

‘We’re both glad that Frederick and George ended up doing well, after their rough start in life,’ Christopher says.

‘We love the fact that every chisel mark tells a story, like the tiny barn that has been roughly cut in a child-like manner in one of the stone window sills,’ Hilary says. ‘When I touch the walls, I can still feel them in the house.’

The barn has a deck and mountain views and the kitchen has the original thick blue gum timber. Today, the barn is a very popular self-contained B&B and guests can share in its charm and fascinating history.

Andre and Jessica Monkhorst

Andre and Jessica Monkhorst have always been fascinated by older architecture and the character of historic houses.

‘We initially looked at buying in Taroona and Sandy Bay, but we wanted to be more central and closer to the city, so SoHo was the perfect place for us,’ she says.

Jessica says Andre was more keen than she was about taking on a property that needed renovation.

‘Andre found the house on the internet and loved the house the moment he came inside,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t so sure, but Andre is very persuasive and he has been watching many restoration documentaries online.’

Jessica says she wanted a small house with a large garden but the Davey Street home was the opposite – they ended up with a six bedroom house and a small garden. Landscaped in the Edna Walling style, the garden blends natives and exotic plants and is designed in harmony with the house. The garden has also needed extensive work.

So they moved to SoHo for the love of a house and garden!

Andre and Jessica like the closeness and the short commute to the city. Jessica, who is a doctor, loves hopping on her ebike and scooting down the rivulet track, arriving in at the hospital in seven minutes. She also loves the services nearby in SoHo and the deli at Hill Street in particular.

‘I seem to spend every waking moment working on the reno project,’ she says.

Four months pregnant, she is currently (with a little reluctance) on hands and knees completing the parquetry-pattern tiling of an old ballroom floor in the house’s basement.

The house is stunning inside, with room after room of ornate Tas oak features, filtered light through stained glass windows, a butler’s pantry, a boot room and a music room. They brought original Morris wallpaper from the UK and Arts and Crafts-style chairs from Scotland. Andre explains that their goal is to put their own stamp on the house and bring it back to what they think it should have been. It’s a slow and thoughtful process of restoration and transformation

The house dates from 1885 and is unique to SoHo. Built in the Arts and Crafts architectural style with a Tudor look outside, it has large windows looking down the river over Sandy Bay.

‘The size of the windows is unusual because most houses of that era didn’t consider the view as much as we do these days,’ Jessica explains.

Over many decades, people’s lifestyles have changed. Now, instead of regular use of the formal dining room, the kitchen is the heart of the home and its next on their list but they’re finding it difficult to find cabinet makers who will take on this type of work.

‘We only use the dining room rarely when we have visitors or for birthdays,’ Andre says.

Jessica discovered that the first owner was Alfred Mault from Birmingham. This talented civil engineer helped to build part of the Glasgow and South West Railway near Kilmarnock, the Neilston and Barrhead branch and the Caledonian Railway near Rutherglen. He wrote a textbook on Natural Geometry, which was published in London in 1877. He then moved to France and as chief engineer designed and built railways for the Compagnie Anglaise, which also held the concession for the sewerage of Paris.

With high testimonials, Mault applied to the Tasmanian Government for engineering work in November 1882. Arriving in 1883, he worked on many government projects including the design of Hobart’s Waterworks Reserve, which borders SoHo. Mault was elected a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1884 and was appointed to the Central Board of Health as Engineering Inspector. He soon condemned the sanitation of Hobart and submitted two plans, one for open drainage, the other for closed underground. He then made plans on the sanitation of Launceston. In 1889 he planned water supplies for several northern towns and sanitation for New Norfolk.

Mault had the innovative idea of packing the walls of his house with coal ash for insulation. This has been an unexpected complication for the electricians working on the renovation!

‘There’s tons of coal in the walls,’ Jessica says. ‘It’s just one of the many surprises you encounter when working on an old building.’

Jessica explains that Mault bought his understanding and experiences from the Arts and Crafts movement in Europe to the house’s design. This movement was a celebration of traditional craftsmanship and a rejection of Victorian industrialisation, with a move back to all things organic and hand-made.

Today there’s a resurgence of studios, galleries and markets featuring the creative work of makers and artisans, a backlash against how commercialised, industrialised and mass-produced our lives have become.

That feeling is strong in SoHo and it finds clear expression in the restoration of Jessica and Andre’s grand Davey Street home.

John Coates and Ros Escott

John Coates came to Tasmania from Sydney in February 1967 to teach in the biochemistry department at UTAS. Two days later he was helping the department’s professor to put out a bush fire at his house in Taroona during the devastating Black Tuesday fires.

John’s partner Ros Escott was living in Melbourne at the time.

‘I told him I’d marry him but I wouldn’t live in Hobart – I thought it would be just too cold,’ Ros says.

Even though she wasn’t really looking forward to life in chilly Hobart, now she absolutely loves living in SoHo.

They started looking for houses in 1990 and 298 Davey Street was the first place they saw. Davey Street has some of Hobart’s most historic homes. The South Hobart section between Elboden Street and D’Arcy Street was originally known as Holbrook Place and in the early days was a favoured address for well-to-do citizens of the growing town.

John and Ros looked at many other houses over three months but nothing quite compared to the first one they viewed.

It was still on the market, so they purchased it nearly 35 years ago.

They show me some amazing drawings by the famous Seabrook family builders, dating from around 1910. The extremely rare drawings are artworks in themselves. The Seabrooks were exceptional builders who built Government House in 1842 and collaborated with iconic colonial Tasmanian architect Henry Hunter on some of Tasmania’s finest early buildings. The detailed drawings reveal that the expansive two-storey, five-bedroom brick house was constructed in 1911 for Sir Henry Jones, one of Tasmania’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Henry Jones had three sons and nine daughters and was knighted in 1919.

John and Ros’s house at 298 Davey Street is the middle house of three and they were all built for Jones’s three daughters. In 298 lived Doris Jones who married professional golfer Theo Sampson. They had four children.

The houses at 296, 298 and 300 Davey Street are all quite different. The Coates’s house has a large circular turret with sweeping views to kunanyi/Mt Wellington and across to another Henry Hunter-designed house.

‘I have Tasmanian ancestry,’ Ros says. ‘Over the road from our house was Birch’s Farm where my great-great-grandfather John Pierson-Row owned land.’

John and Ros’s house is extremely solid, with most walls including some interior walls built in double brick. The property features a grand entrance, 10 and 11 foot ceilings, decorative door handles, ornate fireplaces and an ornate timber staircase.

Many of the rooms include magnificent stained-glass windows in the Art Nouveau style.

‘The only downfall is that it’s expensive to heat,’ Ros says.

Originally the house had gas lanterns and there were eight fire places. There was a coal and wood room just outside the back door. The outside toilet and the upstairs servants’ quarters are shown on the historic plans.

296 and 298 Davey Street were built at the same time and in their day were the height of luxury. John tells me that 296 was once the home of legendary Tasmanian-born Hollywood actor Errol Flynn.

Ros says you’re steeped in history when you live in Hobart.

‘It’s all around you,’ she says. ‘Living in a house that’s part of the island’s heritsge is an absolute privilege. We’ll never leave – SoHo is our home now.’

Sulyn Lam

Sulyn’s property is a one-acre north-facing block that looks onto a beautiful forest and walking track. Every square metre is jam-packed with garden beds and greenhouses, as well as a few goats and free-ranging chickens.

The Hobart Rivulet flows at the base at of her land and it’s usually a peaceful oasis.

‘But sometimes it rages, when there are rainstorms on the mountain,’ Sulyn says. ‘People in the foothills of kunanyi can align their emotional temperament with the moods of the mountain.’

The city of Hobart lies between its guardian mountain and the River Derwent and many locals look to both as a guide to the day ahead. The vegetation changes with altitude and the changeable weather affected by the mountain and the sea can be amazing.

‘Some days It can be raining on one side of my block but not on the other,’ Sue exclaims. ‘And here’s a photo of my garden blanketed in snow!’

The property was once a site for growing blackcurrants for Cascade, where the famous Cascade Ultra C Blackcurrant cordial was made. As a boy, one of her close neighbours Ginteres, who is a world authority on lichen, would pick blackcurrants for pocket money.

Many of Sulyn’s neighbours have been there for many years. Professor Menna Jones is a wildlife ecologist who is involved with Tasmanian devil conservation.

Karen, another neighbour, remembers that many years back her brother brought home a puggle (a baby platypus) and created a habitat for it in the bath. Their mum was furious!

‘You take that platypus back!’ she shrieked.

That’s a very Soho story because we’ve only started seeing platypus in recent years,’ Sulyn says.   

Sulyn’s father was Chinese and her mother Italian, so it’s no wonder she became involved with food.

Sulyn supplies restaurants with her premium herbs and vegetables. She explains that what she does is partly organic experiment and partly work of art – it’s certainly more than a backyard veggie patch but is not quite a commercial market garden.

The clay soil is a challenge. It contained a lot of fly ash from burning coal and some things just won’t grow, but she has a secret compost recipe. It’s a three-step process and one secret is to place the material on a rack so air can circulate. Sulyn shows me the thermometer sitting at 67 degrees.

Digging in her garden can have other rewards! She has uncovered many relics, including old Cascade ginger beer bottles, a Charlie Chaplin figurine which she thinks was used to promote a movie at the State Cinema, a Cascade Brewery barrel bung, a tiny shoe last, callipers and various bottles.

Sulyn and photographer partner Rob came down from Sydney on a whim when the city was becoming so large in the late 1980s.

‘The house was seriously dilapidated with holes in the walls, but it was 1991 and quite inexpensive,’ she says. ‘I cried, thinking what have I done!’

Their Strickland Avenue house near the Cascade brewery was built in 1900 and had a cold water system in the roof which would freeze in winter.

‘I’d have to go to work without a shower,’ she recalls. ‘It was like a rundown country house right in the city.’

Sulyn thinks people once saw Tasmania as backward but now she thinks we’re trailblazers.

‘In SoHo the culture of growing things and enjoying a simpler lifestyle hasn’t entirely disappeared and it’s making a comeback around Australia,’ she says. ‘People are realising that growing your own is fun and more nutritious. It builds community and keeps people grounded and it feels good when we share produce.’

Sulyn goes quiet and gets teary when she explains that what she is most passionate about is watching people achieve success and flourish. This is her greatest reward and is close to her life’s purpose. It’s a trait that she inherited from her father, who had a large market garden and would often donate baskets of vegetables to help those who had little.

She has a photo ‘wall of fame’ featuring many young gardeners who approach her for help.

‘I always say yes,’ she laughs.

Sulyn is happy to offer tips to anybody who asks, including school groups and workers from SoHo’s nearby Hamlet Café. Her good friend and national food identity Hannah Moloney often comes round for a chat.

The topic? Food gardens, of course!

 

Hannah Moloney

As a nineteen-year-old adventurer, Hannah came to Tasmania from Brisbane on a one month cycling journey – a trip that eventually lasted a year. She joined forest protests in the Styx Valley and made close connections with local environmental crusaders. Her Hobart bases were South Hobart share houses, so she quickly became part of the SoHo community.

Twenty years later, Hannah is still close friends with some of the people she met back then.

‘I’ve always been passionate about sustainability, social ethics and values,’ she says. ‘My parents were alternative for their time and were advocates for Aboriginal rights and environmental values. I grew up in the West End of Brisbane, which was incredibly multi- cultural with a lot of activists and creatives.’

One of five children, she says she didn’t really fit in at school.

‘I felt like a square peg in a round hole,’ she laughs. ‘I didn’t see myself going to university so I spend three years travelling Australia by bike, in what I call my self-education university. I think that’s a very valid path for young people when they’re not sure of what they want to do and are under pressure to conform. It’s an intuitive way of living and while some think it’s more difficult, for me it feels easier to be true and follow my instincts and passions. I’ve met many people over the years of travelling who have similar views and they’ve influenced me. That life felt more authentic and affirmed a lot of my values and showed me there is another way to succeed if you look for opportunities or create them.’

In Melbourne, Hannah worked in community cultural development, building and managing school and community gardens and working with refugees in housing estates and low socio-economic areas.

‘But my partner Anton and I felt we couldn’t afford to live in Melbourne so we came to Hobart 11 years ago and bought a SoHo weatherboard fixer-upper with a cottage feel,’ she says.

The house, which is now painted hot pink to match Hannah’s hair, originally had no driveway and was only accessed through a 100-metre staircase in the neighbour’s garden.

‘It was a very steep but affordable property, with majestic views over SoHo and Hobart,’ Hannah says. ‘After four years we purchased the neighbouring block of land, which had a driveway.’

The block is just under an acre and 95% of the land is a perennial landscape to stabilise the slope and create ecosystem health.

‘The topsoil is great for perennials but not suitable for annual vegetables, so we built a no-dig garden with terraces,’ Hannah says. ‘The vegetables need plenty of nutrients and water so we brought in mulch, compost and chicken manure and layered them.’

With plenty of hard work, the terraced garden quickly became productive.

‘During Covid people were contacting me for fresh produce so we set up the food share stand on Macquarie Street and left surplus produce and invited other local gardeners to do the same,’ she says. ‘I also made some free Youtube videos to help people grow food easily. It was very successful – I was approached by a publisher who commissioned me to write my first book The Good Life - How to Grow a Better World. I was reluctant at first but the publisher was persistent and they published my first book about climate action in 2021. It also examined food-growing, where to invest ethically, supporting First Nation Australians and being politically active. It was a huge learning curve.’

Hannah feels right at home here – it’s said that there are more climate scientists per head in SoHo than any other Australian suburb in Australia.

‘In the past I’ve been verbally abused for talking about climate change and climate action, so when I published my first book I was very nervous,’ Hannah says. ‘My work and passion is how to be a good activist and create meaningful change and the book shared concepts that benefit the reader. I’m glad my book helps people start the conversation.’

Her second book, Good Life Growing, is focused on practical advice about growing fruit and vegetables anywhere in Australia. Hannah has also forged a high-profile media career through her appearances as the Tasmanian presenter on the ABC’s popular Gardening Australia program.

Hannah says she met Sulyn Lam through a shared passion for permaculture gardening.

‘Suzi is a great example of how to use your space efficiently and to its maximum,’ Hannah says. ‘She’s a special gem and is so generous and gracious. In return, people often volunteer to help in her garden. Suzi is so connected to her landscape. I always ask her advice, steal ideas and then go home and replicate them,’ she laughs.

Mark Henshaw

As a young boy, I have fond memories of our local family butcher. I remember that special butchery smell, the sawdust on the floor and the butcher always handing me a cocktail sausage to savour while he filled my Mum’s order. Our butcher always knew exactly what she wanted from memory.

Mark’s on Macquarie has that same feeling – a familiar and friendly vibe that you just don’t get in a supermarket. I sit down with Mark for a chat and he greets me with a large and meaty working man’s handshake.

‘My Dad was a butcher in Sydney and my Mum was a butcher’s cashier, that’s how they met,’ Mark tells me. ‘I’d help out at the shop before and after school.’

He shows me a wonderful photo of himself at the age of seven, dressed up as a butcher for a school fancy dress event.

‘I had the full outfit, including sausages and knives, which I took to school,’ Mark laughs. ‘I wore my Dad’s oversized uniform!’

Mark says it’s the camaraderie between butchers and the work ethic they share that attracted him to the profession. He explains that it’s hard physical work, with a lot of carrying, cutting and preparation.

‘Most butchers I know have a great sense of humour,’ Mark says. ‘It’s one of the few professions where you prepare the primary product and serve the customer face-to-face, so you have to be good on the counter. I was extremely shy as a kid, but the shop experience forces you to communicate.’

After training with his father, Mark opened his first butchery at Harbord near Manly when he was 21 – but by 25 he’d gone bust.

He moved from Sydney to Tasmania and eventually joined West Hobart Gourmet Meats, where he was the manager for 13 years. He thought the South Hobart butchery business had potential, so he bought it from Terry Carless almost six years ago. Terry had owned the shop for 34 years and he still helps out at Christmas.

‘When I applied for a business loan, the bank said my plan to double the business turnover in twelve months was a bit fanciful,’ Mark tells me. ‘The bank manager told me in a hushed tone to aim for a more realistic 50% increase. But within two years, the turnover had tripled and that’s happened twice since then!’

Mark believes that his customers are attracted by the quality of the products and the fact that it’s a true family business.

‘My daughter and my wife are both apprentices,’ he laughs. ‘That’s probably unique in Australia.

We often know what people want before they ask us and we know most customers by name. I’ll often cut to order to get the perfect thickness of steak to suit each client.’

With cost of living challenges, Mark is selling plenty of chicken and cheaper cuts of meat, although he does still sell scotch fillets with a marble score of 4+, which is quite unusual. The shop has become so busy that they have opened until 5pm on Saturdays and have a couple of uni students helping out.

‘Gourmet sausages are our biggest seller,’ he says. ‘When I did my apprenticeship, the choice was beef or pork, thick or thin. But today we offer 14 different gourmet sausages, which take us all day Sunday to make. It’s definitely a 7-day a week job!’

In 2023 Mark entered his Spicy Lamb Merguez Sausage in the National Sausage King Award.

‘I tasted and tested the recipe every day for two months before I entered, tweaking the spices,’ he says. ‘The best sausage has fatness and flavour – you can’t eat a lean sausage.’

All that work paid off – Mark won the trophy!

‘When I accepted the award, I was not prepared at all. In my speech I gave a special thanks to my talented and lovely fourth year apprentice who helped me with the recipe. People were probably thinking that sounds a bit sus, most fourth year apprentices are quite young – but it was my wife!

They told me that if I win it three times, I’ll go into the hall of fame,’ Mark laughs.

News of his award has travelled widely. Interstate visitors call in and take sausages home with them, while locals take them across Bass Strait to cook Australia’s best sausage for their friends.

‘We’re always busy,’ Mark says. ‘Afternoons and Saturdays can be peak times but things went really crazy when Covid hit. There were queues out the door stretching down to the post office 80 metres away and the same up the street! People were panic buying and freezing. By the end of each day the cool room was empty. The biggest problem was finding more quality stock because the wholesalers ran out.’

Mark explains that he had a limit of four people in the shop at once.

‘People were buying 10 kilos of mince at a time,’ he recalls. ‘The cabinets were soon empty and we were selling straight out of the cool room. Locals appreciated that we found stock and stayed open. I think it put us on the map.’

Jane and Charlie McCarthy 

Jane McCarthy moved from Ireland to Perth with her family when she was 11.  She lived there for 30 years and studied music at the Perth Conservatorium.

She and her husband Charlie moved to Tasmania in 2017, buying a house in SoHo on the corner of Wynyard and Macquarie Street, opposite Bear With Me café. From her studio window she sees the large platypus mural on the cafe’s wall.

‘I felt like I was coming home,’ Jane says. ‘Tasmania is so much like Ireland and different from the rest of Australia.

The people here are genuine and beautiful. Living in SoHo is like living in a village. Everything you need is within walking distance.’

Jane and Charlie are both music teachers. Jane teaches piano and flute in her front-room studio, with a portrait of Django Reinhardt on the studio wall.

Charlie built his own studio in the back yard. His gypsy jazz band has played regular gigs at the nearby Cascade Hotel for the past eight years. Charlie’s students, who range in age from 4 to 80, are often invited to participate to give them experience in performing. He also puts on concerts at the SoHo Arts Centre.

Jane was devastated when Covid hit.

‘I almost cried when I saw the shops shut and people struggling,’ she says. ‘I was going crazy without any students so I decided to start cooking. I’d had experience running a busy cafe in Albury, where I made some bottled products. After talking with Michelle and Mark at our local butcher, MISH (Made In South Hobart) was born.’

Jane’s first products were cauliflower pickle and tomato relish. Her designer friend created the labels, which feature the SoHo platypus.

‘Michelle said that customers wanted more choice, so the MISH range has grown to thirteen products including three salts and a variety of pickles and relishes, all Tasmanian-made,’ Jane says.

The mustard includes Tasmanian seeds and the sea salt comes from the East Coast. Jane also uses Cascade stout and Huon Valley Simple Cider. Her oak-smoked Tinderbox salt is flavoured with pepperberry and kunzea salt bush.

‘That one is delicious with anything barbequed,’ Jane says. ‘I also make a sweet-salty liquorice sea salt to sprinkle on eggs, meat or even popcorn. Our bush chook salt mix includes lemon myrtle. My ethos is to use local ingredients whenever I can.’

Offers came in from the mainland to ramp up production but Jane was nervous about making such a quick expansion, so she declined.

‘I want to keep MISH smaller and localised,’ Jane says. ‘Making lots of money is not as important as keeping the integrity of the product and maintaining my lifestyle.’

Jane has a typically quirky Irish sense of humour that shines through, even in sad times. When her pet dog Fionn passed away, Jane had him cremated.

‘A landscaper friend suggested I scatter Fionn’s ashes in the garden, under the lemon tree,’ she says. ‘The tree doubled in size and was soon groaning with lemons and falling over the fence onto the street!’

Jane uses the fruit from Fionn’s tree to make delicious lemon and yoghurt cakes, as well as adding them to some of her MISH products.

She makes me some of her favourite Irish soda bread sandwiches, which include three cheeses, smoked wallaby and her Janey Mac Irish Relish. Quite the entrepreneur, she sells homebaked soda bread at her music gigs.

‘Being Irish, I love a drop of whisky,’ Jane says. ‘My favourite is Hellyer’s Road pinot cask, made in Burnie.’

We walk down to the rivulet for a picnic with sandwiches and whisky and Jane plays me some wonderful tunes. I show her the remnants of Tasmania’s first distillery, which she’s surprised to know was right here in SoHo.

Kate Caire

The purchase of SoHo Wholefoods at 435 Macquarie Street completed a circular journey for Kate Caire. She grew up in SoHo and over the years she’s lived in Darcy Street, Wentworth Street, Washington Street and Cascade Road.

Kate recalls playing down at the Hobart Rivulet, well before the walking track was established.

‘I spent my childhood roaming around exploring SoHo and the rivulet,’ she recalls. ‘It was a great place to grow up.

No one worried about us, we could play there all day. Our favourite places were four dilapidated old cottages where we often played until late afternoon.’

Kate says SoHo has always had good foodie roots. As a child she loved fish and chips on a Friday night and pizza on Saturday. She also has good memories of Christmas street parties at 47 Wentworth Street, where everybody brought their own plate.

Kate has always been involved in hospitality and has an infectious sense of humour.

‘Every time I see a TURN LEFT WITH CARE sign I have a little chuckle,’ she says.

She has a local radio cooking spot and runs a cooking school called Carnation Kitchen with her best friend. They promote creating international cuisine at home using delicious sauces made without additives.

When I suggest that she is SoHo’s own Nigella Lawson, Kate smiles.

‘She’s my icon,’ she whispers.

Kate recalls being propped up on a restaurant kitchen table when she was only four, making curly carrots while her father turned sizzling steaks at the Franklin Grill in the Huon Valley.

‘Dad also operated a tea gardens and a pizza shop in Franklin,’ she says. ‘I was destined to work in hospitality. There was really nothing else I wanted to do. I’ve never completed any formal cooking qualifications. I just learnt on the job, working in dozens of Hobart eateries in the 80s and 90s.’

Her father and mentor is John Caire, one of Tasmania’s pioneering restaurateurs, hospitality entrepreneurs and cookbook authors. John came to Hobart as assistant manager at Hadley’s Hotel in 1971 which was owned by Federal Hotels, he then went to the new Wrest Point Hotel Casino as conventions and banquet manager in 1973.

He has established and operated some of Hobart’s most iconic restaurants, including JC’s, one of the first restaurants in Hobart in 1976; the Oyster Cove Inn at Kettering, a bistro at Tattersalls Hotel and the Astor Grill in 1982; The Ball and Chain in 1987 and until recently, The Maning Reef Café in Sandy Bay, with Kate alongside as manager for the past 13 years.

John purchased a butcher shop at the top end of Macquarie Street and began making gourmet sausages in South Hobart in the early 80s, which preceded the Wursthaus. He also invented Tasmanian raspberry chilli beer and brought wood-fired pizza ovens to Australia, building and selling them as well as operating three wood-fired pizza shops in Hobart.

Aged 11, Kate worked on her father’s mushroom stall promoting Huon Valley Mushrooms. The tempura mushrooms took off, so every summer Kate worked at the Taste Festival and travelled to festivals around Tasmania including Festivale in Launceston, the Bream Creek Show, Huon Valley Festival and Agfest in Carrick.

‘Dad and I always joke that I’ve had a 30 year cooking apprenticeship without actually getting any papers,’ Kate laughs.

In her father’s honour, she has a tattoo of his chef’s knife on her arm.

‘I did love working with Dad at The Maning Reef Café, but it didn’t really feed my soul like SoHo Wholefoods does,’ Kate says.

Kate wants her business to be a thriving hub, a space with a sense of community, a place with heart and soul where people can meet.

She’s big on sustainability, getting rid of single use plastics, promoting local products free from pesticides, getting back to grass roots, stopping the reliance on large supermarkets, focusing on organic and carbon miles and sustainability.

‘Filling up your milk in glass bottles or buying cereals in your own containers means you are able to make choices about the quantity you want to purchase,’ she says. ‘And organic whole foods taste better too!’

Kate loves SoHo’s community vibe and activities with a sustainability focus like the community’s annual Resilience Fair.

While we talk, Kate’s Mum arrives with a homemade cake for the shop and Kate needs to get back to work as the SoHo Wholefoods customers roll in.

‘It’s a real family affair,’ she laughs.

John and Nick Papageorgiou

After selling fruit and veggies from his Macquarie Store for a number of years, Emmanuel Papageorgiou wanted a change of scenery, so he bought the Port Cygnet Grocer in the Huon Valley. Emmanuel brought his two sons John and Nick from Greece to Tasmania, to take over the SoHo shop.

‘That was 15 years ago,’ says Julie Whitney, who has been working at the store for 18 years. ‘The shop was about a third the size then, with not nearly as many choices. The two boys changed all that!’

Today, it’s more of a supermarket than a corner store. There’s a large deli and a variety of artisan breads and pastries.

‘Dad’s Cygnet shop supplies the Macquarie Store with lots of great Huon Valley produce,’ John says.

Julie always looks forward to coming to work.

‘It’s one big happy family,’ she says. ‘We’re on first-name terms with many of our customers. 

Some will come in to buy one item, while others do their whole week’s shopping. Many older SoHo residents don’t want to battle the traffic at the big supermarkets. They like our relaxed  approach, with time for a chat and a hand to take the groceries out to their car.’

Julie says that customers often buy extra food items and donate them at the food stand across the road, to give a helping hand to local people who are doing it tough.

‘It’s a good example of the community spirit you find in SoHo,’ she says.

The Papageorgious’ shop is situated on the corner of Macquarie and Darcy Streets. Next time you’re up that way, call in and say hi to John, Nick and Julie. One, two or all of them are sure to be there!

Moggie Triffitt

Moggie Triffitt hails from New Norfolk’s famous Triffitt clan.

He’s had a colourful life and it shows in that wonderful weather-beaten look of a long-lost sailor from centuries ago. Give him a nudge and wink and you can tell that plenty of stories will flow.

Moggie considers himself a lucky man and this is confirmed by two upward-facing horseshoes at the entrance to his apartment.

He’s often seen perched with a beer or two at his prime position on the porch overlooking Macquarie Street, conveniently close to the supermarket, Cascade Hotel and bottle shop.

When friendly passersby, including skipping school children, wave to Moggie on their journey, he feels included in the life of SoHo.

He’s usually spotted wearing his favourite T-shirt with the slogan Save The Planet - it’s the only one with beer!

It would have to be Cascade, brewed and bottled just up the road, of course!

Bob Staddon

 

Bob Staddon was born in Devon in the UK and trained as an upholsterer in the small Welsh village of Cwmaman. Bob recalls seeing ‘Welsh royalty’ coming through the town in their limos – Harry Secombe, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones.

‘We’d all stop work and wave as they drove by,’ Bob says. ‘The whole town would be in on the special occasion.’

Bob came to Tasmania in 1984 on a short trip to visit his wife’s family and then decided to stay, he found the property at the bottom of Wynyard Street in SoHo.

‘With its huge garage it seemed ideal for my upholstery business, so I moved in,’ he says, in his deep and thick Devon accent.

In his workshop there’s always some relaxing 1940s swing and big band music wafting in the background.  Bob’s property runs right down to the rivulet so there’s also the peaceful sound of flowing water.

‘Some days, after a big rain, it nearly drowns out the music,’ Bob says.

It’s ironic that he’s an upholsterer surrounded by industrial history.

From his workspace Bob looks out through huge windows onto a neighbour’s house which was once a tannery, one of seven on the rivulet.

‘In the early days, tanneries and other industries made the rivulet one of the most polluted waterways in Australia,’ Bob explains.

As early as 1824, the Hobart Town Gazette was reporting that many ‘disgusting pollutions’ were being thrown into the stream, and people were both bathing and emptying waste in the waterway.

One of these tanneries opposite Bob’s property operated right up until the mid 1990s. Bob says it had an ‘existing use’ licence, which meant it could operate like it did in the 1800s.

‘It was a tin shed shanty town, an awful, putrid mess with two deep, stinking cesspits.

‘The workers were a pretty rough bunch,’ Bob recalls. ‘They’d arrive at work at the crack dawn in their noisy V8s and make a hell of a racket. I once did a tour of the tannery and the owner showed me some new equipment that he claimed would filter the water before it went back into the rivulet, making it as pure as Melbourne tap water.

Bob wasn’t convinced so he asked the owner to have a taste himself. He refused!

‘I did made some complaints about the place,’ Bob laughs. ‘Then early one morning the owner and a couple of thugs turned up on my doorstep and accused me of dumping rubbish on their site!’

Bob wasn’t the only one who complained. A Mercury article in 1990 shows Bob and two neighbours outside the tannery by the rivulet, voicing their concerns.  Public concerns eventually saw the tannery closed down.

One of Bob’s recent upholstery project has been a $2200 restoration of a vintage couch.

‘Cats had chewed the hell out of the corners,’ Bob chuckles.

‘I should be grateful to SoHo cats, because they give me lots of work.’

In his workshop are material samples with different coloured price indicator tags relating to wear ratings. Bob explains that manufacturers use 12 kilogram disc-shaped weights that vibrate back and forth on the material. This Martindale abrasion rub test measures the durability of fabric, according to how long the discs can oscillate across the fabric before it starts to show distress. The test is named after inventor J.G Martindale, who penned many books in the 1970s such as ‘A Selective Bibliography Of Textile Engineering.’

Fabrics with a Martindale rub count of 20,000-30,000 are suitable for general domestic use like chairs and sofas in the living room. A score of 10,000 is suitable as a decorative fabric like cushions or for accents. A score of 30,000 or more means that a fabric is commercial grade, which can be used on heavy duty furniture and would be suitable for any commercial environment.

If you buy cheap furniture made overseas you may be unknowingly buying it with a low Martindale score. Bob says this furniture has a short life and is often more expensive to repair than the initial cost.

‘There’s often an emotional connection to furniture,’ Bob says ‘People want their Dad’s favourite chair restored, even though it’s an expensive job.'

He knows an upholsterer who’s a bit dodgy – when he talks about a ‘sentimental job’ it means he can charge a lot because price is no objective.

Pride of place in Bob’s workshop are two commercial Singer sewing machines that date from 1947 and still work perfectly. Like these vintage machines, the principles and craft of upholstery are timeless. Bob is a specialist in old furniture repair, and is one of the few who can repair and rejuvenate antique furniture that is upholstered with horse hair, coconut fibre, flock and springs. These old fillings are regaining popularity because they have fewer chemicals than modern-day materials.

Bob has a great 30 year working relationship with Jesus Rendo in Darcy Street who has a furniture restoration business. Rendo sends him upholstery work and Bob sends restoration work up to him.

‘I think I might do antique work too cheaply,’ Bob laughs. ‘I just love the idea of preserving beautiful furniture, bringing valuable things back to enjoy a second life.’

Neville and Lyn Rodman

Neville Rodman was working as a mechanic and also in sales at Hobart’s Co-op Motors, which commenced operations in 1913 and still proudly carries the mantle of being the longest-serving motor dealer in Australia. He and Lyn were attracted to the fact that the Neptune service station, built in the early 1950s, included accommodation upstairs. The Thurley family had owned and operated the business for many years before the Rodmans bought the Skyline. Ever since they have enjoyed the panoramic views over Hobart from their sunny Huon Road perch.

Neville is a fourth generation Tasmanian with convict ancestors on both sides of his family. As well as being a mechanic, he is a storyteller, a loveable larrikin, a musician, a philosopher and an activist.

‘Ask him anything and he’ll have some wise advice or thoughts,’ Lyn says. ‘He’s a kind and generous soul with a good heart.’

‘When we purchased the Skyline, petrol companies weren’t allowed to own a station,’ Neville explains. ‘They were all run by independent operators, so as an owner-operator, the focus was on service, checking tyres, cleaning windscreens, topping up oil and water. Today, even though we still offer driveway service, many people like to self-serve. But our customers here know they can ask for help or advice, so we get to know people well. Sometimes I feel like we are almost counsellors!’

‘But sometimes,’ Lyn laughs, ‘they’ll just sit in their car and toot the horn or simply stand by the pump waiting for service!’

Modern petrol stations lack any real character. Not the Skyline, which is unique and strongly reflects the Rodmans’ personalities. Their station is a museum dedicated to fun, with an eclectic mix of artwork, collectables, vintage posters and postcards sent from overseas by locals. You’ll often hear Neville’s Argentine tango music and the blues wafting out from the garage. Sadly, places like this are quickly disappearing.

Neville is famous for his wicked sense of humour.

‘There was a signwriter here redoing the Lubritorium sign over the garage,’ he says ‘He asked me what sign I wanted over the other working bay. There’s an old Morris Minor in there, still resplendent in primer paint, which I’ve been restoring for many years so I suggested the Procrastitorium! A lot of people probably don’t get the joke’ Neville says.

Some days Neville plays the piano in the Procrastitorium. Lynn says people even stop to be photographed by the sign.

‘Most customers are very friendly and respectful’ Neville says. ‘Not much annoys me except when people bring in their own parts that they buy online or elsewhere and want me to fit them. Now, I want to guarantee my work but I can’t if I don’t know where the goods came from, so I prefer to order in parts locally and put a small margin on top, which is normal. Would you take your own food to a restaurant and ask them to cook it?’ he asks. ‘Well, it’s the same thing.’

Neville has various signs in the garage and up around the station. He says today people are too scared to be eccentric or outspoken, they’re scared by political correctness.

‘At the Skyline they can say what they want without judgement,’ he says. ‘I even put up a No Political Correctness sign in the driveway to encourage it,’ Neville says. ‘Another popular one with customers is Cheerful Whistling Permitted.’

Neville says a car pulled in recently with a trailer stacked up high with various furniture and I asked if they were heading for the tip.

‘No, we’re moving house,’ the driver replied.

Neville’s most eccentric and hilarious invention is his magic wand which he waves over car parts in front of the customer to give them a special Skyline magical fix.

‘We served a customer one day who was travelling across Australia,’ Lynn says. ‘He waved the wand over and under his vehicle, half believing its magical powers!’

Lyn says they have had a few disagreements working together but life is mostly very harmonious.  Lyn explains that originally she only did the accounts for the station while working at Medicare. Then she worked on the driveway and looked after their two children upstairs.

‘I once suggested to Nev that he look after the kids for the day and I’d look after the station. That arrangement only lasted a day,’ Lyn explains with a smile.

Neville says he doesn’t mind the idea of the controversial cable car proposal but thinks it should depart from the northern suburbs, not SoHo.

‘My real concern is that when it’s operational they will decrease or stop access to the mountain by road,’ he says. ‘Over the years I’ve seen many families without much money stop in and get $20 worth of fuel so they could get to the top of the mountain with the kids. It’s a kind of cultural ritual. Every winter families go up and come back with snow on the roof and happy kids in the car. I feel that the cable car could stop that access and these families could not afford the cable car trip. I’m concerned that it’s going to be an elitist situation where only those who could afford it would use it. Having said that I did have a sticker made saying No Cable Scar,’ Neville explains with a grin.

Lyn says she’s noticed a large proportion of SoHo and Fern Tree residents are left handed.

‘Now I wonder what could that mean?’ she asks.

Sinistrality, a term for being left-dominant, runs in families and causes all sorts of practical problems when living in a right-handed world. Nearly 40 years ago, a researcher from the University of Virginia in the United States tested whether left-handers, out of necessity of living in a right-handed world, were more creative. This study suggested that they were. Left-handers were found to be more fluent, flexible, original and elaborate when drawing pictures and answering questions, giving explanations, imagining consequences and coming up with different uses for objects.

“I’d say that just about sums up SoHo people,’ Lyn laughs.

What’s changed over the years?

‘Well, we don’t sell nearly as much petrol as we used to,’ Neville says.

Lyn also notices that previously people on pushbikes would come up the steep Huon Road hill from the city and rest at the station, get their breath back and then continue their trip.

‘But these days,’ she says, ‘they breeze past on their ebikes without stopping!’

Rachel Andrew

British-born Women’s Health Physiotherapist Rachel Andrew grew up in Hong Kong then lived in Sydney before moving to Tasmania in 1993. She has been living in SoHo since 2014.

‘I was attracted to the island life and the cooler climate,’ Rachel says. ‘Geographically, Hobart is a bit like Hong Kong, with mountains and a wonderful harbour.’

A dedicated conservationist, Rachel has run for the Greens on a couple of occasions.

Together with partner Colette and their dogs Pepper and Honey, she has renovated her 1950s house on Adelaide Street and established a well-stocked garden, which has glorious views out over SoHo and up towards kunanyi. Rachel and Colette love growing their own produce.

‘After living in a Hong Kong apartment, there’s something magical about picking fruit and vegetables from your own backyard,’ she says.

One of her specialties is plum liqueur, which takes six months to mature – but her apricot ice cream is much quicker.

‘I just remove the stone, blend the apricots with condensed milk and freeze,’ she laughs.

As a member of an ocean swimming group, Rachel enjoys springtime, when the water starts to warm up, the days lengthen and locals catch up in the sunshine outside SoHo’s cafes and shops.

‘There’s a real sense of a long-standing community here,’ she says. ‘Our next door neighbour Bill Saunders was the youngest man on Adelaide Street when he first moved here.  Now he’s the oldest, at 92. When we renovated the house, Bill, who was a skilled plasterer, would pop over and give us his expert advice. He’s a very caring man. He walks around the block and chats to everyone on the way. He gives our dogs a treat over the back fence every day.’

Rachel’s passion and profession is in the area of women’s health. An experienced physiotherapist, she works with women who suffer pelvic floor pain.

‘Many clients who come to me experience severe pain and often feel isolated because of their condition,’ she says. ‘These are problems that happen to one in four women. Some women find it awkward and avoid treatment. They may be suffering for 15 or 20 years and in some cases even become suicidal.’

Surprisingly, many GPs aren’t aware of the specialised nature of her work. Some doctors simply suggest that sufferers do some pelvic floor exercises, but Rachel says that can actually worsen the problem. So Rachel’s practice now gives medical practitioners access to the Vagenius training program, offering clinician-to-clinician online courses focused on women’s pelvic health.

‘There’s a lot of shame and taboo passed down through generations,’ Rachel says ‘After childbirth, women just expect that they will have problems. It’s been deeply engrained that these things are normal and you just have to put up with it. Many women don’t know there’s another existence. 70% of women talk about it but don’t take action.’

Rachel’s goal is to promote her profession to women and doctors. Treatment is often life-altering.

‘It’s wonderful to help women get back in control of their bodies,’ she says.

Rachel has a great sense of humour and she loves puns. On her desk is a promotional pen labelled I’m cliterally the best – and she belongs to a women’s musical group called The Ukalesbians.

Rachel is a keen knitter and her sense of humour is reflected in the craft.

‘My wedding corsages were colourful knitted vaginas,’ she laughs. ‘Sometimes humour is the best way to get a message across!’

Helen Cushing 

After hearing Bob Brown speak about saving Tasmania’s wild rivers, Helen Cushing came to Tasmania to take part in the 1982 Franklin River Blockade.

‘I had friends in Darcy Street and I camped there before I went to the Blockade,’ Helen recalls.

She had previously attended a permaculture course in Victoria with iconic Tasmanian teacher Bill Mollison.

‘Bill co-created permaculture, an agricultural system that works with nature, rather than against it,’ Helen says. ‘I studied horticulture for two years at Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Sydney and then completed a Bachelor of Arts in communication.’

She returned to Hobart in 1996 and reconnected with many friends in SoHo. Helen was looking for a place with a north-facing aspect and she eventually purchased a house in Wentworth Street, adding a deck to enjoy the fantastic views and sun. As a keen gardener, she also wanted a good-sized block to create a substantial garden.

Helen started yoga classes in 2003 and became a yoga swami, teacher and educator of future teachers in the Satyananda tradition.

She began teaching yoga with a group of Vietnam veterans.

‘I got to know them well and developed my own specialised method to teach people how to recover from trauma and stress-related experiences,’ Helen says. ‘Many of the men have had life-altering experiences and many say that yoga was a re-set that saved their lives.’

Helen became interested in why the veterans were doing so well from yoga, when conventional approaches like psychology and medication had not achieved results.

‘I read up on the nervous system and what actually happens with yoga’s breathing practices and relaxation,’ she says. ‘I developed my own understanding and method of addressing their traumatic histories and experiences through yoga.’

Helen made the award-winning short film Heroes of Peace with film-maker Ryan Walsh about her work with the war veterans. Many of the vets were conscripted and had no debriefing after experiencing the horrors in Vietnam. Helen explains that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a debilitating mental condition that affects approximately 20% of people involved in armed conflict.

‘The film profiles four war veterans who thought they would never feel joy again,’ Helen says. ‘It highlights how they found hope, healing and peace through yoga and meditation.’

In 2016 Helen also self-published her book Hope – How Yoga Heals the Scars of Trauma.

‘Some of the Vietnam vets I work with started with me 20 years ago,’ Helen says. ‘Many of the men are in their seventies and we meet once a month for a coffee. They join in social events and there’s a support group of older men who assist new members.’

Helen has completed a post-graduate course at Sydney Uni on peace and conflict studies.

She is internationally-recognised as a specialist yoga-for-trauma teacher and researcher.

Her work has taken overseas to work with Colombian victims of their 50-year-long civil war  and war veterans in the former Yugoslavia. In 2023 she was invited to work with Ukrainian refugees and military personnel in Finland.

Helen is a keen horticulturalist, permaculturalist and dedicated gardener.

She has worked on Gardening Australia for the ABC, contributed to the ABC’s organic gardening magazine and has published a children’s gardening book. In 2005 Helen published Beyond Organics : Gardening for the Future, with a focus on how gardeners can contribute to the environment.

‘My SoHo garden has fruit trees, vegetable plots and a small hot house – as well as a lot of pademelons, who have moved in and kind of taken over,’ she laughs.

Helen believes that at least a third of every garden should be planted with indigenous local species.

‘That’s how we can support the local ecology,’ she says. ‘We need to understand that what you do and what you plant actually matters to the environment.’

Deborah Wace 

Growing up in the Canberra suburb of Barton, Deborah was influenced by her father Dr Nigel Wace, a researcher into botany and geomorphology at the Australian National University.

‘My father was a sounding board for my many curious questions about the natural world,’ Deborah says. ‘He was also a passionate environmentalist and one of the early Franklin River protestors in the 1970s.’

She studied under famous printmaker Jorg Schmeisser at the Canberra School of Art but after falling in love with the Tasmania’s wilderness, Deborah moved to live here in 1989. Her early Tasmanian adventures included a three-week rafting expedition on the Franklin and exploring Bathurst Harbour by sea kayak.

Deborah is an acclaimed botanical artist, fabric designer and professional printmaker.

Through her highly detailed and intimate artwork she creates a window into the botany of Tasmania’s wild and often endangered plant communities, including native orchids, rainforest species, buttongrass and marine plants.

‘I draw inspiration from the extensive plant specimen collection that I have gathered and digitised over 30 years,’ Deborah says.

She combines digital plant images with drypoint and monoprint original artwork and etchings, layering them to create rich and complex Tasmanian botanical designs that are printed on fine fabric, wallpaper and limited edition prints.

‘Through my artwork I can advocate for Tasmanian flora, threatened species and habitat, all of which need a voice,’ Deborah says. ‘I want my art to encourage people to establish connections and engage with nature.’

For more than 20 years, Deborah lived off-grid with her family at remote Lune River in far southern Tasmania. She was one of many involved in the Recherche Bay campaign, which worked to protect and highlight the natural and cultural values of the area. In 2003 she was part of the community campaign to protect the north east peninsula of Recherche Bay from being logged for profit. Visited by French scientific expeditions at the end of the 18^th century and the site of a recently-discovered experimental garden, this landscape is a touchstone to some of the most remarkable natural and cultural history in first-contact Australia.

‘While at Lune River I pressed, drew and printed many of the plants that were first collected as type specimens by early French naturalists, including the biologist Jacques Labillardière and gardener Félix Delahaye’.

Deborah built a varied collection of 190 species from a range of plant habitats. After pressing the specimens, she drew them under her microscope and created large-scale drypoint plates for printmaking using an etching press.

This practice echoed the methods of the French d’Entrecasteaux expedition to Recherche Bay in 1792-3, which resulted in a unique collection containing significant botanical, zoological, cartographic, geo-magnetic and ethnographic/linguistic material. The expedition’s scientists collected in the vicinity of 5,000 species and 30 genera on this early scientific mission.

The specimen collections of the head naturalist, Jacques Labillardière, form the backbone of Australia’s earliest herbarium collections and resulted in the first published work on the flora of Australia, the two-volume Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. Deborah’s 2018 Churchill Fellowship took her to Europe to study the botanical records of this and other French expeditions to Tasmania.

She also loves song and for many years was a member of the a capella group Arramaieda, singing songs of social justice and sense of place. In a recent commission with a musical connection, Deborah designed and produced a bespoke artwork that features on the underside of the lid of the Van Diemen’s Band’s harpsichord, which was officially launched in Hobart in August 2023. A special addition to this internationally-acclaimed chamber orchestra, the harpsichord travelled all the way from Titus Crijnen’s workshop in Sabiñán, Spain to Australia. Deborah’s design masterpiece showcases 31 Tasmanian botanical species and multiple drypoint and monoprint elements that were created especially for the harpsichord.

In 2023 cinematographer Michael Gissing created ‘Threatened Species Dance’, a mesmerizing slow-motion dance featuring Deborah’s Tasmanian plant designs and set to the incredible music of Linsey Pollak and Lizzie O’Keefe. Dancers move poetically to the music, draped in swathes of Deborah’s luscious silks, featuring rare and endangered Tasmanian species such as Lomatia tasmanica and giant kelp.

‘It’s a gentle reminder of the fragility of our natural world with its precious flora and fauna, and our need to protect it,’ she says.

Deborah lives on the fringe of the SoHo bush with huge eucalypts shimmering, rustling and changing colour outside her window. She loves the rain and the winds that sweep around the mountain’s gullies. She is passionate about kunanyi/Mount Wellington’s diverse plant and animal habitats and concerned that its ecology is under threat.

‘I find nature completely fulfilling and I weave myself into it, seeing the small details in tiny orchids and the patterns made by moisture held trapped by lichen and moss,’ she says.

An accomplished singer, Deborah can often be found happily wandering the mountain tracks, deep in conversation and song with the plants.

‘I find it nourishing and healing,’ she says.

Heidi Woodhead 

Heidi Woodhead came to Hobart from Sydney at 16. She attended Hobart College, where she was mentored by art teacher and painter Wayne Brooks. With her talent, Heidi could have chosen Art School but instead completed a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and history, with honours in poetry and crime fiction.

‘I wanted to write crime fiction novels,’ Heidi laughs. ‘But in 2001 I applied to join Tasmania Police and in 2004 I became a forensic crime scene examiner. I married a policeman as well!’

Heidi said her police work took her into a very dark place, living day after day in a world examining how people can harm each other and themselves. She hit a wall psychologically and sought professional help.

‘The demands and stresses of the job became too much,’ she says ‘I was advised to take up painting again as therapy, to reconnect with beauty and creation.’

Heidi is still a police officer but she now works with CCTV, processing and enhancing digital evidence and painting in her spare time.

Her attention to detail in the world of forensics is reflected in her artworks, which have a strong sense of realism. Heidi’s work is full of texture and mood and her ability to paint glass in particular is astonishing. She mostly focuses on still life flowers that she finds in her garden and wandering the SoHo streets. She exhibits her work at the Handmark Gallery in Salamanca Place and sells out each show. Heidi has just completed Tulip Fever, a series on tulips that she describes as an outpouring of happiness and joy.

Heidi and husband Adrian purchased their 1830s house in Adelaide Street in 2005 and 10 years later began the extensive renovation.

‘The house was originally a cottage built for William Birch's daughter Eliza and was once part of Birch's Farm, the hundred acre farm that extended from Davey Street to Salvator Road and from Elboden Street to D'Arcy Street,’ Heidi explains.

Dr Thomas William Birch (1774-1821), a surgeon, merchant and ship owner, arrived in Hobart Town in May 1808, as medical officer on the whaler, Dubuc. He was one of three surgeons in the town. Birch thrived in the new colony and became sufficiently wealthy, through land speculation, to build Macquarie House, which still stands today at 151 Macquarie Street. When Governor Macquarie visited Van Diemen's Land, he chose to stay with Birch, rather than at the then inferior Government House.

Birch's Farm was sub-divided into seventy-five lots in November 1838. The sub-division created a triangular piece of land bounded by Holbrook Place (now Davey Street) to the south-east, Macquarie Street to the north-west, newly formed D'Arcy Street to the west, and Elboden Street, which formed the apex of the truncated triangle. The original intention was to create half-acre house and garden allotments, true suburban development. However, due to depression and other circumstances, the original intention of the trustees of Birch's will was never achieved. Lots were sold off and further subdivided. This explains South Hobart's varying plot sizes, from large mansions with spacious gardens, to small conjoined workers' cottages. This diversity of dwelling size accounts for much of the present-day charm of the suburb.

‘In the 1900s two spinsters lived in our house and a local remembers it as a boarding house with chickens inside,’ Heidi recalls. ‘It was very run down when we bought it.’

Much of the timber from the old house has been reused in the refit. They didn’t want anything new so Heidi found a huge old timber-cased fridge from the Strahan picture theatre. It’s an amazing piece about two metres long and 1.5 metres high and very heavy. It has eight doors with original brass latches and it was restored by refrigeration mechanics.

I climb up her very narrow, well-worn and steep Baltic pine stairwell to the attic. The wall beside the stair was lath and plaster, a building process used to finish interior dividing walls and ceilings. It consists of narrow strips of wood (laths) which are nailed horizontally across the wall studs or ceiling joists and then coated in plaster. The technique derives from an earlier, more primitive process called wattle and daub.

‘I stripped the plaster off but seeing all the hand-cut strips of timber and tiny nails, I couldn’t bear to remove or cover the laths, so they’re left exposed like a lattice work,’ she says.

It looks rustic and very effective. The low-ceilinged attic with a patchwork of old Tas oak floorboards feels like a transformation to another world.

‘It probably had a fireplace and chimney when servants lived here,’ Heidi says. ‘The house has had many transformations and alterations over the years.’

Now it’s a studio, a world full of easels, canvases, sketches, brushes, half-squeezed paint tubes and that wonderful smell of fresh oil paint and turpentine.  Dormer windows with glorious views look out over Adelaide Street to kunanyi/Mount Wellington.

During the renovation, the builders moved the bathroom and added a huge living room and kitchen extension with three-metre high exposed sandstone walls and reclaimed timber beams. Large bifold doors open onto a deck, courtyard and a terraced garden with established trees.

Outside, Heidi and Adrian began removing the old concrete render to reveal beautiful sandstone walls. They carefully chipped away for months and learned the skills of repointing to repair what had fallen away.

‘Our neighbour Bill Saunders was a plasterer who had worked on the exterior of the house many years ago,’ Heidi says. ‘He suggested we should leave it alone because who knows what we might unearth? And he was right – under the render we found that one corner of the house was filled with bricks held in place by chicken wire!’

In the course of the work they found many curiosities behind walls and under floorboards. Two convict-era pointing tools with string wrapped around the handles to aid measurements were found behind a fireplace in one of the bedrooms. Heidi shows me an old printer’s tray with more than 150 tiny compartments all filled with treasures – a piece of shot, old newspapers, a very old bus ticket, a rat’s skull, twisted and rusty convict nails, an old razor blade, cigarette butts, various wallpapers, tiny tobacco pipes, an old Fantales lolly wrapper, crockery and coins, buttons, tufts of horse hair and a 1956 penny.

‘I think it’s a fascinating time capsule display of our house’s nearly 200 year history,’ Heidi says.

Georgina Richmond 

Born in the United Kingdom in 1964, Georgina has always been interested in vintage clothing. When she was just 14, she would attend the iconic Kite Market in an old area of Cambridge and she loved to visit jumble sales with friends to pick up amazing collectables.

‘I come from an African and English heritage,’ she says. ‘There was racism in England in those days. I was called horrible names and I felt very different.’

The atmosphere was not helped by Conservative MP Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech in April 1968, which was racist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions.

‘I grew up in a very artistic family,’ Georgina says. ‘My granddad was an artist and an engraver. Creativity was always encouraged so I was always drawing and painting.

I went to Cheltenham Art School in Gloucestershire and did a BA in sculpture and painting. I met my partner Michael in 1985 and followed him back to Australia.’

When Georgina came to Tasmania, she says there weren’t many people of colour here.

‘People would tell me I must be Aboriginal,’ she says. ‘I was never asked about my heritage, it was a different kind of racism. I had no friends and I felt very isolated. Thankfully Tassie has got a lot better and is much more multicultural now.’

After coming to Hobart, Michael and Georgina rented in Battery Point. They could see a business opportunity at Salamanca Market so they put a rug on the pavement and sold various books and collectables.

‘We made $100 at the first market and we celebrated out with a slap-up dinner.,’ she says. ‘As our sales built up we were offered the chance to join the Kookaburra antiques shop on the corner of Hampden Road. I sold vintage clothes and Michael handled the books. It was a fantastic thriving business. We were at Kookaburra and Salamanca Market for 25 years.’

Georgina and Michael rented a charming old house at 50 Wellesley Street, then saved enough to buy their own home.

‘Everyone was friendly and we had lovely neighbours, so we purchased 14 Wellesley Street, with a massive garden and a sunny aspect,’ she says. ‘

We love living in South Hobart and we often walk along the track to the Waterworks Reserve.

The Kookaburra building changed ownership and the rent increased enormously so they moved into SoHo and are now situated at 418 Macquarie Street, in a beautiful shop with a lovely frontage. It was originally a shop front for Watkin’s bakery which began operation in the late 1800s.

Some days you might catch Georgina singing in the shop.

‘I had singing lessons for 10 years with local vocal coach Helen Todd and I began performing Celtic songs and learned the harp,’ she says. ‘I was in the EHOS opera and was asked to join a Flamenco group, so had to learn Spanish songs.’

Georgina’s artistic talent saw her enter the John Glover art prize 12 years ago and her work has been accepted twice. She has exhibited at the INCA gallery and now exhibits at Wild Island Gallery in Salamanca Place. She recently complete a series on SoHo and kunanyi and wants to have an exhibition every year.

‘People love our Kookaburra shop in SoHo,’ she says. ‘Some days we have great book days, with many collectable volumes sold. Regular customers often buy top-quality second-hand women’s clothes from me, so they don’t have to go to the city.’

Matthew Newton and Jane Hutchinson 

Matthew Newton is a photographer and cinematographer who came to Tasmania from Sydney 30 years ago.

About 12 years ago Matthew and partner Jane Hutchinson cycled up Cascade Road to view a rare empty block with a north-facing view down over the rivulet. It was an ideal location, only a short stroll from the rivulet and SoHo’s supermarket and cafes.

Their house is wall-to-wall conservation. Jane is a leader in nature conservation, with over 25 years as a director of multiple and varied conservation organisations including Pollination Foundation, Nature Conservancy Australia Program, Australian Land Conservation Alliance, Accounting for Nature and Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

She joined the innovative team at Pollination Foundation in 2021 to lead the development of nature-based markets to flow finance to indigenous people and local communities, who are the stewards of 80% of the world's critical biodiversity. She was Tasmanian Australian of the Year 2016 for her contribution to nature conservation.

Matthew is also a life-long conservationist. His outstanding skill and flair for nature photography grew from his deep commitment to the natural environment.

Their home on the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington suits them both perfectly.

‘We don’t really have a backyard, so the rivulet has become that,’ Jane says. ‘We pop out of McFarlane Street onto a little bridge and we’re right there.’

Matthew describes SoHo as a self-contained hamlet.

‘In SoHo you don’t feel like you are in a city – it’s a unique place to live,’ he says. ‘It’s  bordered by the mountain, the bush and the rivulet and because it’s in a valley it has geographic boundaries.’

Matthew will take on most photographic assignments – a news job or a portrait one day, reporting on a bush fire for national news the next, but he’s most famous for his powerful image of Alana Beltran, known as the Weld Angel. Matthew’s haunting photograph received worldwide exposure and made Alana the face of forestry protests in 2008.  Matthew has been documenting the Tasmanian forest story for twenty years.

‘The quality of Tasmanian light is very special,’ Matthew says. ‘Everything in photography is about the light, so it’s a privilege to work anywhere on our unique island, whether I’m in the forests, in the mountains or even in the streets of SoHo.’

One of his other achievements is his astonishing documentation of the shy albatross. Matthew collaborated with the Tasmanian Albatross Fund to undertake the long-term documentary project 'On Albatross Island'. This tiny 18 hectare patch of rock off the northwest tip of Tasmania in Bass Strait is home to around 10,000 shy albatross. These famous storm birds have made their home here for centuries, kept safe by the isolated location. But isolation has its downsides, with wild weather caused by climate change starting to take a toll on shy albatross populations.

Matthew was embedded with the scientists in the longest-running albatross monitoring program in the world.

‘It’s an amazing bird and I wanted to tell its story,’ Matthew says. ‘I spent four years taking images and making a film. Albatross mate for life and each pair returns to the island to breed. The young chicks are banded and then they return after seven years to start a new generation.’

Matthew’s astonishingly beautiful work, shown to an international audience, promotes why these fascinating creatures should be protected.

I sheepishly ask about his thoughts on the proposed SoHo cable car. ‘Perhaps there should be a Festival of Bad Ideas and the cable car should be on that list,’ he chuckles.

Emma and Vaughn Bennison 

Growing up in Brisbane, Emma spent her first few years of education at a blind school and had a blind music teacher from the time she was five. ‘I thought if he can do that, there’s no reason I can’t’, Emma explains.

Emma met her future husband Vaughn at the national braille music camp for blind children.

They started corresponding when they were 17, and travelled to visit each other soon after. Vaughn lived in Lismore in NSW, and Emma studied classical voice at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Emma was 20 when she moved to be with Vaughn, and they soon married. Their daughter June arrived in 2003 and daughter Lucy in 2007.

Bringing up two children when you are both blind had its challenges! ‘We had a very childproof house and had baby gates so we could isolate certain areas. If we were cooking dinner, I had to have a baby gate up in the kitchen to avoid a catastrophe! Emma explains.

The children probably took advantage of the fact that Vaughn and Emma couldn’t see so they attached bells to their shoes, so when they tried to sneak a snack out of the pantry, they could hear it!

Coming from a cookery background I’m amazed at how they managed to cook at all but Emma says because they’ve been blind from birth they haven’t known any different and they’ve have a lot of training. ‘You can’t compare the experience of a blindfolded person with a person who is blind,’ Emma explains.

I’m also amazed at how they became musicians, playing professionally for 45 years. ‘It’s very much like touch typing, how you learn to type without looking at the keys, it’s quite intuitive’ Vaughn says.

Emma has just recently released her latest album Fine Line and one song on the album, He’s Not Human, is about guide dogs and the weird assumptions people make – that they can see when the traffic lights change and read the numbers on doors. Vaughn jumps in with ‘most people think it’s about him!’ He has a wicked sense of humour.

Fine Line was the album of the week on 612 ABC in Brisbane when it was launched and Emma also did a live performance on ABC Hobart.

Emma says the music meets her own needs in the sense that the music speaks a lot about the issues of disabilities.

Emma is presently the Chief Innovation Officer at Life Without Barriers, before that she was the CEO of Blind Citizens Australia and previously CEO of Arts Access Australia. Vaughn and Emma are passionate about employers employing more disabled people. ‘If companies don’t employ disabled people how can they possibly understand the needs of their customers?’ Emma says.

The Bennisons moved to Tasmania in 2012 when Vaughn got a job managing 7RPH Print Radio Tasmania. They moved in to SoHo 12 years ago, their charming 1920s house is on Davey Street, a short walk from Hill Street Grocer and the southern outlet.

Vaughn loves that’s its very close to the city and they have easy access to amenities. Emma loves walking up the rivulet with her father and is amazed that they live just five minutes from the city and have this beautiful haven on their doorstep. ‘It’s like a dream come true’ Emma says. ‘It’s often difficult for blind people to access nature. I do get worried by the bikes that go whizzing past, I’d like a designated walking track’ Emma says.

Vaughn says SoHo is often colder than the city which he notices when he walks to Hobart. Vaughn says that one morning at the outlet the light poles were completely covered in ice then only one block later at Antill Street they were normal.

Emma loves the cooler weather after living in Brisbane for years. ‘I go back to Brisbane and think how did we ever survive in this climate’ Emma says. Vaughn thinks it’s fascinating and humorous that when they lived in Brisbane if they lived in a fifty year old house it would become a tourist attraction and when they moved here they lived in a 130 year old house which wasn’t uncommon.

Vaughn likes it that many of the older buildings are still in SoHo and that SoHo hasn’t changed much geographically. He appreciates that the South Hobart Progress Association are very active in preserving SoHo’s heritage. He also the smell of woodsmoke that lingers in the frosty winter air.

Emma would really like it if they made the southern outlet easier to cross, perhaps with an overpass or tunnel. It’s such a busy road to navigate. Vaughn says he’s been complaining about it for 12 ½ years.

Both their two daughters and a friend all live at home and are students. Emma says they are all learning to drive ‘and they all want their own cars’ Vaughn laughs.

Emma says they need to get their 80 hours of driving experience and friends and neighbours offer to assist by taking them driving. Emma says it reminds her of how kind and generous the community is.

They love Hill Street Grocer for its exceptional variety and that’s it’s a three minute walk and they also deliver. ‘Hill Street and the butcher across the road are wonderful’ they agree. ‘People behind the counter help us to find things’, Emma loves online shopping, ‘that’s very handy for us, we can be more spontaneous’.

Vaughn also likes the way Hobart people still refer to BWS in Davey Street as the Aberfeldy bottle shop and call Woolworths Purity when it’s been change for 25 years!

Emma really misses the Macquarie Street food store and the eclectic mix of customers which was an easy walking distance. And Mike Dutta, the owner, was so genuine, it was a great place to meet people and upstairs they had a basket of toys for kids to play with.

John Snapper Hughes 

Philosophers often say the journey is more important than the destination – it’s what you see feel and experience through life that makes it rich and fulfilling.

For John Snapper Hughes, that idea may be his mantra.

A nationally respected and deeply experienced designer and builder of wilderness walking tracks, John Hughes is a legend in a specialised field.

Known to all as Snapper, he says he can’t remember where the name came from.

‘I guess I was probably a young whipper-snapper,’ he laughs. ‘And it stuck!’

John can camp out for days building walking tracks in the Tasmanian wilderness, often using tried and tested techniques that he learnt from track pioneers like Gary Witzerman, who worked on the Overland Track in the early 1980s.

‘It’s not like a real job,’ John chuckles. ‘It’s more like getting paid to go bushwalking. And it’s rewarding to know that thousands of people will follow the tracks we build and use them to enjoy the landscape in safety.’

Snapper John says the aim of sensitive trackwork is to work with nature.

‘The orientation of the track depends on the lay of the land,’ he explains. ‘We avoid cutting any more vegetation than is absolutely necessary. It makes the track more interesting if you have to navigate around the trees. The goal is to design tracks that wear well and have character and personality.’

Snapper John’s tracks are carefully hand-crafted, unlike machine-made tracks, which are more damaging to the environment.

‘You have to feel your way when you’re building a track,’ he says. ‘The aim is to create a safe contour so the water runs off. You may need to use rock steps or zig-zag switch backs, sharp bends which go from one direction to almost the opposite. If no rock is available, you can add a timber step, using treated pine, cypress, macrocarpa or even celery top and King Billy pine, which is still good after 20 years.

John lives on Turnip Fields Road on the edge of SoHo and Fern Tree. In 2008 he planned and designed the Cascade Track, which starts at the Cascade Brewery and runs beside Old Farm Road and comes out at the main fire trail. This track provides a link from the edge of the city to the network of tracks and fire trails in Wellington Park, but is also a good option for a walk in the bush close to the city.

The vegetation along the track is quite diverse, from open forest to fern-filled gullies. There are numerous wallaby runways that cross the track and a lovely arched stone bridge is built at the first creek crossing to commemorate Peter Degraves, the founder of Cascade Brewery.

At the end of the track you can continue up kunanyi/Mount Wellington via the Myrtle Gully Track. The charm of this journey lies in the waterfalls and rivulets sprinkled throughout the trail. Snapper John built the stone arch bridges, with their spans up to two metres.

‘The Cascade Track is well-used and the HCC has a good maintenance program,’ he says.

Another popular track is the full-day walk to Wellington Falls. Rather than walk the full 12.7 kilometre distance, many people cycle the Pipeline Track then leave their bikes and follow the Wellington Falls Track to the lookout.

‘There are some exposed high-points and it is quite remote,’ Snapper says. ‘You can’t remove all the risks, but the council has posted signs warning about potential dangers.’

John has also worked on the renowned Zig Zag Track, a 100-year-old route that is one of Tasmania's finest day-walks.

‘This is a short but challenging track that starts at 750 metres above sea level and snakes its way up to the top of kunanyi /Mt Wellington,’ he says ‘It takes walkers up through subalpine and then alpine country, with views of the towering crags of the Organ Pipes, down to the River Derwent and out into Storm Bay.

The North South Track from Glenorchy to The Springs is another of Snapper John’s creations.

‘This was one of the first mountain bike tracks on the mountain,’ he says. ‘ Now there’s a new one from Strickland Avenue that meets up with the North South Track.’

‘Walkers don’t like mountain bikes on walking tracks, although most of the riders are pretty considerate,’ John says. ‘But it does annoy me when bikes skid on the walking tracks, making grooves that cause erosion.

The HCC has an excellent online guide to mountain tracks and good signage is placed at key locations. John says that the mountain has quite a few secret tracks and huts and even an ice skating rink!

‘Our days at work building tracks are usually pretty mundane, meeting occasional walkers and mountain bikers,’ Snapper explains. ‘But we do get the odd surprise. Early one cold, misty winter morning, my team was heading up to Myrtle Gully. We came around the corner by the falls. Perched on a huge rock were two naked girls and a photographer. They simply smiled and we kept walking. Now that was a day to remember!’

Andy Crawford 

Andy Crawford grew up roaming the tracks and trails of kunanyi/Mount Wellington. After getting into mountain biking, he and his mates explored further and would sometimes sleep overnight in one of the secret mountain huts they discovered.

‘It was a magical playground, right on our doorstep,’ Andy explains.

They played in the creeks and rivers, went rock climbing on the Organ Pipes and discovered trails and tracks from the early days of timber-getting on the mountain.

Andy was first employed by Hobart Water as an educational and environmental officer and part of his job was to manage the drinking water catchments on kunanyi.

He is a strong environmentalist who believes that the origins of conservation of the mountain probably goes back to very early days when Hobart’s water was being exploited for profit by Peter Degraves at The Cascades. The people of Hobart had to forcibly take their water rights back.

Andy says there’s a web of unmapped trails on the face of the mountain.

‘Wellington Park actually stretches from Mountain River and Crabtree in the Huon Valley to New Norfolk,’ he says. ‘The kunanyi/Mount Wellington we see from the city is only around 10% of the total park.’

The mountain itself formed millions of years ago and subsequent erosion of the sedimentary rock has shaped its distinctive profile over time.

Much of Hobart’s water supply relies on the mountain. Sixteen different catchments flow into storages on its eastern flanks. A pump station near the Fern Tree Tavern can divide the water between the Waterworks and Ridgeway, which feeds the Kingston area. Associated with the water supply is some historically-significant infrastructure from the 1800s, including Silver Falls and the Pipeline Track to North West Bay River.

‘Most tourists drive up to the Pinnacle, look at the view, take a quick photo then drive back to the city,’ Andy says.

‘But the mountain has so much more to offer and many more stories to explore. The views are great – but the tracks are better!’

So in 2019, Andy and a partner Andy set up Walk On kunanyi, a mountain walking track tour business. They offer a variety of day-walk experiences and have also included gourmet picnics, using local cheeses and MISH (Made In South Hobart) relishes, pepperberry quince paste and wallaby sausages from local butcher Mark Henshaw, all washed down with a refreshing Cascade Pale Ale.

Led by experienced and knowledgeable guides, their tours offer an immersive experience that allows guests to connect with the natural world around them.

Another Walk On kunanyi experience is Wild Wellness, which coaches curious and intrepid guests through the Wim Hof cold water breathwork method, finishing with an icy plunge in the North West Bay River’s crystal waters from kunanyi's alpine plateau.

Walk On kunanyi also offers a sea to summit walk that connects six different tracks to reach the Pinnacle. The tour begins on the Hobart waterfront, then climbs via the Hobart Rivulet in SoHo to meet the Cascade Track behind the brewery before following the Myrtle Gully Track to Junction Cabin. The route continues on Hunters Track and the Organ Pipes Track, finishing by climbing on the Zig Zag Track to the summit.

‘There are plenty of rests along the way,’ Andy says.

This walk features a steep transition of climate and vegetation as it ascends the eastern face of kunanyi from sea level to nearly 1300 meters in about 18 kilometres.

‘You go from a coastal lowland bush environment to temperate rain forests and then into subalpine forest, then above the tree line into full alpine vegetation,’ he says. ‘There are few places on the planet where you can do that in under 18 kilometres.’

The weather difference can be extreme.

‘It can be comfortably warm in the high teens in the city but on top of kunanyi it can hit -5 degrees, with wind chill down to -15,’ Andy explains.

Another tour, Under The Organ Pipes, starts at The Chalet then walks beneath the cliffs, with awesome views up to the soaring dolerite columns.

Groups also walk to discover the Octopus Tree off Shoobridge Bend. In the forest is a towering 200 year old eucalypt, with thick spreading roots like tentacles gripping a huge boulder.

‘I’ve been told by palawa people that this location is where women’s business would have occurred,’ Andy says.

He has a deep respect for original owners of the land, which is why he won’t consider a cable car in any form.

‘The mountain has significant meaning to palawa people,’ he explains. ‘Would you put a cable car on Uluru? Well, kunanyi is just as special to the palawa.’

Andy has been told that the muwinina people created tracks as they moved through the landscape, carrying their fires with them on their journeys and using medicinal plants such as bracket fungi that they found in the mountain’s forests.   

Other Walk On kunanyi tours visit the stone ruins on the Icehouse Track and introduce some of the mountain’s fascinating characters, like Henry Woods and his wife who lived on the mountain in the 1800s, bushranger Rocky Whelan who lived in a cave in the early 1800s, English naturalist, geologist, and biologist Charles Darwin who reached the summit in one day in 1836 and a hermit hairdresser Danny Griffiths who lived for many years in Lone Cabin in Myrtle Gully at the edge of Hobart. There are still huts that only locals know about and Andy is very protective about their location.

Recently Andy started the very popular kunanyi After Dark experience. During the colder and darker months between May and September), guests meet at the Springs on kunanyi/Mt Wellington, warm up by a fire in the cabin and learn about the southern night sky and the mountain’s unique nocturnal wildlife.

‘People can bring their own cameras and telescopes and photograph the Aurora, if we’re lucky,’ Andy says. ‘We have a laser that shoots three kilometres into the sky to identify stars.  You can see the Southern Cross and Milky Way quite clearly. People love animal spotting for wallaby, possums, owls, pademelons and bats and occasionally we hear Tasmanian devils.’

There’s also an evening tour with a palawa guide, exploring the night sky and learning that indigenous people have a uniquely different connection with the stars.

Sky, forest, stone and water – they’re the elements that led Andy to create Walk On kunanyi.

Andy met iconic track designer and builder John ‘Snapper’ Hughes years ago when he was upgrading the track into St Crispins Well, a convict-cut sandstone weir that blocks the creek and directs water through cast iron pipes along the Pipeline Track.

‘I was in awe of how Snapper John made natural stone into a mosaic jigsaw puzzle on the ground,’ Andy says.

Andy says that kunanyi water is the best in Australia, winning many national awards.

‘Whenever I travel I really miss that beautiful crystal clear taste,’ he says.

Ben and Penelope Clark

Ben met Penelope in 2007, while in Hobart for a friend’s wedding. Four months later he moved from Adelaide to live in Tasmania. He works for Parks and Wildlife, holds a masters degree in environmental management and has a keen interest in urban planning. Pen works in public health as a community dietitian. She grew up in South Hobart and has a long history of involvement in sustainable activities in Tasmania.

‘We’re both in awe of Tasmania’s natural landscapes,’ Pen says. ‘And we love that we are able to raise our boys so close to nature in South Hobart.’

Ben explains that the South Hobart Sustainable Community is a grassroots collection of South Hobart residents who are working towards making SoHo a more connected, sustainable and resilient place to live.

The group was established in 2008, following a community meeting convened by Lissa Villeneuve and Margaret Steadman from Sustainable Living Tasmania.

‘Lissa was working for Sustainable Living Tasmania at the time and wanted a more local connection to her community,’ Ben says. ‘Many ideas came from that first meeting, including a community garden and food self-sufficiency, more renewable energy, a more cycle-friendly community and more art and events in the community. The growers group has met every month since then, so over 170 times, where typically the host leads a garden tour, excess produce and seedlings are swapped and tales are shared over afternoon tea. Six working groups were formed and Pen and I joined the renewable technology group.’

Solar panels, and solar hot water were expensive at the time, so the group approached solar companies and received significant discounts by purchasing in bulk.

‘We held two community meetings, with overwhelming interest from residents in SoHo and other parts of Hobart,’ Pen says. ‘145 households signed on for the solar panels, and 120 for solar and heat pump hot water systems.’

Other projects include the bulk purchases of electric bikes and electric vehicles, cleaning up the rivulet, commissioning a mural for the badminton centre and a community garden.

Over the past twenty years there has been a steady increase in people commuting using bikes and ebikes. This is largely due to Council improvements to the Rivulet Track over that time, creating a safe connection to the city edge. One of the group’s current goals is to improve the access from the track into the city centre by installing dedicated bike lanes down Collins Street.

‘We want to encourage more cycling,’ Ben says. ‘A recent National Walking and Cycling Participation Study shows that there’s a rapid decline in cycling after 10 years of age, when 65% of children are riding bikes once a week. It drops to about 30% in teenage years and in adult years it drops down to just under 10 per cent.’

Census data shows that SoHo has one of Australia’s highest cycling rates, which South Hobart Sustainable Community is keen to increase further.

Cycling is healthier, time-effective, and very economical compared to most other transport modes Ben says. ‘Electric bikes have definitely increased its appeal. In 2021 we held a test day on the Rivulet Track with Teros ecargo bikes, which can carry one or two children as well a load of groceries. Nearly 20 families purchased the bikes and they are a common sight at school and childcare drop offs.’

Over the years, events have included winter Lantern Parades, film nights and Autumn Harvest Fairs, with the Resilience Fair now becoming South Hobart Sustainable Community’s major annual event. Launched in 2022 at the D’Arcy Street park and community centre, it was driven by the groups co-founder Lissa Villeneuve.

‘Held in November, the fair includes food stalls from the growers groups and representatives from the Bushcare groups, Ben says. ‘There’s also a focus on waste minimisation, emergency kit preparedness and bushfire awareness.’

The fair includes forum events with guest speakers, children’s activities, Tasmanian Aboriginal craft workshops and nature-inspired art and craft. It’s a well-patronised event and is growing in momentum each year.

‘We all share a vested interest in empowering community members with skills, knowledge and resilience,’ Ben and Pen say. ‘The Resilience Fair is an effective and successful way to get those important messages out into our community.’

Ian Higginbottom

Ian Higginbottom’s journey towards the concept of cohousing has its roots back in the 1970s, when he had an idea to purchase land and build some houses with friends.

‘I saw a large block in SoHo that I thought would work, but nothing really concrete came of the idea,’ Ian says. ‘At the time, it was a bit of a fantasy.’

Ian grew up in Hobart and studied physics at UTAS. After graduating he took a year off and travelled with his girlfriend to the United States. He describes it as a ‘Go to America and bring some great ideas home’ kind of trip.

Wandering through Capitol Hill, a hippie neighbourhood in Seattle, he came across a bookshop featuring a volume titled Cohousing – A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves.

The authors, architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, had spent six months in Denmark researching cohousing.

‘My spine tingled – I bought two copies and sent one home,’ Ian recalls. ‘In the book, the authors explore the idea of cohousing as a way for a group of people to work together to develop places to live that offer both privacy and community, along with the values of an old-fashioned neighbourhood – safety, independence and mutual concern.’

Today, Capitol Hill, located just east of downtown Seattle, is a vibrant and eclectic neighbourhood with a distinct bohemian charm. This lively district is known for its diverse community, progressive spirit and bustling arts scene.

Travelling on to California, Ian stayed with friends in Berkley who were interested in town planning. Incredibly, they knew Chuck and Kate, authors of the cohousing book, who lived nearby. Ian spent an evening with them and then went to Denmark to spend three weeks visiting five cohousing communities there.

‘I had a strong sense that this could really work at home,’ Ian says. ‘Back in Tasmania, we had public meetings about the cohousing idea and how it brings people together. My idea was for urban cohousing like city apartments – others wanted to be in the country. We decided on some common criteria. The community had to be within 30 minutes’ bicycle commute to the city, on a bus route and with some sun. We set out to look for a location and decided on land in SoHo.’

The Cascade Cohousing is a co-operative. The dwellings are strata titled and privately owned, with a large communal kitchen and gathering area.

‘The uptake was slower than I would have liked,’ Ian says. ‘We were beginners and our marketing skills were probably less professional.’

Cascade Cohousing was established in South Hobart, lutruwita/Tasmania in 1992 and is recognised as the first cohousing development of its kind in Australia. It is situated at an altitude of 180 metres above sea level at the base of kunanyi/Mt Wellington on country belonging to the muwinina people. There is a mix of 14 private strata-titled small blocks as well as common property comprising a common house, common land that incorporates privately managed exclusive-use areas, car parks, vegetable terraces, fruit trees, a chicken run and established and regenerating native forest.

Ian built his own house at Cascade Cohousing.

‘When I was 12 I built a cubby house that the council asked me to demolish, so my desire to build perhaps started there,’ he laughs.

‘We had a commitment to be efficient, so we built compact houses of around 80 square metres in area, similar to a two-bedroom unit,’ Ian explains. ‘Owners can make use of the large communal kitchen, dining and workspace area.’

Ian still owns his unit, which he rents out. He is now based in Melbourne but travels to SoHo often, staying in the guest bedroom at the Cascades.

The city of Boulder Colorado, which is about the same size as Hobart, has 20 cohousing complexes.

‘The real benefit of cohousing is the social aspect,’ Ian says. ‘Over the years, many children – including my daughter – have lived at Cascade Cohousing, growing up together in a safe and nurturing environment with strong social connections. There’s great potential when it’s done well.’

Linda Seaborn

On the edge of the kunanyi/Mount Wellington bushland are two share-housing communities. Ian Higginbottom set up South Hobart’s first cohousing model, where all the owners have a share in the equity.

SoHo’s second co-op was founded by Linda Seaborn in partnership with the Federal Government.

‘Before the co-op was built, I lived in Wellesley Street,’ Linda says. ‘Many of our neighbours lived like a community, with gates in the fences so people could move between the houses.  But we didn’t have a central place to meet.’

In 1999 an architect was commissioned to design the co-op. There are 25 two-storey houses designed around a central pathway hub and the space has secure fencing. There’s an outside communal area with seating and a large shared kitchen and dining room. Twice a week, tenants cook dinner for the community. Some nights they light the wood-fired oven and cook tasty pizzas.

‘The co-housing concept is village living,’ Linda says. ‘Maori people had the same model, with a common meeting house where everyone comes together and individual houses around it.’

All the tenants at the co-op are eligible for public housing and there’s a waiting list. Linda says the community is attractive because the rent is 25% lower than normal and some can pay less if their income is less.

‘There’s a sense of security at the co-op,’ she says.

‘Once you’re in, your rent remains stable and your lease won’t be terminated, which can happen if you’re renting in the normal market. The system is designed to support those who are struggling socially and economically.’

Linda has noticed that when people have stability in their lives they often go on to further education. She says that having a place to live should be a basic human right, but today that’s not happening.

‘A lot of people want to live in community-style living, single mothers especially,’ she says. ‘Couch surfing with children can be extremely traumatic. A co-op like ours is a soft place to land.’

Linda explains that in a non-equity co-op, the tenants run the business but don’t have any equity in the property, unlike some other cohousing models. The co-op is run on an at-cost model, where the tenants pay a fee and the expenses are paid out of that. This makes it much cheaper than the usual housing market model, where the property owner makes a profit.

‘The rent is based on a sliding scale to income,’ Linda says. ‘We have a mix of people on lower and middle incomes, so those who earn more, pay more. The tenants learn valuable business skills which make them more employable.’

Linda explains that the selection process identifies people who are willing to live communally and to solve conflict if it arises.

‘Housing co-ops are not for everybody,’ she says. ‘It’s only for those who desire a sense of community, who want to run a business collectively and put the time into getting on with others.’

The preparation and sharing of food is a key part of the co-op model. Neighbours from outside the co-op sometimes come to common meals and ex-members often return to bring produce and catch up with friends.

‘It’s good for your mental health to socialise and not be isolated,’ Linda says. ‘In the past, Tasmanians were more community-minded, where children would roam the neighbourhood more freely, but that has changed,’ Linda says. ‘Our co-op has secure fencing and children are free to wander around the internal spaces. The common area has TVs and there’s a safe space for sleep-overs. Bigger kids go down to the bush where there are swings, trampolines and a fire pit.’

Before 2000 in Australia, people could afford home ownership but then the gap between wages and home ownership increased disproportionately. Linda believes the home ownership model in Australia is now broken.

The community housing model was developed many years ago in Europe in response to housing stress, so Europeans have had time to develop their models. Overseas, housing is seen as a social good rather than an investment vehicle. In some countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, community housing makes up a third to a quarter of the total housing market. The European experience proves that more stable housing creates personal stability, decreases crime and improves employment.

Linda believes the co-op model is an important part of the answer for Australia’s current housing crisis. She has just completed a study tour to Europe and America to look at housing co-ops and she is in discussion with the Australian Government on how the model can work here.

‘In Australia we’re living through a human rights crisis,’ Linda says. ‘Housing is a fundamental human need and giving people the power to make decisions over their lives is transformative.’

Uta Green

Brought up in East Germany, Uta Green studied in Weimar, a city famous for its connection to the Bauhaus art and design movement. When the Berlin wall came down in 1989, Uta was 16 and the entire world opened to her.

‘It was a massive year-long celebration, a delirious year of joy and freedom,’ Uta explains. ‘It was the perfect time for me.’

In her fifth year of architectural studies Uta travelled to Tasmania as an exchange student at UTAS Launceston.

‘I discovered the bush and went caving and bushwalking and felt like I was at home in Tasmania,’ she explains. ‘My future husband David Green, who was working in sustainable architecture, was in the same walking club.’

After moving south, Uta became involved with the South Hobart Sustainable Community, serving as secretary on the Sustainable Living Tasmania board and also being involved in the Tasmanian Renew Committee and the Tasmanian AIA Environmentally Sustainable Design Committee. She also tutors young architects at UTAS.

Green Design Architects, her business with husband David Green, has been based in SoHo for 20 years.

‘This is a great place to live and work,’ she says. ‘Our house is surrounded by bush tracks with easy access to nature, it’s a short walk to school and there’s a creek that runs into the rivulet and the nearby Strickland Falls. It’s an easy commute by e-bike to the city and we can engage with the SoHo community, a group of like-minded people who appreciate the quiet life and natural beauty.’

The Greens love Tasmania and the particular challenges its climate poses. They design considering energy efficiency through passive solar design and effective insulation. They have a sensitivity to the unique aspects of each site, its views and the local landscape, its impact on nature and water conservation. The use of healthy and ethically-sourced building materials and high quality construction and finishes is also considered. They design for future flexibility, climate change resilience, longevity and low maintenance. Their houses are generally over eight-stars, the optimum for energy efficiency and economy. They design passive houses and enjoy implementing designs which need little or no heating or cooling.

When I came to Tasmania, I really fell in love with the people and the place,’ Uta says.

‘However, when it comes to construction, some older houses we look at for renovation are drafty, built the wrong way round, with the living room facing the road, which often faces south, with no winter sun. Then the laundry at the back of the house might face north, ignoring the view. The main concern seems to be the position of the Hills Hoist,’ she chuckles.

Many of Uta and David’s clients are interested in passive solar design.

‘The most important consideration is a well-insulated and draft-free building envelope,’ Uta says. ‘We mostly use the northern sun for heating. A passive house adheres to a particular low energy and air tightness standard, involving heat recovery ventilation and minimal heating. The passive house movement has been gaining momentum Australia in the last few years.’

Uta says that while the off-grid house idea is possible, it’s not always the answer because it’s not necessarily sustainable and it can be worse in terms of natural values.

‘Building in the forest will have a detrimental effect on the natural habitat, no matter how low the footprint,’ she says.

Instead, Uta thinks we should live close to where we go to school or work, so we have shorter travel distances.

‘It’s a fallacy that you’re saving money if you buy a cheap house out in the suburbs, because the commuting costs are significant, especially for two or three car families. The other cost is the social cost – but instead of long commutes, you could spend more time with your children or gardening, socialising or relaxing. If you can’t afford a large house in the city, look for a smaller one!’ she suggests.

Uta explains that it’s possible to design houses that are carbon neutral if they can connect to the grid. Rooftop solar panels generate energy to power the house and even charge an electric vehicle and supply green power to the grid.

‘The goal is to get to carbon zero, where over time we pay back the amount of energy that is used to produce the house,’ she says.

‘The government is aiming at 2050, but I believe we can do it now.’

Uta believes that the materials we use should be recycled wherever possible. She suggests that it should be possible that nearly everything can be recycled and waste can be burned to generate electricity rather than burying it in landfill.

SoHo is in a bushfire prone area, so that of course requires special consideration. Uta says we can make houses bushfire resistant but not bushfire proof.

‘SoHo has many shady blocks and steep sites, both of which require skill and creativity to build comfortable and efficient homes,’ she says. ‘We want people to consider wheelchair access so they can stay in their houses longer. SoHo also has many historical houses of various ages and it’s always better to renovate than to demolish and rebuild.’

Uta would like to see more builders who are willing to learn new techniques, but it’s the government that needs to change building standards. Most older Tasmanian houses have a very low star rating. New builds have a minimum limit of a six-star rating but the mainland is at seven. She believes the government should lift that rating.

‘I focus my entire professional life on sustainable building,’ Uta says. ‘It’s good to see that more people are becoming aware that we need to consider the environment and conserve our resources. I love living in Tassie, and particularly in South Hobart. The community is happy, safe, progressive and supportive. I’m very lucky I landed here. It was always meant to be home.’

Jesse Chapman 

Jesse Chapman grew up in Victoria and at the age of 16, he hit the road to travel Australia, working as a fruit picker. His goal was to work for three months then take the rest of the year off.

‘As well as the fruit picking job I worked as a labourer and for a while I was the drummer in a punk rock band,’ he says. ‘Then a close mate invited me to come to Hobart and I felt right at home, so that’s where I stayed.’

Jesse reminds me of a cross between Will Anderson and Tex Perkins.

‘Don’t know about that,’ he chuckles. ‘But I once was mistaken for You Am I singer Tim Rogers. I didn’t let on, I just signed the autograph!’

Jesse has worked at the Resource Work Cooperative – usually known as simply the Tip Shop – for over fifteen years and he is a key person in the organisation. He has been a Weekend Site Manager for much of this time and is well known among the customers and community for being kind, friendly and approachable. He is a great character, a natural storyteller, musician and comedian, with a wealth of knowledge and life experience.   

On the day I interviewed Jesse, some wonderful Hindustani music was playing over the Tip Shop speakers.

‘Music is pretty important to us,’ Jesse says. ‘We always try to have a piano on-site so people can play. It’s nice to hear piano music wafting through the workplace.’

The idea for the Resource Work Cooperative came from a bunch of like-minded individuals who liked to scrounge for useful items at the McRobies Gully Waste Management Centre in SoHo.  These concerned citizens were wanting to address the issue of reusable materials being thrown into landfill.

‘It was an idea that grew and grew,’ Jesse says. ‘We’ve now been operating for 30 years and we employ around 40 people.’

Their goal is to rescue useful material that can be recycled and repurposed and also to provide meaningful employment. They divert over 1.2 million kg from landfill per year. About 30% of the material is salvaged from the landfill site – they are the only people allowed to access the tip itself – and the rest is dropped off direct to the Tip Shop. Their aims are to reduce waste to landfill, create sustainable local employment and educate people about waste reduction.

‘The resource centre is structured as a workers coop, so there’s no boss as such, which is refreshing,’ Jesse says. ‘We have monthly meetings and you get to design your own workplace, which is empowering. People are only allowed to work four days a week. It’s been that way ever since I started 19 years ago. We’re a self-sustainable not-for-profit organisation – 85% of our income goes in wages. The premises are rented from the council.’

The salvaged materials, whether they come from the tip or are dropped off at the Tip Shop, are many and varied.

‘We get all kinds of household items, clothing and building materials,’ Jesse says. ‘Quite often we get valuable items like musical instruments, jewellery, medals, camera lenses, electronics, computers and artworks. We’ve discovered paintings that are worth money. We got a bit excited once when we thought we’d found a Brett Whiteley – but it was a really good forgery and even had his forged signature.’

There are 11 evaluators on-staff, whose job is to assess and research old, unusual and interesting items.

‘A few years back, we had collected so many historic family portrait photographs that we put on an exhibition at the Salamanca Arts Centre called Welcome To Apple Land. Many people came forward saying they recognised themselves or relatives and friends, so we gave the photos away.

‘I’ve found people’s ashes,’ Jesse recalls. ‘They were in an old tea tin, taped up with Mum written on top. I thought of trying to find the owner, then it dawned on me that maybe it was left deliberately. We have actually collected a few containers of ashes. A couple of our workers sprinkled them in the Rivulet and had a small, solemn ceremony.’

One impressive find was a box of costumes from a 1970s Wrest Point production of the show Moulin Rouge. They kept digging and found 80 boxes, a truck full!

‘We tried them on at the landfill site,’ Jesse laughs. ‘I drove back in a feathery sequined number, with my long headdress poking out the window of the truck. Back at the Tip Shop we all dressed up and paraded around. Some were so heavy, they had steel frames underneath. It was hilarious, a real Priscilla Queen Of The Desert moment.

‘When the costumes went on display in the shop, they created huge interest. The shop exploded with activity and everyone wanted to purchase them. One antiques dealer tried to buy the lot, but we said no – we wanted everyone to enjoy them. From a distance they probably looked fine, but up close, they were a bit tacky. I call it our Tassie-Rouge incident.’

Occasionally, the Tip Shop experiences an event they call ‘meat rain’. A couple of times a week, seagulls feast on fish heads and meat scraps that local businesses drop off onto the compost piles. The scavengers take off with their smelly loads and fly over the Tip Shop. But sometimes the loads are too heavy, so they drop them – and they rain down into the shop.

‘We might be standing outside talking with a customer and a snapper head can fall from the sky and land ‘splat’ right next to us,’ Jesse says. ‘The customers are shocked of course but we don’t bat an eyelid.’

One of the Tip Shop workers has produced a photo essay on the meat rain. It’s worth a look – you’ll find it on Instagram @UnofficialTipShop, along with a gallery of other unusual items salvaged or dropped off.

One thing Jesse likes about the job is that no two days are the same. He never knows what weird finds or strange requests are coming next.

‘I arrived at work one morning to find a man asleep in his car,’ he remembers. ‘He presented me with two bottles of wine and nervously asked if he could have back his wife’s prized sewing machine, which he had accidentally left at the shop.  I gave the wine back – maybe it would help rekindle the romance!

‘We get some bizarre requests. One woman asked for a metric tonne of dirty magazines for a anti-pornography protest on Parliament Lawns, but since the internet, we don’t get them. Another unique find was a box of amazingly-tooled bondage gear. At first we thought it was horse tack. We tried the gear on and the council workers looked at us rather strangely.’

Over the past few years, Jesse helped the cooperative establish the Timber Reclamation Department. Skilled and experienced in woodwork, Jesse leads a small team in dressing salvaged timber, bringing back to life many unique Tasmanian timbers including myrtle, Huon pine and King Billy pine. The Timber Reclamation Project was a finalist in the Sustainability Award at the Tasmanian Community Achievement Awards in 2022.

Jesse says it’s meditative and rewarding seeing beautiful timber come back to life.

‘When pulled the Tas oak floorboards out of the Hobart City Hall, we kept finding shoes and hobnail boots under the floorboards, but always the left foot,’ Jesse says. ‘We found out it was a builders’ good luck charm. We persuaded the site manager to throw a shoe under, so he left an old left-foot Blundstone boot down there.’

People often use materials they’ve found at the Tip Shop to build shacks, sheds and tiny houses. Jesse does the same and he says that one of the perks of working there is that he gets first choice.

‘I starting using salvaged materials to build a shack in the Huon Valley. It’s a long-term game and a slow process, little by little. My shack is completely off grid. I build on my days off and I pay for everything I take. I have a wonderful, bright-red enamel cast iron bath in the shack.’

Part of Jesse’s shack comes from a seven-tonne load of hand-cut convict sandstone, which was delivered to the tip site from Sandy Bay when a big retaining wall was demolished.

After 30 years, the tip shop is a success, a significant SoHo organisation that really aligns with the values of the community.

‘It’s a wonderful place for societal misfits,’ Jesse laughs. ‘There’s a strong greeny-leftist contingent of people working here.

‘I rest easy because I’m not making the world worse, consumption wise. And besides, imperfections activate the eyes and brains,’ he says.

Martin Stone

Martin Stone moved into SoHo with his wife Janet and four children in early 1993.  On the day they arrived, they remember receiving a lovely and unexpected surprise – an invitation to the annual upper Wentworth Street Christmas Party.  It’s this sense of community that the Stones still enjoy 30 years later.  Janet is involved with the nearby SoHo Community Garden and coordinates South Hobart Bushcare.  Martin has retired after a career with Forestry Tasmania, so while he still appreciates living within easy walking distance of the city, he now has more opportunity to enjoy living within easy walking distance of Mount Wellington.

‘I’ve developed a strong interest in the historic cultural heritage of Mount Wellington,’ Martin tells me.

‘It’s a history that significantly overlaps with that of SoHo, because the suburbs and urban fringes of today were the forested valleys and mountain foothills of the past.’

Martin shows me an 1858 town boundary marker at Darcy Street. The semi-rural areas beyond were once called Wellington Hamlets, more associated with the mountain than the town.  SoHo did not extend beyond the Cascade Brewery until the early 1900s, when the company built Strickland Avenue and began to sell off parts of its mountain property.

Martin has conducted historical guided tours and is a member of the SoHo Local History Group.  He recently delivered a paper to the Tasmanian Historical Research Association titled Forensic Wellingtology, which explored historic sites on Mount Wellington.

To my good fortune, on a glorious summer’s day, Martin offers to take me on a private tour. I’m interested in what Martin feels are his most interesting historical facts. Perhaps I can glean a few secrets?

‘The Hobart Rivulet was the lifeblood of the new colony,’ Martin explains ‘The original settlement at Risdon on the eastern shore of the Derwent was moved to Sullivans Cove in 1804 primarily because the rivulet provided a better water supply.’

Within months, George Prideaux Harris had produced an amazingly detailed map of the rivulet and its rapids and waterfalls, showing lush, ferny groves and forests of huge trees.  But like so many good things, the rivulet was loved to death –  within only a few decades of colonialisation it was officially declared as a sewer. The Mouheneerer people, who had enjoyed the rivulet with its regular supply of water from the mountain for thousands of years, would have been appalled, but sadly, none of them is believed to have survived colonisation.

Peter Degraves was one of Hobart’s most significant pioneering manufacturers.  He arrived in Hobart in 1824 with a steam engine, a sawmill and a flourmill, along with mechanics to set up and operate them.

‘He was granted an immense property of 2000 acres in the Cascade Valley, which gave him the first use of the water from the rivulet,’ Martin tells me. ‘His sons later bought another 2500 acres on the mountain.  Much of this land has since been re-purchased by the Hobart City Council to form Mountain Park.’

Degraves’ original sawmill commenced in 1825 on the site now occupied by the Cascade Brewery.  He added his brewery in 1832, then two flourmills in 1836 and 1844. He also built brick and lime kilns and produced ships’ biscuits.

Degraves described his beer as ‘the best as a London manufacturer’ using the pristine mountain water.

However a long and bitter war developed between Degraves and the people of Hobart over Hobart’s water supply. Settlement and survival depend on the availability of water – for drinking, growing crops and attracting potential food sources, as well as for washing, drainage and turning mills. In 1831 an aqueduct called the Town Tunnel was constructed to bring water from the rivulet above the Cascade sawmill to the town and waterfront via the Anglesea army barracks.

But Hobart’s demand for water soon began to exceed the capacity of the rivulet.  An exceedingly dry summer in 1834–35 led to a drought and the mills on the rivulet were asked to temporarily cease operation. Degraves refused. Eventually constables ripped down Degraves’ sluice gate and dam. Shortly afterwards a flood occurred and without the dam and sluice gate to control the water, the sawmill and waterwheel were destroyed. Degraves later successfully sued the government for compensation and built a new and bigger sawmill with a huge 40 metre waterwheel. In 1837, as a gift to the people of Hobart Town, he built the magnificent Theatre Royal, now Australia’s oldest theatre. Some say Degraves was ‘an adaptable opportunist’.

Below the Cascade Brewery, Martin points out three small and charming colonial buildings that back onto the rivulet in Degraves Street.  The last of these was originally a fulling mill, powered by a waterwheel and operated by convicts, who used a washing and stamping process to finish the woollen blankets that were produced at the nearby Cascade Female Factory.

Female convicts were originally held in central Hobart Town, but a larger and more secluded location was needed, so the government purchased and converted Lowe’s distillery, which already had three-metre high walls.

In 1823, 20 acres of land, including the area where the Female Factory stands, had been granted by Governor Sorell to Mr Thomas Yardley Lowes. Building commenced in that year of what was to become T.Y. Lowes & Co. Distillery. When Mr Lowes had embarked from England with almost £2000 and goods including alcohol and distilling equipment, not a single legal distillery was operating in Van Diemen’s Land. By the time Mr Lowes opened his doors in 1824, there were at least 16 distilleries in operation.

Martin explains that SoHo was the perfect site for industries which used the rivulet for water and power.

‘The main industries were timber cutting and processing, flour mills, breweries, tanneries, brick-making and sandstone quarrying,’ he says. ‘In the very early days, convict timber-getters had harvested trees along the rivulet and hauled the logs down the valley to be hand-sawn at the government Lumber Yard at Macquarie Point.  Their operations gradually moved up the rivulet as the supply of timber diminished.’

The huge demand for timber in the early colony attracted settlers who were keen to profit from the opportunities.  SoHo’s first sawmill was built by Thomas Stace in 1824, but didn’t function for some years, so Degraves’ mill was the first operational sawmill in the valley. By 1829 a flour mill was established at Molle Street, the first of many in SoHo.  Most mills diverted water from the rivulet along mill-streams so that they could regulate their water-flows.

At Macfarlane Street Martin shows me the wonderful remnants of the Sorell distillery. What remains is a portion of a longer building which was about five metres wide by 60 metres long.

At Wynyard Street we inspect the site of a large tannery.  Colonial tanners had discovered early that the bark of our native black wattle had 10 times the tannin content of the bark of English oak. Tasmanian native black wattle seeds were transported to Africa and India and around the world.

We then inspect the remnants of the Derwent Distillery at Gore Street, where exotic spirits based on hazelnuts, cinnamon, cloves and peppermint were once produced.

These distilleries’ licences were withdrawn by the Distillation Prohibition Act in 1839, when Lady Jane Franklin, the governor’s wife, complained about the high level of drunkenness in Hobart. Tasmanian distilling only recommenced when whiskey pioneer Bill Lark applied for a distilling licence in 1992.

Martin takes me up the Huon Road and shows me the place where a toll gate was built to help fund the expensive Hobart-to-Huonville road. The first stagecoach travelled through on the rough gravel road in 1869. The construction of the new Huon Road also connected Hobart to Fern Tree, from which tracks and later roads eventually linked the city to its mountain.

Climbing Mount Wellington and visiting waterfalls on the rivulet was very popular with locals and visitors to the new colony. Most early walkers would travel up Macquarie Street, past Degraves’  Cascade Mills and up logging roads and tracks through the bush.  At the Springs, the tourists  would stop for tea at Wood’s Cottage, then continue up past the ice-houses to the summit plateau and across to the survey beacon on the Pinnacle.

After 1845, Wellington Falls, around the back of the mountain, also became a much-visited destination. After the Huon road was built, these treks became even more popular because people could travel from town by stage-coach to the Fingerpost Track or Fern Tree before starting their climb.

Martin and I arrive at the first big bend up Strickland Avenue, just below the site of Stace’s old water mill.  A few hundred metres into the bush, a pipe emerges from a dam on the rivulet. Still owned by Cascade Brewery, the dam funnels water around the hillside towards Huon Road.  Peter Degraves had built this dam in 1835 to supply a long water-race that went around the hill to a mill-pond that he named Mountain Lake, poised above his sawmill.  A pipe then plunged nearly 300 feet to drive his hydraulic flour mill, the first turbine-powered mill in Australia.

At Mountain Lake, which still exists, there are now also substantial water reservoirs that store and send water down to the brewery. This system has been in place for many years and today provides the brewery with free mountain water.

Martin also shows me at the nearby Strickland Falls an old 15cm steel pipe which once sent water to the Cascade Brewery.

Above Strickland Avenue at the site of Stace’s mill, in 1865 a little-known pyrolignite factory once heated up wood to produce pyroligneous acid (crude acetic acid) to make chemicals. A chemical spill into the rivulet caused Cascade Brewery to dump a whole brew and caused the Council to shut off the town’s water supply. Martin believes he has discovered some remnants of the short-lived prototype factory, which was demolished and moved to Battery Point.

Concern for the quality of rivulet water has been an issue since the early days of the colony. By 1843 the polluted state of the rivulet and the resultant spate of disease epidemics led Major Hugh Cotton to make an impassioned plea for the incorporation of the City of Hobart. Three years later a Board of Commissioners was elected to manage the affairs of the city. With the flow and quality of water from Hobart Rivulet clearly inadequate to supply the future needs of Hobart, major new waterworks were constructed on Sandy Bay Rivulet in 1861, comprising a storage reservoir, iron pipes and sandstone fluming, designed by Scottish engineer Alfred Mault.

‘While other suburbs also border on Wellington Park, it is SoHo that can claim the earliest and closest relationship with the mountain,’ Martin says. ‘It has a deep connection for SoHo locals, defining their sense of place.  It is our suburb’s backdrop, it moderates our climate and dominates the views from our homes. Old-time locals say they can predict the day’s weather by observing the mood of their mountain.’

There are many small cascading waterfalls along the rivulet and after a heavy rain they can look spectacular. On a hot day locals take refreshing dips in secret waterholes. Today the rivulet is heading back to pristine condition and native animals like the platypus are returning.

Shelah Quirk

Arriving in Australia from Britain in the 1950s, Shelah Quirk came to Tasmania and lived on Summerleas Road in Ferntree, the bush suburb directly behind SoHo.

‘Luckily our house was spared in the horrendous 67 bushfires,’ Shelah recalls.

Needing more space and closeness to schools, the Quirks moved into Hanby Lodge on 118 Cascade Road in 1980.

‘It was derelict and it still had the toilet outside, which was unbearable in winter,’ Shelah recalls. ‘But our family renovated it in the mid 1980s, careful to preserve its wonderful heritage features.’

An historical photo taken in the 1850s shows the small cottage isolated on Cascade Road. Shelah says that Hanby Lodge was a very early workman’s cottage, where nine children were born.

‘It has a ghost,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen her in a long blue dress, standing eerily at the end of the bed.’

Behind the house was the old South Hobart tip, which is now the soccer ground.

Hanby Lodge is of cultural heritage significance as it yields important information about the lives of mid-nineteenth century working class families. It also demonstrates the pattern of early land settlement, early workers’ cottages and mid-nineteenth century construction.

In the 1980s Shelah worked as a nurse at the Royal Hobart Hospital and at the Vaucluse nursing home. By coincidence she now lives in the Vaucluse retirement village in SoHo. Shelah recalls there were small wooded chalets on the Hobart Rivulet for the doctors who did long back-to-back shifts at the hospital,.

‘When I was young I was this innocent little Pommie nurse, but the other nurses soon taught me how to drink and smoke,’ Shelah says.

‘I remember that Mrs Long had the little shop at 365 Macquarie Street and she’d let us know when cigarettes had arrived. My girlfriends also showed me how to pierce my ears and catch the eyes of the boys,’ she recalls with a mischievous chuckle.

Shelah met her husband at the Belvedere, a beloved Art Deco dance hall that shaped the city’s social fabric from the late 1930s. The beautiful parquetry dance floor has found a new home in a house on Strickland Avenue, thanks to the quick thinking of one of the builders demolishing the old dance hall.

Shelah doesn’t believe in taking medications and that has certainly worked for her, because at 88 she is very sprightly, fit and sharp-witted. The day I visit she’s working on a jigsaw puzzle she picked up from the tip shop for $4. Shelah volunteers in the canteen at Vaucluse on three or four days a week and she often walks her favourite SoHo streets and the Rivulet track.

‘I particularly love the Cascade Gardens, which was opposite the cottage where we lived at 118 Cascade Road,’ Shelah says. ‘It was one of the places my Mum liked too and after she passed away we had a little family gathering there.’

For 10 years Shelah was the first manager of the Vinnies shop in SoHo in the early 1990s. With her strong social conscience, she has volunteered for 30 years in various Hobart Vinnies outlets. Located next to the very popular Ginger Brown restaurant, Vinnies is now an important part of the SoHo social landscape and you’ll often find eclectic collectables and treasures in the window display.

Dianne Snowden

Dianne’s links to SoHo are strong. She purchased a house there in 1981 for $22,000 and has lived in the area for many years.

‘We first lived at 94 Cascade Road before moving up the road to number 122, then back down towards the city at 473 Macquarie Street.

Every time we moved we put the fridge on a trolley and pushed it up or down the street,’ Dianne chuckles.

Her four boys went to school in South Hobart and three of them played soccer for the South Hobart team. Dianne went on to write the club’s history for its centenary in 2010. 

An author, historian and genealogist, Dianne studied Women’s History at the ANU in 1975. She is also interested in the stories of her female relatives and was responsible for introducing Family History Studies to UTAS. As a result of a family connection to the New Town Orphan School from the early days of the colony, Dianne founded the Friends of the Orphan School. 

‘All my grandparents were descendants of convicts,’ Dianne says. ‘I have 20 convict ancestors. One of them was Margaret Butler, who was housed on the Anson, a floating workhouse on the River Derwent, where the convict women were given religious instruction and domestic skills training.’

An Irish widow, Margaret was convicted with four other women for stealing potatoes. They bought 11 of their children to Van Diemen’s Land in 1845. Margaret left four children behind in Ireland. Upon arrival, the older children were taken from their mothers and put into the Orphan School.

‘When Margaret’s daughter Mary Ann was just two years old she was sent to the Orphan School and not released to her mother until the age of 11,’ Dianne says. ‘Margaret married a Yorkshireman in Van Diemen’s Land and tragically was beaten to death by him. He was imprisoned at Port Arthur.’ 

Dianne is often surprised that people don’t know more about the story of SoHo’s Cascades Female Factory, which is almost 200 years old.

‘It’s one of five Female Factories in Van Diemen’s Land, but it’s so much more than the bricks and mortar,’ she says. ‘It’s actually about the lives of the women and their children who were sent there.’

Female Factories were established as places of punishment for women charged with further offences after their initial sentences of transportation. The inmates were required to work at a range of tasks including making and mending clothing, carding and spinning wool and laundry duties.

The first Female Factory in the mid-1820s was a makeshift affair – just a few rooms attached to the Hobart Town Gaol. But with increasing numbers of women being transported, plans were produced for a more substantial institution and 1828 the Female Factory opened on the outskirts of Hobart at Cascades. It became the colony’s largest,  expanding by 1853 into five major courtyards accommodating 1000 women and 175 children. At least 2000 children came with their convict mothers. 

‘Women could be punished with six months’ hard labour simply for getting pregnant,’ Dianne says.

‘They served the sentence after they had given birth. It seems incredible to us now that such a prison for these unfortunate women ever existed at all.’   

During International Women’s Year in 1975, the Cascades Female Factory gained prominence when a group of women including UTAS academic Dr Kay Daniels, the Women’s History Group and the Women’s Electoral Lobby were instrumental in the first stage of saving the site.

‘In 1985, Maggie Nettleship, Bob Gordon and I protested against the potential demolition of one of the Female Factory’s sandstone walls,’ Dianne says. ‘Our protests helped raise awareness of its important history. Up until that time, the site had various uses, including a  paint factory and car yard.’

Dianne completed a PhD on women who committed arson in order to be transported.

‘In post-Famine Ireland, many desperate women deliberately committed crimes that led to sentences of transportation,’ Dianne explains. ‘They had various reasons – to become reunited with convict relatives in Van Diemen’s Land and even as an opportunity for a better life, because they were clothed and fed and housed on arrival.’

The number of women transported from Ireland increased dramatically after the Great Famine. Some were sent to the Female Factory to be assigned or for punishment or childbirth. Some of the convict women were assigned to the Orphan School.

‘They were resilient and determined characters who wanted to survive,’ Dianne says.

Control of the Female Factory Historic Site moved to Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority in 2012. Dianne is the president of the Female Convicts Research Centre, which was established in 2004. The Research Centre has created an amazing data base with records of 13,500 convict women. It is freely available online. The Cascades Female Factory Historic Site offers guided tours, which offer visitors a comprehensive introduction to the site and the lives of the women who were imprisoned there. Operating several times each day, the tour provides insights into the history of the Female Factory, the convict system of punishment and reform and offers a glimpse of what convict life was like for the thousands of women transported to Van Diemen’s Land.

Dianne loves the statue of a female convict in a park near the entrance to the site.

‘She’s pregnant and seems so vulnerable,’ she says. ‘As a mark of respect, people often adorn her with flowers, which is lovely to see.’

Chris Ludford 

In 1980 Chris Ludford was looking for her first home. She was attracted by a advertisement describing a two bedroom cottage in Degraves Street, South Hobart, with a babbling brook right behind.

‘It had a concrete front garden and an asbestos-clad fibro lean-to addition on the back.’ Chris recalls ‘I thought, this is fantastic, so I bought it for $27,950.

I received a $2,000 first home owners grant and I had to borrow $20,000 from the bank. I thought, I’m never going to be able to pay this back.

Chris discovered that her cottage and its next-door twin was built by a William Pinkerton Young, a contractor who purchased Yard 5 (built 1850s) and the western half of Yard 2 (built 1832) of the Female Factory

at the public auctions held 1904-5, when all the factory yards and the surrounding acres of the factory reserve were subdivided by the government.

Chris believes that William Pinkerton Young used the bricks, sandstone and lime-washed timbers salvaged from the demolition of the cells and buildings in Yard 2 to build numbers 25 and 27 Degraves Street, which was then known as Harold Street. Chris has a photo that shows the cottages under construction with the demolition of the buildings in Yard 2 in progress.

When she moved into Degraves Street she had no idea of the story of the Female Factory.

‘It was a very industrial noisy area in the 1980s, a woodyard, a car yard and a paint factory,’ she recalls.

The story gets even more bizarre and interesting! Some years after moving to Degraves Street, Chris decided to research her family history and discovered she had an ancestor Helen Brown from Dundee, Scotland who had three children and lived a hard life that put her on the wrong side of the law.

Helen Brown was tried on the 5th of October 1847 in Perth, Scotland and, as it was her third criminal offence she was sentenced to ’seven years transportation beyond the seas for the crime of theft, habit and repute.’ Chris has researched Helen’s history and learned more about her tragic but resilient life story. After the long voyage to Van Diemen’s Land, Helen spent six months on probation aboard the ‘Anson’ a former Royal Navy ship that was used as a prison hulk at Prince of Wales Bay. She worked at needlework and attended school one day a week for lessons and for moral and religious instruction.

As a probation pass holder she was employed in December 1849 by Mr George Hutton in Elizabeth Street for 12 months at the salary of £9, but she appears four months later in April 1850 in the records at the Cascades Female Factory when she gave birth to an illegitimate child she named Isabella. Curiously, and by pure coincidence, Chris’s mother’s second name is Isabel and she also has a niece with the same name.

When Helen had served her sentence for the crime of becoming pregnant, the record shows that she stated that she would return for her child.

Helen was returned to the Female Factory in January 1852 after being sentenced to three months hard labour for being in the company of a known absconder. Then she was charged with talking while on watch duty and sentenced to three days solitary confinement on bread and water.

Tragically Isabella died in the Female Factory nursery in September 1852, aged just two years and seven months. Chris assumes she was buried in the little graveyard in the Factory reserve, only metres from her cottage.

John Lahey is Chris’s partner. His ancestor Robert Nash built the first water mill in Tasmania on the Hobart Rivulet at Molle Street. John takes me out to the backyard and shows me how high the rivulet’s water came to during the recent floods in 2019.

‘Another half metre and it would’ve been in the back door’, he explains.

Chris and John have spent a lot of time planting ferns and regenerating the section of rivulet that passes by their backyard. John shows me the metre-wide pipe that takes the run-off from McRobies Gully into the rivulet. John tells me that Chris has corresponded with the council over many years to put in measures to prevent rubbish from the outfall pipe getting into the rivulet.

Chris is a modest and quiet achiever, a guardian of the rivulet, John and I agree.

Chris tells me about four ladies who lived in cottages on her street. A mobile food truck arrived every week. The ladies, sometimes still in dressing gowns, would huddle around the van collecting their supplies. One of these ladies was Dominica Armanelli. She had little English when she arrived from Italy in the 1950s, but she had her own shortened English vocabulary.

‘She’d invite us over for a ‘cup of coff’ and she delivered her delicious home-made pastas and soups to the neighbours,’ Chris says.

Chris explains that when John came back from fishing trips,  Dominica would be at the front door asking ‘You have fish, you have fish?’

‘She was just a wonderfully warm and generous women who brought a real sense of sharing and community to our little street,’ Chris recalls.

Pete Walsh

During Covid, Pete Walsh was sitting on the banks of the Hobart Rivulet, deep in self-reflective thought like many others, contemplating where life was going during this strange time. He noticed platypuses going about their business and was fascinated by this mysterious creature. He loved returning to the rivulet and watching them at play.

One day near Cascade Gardens Pete observed a platypus with plastic around its body. He experienced an epiphany – this became a moment for him to consider his life as a consumer,  mostly not thinking about how his footprint might be affecting the natural world. Pete felt many emotions at the same time – anger, guilt, shame. He asked himself, ‘How can I assist the natural world by giving something back?’

Pete has learned that nearly ten percent of platypuses die from being trapped in our rubbish.

‘In fact one animal died recently in the rivulet from this kind of strangulation,’ he says.

He made it his mission to increase awareness of the platypus in SoHo and to alert people about how the natural environment and its wildlife is affected by the careless disposal of our waste.

With his experience in photography and IT, Pete established the Hobart Rivulet Platypus Facebook group in 2020.

After launching the site, Pete was inundated by visitors’ messages and media agencies who wanted to know exact locations and times of the platypuses’ appearances. A tough question – and a risky one! He faced a dilemma, realising that too much attention could become extremely invasive for the animals.

‘The last thing I wanted was to see the animals killed with kindness,’ he says.

Pete was reassured when the Australian Platypus Conservation Group reassured him that raising the animal’s profile in a careful way should help create awareness and not affect the animal adversely.

Producer Nic Haywood reapproached him about making a documentary on the platypus. In 2020 with Simon Plowright he had produced Quoll Farm, a beautiful 52 minute documentary about a colony of eastern quolls on an abandoned farm in a hidden valley in the Tasmanian wilderness and highlighting one man’s extraordinary devotion to save them.

The amazing documentary changed Pete’s mind but he found the process challenging because he didn’t want to put the animals at risk, but at the same time wanted to help Nic and his team get the footage.

‘They’re wild animals after all, so you can’t just call them to perform on demand,’ Pete says.

‘Platypus Pete’ has received thousands of emails since the documentary was launched.  He’s also been invited to many schools and he’s fascinated by how the students have taken up the cause and produced their own platypus banners and signage that they’ve placed along the rivulet and on SoHo streets.

A community crowd-funding campaign raised funds for nationally-renowned contemporary artist Jimmy Dvate to create a superb 10m x 3m platypus mural in downtown SoHo, right in the heart of the Hobart Rivulet catchment area.

Aside from being a beautiful piece of art that enriches the South Hobart community, the mural celebrates the presence of platypuses in the Hobart Rivulet

and serves as a prominent daily reminder of the need to care for our urban waterways. The building wall on the corner of Wynyard and Macquarie Streets is highly visible to car, bike and foot traffic.

Pete said they’ve measured the health of the waterway several times, testing the water and studying invertebrate numbers.  Platypuses live on water bugs, which are an indicator of waterway health. Up above Strickland Falls it’s like a platypus smorgasbord with a wide variety of bugs, but then numbers diminish quickly downstream from Cascade Gardens.

Pete is a keen but passive observer of the platypus. With grace and skill the female carefully bundles materials in her tail and takes it back to her nest site. Through a long camera lens, Pete has recently been observing a new baby platypus. The puggle (what a great name!) has been in its burrow for four months and now its mother has just pushed it out to fend for itself. Instinctively it knows how to survive.

With remote cameras Pete is shooting his own series, following the day-to-day life of two platypus families.

After recent heavy rains, when the rivulet’s water level rose dramatically, Pete actually dived in and was tumbling and swimming in the torrents with the platypuses who were revelling in all the new food that the increased flow provided. Pete Walsh is a true pluviophile, someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days. The rivulet has become his second home, the place where he feels at peace and a part of that watery world.

Menna Jones

Professor Menna Jones is a wildlife ecologist at the University of Tasmania. With a special interest in marsupial carnivores, she studies ways to harness natural ecological interactions to conserve and restore ecosystems at a large-landscape scale. She is also a talented wildlife photographer.

Menna’s father was a medical doctor and medical statistician who worked with Fred Hollows in Aboriginal communities and developed a sense for humanitarism and compassion concerning the health of indigenous communities.

‘He could read and write six languages, including Russian, Greek and Welsh,’ Menna says. ‘He was interested in absolutely everything, from mathematics to music. I grew up listening to various styles of medieval music.’

It’s this curiosity in the world and sense of equity that drives her.

Menna was always fascinated by zoology and ecology. From as early as six years old she’d borrow library books on natural history and methodically transfer all the information into her own journals.

After completing honours at university she spent most of her free time volunteering on challenging research projects. She completed 14 trips to remote islands in the Great Barrier Reef, studying seabirds and turtles. This included a month spent camping on Raine Island, on the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, almost 700 kilometres north-west of Cairns. The 27 hectare coral cay supports the world’s largest remaining nesting population of green turtles as well as the most important seabird rookery in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. It is a significant cultural and story place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

‘I wanted to work on marsupial carnivores,’ Menna says. ‘Tasmania has Australia’s richest diversity of these animals, so I came to Hobart in 1990 to complete a PhD. I felt like I’d come home. We purchased a north-facing house in Strickland Avenue, backing onto bush and within cycling distance from town.’

Many South Hobart houses in South Hobart were lost in the 1967 bushfires – in Menna’s  part of Strickland Avenue, only 13 houses survived.

One of the things Menna likes most about SoHo is its mix of residents and its intriguing history.

‘It’s an interesting mix,’ she says. ‘When we moved here, we used to see workers with their Gladstone bags, heading off to the Blundstone factory and Cascade Brewery. Today, there are tradespeople, scientists, political advisers, activists and environmentalists. Menna believes that the SoHo polling booth, along with Byron Bay, has the strongest Green vote in Australia.

Menna grew up in an affluent suburb of Sydney, but she attended a public school.

‘We sent our children to a public school because we wanted them to mix with children from different demographics,’ Menna explains. ‘The boys suffered a little, but they grew up with kids from right across the social spectrum. They grew their social conscience and an understanding of society.’

Menna says SoHo has the highest proportion of primary school students in Tasmania who cycle or walk to school. Nearly every day, she’d walk or cycle with their two boys to school down the rivulet and look for platypus on the way home. Menna says SoHo could be an exemplar to other suburbs on how to design easy access ways to schools.

Living so close to the forest means that native wildlife is abundant in SoHo.

‘The wildlife here is amazing,’ Menna says. ‘Wedge tailed eagles, peregrine falcons, the endangered grey goshawks and sparrowhawks all hunt in my back yard. Eastern and spotted tail quolls, Bennetts wallabies, pademelons, devils, possums, Eastern barred bandicoots, bettongs, pottoroos and echidnas are all found in SoHo. The rivulet that borders my property has small burrowing crayfish (one of 37 species in Tasmania), brown trout, galaxias fish and platypus of course.’

Menna is passionate gardener and an ambassador for slow food and slow lifestyle. She grows much of her own food and avoids processed food and large supermarkets.

Menna’s whole block is set up on a permaculture framework. It is a bio-diverse garden designed both for food production and a haven for native fauna, birds and insects.

Her front yard is an eclectic mix of Australian natives and exotics. There are banksias, flowering gums, including Eucalyptus macrocarpa (the world’s largest eucalypt flower), New Zealand lancewoods and mountain pepper. An amazing feature is a sub-tropical section planted against a sun-warmed car park wall, which shelters their first banana crop, South American papaya and a jelly palm.

Continuing the walk, Menna rattles off a fascinating list of unusual plants – a Buddha’s hand citron, lily pilly berry (great for jam), finger limes, two cumquats, a fig tree, a bay tree, a hairless grape kiwi berry, feijoa, strawberry guava, east Asian yuzu fruit and persimmon!

There’s a greenhouse with basil and lemongrass and many other fruits and vegetables. Flourishing in a caged area that also serves as an enclosed cat run are raspberries, red and black currants, gooseberries, boysenberries, loganberries, blackberries and tay berries,.

Rummaging around the garden is a motley collection of heritage chickens including South American araucanas which lay blue eggs, Rhode Island reds, Polish, Transylvania naked necks, Australorps and black copper Marans, which lay dark chocolate-coloured eggs.

All Menna’s family are keen cyclists. There are 11 bikes in their house between four people and Menna has just completed a 70 kilometre ride on bush tracks in five hours. She says its much easier to go from uni to town by bike than trying to find a car park.

Entering her sixties, Menna’s ambition is to travel the world by bicycle, enjoying long-distance slow travel, where you immerse yourself in the landscape.

‘Living here couldn’t be better really,’ Menna says. ‘You can commute sustainably and easily grow your own food. SoHo has a lovely community feel. My goal is to live a slow and meaningful life – and this is just the place to do it.’

Victoria and Ken Morton

For over 20 years, Victoria Morton has dedicated herself to the South Hobart Football Club, starting as the club secretary and serving as president for the past 14 years.

‘South Hobart is Tasmania’s oldest continuously operating football club, with a rich history dating back to the early 20th century,’ Victoria explains. ‘Our home grounds include South Hobart Oval, also known as D’Arcy Street, and Wellesley Park, along with Bell Street and The Friends’ School grounds for training.’

The first official game at South Hobart Oval was played on May 21, 1910, with a 4-1 victory against Westralia. The match marked the beginning of a long and proud tradition.

‘The South Hobart Football Club has been part of the South Hobart community for over a century,’ Ken says. ‘We are one of the oldest football clubs in the country and we will celebrate 115 years in 2025. Victoria and I are passionate about the club and its significant history. Our legacy is that it continues to be strong.’

Club stalwarts Brian and Keith Roberts have kept immaculate records over the years and a history of the club was written by Dianne Snowden to mark its centenary.

The club has been based in South Hobart since its inception, with all national Premier League and Women’s Super League matches played at South Hobart Oval.

Ken, originally from Copley in the UK, began his football career with Manchester United in 1964. He later played for various teams including York City, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Darlington and Stockton. Ken left England in the 1970s, moving first to New Zealand and then to Perth before eventually moving to Tasmania and coaching many local teams.

The South Hobart Club had experienced mixed success, but that changed when Ken joined as Head Coach in 2008. Under his leadership, the club won five consecutive Southern Premier League titles from 2008 to 2012 and three state finals, achieving an unprecedented level of success, including capturing all five state trophies in both 2010 and 2011. Ken was recognised for his achievements, being named Southern Premier Men’s Coach of the Year by Football Federation Tasmania in 2011 and 2012, plus more recently in 2022.

‘In 2008, with no funds for a paid coach, Victoria and I decided to start a soccer school,’ Ken says. ‘In our first year we had 16 players.

The school has since expanded dramatically and we are now coaching hundreds of players, including some very keen students from Korea.’

Victoria notes that the South Hobart club has grown substantially in the last decade, now boasting 32 teams and 487 registered players. However, this growth has led to challenges with space.

‘We have a huge number of kids between 6 and 12 from all areas of Hobart in 11 junior teams,’ she says. ‘When they turn 13, they join the South Hobart club, and the team aspect of playing together is really important for children’s mental health.’

Ken explains that on weekends, all the club’s teams are rostered to play but only three games can be played at D’Arcy Street, because it has no lights.

‘In the winter, it’s dark by 4:30, so we’re really limited,’ Victoria says. ‘We have three social men’s and three social women’s teams that have barely played a home game because there’s no space.’

The Mortons have big dreams for the club, including upgraded facilities, with the ultimate dream being an indoor domed field, similar to those in England, to allow games in any weather.

Recently, the club secured federal and state grants to improve facilities at South Hobart Oval, including establishing female change rooms, lighting, a club room and accessible facilities.

‘But rising costs have reduced the purchasing power of the grant,’ Ken says. ‘It’s not going to build two changerooms and a canteen, which we desperately need to help us generate money.’

Victoria is passionate about the need for government support in upgrading facilities for community football clubs.

‘It shouldn’t be solely the role of grassroots volunteer clubs to upgrade their facilities,’ she says. ‘The government should support every sporting club, rather than spending millions of dollars on the AFL. It seems completely unreasonable that so much money is going to one football code, especially when soccer is the largest participation sport in Tasmania.’

Ken shares the frustration, noting that the promised improvements to the South Hobart ground may be years away.

So here we are in 2024 with 1950s-era toilets,’ he says.

It’s their shared love of the game that makes Ken and Victoria Morton fierce advocates for their sport and for the South Hobart Football Club that they have served for so many years.

_{^{Updated 051224}}