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Home History and Conifers

© Gay Klok

Musings in the Garden

RED CHAPEL AVE - Historical House

I have written so much about the country garden ?Kibbenjelok? in past articles, I thought we would have a break from that garden and I would tell you, over this month, something of the history of our Town House and Garden. The cottage has been in existance since the very early days of Hobart, Tasmania and is now listed with the Australian Heritage. I will do this in two parts. To set the scene I will begin with a murder story

Australia?s settlement as a penal colony dates from 1788 when the British Home Government decided to make the unexplored lands of New Holland into a British settlement. Part of the thinking of the Home Government was that it may prove handy to relieve the prisons of London and at the same time expand the British Empire from one end of the earth to the other.

To determine the age of 2 Red Chapel Avenue is not an easy task. The original thirty acre land grant to Thomas Kidner, a convict who came to Australia on the First Fleet, was delivered to him by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1813, but recent information informs us that Kidner, arrived in Van Diemens Land [Tasmania] in 1807 from Norfolk Island [He had been sent to Norfolk Island from Sydney for stealing rum] and settled on his land immediately. The official grant, which we are lucky enough to have in our possession, was not signed and delivered to Kidner until 1813. It would seem the wheels of the Public Service turned equally slowly in the 19th Century as in the 20th Century and I expect in the 21st Century too!

A recent privatly published book relates the story of a murder perpetrated on Thomas Kidner's farm. Apparently, two convicts were chased by the soldiers of His Majesty's Government through the hills behind where our house now stands. The felons were on road making duty, supervised by the soldiers, [who, in those days were as rough and villainous as any of the convicts], and they had decided to go walk-a-bout. They ran down to the foothills after overpowering a soldier and taking his gun. When they reached Kidner's farm, there was a falling out between the two convicts over the shooting of one of the soldiers. Terence Flynn, convict, shot Thomas Dawson also convict of Van Diemens Land. Terence Flynn [a forefather of Errol?] was arrested.

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