In Search of a Title

Just to show it does rain in the Southern Midlands

( And also in Ross )

Photos: I haz them!

*satisified noises*


And I don't care that most people reading this neither know nor care where or what it is :)

( Well, maybe a little bit. )

You might remember this photo of Ross from earlier in the year. It was taken in February.



Now, here it is again, in August. Quite different.



Yes, there's no hay or sheep!

( Some more )

Here we have a sheep paddock


with an empty house in it.



( Read more... )

A side trip, to the hill behind the older part of town.

Through a gate



Penalty For Not Closing Gates ?10
( More photos )

So I lied :)

The Ross Bridge is on the southern access road, although once part of the highway. It was built in 1836, at the request of Lt Gov Arthur, and is another design by architect by John Lee Archer (maybe I should add a tag for his creations?). The two men responsible for building it, as both stonemasons and overseers, were highwayman Daniel Herbert and burglarJames Colbeck. Herbert's name is still well known Colbeck though has faded into relative obscurity, and when he does get a mention, he's often called John. Both did get a pardon a few years latter though.



( More photos )

The best known, and probably most photographed, feature in Ross is the Bridge. As there are so many photos already on the web, you can look at them instead of me putting some up.

Some photos of buildings today, and then I'll get onto the interesting stuff. :)


Along Bridge St, being the street leading from the Bridge. Military Barracks.
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Ross sits beside the Midlands Hwy, not quite halfway between Launceston and Hobart, and just south of the Line. At the time of the second settlement in the north, the island was divided into two: Cornwall in the north, Buckingham in the south. Folk history puts the line along the 42nd latitude, and Ross is at 42°01' S. Nowadays, the (unofficial) dividing line between north & south is at Oatlands, the next town down the road.

With a settlement at each end of the island, there was soon travel between north and south. From Highway in Van Diemen's Land, by Hawley Stancombe, "Wentworth wrote in 1819 of the track between Hobart and Launceston worn by carts and stock regularly passing between the two towns, but winding about so much that it was probably a hundred and sixty miles long. [Today it's closer to 124 miles] Major Thomas Bell of the 48th Regiment was therefore commissioned in 1821 to construct portions of the road from the capital to Port Dalrymple."

1821 is the same year, according to Parks & Wildlife, that Ross was a declared a town, although there'd been a garrison there from a few years earlier.

( Lots of words, and a few photos )