RICHMOND
Our first stop today was to see Richmond Bridge, the oldest bridge in Tasmania, built by convict labour in 1823. And here we discovered Tasmanians love of pies! We stopped in a bakery for breakfast and enjoyed the first of many pies eaten during this trip. Then we walked around Richmond Gaol, also convict-built, and again saw the awful dark jails used to house troublesome prisoners. Many of the museums along the Convict Trail had folders listing the names of the convicts transported to Tasmania. While there were many named Gray (my husband’s family name), there were none named Wise (my family name).
Overlooking the town of Richmond was St. Johns Catholic Church, also built by convicts. When Tasmania was colonized by the British, the land was bare. So everything had to be built from scratch. Any convict who had been a craftsman by trade was in high demand. The gravestone belongs to Bartholomew Reardon who was the son of a First Fleeter who had arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1810. He is renowned as the first person to bring the highly valued merino sheep into the colony. He died in 1849.
DUNALLEY
The first checkpoint at the top end of the Tasman Peninsula is Dunalley. We stopped here for lunch at the Bangor Wine Shed and were thankful to get out of the pouring rain. The seas here are beautiful in the sunshine but unwelcoming in the cold and wet.
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