The influence of cousins Jack and Jenny on Tasmanian history

The most obvious exemplar of this story is the liberal, even prodigal, use of ‘Cornwall’ as a Tasmanian designation: it has signified an administrative division, an electorate, a famous hotel (now known as the Batman Fawkner), an insurance company, a bank, a newspaper, a school, an assembly rooms, a ploughing association, cricket and football clubs, a bible society, a hospital and a coal mine. Transference of place nomenclature is less common, although examples are Launceston, situated on the River Tamar, and Falmouth, a coastal resort. Such properties as Camelford near Campbell Town, Calstock and Cotehill in the Deloraine district, and Callington Mill, Oatlands retain their early names despite change of ownership. Mines included Dolcoath and Carn Brea. This paper will push behind these superficial indicators to explore areas—politics, religion, convictism, mining, maritime affairs, education and agriculture—where the Cornish were prominent. According to Phillip Payton, pre-eminent scholar of Australia-Cornwall connexions, the preoccupation with the Cornish mining diaspora is ‘both inevitable and desirable’ because miners were the numerically dominant occupational group of emigrants. Furthermore, it was in mining centres that distinctive features of Cornishness were palpable. Despite this, most nineteenth-century emigrants were not miners. AL Rowse justifies the recognition of everyman and everywoman: We can only here and there dip into this vast inexhaustible reservoir. It must be clear by now that we can only give samples; nevertheless, however incomplete, our picture can be taken as representative.