Van Diemen's Land-Scapes

In 1821, Thomas Scott stopped at a hut on Macquarie River, just outside today’s town of Ross in Tasmania’s Midlands. He sketched it out, noting that it was “Built of Mud and thatched with grass, of the most rude description”. His drawing shows this – a rough hut with a dog sleeping in a bark shelter nearby, a small kitchen garden almost out of frame. Scott noted that when he drew it there were no huts within six miles. Although the British had been in Van Diemen’s Land for nearly twenty years by then, and travelling through the centre of the island from Hobart to Launceston for fifteen, settlement in the Midlands was still at a very rudimentary stage.