History of Tower Hill and surrounds | Primal Pastures Tasmania

On Tower Hill, where Tower Hill Rd climbs out of the Fingal Valley, the twin peaks of East Tower and West Tower have watched over more than 170 years of gold, timber, farming and fire. This is the country Primal Pastures calls home. Diggers, sawyers, teachers and farming families have all left their mark on these slopes, and when you walk the farm tracks today you are walking through their story.

Tower Hill's crags and fire tower, seen from Fonthill Farm

We have pieced this history together from old newspapers, government reports and land records. It is a work in progress, and we would love your help to fill the gaps.

Timeline

Tower Hill through time: gold in 1852, quartz crushing from 1857, the reef in 1869, sawmills from about 1885, the Towers settlement about 1900, Speers lease 1917, fires in 1926 and 2019

February 1852: Tasmania's first payable gold is found at the Nook, now Mangana. About 200 people rush to the field.
March 1852: Scale and grain gold, and gold in quartz, is washed out near Tower Hill Creek.
1856: A digger climbs Tower Hill to survey the country and judges it "very poor promises".
1857: Quartz crushing begins on the spurs of Tower Hill.
1859: The Fingal company begins quartz crushing.
10 January 1869: J. C. Goodall discovers the Tower Hill reef.
November 1870: The Tower Hill Quartz Mining Company banks a 137 ounce gold cake.
About 1885: Railway contractors build a sawmill on Tower Hill.
1886: The Fingal railway opens (29 June).
1888: The mine runs a 10-head stamper battery and a 530 ft tunnel.
About 1900: A government report describes "a small farming settlement called the Towers".
1904: Miners are still working the reef on tribute.
1917: Crown land at Tower Hill is let to A. J. Speers.
1920s: The Tower Hill sawmills are busy, and timber lorries run down the hill.
February 1926: Bushfires sweep Tower Hill, touching about six farms.
1929: B. C. Dickson takes up a pastoral lease at Tower Hill.
1932: Coker, Kenyon and King are recorded as landholders at Fonthill.
1940: New mining sections are still being taken up.
1991 (approx.): A fire lookout is in use on East Tower.
December 2019: Bushfire burns the farm's boundary fences.

Gold on the hill

Long before gold, this was Aboriginal country. The Fingal Valley and the slopes around Ben Lomond were the lands of the Ben Lomond people (plangermaireener), who travelled the South Esk valley and the highlands with the seasons. The South Esk was recorded as mangana lienta. People were driven from this country in the 1820s and 1830s as settlers took up the valley.

Pencil sketch of a timber stamper battery shed on a forested spur, with a tunnel and ore trucks

The story starts with gold. In February 1852 payable gold was found at the Nook, the spot we now call Mangana, and James Grant claimed the government reward on behalf of Keeling Richardson. Word spread fast and about 200 people came to try their luck. Within weeks The Courier was reporting "scale and grain gold, and gold in the quartz, obtained by washing near Tower-hill Creek, Fingal".

Illustrated timeline of Tower Hill, from the gold days to today — Illustration

Later writers remembered gold dust "along the Tower Hill Creek and on the hillsides, where beautiful specimens of crystallised quartz abounded". Not everyone was impressed. In 1856 one digger pushed through the bush to the top of Tower Hill to look over the country and declared it "very poor promises".

The real hope lay in the quartz reefs. Crushing began on the spurs of the hill around 1857, and the Fingal company started crushing in 1859. Then, on 10 January 1869, J. C. Goodall found the Tower Hill reef on William Gellibrand's land of about 160 acres. Goodall was a Mangana pioneer for 42 years and went on to find the Alpine, Buckland No. 1 and Sovereign reefs too. By July 1869 he wrote that the reefs were "turning out extraordinarily well".

In November 1870 the Tower Hill Quartz Mining Company banked a gold cake of 137 ounces 8 pennyweight from 244 tons of stone, hailed as "the first really promising mining news from Fingal". By 1872 it was the only company still working, driving its No. 2 tunnel. In 1888 it had a 10-head battery and a 530 ft tunnel. Miners were still working the ground on tribute in 1904. Fresh sections were still being taken up as late as 1940.

The Towers settlement

Pencil sketch of two timber cottages with post and rail fences in a cleared hillside, stumps in front and ringbarked forest behind

Gold brought people, and people needed food. Above the diggings grew a small farming community. A government geology report from about 1900 describes "a small farming settlement called the Towers", about 1,000 feet above Mangana. In 1925 a visitor wrote that Mangana was "overshadowed by Old Ben and the Towers".

Local accounts tell of a township of around eight families, with dairies, a blacksmith, shearing sheds and gardens feeding the mining camps below. The land here at Pig Creek is thought to have been first settled around 1857. We are still looking for the original land record.

Timber and the railway

Pencil sketch of a bush sawmill with stacked timber, a boiler chimney and an old lorry loaded with logs

Tall forest covered the hill, and timber became its next industry. Around 1885 the contractors building the Fingal railway (Conara Junction via Avoca and Fingal to St Marys) put up a sawmill on Tower Hill and carted the timber down to Avoca.

By the 1920s H. Aulich was running the Tower Hill sawmills, and in 1922 a timber lorry was making the run from Tower Hill. The heavy loads took their toll on the road, and locals complained it had become close to impassable.

School and community

Pencil sketch of a small weatherboard school with a porch, picket fence and flagpole among gums

Families meant children, and children meant a school. Records show a teacher at Tower Hill until about 1914. Winters up here could be tough, with snow sometimes closing the hill road.

The community was tied closely to Mangana below, with its Alpine Hotel, state school and post office, and to the farmers' associations and council wards of the wider Fingal district.

Fire

Fire has always been part of life on Tower Hill. In February 1926 bushfires swept through "about six farms". One report said: "Not a fence is left untouched by the flames on Tower Hill." C. Hill lost a building, while Stanley Smith's house was saved.

Nearly a century later, in December 2019, fire came again. It burnt the farm's boundary fences and stopped about 50 metres from the historic buildings.

Starting again after the fires

We moved onto the farm in August 2019. Only a few months later, on 30 December 2019, the Fingal fire started right here in the Tower Hill area. On a day of total fire ban, it burnt more than 22,000 hectares in total and took out three quarters of our boundary fencing. We were devastated. Luckily the local fire brigades saved our farm house, and we'll always be grateful to them. The fire was deliberately lit, and the person responsible was convicted in the Supreme Court in 2021.

The fires set us back. Before we could run any cattle, every one of those fences had to be replaced. It was a tough start, but it's part of why this place means so much to us.

A fire brigade crew in yellow gear hosing down burnt ground beside two red tankers — The local brigades who saved our farm house. We can't thank them enough.

Burnt-out fence droppers and fallen wire lying on blackened ground — What was left of the fences. Every one had to be replaced before we could run cattle.

2019-2020 Fingal Fires (Mangana and Mt Malcolm) Tasmania

Fingal Fire Brigade - 12-month update (2020). Watch on YouTube.

Fire on Tower Hill

The fires that came through the farm, and the ground we are bringing back.

Bushfire burning through the bush, with flames below the trees — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

Fire burning among tall trees at night — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

Flames along a ridge at dusk — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

A firefighter watching a fire front through smoke — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

A fire vehicle on a farm track beside burning grass — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

Smoke and flames along a tree line — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

A firefighter looking over freshly worked ground beside the fire — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

Smoke over the trees beyond a farm track — Photo courtesy of Tasmania Fire Service

See how we rebuilt: fencing for the next 100 years

The lookout today

Sign on the East Tower lookout reading Tower Hill, height above sea level 1117m (3665ft)

Dolerite columns on Tower Hill above a forested valley with paddocks and distant ranges

The East Tower fire lookout on Tower Hill, with hills beyond

Today a fire lookout keeps watch from East Tower, at about 1,118 m. It is run by Sustainable Timber Tasmania and is a small steel cabin built right on the summit rocks. Spotters used it to patrol after the 2019 fire. On a clear day the views stretch for well over 100 km across the Fingal Valley and towards Ben Lomond.

Video: Tower Hill Fire Tower
Watch on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

Video by Sustainable Timber Tasmania. It plays on Facebook, so nothing loads here until you click.

The lookout keeper in the video says: it's Tasmania's highest fire tower.

East Tower is about 1,118 m, right in the middle of the range, with a near 360 degree view.

Families of Tower Hill

These are some of the names that turn up in the old records:

Goodall: Records show J. C. Goodall found the Tower Hill reef in 1869, and the family was mining around Mangana from the 1860s to the 1880s.
Gellibrand: Records show William Gellibrand owned the land where the Tower Hill reef was found.
Hill: Records show Charles Hill ran the Alpine Hotel at Mangana, then farmed his own block of about 200 acres at Tower Hill (a historic farm, not ours today), where he trained and rode his own racehorses. He died in 1934. A C. Hill was also the Mangana mail contractor.
Holder, Smith, McLeod, Wrankmore and Williams: Records show Holder Bros, S. L. Smith, D. McLeod, H. Wrankmore and R. T. Williams held land in the Tower Hill Ward in 1932. D. McLeod also served as councillor for the ward.
Speers: Records show Crown land at Tower Hill was let to A. J. (Andrew John) Speers in 1917, and a J. Speers on the St Marys Farmers' Association in 1892. Family memory places the Speers here in the late 1800s, and we are still looking for the record to prove it.
Dickson: Records show B. C. Dickson held a pastoral lease at Tower Hill from 1929, and Ben Dickson jun. was living at Tower Hill in 1935.
Coker, Kenyon and King: Records show Coker, Kenyon and King held land at Fonthill in 1932.
Cox: Records show C. Cox in the Tower Hill Ward of the Fingal Municipality in 1932, holding a house and land in Mangana township. Family memory holds that the Tower Hill telegraph office stood on the Cox holding, though no record has yet been found to confirm it.
Aulich: Records show H. Aulich ran the Tower Hill sawmills in the 1920s.

Black and white photo of Victor Speers in a hat and suit with his horse and dog, in front of a white timber shed and post and rail fence — Victor Speers on our farm at Tower Hill, taken in the 1940s. A man, horse and his dog.
Photo: Speers family

Help us fill the gaps

There is so much we still do not know. Who was the first prospector to work Tower Hill Creek? Where exactly did the school and the sawmill stand? Which families lived at the Towers in the 1800s?

If your family has roots on Tower Hill, or you have old photos, letters or stories, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch and help us tell this story properly.

Stories, memories, family names and old photos are all welcome. We read every one before anything is published.

Sources

Explore activities on the farm