tasmania

Launceston’s first church, a story of faith, hope and survival

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St John’s Church is an important part of Launceston’s history. In 1824 the northern headquarters of Van Diemen’s Land was relocated from George Town to the head of the Tamar River. In the same year the foundation stone was laid for St John’s Church in Launceston.

In 1825 construction of St John’s Church was completed and the first divine service held. St John’s Church is the oldest public building in the city of Launceston and the oldest surviving Anglican church in Tasmania.

The church has reflected the progress of Launceston over 200 years and there are numerous remarkable events and firsts in the story of St John’s.

The story of the church is told in a new book, St John’s – Launceston’s First Church 1825-2025, launched on 29 April 2025. The book is part of bicentenary celebrations for the church.

The St John’s Church story starts with courageous Reverend John Youl who was the first ordained minister in northern Van Diemen’s Land. He arrived in 1819 and oversaw the construction of the first iteration of St John’s.

The foundation stone was laid by newly arrived Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur on 28 December 1824. Construction began in early 1825.

The first funeral service in the church was held on Wednesday 24 August 1825, before the building had even been completed.

Charlotte Balfour, the 33-year-old wife of Launceston Commandant William Balfour, died in childbirth and was interred inside the walls of the unfinished church.

Her resting place, marked by a plaque on the original southern wall, remained largely forgotten until major building works in 1911.

It was uncovered again in 1938 when a new floor was installed and again last year when electrical work was undertaken. Charlotte Balfour was the first and only person buried at St John’s Church.

The first Divine Service was held in St John’s on Friday 16 December 1825.

In 1829 a clock was installed in St John’s Church tower which became Launceston’s first town clock. The clock in St John’s tower served in that role for more than 80 years. In 1837 the first stained-glass window was installed, believed to be the first in a church in Tasmania.

In 1846 the Launceston Church Grammar School opened next door, with St John’s used for regular school chapel services. The Grammar School is said to be Australia’s oldest continuously operating school.

When St John’s second rector Revd Dr William Browne retired in 1868, after 40 years in the role, he said his Parish Register recorded that during his Ministry he had performed 1,834 marriages, 4,153 baptisms and 2,231 burials.

In 1893 the church leased the former Queens Head Hotel in Wellington Street and converted it into the first St John’s Mission House.

It offered support and accommodation for Launceston’s poor and homeless under the caring management of Sister Charlotte Shoobridge who was ordained as Tasmania’s first deaconess by Bishop Henry Montgomery in St John’s Church on Saturday, 13 October 1894,

In 1902, Bishop Mercer said that should the Diocese of Tasmania ever be divided, St John’s, as the Mother Church of the North, would naturally become a cathedral.

In 1912, following the completion of a major extension of the church, St John’s was being referred to as “the Cathedral of the North”.

The church was full when St John’s held its first Anzac Day service on Tuesday 25 April 1916. There was a congregation of more that 1,000 for the National Day of Prayer in St John’s on Sunday 26 May 1940 calling for peace in Europe. The Governor, Sir Ernest Clark, was in attendance.

The church was again full for the special service on Tuesday 2 June 1953 to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1955 parish records noted 117 marriages and 195 baptisms in St John’s. It was said that more marriages were solemnised at St John’s than any other church in Launceston and the same could be said for baptisms.

In 1997 former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam delivered the eulogy at the funeral of his former deputy Lance Barnard, the long-serving Federal Member for Bass.

The Brindley organ in St John’s, first installed in 1862, has been described as the finest in the nation. In 2007, the long-held goal to complete the rebuilding of the organ, as designed by organist George Hopkins in the early 1900s, was completed.

For 200 years St John’s Church has been a place of worship for generations of northern Tasmanians and a place of celebration, mourning and contemplation for many others.

Its imposing presence on the edge of the business district has aways been a reassuring and comforting sight for Launcestonians, both parishioners and other citizens.

St John’s Church has only had 20 rectors since 1825. The incumbent in 2025 is The Venerable James W. Hornby, B.ForestSc, M.Div.

(St John’s – Launceston’s First Church 1825-2025 was written by Julian Burgess and produced by Forty South Publishing for the All Saints Network as part of the parish’s bicentenary celebrations during 2025. The book is available from St John’s Church office, 157 St John’s Street, Launceston, Tasmania, Phone (03) 6331 4896.)

Charlotte Shoobridge, Tasmania’s first Deaconess

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Charlotte Jessy Shoobridge was ordained as Tasmania’s first deaconess by Bishop Henry Montgomery in St John’s Church, Launceston, on Saturday, 13 October 1894.

There had traditionally been strong opposition to the appointment of women to positions within the Anglican Church but the Bishop and other senior ministers saw the need for change.

With the support of St John’s rector Rev. Nugent Kelly and church-warden Ernest Whitfeld, Miss Shoobridge had been appointed in 1893 to run the St John’s Mission House.

Her job was to oversee the provision of support, accommodation and religious guidance for the growing number of poor and distressed people in the parish.

The job came with no pay and no security of tenure but Miss Shoobridge, who was 50 at the time, held the position for nearly 20 years. She was widely known as Sister Charlotte.

Born in 1843, she was the eldest daughter of hop grower and politician Ebenezer Shoobridge and his wife Charlotte, of Bushy Park in the Derwent Valley.

She trained in parish work in Melbourne before applying to join St John’s Church.

Church-warden Ernest Whitfeld told a meeting of the St John’s congregation in 1882 that Miss Shoobridge had written to him asking to come and work in Launceston.

He said it was a “most unexpected offer” but there were many things she could do in Launceston in “nursing sick women and children and visiting cases where other women would be afraid to go, and would scarcely be so effective.”

Ernest Whitfeld was enthusiastic about the church being active in “home mission” work and early in 1893 he had arranged for the lease of the former Queen’s Head Hotel in Wellington Street for £1 a week.

The old hotel was converted into St John’s Mission House with the bar turned into a free reading room and the old skittle alley becoming a meeting room. Another area was turned into a chapel.

The dining room was used for educational purposes with singing classes held for boys and girls and sewing classes for girls held twice a week.

Upstairs there were bedrooms for those who required sympathetic care and a temporary home. One room was made available to the Benevolent Society.

At Deaconess Shoobridge’s ordination Bishop Montgomery preached a sermon on the subject of women’s ministrations and he gave many instances of the good resulting from the “labours undertaken and nobly carried out by sisters of the church.”

Among the congregation were a number of the people who had benefited from the care of the St John’s Mission House.

By the early 1900s the converted hotel had become inadequate and in 1905 a new St John’s Mission House was built at 103 Canning Street.

It was officially opened and dedicated in March 1906 and Sister Charlotte was in charge of the new, larger mission house until her retirement in 1910.

The building served as St John’s Mission House until 1947 when it was sold to the State Government. In recent times it became a backpacker hostel.St John’s Church, which was Launceston’s first church, will celebrate its bicentenary next year.

Images — TOP: Deaconess Charlotte Shoobridge photograph from about 1895. All Saints Network picture. BOTTOM: Laying the foundation stone for the new St John’s Mission House, Canning Street, Launceston. Sister Charlotte is pictured with the mayor J. W. Pepper and other guests. Weekly Courier, 3 May 1905.

Originally written for the Launceston Historical Society and published in The Sunday Examiner, 29 April 2024.

The importance of Milton Hall in Launceston’s history

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Milton Hall, sold in 2022 by the Baptist Union of Tasmania, is a hugely important place in the history of Launceston.

It was built in 1842 and paid for by supporters of the Independent pastor Rev. John West as the St John Square Congregational Chapel.

John West biographer Patricia Ratcliff wrote that he was “arguably the most influential of the middle class dissenters, a person of colossal intellect, a dynamic orator with a mellifluous voice.”

The Rev. West arrived in Launceston in 1839 and initially held services in an infant schoolroom in Frederick St, between Wellington and Charles streets.

By 1841 his congregation had grown so much that a proper church was needed.

A block of land was bought further up Frederick Street and money was pledged to erect a new chapel. The prominent Baptist minister Henry Dowling laid the foundation stone on Thursday, September 2, 1841.

It took builder George Gould nearly a year to complete the Doric Temple style chapel with the dedication service held on Friday, August 12, 1842.

The first services were held on the following Sunday with sermons by Rev. Dowling, Rev. Joseph Beazley, of the Kempton Congregational Church, and Rev. William Garrett, of the Presbyterian Church.

John West and members of his congregation established a number of important community and charitable institutions in Launceston.

They include the Mechanics’ Institute (predecessor to the Launceston Library and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery), the City Mission and a general cemetery.

He also supported the establishment of business organisations like the Cornwall Insurance Company and The Examiner newspaper.

John West wrote the leading article in the first edition of The Examiner attacking convict transportation and its detrimental effect on building a respectable, sound and prosperous society.

From 1842 to 1854 his editorials championed social reforms.

In 1849 John West designed a flag for the Anti-Transportation League that was unveiled at a national meeting in Melbourne. It is considered to be the model of the Australian flag

He published his History of Tasmania, printed at The Examiner, in 1852 and it is still widely quoted and considered an important source of information on Tasmania’s first 50 years.

His series of essays entitled Union of the Colonies, written in Launceston in 1854, outlined his vision for the federation of the Australian colonies.

Convict transportation to Tasmania had ended when John West resigned as pastor of the St John’s Square Chapel in 1854 to accept the position of editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

He died in 1877 and it is quite remarkable that so many of the institutions he helped establish continue to benefit Launceston.

Image — TOP: Frederick Street in 1866 shows Chalmers Church, John West’s Congregational Chapel (Milton Hall) and schoolhouse. Picture courtesy State Library of Victoria.

Miss Flinders: a pioneering plane

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In March 1932 the first regular air passenger service between Tasmania and Flinders Island was introduced by pilot and flying instructor L. M. (Laurie) Johnson.

His Desoutter II single-engined monoplane, given the name Miss Flinders, had been flown out from England between December 1931 and February 1932.

The plane, which could only carry two passengers, had a cruising speed of 140 to 160 kilometres an hour and the trip to Whitemark from Western Junction took about an hour.

Laurie Johnson had been the Tasmanian manager of Essendon-based Matthews Aviation who in 1930 had started a short-lived air service between Melbourne and Tasmania.

The Flinders Island service ran on Tuesdays and Fridays and on other days he offered joy flights from Western Junction and other airstrips.

In the first three months of operation Laurie Johnson’s Flinders Island Airways made 56 return flights to Whitemark carrying a total of 85 passengers as well as mail and freight.

Victor Holyman, who had been a World War I fighter pilot and was a ships captain in his family’s shipping company, watched the progress of the new air service closely.

Holymans, based in Launceston, operated numerous vessels across Bass Strait, including services to Flinders Island.

In September 1932 Holymans took delivery of a new de Havilland Fox Moth bi-plane to also service Flinders Island. The Fox Moth could carry four passengers at a maximum speed of 170 kph.

The Holymans called their plane Miss Currie.

Within weeks Laurie Johnson had agreed to merge with Holymans in a new company called Tasmanian Aerial Services.

The merger enabled the fledgling airline to expand its services along the Tasmanian coast to Latrobe, Wynyard, Smithton and King Island.

The success of these new services encouraged the airline to buy two eight-seater de Havilland biplanes they named Miss Launceston and Miss Hobart.

A service to Melbourne was introduced with the main pilots being Laurie Johnson and Victor Holyman. Tragically, in 1934 Victor Holyman and his passengers in Miss Hobart disappeared near Wilsons Promontory.

In 1935 Miss Flinders was sold back to de Havilland.

Laurie Johnson continued flying with Tasmanian Aerial Services which under Holymans management would grow into Australian National Airways, the biggest airline in Australia in the 1940s.

In later life Miss Flinders returned to Launceston, being on display at Launceston Airport, then a major exhibit at the Queen Victoria Museum at Inveresk, and finally back to Launceston Airport.

New Launceston mills a boon for 1923 wool sales

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The Launceston wool sales of January 1923 were hailed as the most successful held with representatives from the city’s two new textile mills competing with buyers from around the world.

It was an exciting time with cloth and flannel producer Kelsall and Kemp at Invermay already operating and construction of the huge Patons and Baldwins yarn factory at Glen Dhu well underway. The two new mills were expected to be a boon for Tasmanian wool producers as well as providing hundreds of new jobs in Launceston and giving the local economy a major boost.

George Cragg, chairman of the Launceston Wool Brokers’ Association, told The Examiner that the number of buyers was probably a record, and the clip quality was better than recent sales. “It might be said thankfully that it was the most successful wool sale held in Launceston. The representation of British, Continental, and Australian buyers was probably a record.”

He said buyers for Kelsall and Kemp and Patons and Baldwins were keen bidders and Waverley Woollen Mills, that had been operating for nearly 50 years before the big UK mills decided to establish factories in Launceston, was also represented.

Construction of the Patons and Baldwins mill had started nearly a year earlier, in March 1922, after the tender of Hinman, Wright and Manser had been accepted at a contract price of £90,000. The Examiner of 23 March 1922 said it was probably the largest building tender ever let in Tasmania.

“The plans and specifications were executed at Launceston by a special staff, under the personal supervision of Mr F. J. Heyward (of North, Ricards and Heyward) and in order to expedite the work long hours were worked on several occasions.”

By April 1922 more than a hundred men were working at the site with 21 horses and carts and two teams of eight bullocks excavating the foundations and basements.

The mill buildings would cover nearly two hectares and consume 1,750,000 bricks made at the nearby Hutton’s Brickworks. Roof ironwork was being fabricated by the Salisbury Foundry. The Examiner said there would be seven departments in the mill with the wool combing section expected to be operating before the premises were finished.

Most of the employees would be female, and young people, and special provision was to be made for their welfare. They would be trained by experienced staff from Patons and Baldwins UK mills. The manager of the new mill, Mr McVann, was already in Launceston and machinery from the UK started arriving in September 1922.

When two large boilers were landed at Beauty Point, they were brought to the Launceston wharves by barge. Steam traction engines towed trailers with the boilers to the Glen Dhu site. The factory was expected to be producing knitting yarns before the end of 1923.


Images — TOP: The Patons and Baldwins mill under construction surrounded by scaffolding. Picture: Weekly Courier, 5 April 1923. MIDDLE: Bales of wool in the new Patons and Baldwins mill. Picture: QVMAG 1991:P:1068. BOTTOM: Machinery in the new Patons and Baldwins mill. Picture: QVMAG 1991:P:1070.

Written for the Launceston Historical Society and published in The Sunday Examiner 5 February 2023.

Launceston role in making the first Holden car

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In November 1946 it was announced that General Motors-Holden’s Ltd had reached an agreement to take over the Tool Annexe at the Launceston Railway Workshops to produce tooling for its proposed Australian-made car.

GMH had responded to a request from the federal government in 1945 to make a mass-produced Australian car. Up to this time most cars sold in Australia were either fully imported or assembled from components from overseas car makers.

The Examiner of Wednesday, November 20, 1946, reported that production details had been discussed between the GMH technical superintendent (Mr W. G. Davis). the Secretary for Transport (Mr A. K. Reid) and the administrative officer at the annexe (Mr P. H. Welch).

“Mr Davis will remain in Launceston as technical superintendent of production. He has had wide experience in engine manufacture … and recently joined General Motors as assistant chief inspector of mechanical operations.”

The Examiner said that since the end of World War II the Tool Annexe has been conducted by the Tasmanian Transport Commission and has been turning out tractor parts of such precision that only one-half of one per cent were rejected.

Mr Davis said various types of punches, dies, trimming tools, component parts and very large assembly jigs for sub-assembly and final assembly of panel would be made.

“The modern and very valuable equipment in the annexe and the high standard of workmanship attracted General Motors, and work which began in Launceston this week is one of the first practical steps in the actual production of Australian cars.”

Details of Australia’s first locally made car slowly emerged as production facilities were set up around the country.

At Woodville in South Australia the bodies and metal pressings for the new car were being produced at a £1,744,000 factory and at Fishermen’s Bend in Melbourne a 12,000 square metre plant was built for the manufacture of the engine, transmission and other basic car components.

GMH said that when the car was in full production it would provide direct employment for about 9000 Australians and indirect employment for thousands more in businesses supplying raw materials or specialised components for the new car.

It was announced that the new car would be simply called the Holden and would be priced at £733, which was about two years’ wages for an average worker at the time.

By the time Prime Minister Ben Chifley unveiled the first Holden 48-215 (later known as the FX) on November 29, 1948, it was announced that 18,000 people had already paid a deposit.

The first Holden car to come to Tasmania was unveiled by the Premier Robert Cosgrove in Hobart the following day. He said the development of the Holden marked Australia’s “growing up as a nation.”

Australians embraced the first locally mass-produced car and over the next five years 120,402 Holden vehicles were manufactured and sold.

Image — TOP: Holden cars roll off the Fishermen’s Bend production line factory. State Library of Victoria, public domain image.

Written for the Launceston Historical Society and published in The Sunday Examiner, on 29 October 2023.

Launcestons disappearing industrial heritage

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Only one of the three factories at Mowbray designed by renowned Melbourne industrial architect Graeme Lumsden in the late 1940s is still standing.

It was a period when port-war prosperity allowed more aesthetic industrial buildings and the most distinctive of Mr Lumsden’s Tasmanian commissions, the James Nelson factory, was described in the Launceston Heritage Study of 2006 as an early example of an “international style” industrial building.

According to the website of Victorian architectural historians Built Heritage Pty Ltd, the Replacement Parts (later Repco and now ACL) factory at 310 Invermay Road, was designed in 1947 when Mr Lumsden was in partnership with leading Melbourne architect Arthur Purnell.

After setting up his own architectural practice in 1948, Mr Lumsden designed factories for Modern Transport and Metal Industries (MTM Industries), at 316 Invermay Road, Mowbray, and the electrical fittings maker CGC Manufacturing Company in Howard Street, Invermay.

The James Nelson factory, at 298-308 Invermay Road, was designed in 1949 and the following year he designed a textile factory at Devonport for the Tootal Broadhurst Lee Company Ltd.

His Tasmanian work led to numerous major commissions in Victoria. Both the MTM factory and the James Nelson factory have only recently been demolished.

Graeme Lumsden’s obituary in the Melbourne Age on 17 August 1995, said he was one of Australia’s most successful industrial architects and factories he designed in Victoria included projects for Leyland Motors, Volkswagen Australia, Peters Ice Cream, Specialty Press, Repco, Glaxo and Bowater Paper.

Of his Tasmanian projects the James Nelson factory was perhaps his most noteworthy.

James Nelson Ltd, of Valley Mills, in Nelson, Lancashire, was the last of the British companies to build textile factories in Launceston. The Patons and Baldwins knitting yarn mill at Glen Dhu, and Kelsall and Kemp, at Invermay, which produced flannel, had both commenced production in 1923.

James Nelson had been founded in 1884 and by the 1900s was a huge operation employing thousands of people. By the 1950s it was the only company in the world spinning its own cotton and making its own viscose rayon and acetate rayon.

It formed its Australian subsidiary in 1949 and its factory in Launceston was its first outside the UK.

The James Nelson factory in Mowbray was built by Launceston firm H. J. Martin and like the other British textile companies that set up in Launceston, they brought out equipment and workers from the UK.

Production in Launceston commenced in August 1951 using imported rayon yarn to produce fabric that went to the makers of dresses, blouses, underwear and linings and materials used as a replacement for silk.

By the late 1960s more than 200 people worked at James Nelson and curtain, upholstery and other fabrics were being produced.

However, the 25 per cent reduction in tariffs on imported textiles in the 1970s devastated the Australian industry and led to the demise of Kelsall and Kemp and Patons and Baldwins. Production at James Nelson ceased in 2014 with the machinery sold off.

The Launceston Heritage Study says the well-designed James Nelson façade is attached to a more traditional factory building but is a very good example of modern post-war industrial design.

Images — TOP: The now demolished James Nelson facade photographed in December 1951. Picture: Libraries Tasmania AB713/1/250.

Written for the Launceston Historical Society and published in The Sunday Examiner, 27 August 2024.

65 years since the Pot sailed in

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When the new Bass Strait ferry Princess of Tasmania came into service on September 23, 1959, it was the first roll-on, roll-off passenger ship in the southern hemisphere.

Known affectionately as “the Pot,” the Princess of Tasmania plied between Melbourne and Devonport for 13 years and was promoted as a “searoad” that made it easy for motorists to drive between the mainland and Tasmania.

The Princess of Tasmania was built specifically for the Bass Strait service by the federal government-owned Australian National Line at the New South Wales State Dockyards in Newcastle.

It could carry 334 passengers and 142 cars and there was cabin accommodation as well as 140 lounge chairs where passengers could spend the 14-hour voyage. It made three return trips across Bass Strait a week.

With its stern-opening vehicle ramp allowing cars and trucks to drive into its hold, the Princess of Tasmania was part of a revolution in ship loading.

Passengers on its maiden voyage comprised mostly VIPs and politicians, including Premier Eric Reece and his wife Alice, as well as media representatives.

The Examiner sent reporter (and later editor) Michael Courtney and in his report he noted that on a cold night there were only about 100 people to see the ferry off in Melbourne.

However, when the Princess of Tasmania arrived in Devonport more than 8000 people lined the banks of the Mersey River to watch the ship arrive at its newly constructed roll-on, roll-off berth.

The Examiner described the ferry’s arrival in Devonport as “majestic”.

“When the Princess of Tasmania berthed at her terminal yesterday she completed a voyage which has evoked public interest and enthusiasm such as has not been seen before in Australian coastal shipping services.”

“Her appearance and appointments have impressed all who have seen her.”

The chairman of the Australian Coastal Shipping Commission, Captain J. P. Williams, told The Examiner that Tasmania was getting a shipping service as modern as any in the world.

Like its predecessor, the Empress of Australia operated on the Melbourne-Devonport run for 13 years before ownership of the service passed to the Tasmanian government and a new ship, the 10-year-old German-built Abel Tasman, was bought.

The Princess of Tasmania made nearly 2000 crossings of Bass Strait before being taken off the run in June 1972. It was replaced by another ANL-build roll-on, roll-off passenger ferry, the Empress of Australia, which had been built in 1964 for the Sydney to Devonport service.

The Abel Tasman was in turn replaced by another European-built ferry, the first Spirit of Tasmania, in 1994. The two current Spirit of Tasmania ferries, also built in Europe, commenced service in 2002.

Tasmania’s Bass Strait passenger ferries have been getting progressively bigger and more expensive since the Princess of Tasmania which was 113 metres long and cost weighed £2.5 million.

The two new Spirit of Tasmania ships, being built in Finland and due here soon, are nearly twice the size at 212 metres, are considerably faster and will cost close to $1 billion.

Image — TOP: The Princess of Tasmania in the Mersey River. ANL publicity photo, photographer unknown.

Written for the Launceston Historical Society and published in The Sunday Examiner, 29 September 2024.