HISTORY

‘On Wednesday last, I received information that a certain plant grew on the banks of a certain lake, which lake was three miles down the rivulet that drains the tableland of Mount Wellington [and] in attempting to discover which lake I encountered one of the most magnificent cascades of which any account is published’ wrote “Tyro” to the Van Diemen’s Land Gazette in January 1845.

‘Tyro’ was the nom de bloom of James Dickinson, a now-famous early Hobart nurseryman and amateur botanist.

Likely this waterfall was known since time immemorial and Dickison arrogated to himself nothing of its discovery. He acknowledged that he had ‘previously heard a vague report of its existence’, and he explained he ‘had indubitable evidence of being preceded by a human being in the road I had taken, both in going to and returning from the waterfall.’

But he etched his name into literary history with his torrent of praise (quoted above) for “a scene where the wild, the grand, and the sublime are merged in the romantic, the stupendous, and the terrible.” In this ravishing light the cataract immediately became and has forever remained the most famous waterfall on the mountain. It led to a public subscription campaign to finance a walking track to the Falls from The Springs—a direct and level route compared to going the long way round: up to the Pinnacle, across the back of the mountain, then down the North West Bay River’s rock-strewn banks. This Falls track is highly significant too.

Soon built, thousands flocked to see the Falls and its fame spread by way of painting and tourist promotion. International prominence flowed when the French writer Alexander Dumas published a novel that begins its adventure in Hobart with an attempt to reach the Falls.

HERITAGE VALUES

The Falls have natural, aesthetic and social heritage value.

HERITAGE SIGNIFICANCE

The Falls were the subject for a pair of paintings by the contemporary mid-19th century landscape painters de Wesselou and Piugenet.

Peter Dombrovskis re-traced Dickinson’s route in 1995 and included four images of the river and its falls in his landmark work On the Mountain.

The Falls have been on every Australian waterfall enthusiast’s Must Visit list for almost two hundred years.

HERITAGE ASSESSMENT

Wellington Falls (WPHH0394) is recognised as of very high local cultural and historic heritage significance. It likely meets the state threshold for its aesthetic significance—as it has been the subject for several important landscape artists. And for its historic significance to the history of recreation and tourism.

In 2018 the Trust made it a priority place for nomination to the Tasmanian Heritage Register.

In 2023 the Trust nominated the Falls Track to the state heritage register.

sources

Irene Schaffer Nature in its Wildest Form

Dumas The Diary of Madam Giovani