Early timber workers built huts on the mountain to provide easy access to their work sites. Huts were also built in the foothills by orchardists, apiarists, miners, and other small industrialists. The families of sawyers are reported as living on the Mountain by the city’s waterworks caretakers. Convicts working on roads and tracks lived in temporary huts, along with their minders, as did prisoners and unemployed workers in later years.

HUTCHISONS FIREPLACES

Surveyor H. Hutchison was engaged by the Council to do a survey for water management purposes around 1900. He built at least four open fireplaces on his regular routes all over the mountain. Several of these remain today.

They are marked on his beautiful map. See Boundaries.

CONSTABLES COTTAGE

The work of creating the troughing for conveying the water along Milles Track diversion fell to a group of convicts in 1831 under the supervision of a constable. The constable’s cottage was situated close to the works.

HERITAGE SIGNIFICANCE

For its association with the 1831 water diversion, in 2018 the Park’s trustees decided that this hut should be a high priority for nomination to Tasmania’s Heritage Register.