Located to the east of Bellerive and north of Tranmere, Howrah is a beachside suburb, with views across the Derwent River to Hobart City. Clarence Street runs through the centre of the suburb on its north side, separating the hillside section from the beachside.

Clarence High School is generally thought to be in Howrah, due to it being located east of Wentworth Street, however it is in Bellerive. Howrah has a primary school, Shoreline Shopping Centre, is the largest shopping centre which services the area.

56 acres on Clarence Plains, including what is now Howrah Point was originally granted to John McKoy 1st January 1817. James Fielder, Louisa Fielder and others moved into the area. In the 1830s, Captain James Fielder, a retired Indian Army officer of the Bengal Pilot Service, built a property which he named after Howrah, the twin city of Calcutta (now Kotkata), India, near where he lived and was stationed. According to the Asiatic Journal of the times, his wife had a son in Kolkata on 3 March 1830 so travel to Tasmania occurred sometime after that, but before 25 March 1835, the day his wife gave birth to a daughter at Clarence Plains.



It was from Kolkata that Lieutenant John Hayes, who explored and named the Derwent River had sailed in 1793. Back when Hayes was in the India, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Raj and a bustling, active and expanding city. In October 1760, the Indian Howrah district had come under control of the East India Company (EIC) – a massive trading company with ships travelling the world. Hayes and Fielder would have known each other, and Hayes's glowing report of the Derwent valley would have been a strong incluence in Fielder's decision to retire there.

Colonel Crawford, who entered the Tasmanian Parliament, was another such retiree (1864) from Clacutta, India, as was Edward Braddon of the British India Service who became the Premier. In 1906, Chokey Nuroo came to Tasmania from Calcutta and established the popular Lufra Hotel at Eaglehawk Neck.

Tranmere

To the southern of Howrah is Tranmere, another developing riverside suburb with views across the Derwent River to the Hobart city centre. It is accessed from, and shares a border with Howrah, which lies to its north. Rokeby lies to its east. Tranmere beach extends along the base of the sloping Tranmere shoreline, from the northern base of the grassy Rokeby Hills along to and around Punchs Reef and on to the southern side of Howrah Point.



Tranmere takes its name from the ship, Tranmere, which was launched in 1819. She first traded between England and South America. In 1827 she played a role in the settlement of Tasmania and thereafter sailed in the region and between England and Tasmania. On 21 April 1826 Tranmere, under Captain T. Burton, made her first trip from England to Van Diemen's Land. She brought out to Van Diemen's Land much of the initial cargo, stock, farm labourers and officals of the newly-formed Van Diemen's Land Company. In particular, she carried 50 Cotswold sheep – 10 rams and 40 ewes – which were the first sheep in Tasmania. Tranmere returned to England via Bengal.

Above: illustration of the Van Diemen's Land Company's Circular Head settlement, 1832. Circular Head is depicted as being offshore away from the mainland settlement.

The Van Diemen's Land Company was formed by a group of nineteenth-century British businessmen who were interested in developing colonial resources, and the Van Diemen's Land Company was formed in May 1824 to ensure a cheap supply of wool for British factories. The colonial experience of William Sorell and Edward Curr was enlisted. The directors sought a 500,000 acre land grant and Sorell suggested land between Port Sorell and Cape Grim. An 1825 Bill granted only half this area, 'remote from settlers'. No thought was given to the dispossession of Aborigines. A vanguard of officials left England in October on the Tranmere, assured of a company Charter, which was issued in November 1825. The chief agent (Curr), with Stephen Adey (superintendent), Alexander Goldie (agriculturalist) and Henry Hellyer (surveyor and architect), accompanied by surveyors Joseph Fossey and Clement Lorymer, arrived in Hobart in March 1826. Lt-Governor Arthur's reception was encouraging; however Arthur and Curr soon squabbled over the remote location of the grant.

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Rokeby House

Rokeby

Rokeby, a part of suburban Hobart, is located 16 km from Hobart via the A3 and Southern Arm Highway. The first European settlement of the area occurred as early as in 1808, just four years after the establishment of Hobart Town. Rokeby takes its name from Rokeby House (built in 1830s) which was named by George Stokell, a prominent builder and merchant, after the parish of Rokeby in the North Riding of Yorkshire in England. Rokeby is located on Clarence Plains which were named by explorer John Hayes, after his ship, the Duke of Clarence.

Prior to the arrival of European settlers the district around Rokeby was home to the Nuennone Aboriginal people. The explorer John Hayes named the district Clarence Plains in 1794 after he had sailed the Duke of Clarence up the Derwent. Rokeby had its beginnings in Rokeby House. Many of the early settlers came from Norfolk Island, some being ex-convicts. Clarence Plains Post Office opened on 20 November 1850 and was renamed Rokeby in 1882. Along with the nearby suburb of Clarendon Vale, Rokeby was developed into a mainly public-housing suburb of Hobart in the 1970s. It was modelled after public housing projects that took place in the United States in the 1950s.

St Matthews Church, Rokeby

Rokeby has a traditional British picket-fences cricket ground and an historic church. St Matthews Church, in Mockridge Road, was completed in 1843 and contains the grave of Van Diemen's Land's first Church of England chaplain. Rokeby's first service was held in 1821 by the Reverend Robert (known as Bobby) Knopwood who was the first Church of England chaplain in Van Diemans Land. The church was designed by convict architect James Blackburn and was dedicated by Bishop Francis Russell Nixon in September 1843. Inside are some chairs which were carved from wood used in the ships in Nelson's fleet. The church and the graveyard are located in King Street just off Mockridge Road.

Rev. Knopwood's Tomb

Knopwood's Tomb is a memorial to the Reverend Robert Knopwood, MA, who as the first chaplain of Van Diemans Land played an integral part in the social and religious history of the local community and the formation of the Anglican community in that State. The tomb has a stucco base with stone obelisk and iron railing surroundings. It records the date of the Reverend Robert Knopwood’s death in September 1838. Knopwood who arrived in the colony in 1804, was the first Anglican chaplain in Van Diemans Land. The first service in Rokeby was conducted by the Rev Knopwood in 1821.

The Old School House at 3 South Arm Road - a small cottage with the picket fence - was the Clarence Plains School in the 1860s and the building next door, which dates from the 1880s, was the Rokeby State School until 1944. It is now home to the Tasmanian Police Acacemy which is used as a training academy for recruits of the Tasmanian Police Force.

Rokeby Watch House

Rokeby Watch House (1850), now a private residence, has been used as a police station, courthouse and gaol with three cells. The single-storey, sandstone, Gothic-style building features a central double-storey section, rooms for the constables, a watch house keeper and a magistrate, a retiring room and a day work room for prisoners. A nine foot high slab fence, affixed to the walls, not only secured the prisoners, but enclosed the two outside “dunnies”. Location: Corner Hawthorne Place and High Street, Rokeby.

Clarendon Vale House

Clarendon Vale House is a two storey stone Georgian house, featuring a five bay front facade, a central entry with portico, two pane windows, a arapet and cornice. The rear of house is brick. There is a single storey brick and stuccoed wing at the rear, with one twelve paned window, a six panelled door with casing and radial fanlight and with iron hipped roofs. Location: 31 Goodwins Road, Rokeby.

Rokeby's skate park is regarded as one of the best skate parks in the state. It attracted national and international professional skateboarders in a competition held there in January 2009, with $50,000 prize money on offer.



Rokeby Beach is located in the northwestern corner of Ralphs Bay. It is bordered to the east by the low Mill Point which is backed by the police academy, with Clarence Creek draining out across the western end of the beach below the rising slopes of the 100 m high Rokeby Hills. The beach continues for 200 m south of the creek mouth with tidal shoals extending off the mouth. The Clarence Road crosses the creek at the western end of the beach, where a boat ramp is located.

Trywork Point Whaling Station

In 1805, William Collins, a well known successful administrative and entrepreneurial figure in the first settlement of Van Diemen's Land, established a bay whaling industry at Trywork Point on the southern tip of Droughty Peninasula. Collins had planned this venture in England and it was ostensibly the first bay whaling station in Australia, pioneering the American technique of bay whaling, an industry of major economic importance to the Van Diemens Land economy and particularly the economy of southern Tasmania for the following 30 years. A recent survey of bay whaling sites has listed this one at Droughty Point as one of the five smilar sites in Tasmania that have been nominated for the Register of the National Estate.

Collins, Van Diemens Land’s first Lieutenant Governor, had a brief glimpse of Droughty Point in February 1804, when contrary winds blew his ship, the 3-masted brig Ocean, into Frederick Henry Bay. At that time the River Derwent supported large numbers of whales, many of which were southern right whales, so named because they were the right whales to catch. Collins could see the potential for a very pro table whaling industry in the colony as whale oil had become, at that time, the new fuel for lighting purposes.

Hobart’s first Harbour Master, William Collins, had noted that whales were more prevalent in the Derwent from July to September and was encouraged by Collins to set up a shore whaling station. Tasmania's first known whaling station at Trywork Point was already in operation by September 1805 when Reverend Robert Knopwood remarked in his diary that he had seen upwards of 60 whales near Sullivans Cove and it could be dangerous to cross the river by boat. 'At 9, I went across the river to see the tryworks. They had great quantities of oil casks.'

Hobart Town quickly became one of the great whaling ports of the southern hemisphere. Besides servicing foreign ships, a sizable fleet was based here. Local ships cruised waters stretching from the Coral Sea to Macquarie Island, and from New Zealand to Western Australia. Despite cruising such a wide area, whalers spent a lot of time in Tasmanian waters. In bad weather, they would shelter in Recherche Bay or Port Davey, which were closer to the whaling grounds than Hobart.

However, the venture was short-lived and by 1818 numbers of whales had decreased to such an extent that operations ceased. Colonel William Sorell, Governor from 1817-1824, noted that 'Mr Collins made some attempt at a Fishery Establishment on a point of Land ... called Tryworks Point, but no buildings were erected there and no vestige now remains there.' By then, colonial whalers had moved away from Hobart, making extensive use of Port Davey which, besides a ording supplies of wood and water and being a meeting place, was sufficiently isolated to discourage would-be deserters. Whales had completely disappeared from the Derwent by 1856.

While the exact site is difficult to locate, a number of features and studies strongly support the likely location of the sandy beach at the southern end of the Droughty peninsula. These include a suitable landing place and foreshore area, prevailing winds, fresh water and suggestive physical evidence, eg. old track formation, old creek bed, artefact spread, components which all relate to the sandy beach.

Nineteenth century artefacts noted above rocky Tryworks Point include: a concentration of burnt handmade bricks and stone adjacent to old creek bed at western end of beach foreshore; light scatter of 19 century artefacts west of dry creek bed at western end of beach foreshore; natural rock feature at eastern end of beach could have provided good area for beaching and butchering whales. Location: Trywork Point, 4km south of Rokeby, Tasmania.

Droughty Point Farm

Joseph Simmons was a convict, tried at the Bedford Assizes in March 1799 before being sentenced to life for stealing one brown pony. He was transported in February 1802 on board Coromandel, sailing direct from Spithead, and arriving at Port Jackson four months later. It was here that he met Catherine Burn, another convict. Their first son, also named Joseph, was born before they were again transported - this time to Norfolk Island - arriving on board HMS Buffalo on 9 May 1803. Joseph then changed his name to Chipman before he and Catherine were officially married. Within two years he had been made a Constable and lived in a small thatched cottage on 25 acres of land.

The Chipmans, along with other settlers, were transported, yet again, this time to Van Diemens Land on board City of Edinburgh, arriving after a protracted 32-day voyage, in September, 1808. They were given land at Clarence Plains and by 1809 were growing wheat on their 75 acres which they called Clarendon Vale. The four-room brick house they built from clay quarried nearby is still inhabited (Clarendon Vale House, 31 Goodwins Road, Rokeby). The family became quite prosperous, buying up other properties, including land at Droughty Point, when less successful settlers gave up.

Their weatherboard farmhouse, built just above the sandy beach, was adjacent to a creek, where a willow tree provided shade, and a dam provided water for sheep and cattle. As with many families at the time, theirs was a subsistence living, keeping ducks and chooks as well as growing all their own fruit and vegetables. When the larder was bare, they went fishing. Rock cod, trumpeter, ounder, barracouta, mullet, garfish, leatherjacket and skate were plentiful at a ‘secret’ location — a reef just off the point. Crayfish were also plentiful. According to family members, seals could been sunbaking on the rocks at Trywork Point.

The Chipman family played a significant role in the development of Clarence for 130 years from 1820 to around 1950. Although in a ruined state, their farm site at Droughty Point contains many features of rich regional historic interest. It comprises foundations (stone and hand made bricks, bonded with mud mortar) of a residence, a dam, waterhole, ancient mulberry tree, fences and fencelines, stone foundations of outbuilding, a stone sheep dip, and another stone foundation. The farmhouse was moved to Rokeby in the 1950s and destroyed in bushfires. There is a coloured and initialled shield in cobblestone paving with date 1851 - presumably placed there during construction of the weatherboard house.

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