Escaping the First Road Outta Hobart, Tasmania

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:09]The dog and I here in the Tasmanian capital. Up above the tree line, there are sheets of fog moving through the air.

[00:00:17]We're more interested in what's beneath our feet. There's no particular markers anywhere.

[00:00:23]There's no signage indicating why this place is of import.

[00:00:29]If you're inclined to believe that built things might have magical powers, then this location is probably one of those.

[00:00:47]Normally, when the dog and myself are wandering about town, the hound likes to get a bit of a scent on and go looking. He's struggling a bit right now, and that's because not even that many dogs come through here.

[00:01:02]It's a really unvisited location within Hobart.

[00:01:09]But at one point in time, everybody that traveled came along here. They came up there, and they took the bend, and they went down to where the main road through Mona and Glenorchy now is.

[00:01:21]That road is really there now because this was here then.

[00:01:27]The people that were involved in putting this thing together 200 years ago, well, they're a mystery to us. We don't really know much about them.

[00:01:36]Like with anybody, if you're lucky, you get a birth date and a date of death, and maybe a few other details about who they got hitched to. Maybe they owned some land, something like that, but the personalities of the people from the past are vaporized when they dissipate.

[00:01:58]So, the air is biting a bit right now.

[00:02:00]It's feeling pretty cool. You got weird stuff up there.

[00:02:05]Stuff that would have been weird and super strange to the people that built this road.

[00:02:10]You got a power pole up there, a dead tree with electricity running across the top of it.

[00:02:18]These trees though that are here, they're all different.

[00:02:23]The things that were here would have been eucalyptus.

[00:02:29]>> [sighs] >> This path here, yeah, mate.

[00:02:37]This path is kind of just the same as it was.

[00:02:42]It lies on the land like it did when it was first put here. There's been no earthquake come through and cause a rapture.

[00:02:50]Everybody, all the important people that you might read about that were in Hobart town in those early decades after this road was put in place and maybe even before the road was put in place because the roads in Tasmania were often built on existing paths that might have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years, but sometimes they're brand new.

[00:03:15]We don't know. This could have been a brand new one or it could have been built on top of something older.

[00:03:22]But all the people, all the important people that you hear about and all the other people that really did the bulk of the physical labor to get the place going under terrible circumstances, they came up and down here.

[00:03:38]Every class of individual from convict to governor, they're all coming back and forwards.

[00:03:50]And maybe if you use your mind, they're still here.

[00:03:53]Like ghosts.

[00:04:01]So, McCartney's job was to build the road.

[00:04:05]Now, what standard that road was going to be, well, that was kind of open to interpretation. He just had to get it done, basically.

[00:04:12]Basically, he had to clear it away. Had to clear stuff so that horses and maybe carriages and people could move freely. Actual road itself was most likely, to begin with, not really like this. It was the same, was in the same spot, but it didn't have the macadamization, and it didn't have the chips of metal pushed down into it. That was probably done later on by a convict road gang.

[00:04:43]We don't really know.

[00:04:45]But, that's probably the case because when the road was finished, there were complaints that it was substandard.

[00:04:55]So, it was probably initially cleared, and then later on, the the convict workers had to come along and sort of make it a bit more usable.

[00:05:06]So, you got clay, topsoil, then the chip metal pushed into it to make it okay in all weather.

[00:05:15]But, you got to say, they've done a pretty good job because I reckon you could still, right now, take a horse and cart down here.

[00:05:23]It'd be all right.

[00:05:31]Irish-born Dennis McCarty was transported to Sydney in 1800 before being sent down to Van Diemen's Land in 1803.

[00:05:41]In 1818, he was somehow contracted to build a road from Hobart to New Norfolk.

[00:05:50]The road to New Norfolk was built so that people didn't need to travel by water from Hobart to get there.

[00:05:58]It's important to remember that basically everybody knew not how to swim.

[00:06:06]In return, his payment would be 2,000 acres of land.

[00:06:11]The military dictatorship running the place gave him 15 men and rations, bullocks, tools, tents, and 500 gallons of rum to incentivize hard labor.

[00:06:27]It was to take a year, and in 1819, on time, it was finished.

[00:06:34]Down on the main modern road of today, where McCarty's first road has been built upon, there is a sandstone possibly a marker from the original turn in the path.

[00:07:10]The fact that this road is still here at all is kind of a accident. It would have had to do with how land had been allocated and built on with homes and so forth, estates, and how that the main road was actually moved down to be more in line with everything that ran through from Hobart to Newtown and out through Glenorchy.

[00:07:36]The fact that it kind of now detours up this way is >> [snorts] >> the reason that this is still here because it was still a main thoroughfare, this would all been paved over with concrete, bitumen, all that sort of stuff, and there might be shops on either side, but it's still here by accident, and at this point, it is a location of heritage, and is useful to be admired in that way.

[00:08:07]Everything else in Hobart can change, but the heritage items are meant to stay the same in perpetuity, for as long as possible.

[00:08:22]Some could come back through the power of magical science in another two centuries, and this place would be the same.

[00:08:35]The year after the road was opened, McCarthy was out on the river when something unexpected happened.

[00:08:42]His ship capsized, and he drowned.

[00:08:47]Exactly what happened out there is a permanent mystery.