Fashionable Devonshire Tea!

"Of course the best Devonshire Teas in the whole of Tassie are at the Servant's Kitchen at Woolmers, near Longford." I said to the visiting food and wine journo. "And it's just amazing how scones and jam and cream are so, so fashionable right now!" said she.

Oh dear! I thought, and there I have been guzzling those very things at every opportunity for years and years without it ever occurring to me that I was showing myself to be completely out of fashion. And been spouting on too, about how delicious the raspberry jam is at Woolmers to everyone who would listen, thus spreading the word far and wide about my lack of fashion conciousness.

"But then everything old is new again." said the journo as she left me.

Whew, thank heaven for that!

So, I'm off to Woolmers right away, to order a round of warm, freshly baked scones with all that lovely home-made raspberry jam and lashings of thick real cream.

And I can be happy and secure in the knowledge that I'm right up there - so, so in fashion!


This blog written by Pixie Lowe http://pixielowe.blogspot.com/

Woolmers Estate World Heritage Listing

A total of eleven built sites (as opposed to significant natural areas of National Parks), in Australia have this week-end been declared by UNESCO to be World Heritage Convict Sites and five of those chosen are in Tasmania.

All are important places where the British Empire sent some 166,000 of its convicts over a period of eighty years from 1787 to 1868. British transportation of convicts to Australia was the first-ever attempt to use the labour of convicts to build a whole new society.

And - in the fullness of time - it worked! They could not possibly nave imagined back then how amazingly well it would all turn out.

The eleven sites spread accross Australia are listed so you can see just how important the ones chosen in Tassie really are, joining such places as the Sydney Opera House on the World Heritage list.

On the mainland the historic convict sites are Norfolk Island; Old Government House at Parramatta; Hyde Park Barracks in central Sydney; Old Great North Road NSW; Cockatoo Island Convict Site NSW; and Freemantle Prison in WA.

The five important Tasmanian Convict Sites are:

- Cascades Female Factory in Hobart
- Port Arthur Historic Site
- Coal Mines on the Tasman Peninsular
- Maria Island Darlington Probation Station
- And last by by no means least - Woolmers and adjoining Brickendon Estates which have been listed as one historic precinct. It's fantastic to get this international recognition of the importance of both properties.


These two beautiful 19th century estates, near Longford in the Northern Midlands, illustrate the 'good' side of the convict story, where convicts could be assigned to work out their sentence, eventually obtaining their freedom.

Port Arthur (which is now Government owned) and the Coal Mines Historic Site represent the opposite extreme of the penal system, in all its misguided cruelty.

Strangely, this cruel severity seems to hold the most fascination for visitors, Port Arthur attracting by far the biggest numbers.

Just to avoid misunderstandings, (of which I know there are some) Brickendon is still owned and operated by the Archer family as it has been since earliest settlement. Woolmers Estate, on the other hand, originally also an Archer property, is now owned and operated by a non-for-profit Foundation and is administered by a Board of Management, all of whom are volunteers.

Woolmers is open all year and it's well worth visiting to take the tour of the house and property. If you have not yet visited these beautiful and significant historic World Heritage Estates - it's surely time to do so!