I
f the clutter at home is getting on top of you,
spare a thought for Woolmers Estate, near
Longford in north-eastern Tasmania. For
six generations, the owners of this World
Heritage-listed estate, the Archer family, never threw
anything out. From baby clothes and buttons to
magazines, match boxes and even a snake-bite kit,
the possessions accrued by the family from 1817 to
1994 were preserved in the homestead creating a
remarkable pastiche of Australian colonial life.
In 1813, Thomas Archer I became the fi rst of
his family to settle in Van Diemans Land, as the
colony was then known. He’d set off for Sydney
from England in 1811 and in 1813 was appointed
to the role of deputy commissariat of the stores at
Port Dalrymple, now George Town, on the banks
of the Tamar River. He progressed through various
government positions including justice of the peace,
coroner and magistrate and in 1817 was rewarded for
his eff orts when Governor Macquarie gave him a
grant of 800 acres (324 hectares) on the banks of the
Macquarie River. Having recently married Susannah
Hortle, he settled on his land and named the property
Woolmers after a property in his home county of
Hertfordshire. Their son, Thomas William, was born
shortly after and work on the homestead also started
about the same time.
The house was built along the lines of a NSW
bungalow with a wide verandah paved with slabs
of sandstone from the Western Tiers encircling it
and the timber framework fi lled with bricks, then
clad with weatherboards, milled on the estate. As
a concession to security, shutters were fi tted to the
windows to protect the family from bushrangers