Avoca Post Office
Here you can find a good display as well as information on the history of Avoca and the Fingal Valley

St Thomas Anglican Church
Consecrated in 1842

The old Avoca School House was the site for the first Catholic school in the
Fingal Valley.
It was established in the 1840s

The barn and stone walls at "Bona Vista"

Avoca

The township of Avoca is situated at the junction of the South Esk and St Pauls Rivers. Over the years the economy has been made up of farming, coal and tin mining, with an odd saw mill or two thrown in. Now, however, it is a quiet, sleepy, little town with only farming and a small sawmill remaining as major industries.
Early records show that James Gilligan was the first settler to the area in around 1820. He took up residence on his 1600 acre land grant a few miles east of the present township. Gilligan built a fine home overlooking the South Esk River and named his property “Clifton Lodge”.
It was here in 1843, whilst District Constable William Ward was a dinner guest of the Gilligan’s, bushrangers Riley Jeffs and John Conway raided the homestead. In the scuffle that followed Constable Ward was shot dead by one of the “misguided” men, and it is said the policeman’s ghost still lingers amongst the old ruins today.
In 1825 Colonial Government Surveyor John Helder Wedge surveyed the area and called it St Pauls Plains. But it wasn’t until the early 1830s, when a Police Barracks was built, that a township developed and took on the Irish name of Avoca.
Today the town still has a number of historic buildings including the local Union Hotel built in 1842, the former Rectory built in 1845 and the Parish Hall built around 1850.
The most significant of the old buildings in the township, however, is St Thomas Anglican Church, which is set on a hill on the northern side of the main road and overlooks both the St Pauls and South Esk Rivers. Its Romanesque Revival style is a design attributed to James Blackburn, the architect who built the stunning old church at Port Arthur. St Thomas was consecrated on the 8th May 1842.
Just a stone throw from town, on the Rossarden Road, is the old homestead of “Bona Vista”. This fine example of Georgian architecture was built in stages by Simon Lord Jr. Lord took up residence on the property after his marriage to Sarah Birch in 1831 and after living in a hut for some time, commenced building his home around 1840, but it appears to have not been completed until 1848, at which time 43 residents lived on the property, 18 of whom were convicts.
The homestead seems to be designed with an emphasis on security, as early settlers in this region were under constant threat of attacks from bushrangers and natives. An elaborate system of walled yards near the house offered some safety to valuable stock, which could be herded there when an attack was feared. The house itself is surrounded by by a stone wall some nine feet high and two feet thick.
As well as a place for social gatherings Bona Vista was also the scene of several tragic events. There was a bushranger attack in 1853, which saw a Constable shot dead. In 1862 the “Examiner” reported the murder of the child of a German couple, and in 1898 a young man is said to have been murdered on the homestead woodheap. His body was carried upwards of half a mile and dumped in the South Esk River. The victims name was “Beckitt” and the murderer was “Small”
Another significant settler to the area in the 1820s was a wealthy Irishman by the name of Roderick O'Connor. He arrived in Van Diemens land in 1824 and was soon appointed Lieutenant Arthur's Land Commissioner. He established two substantial properties: "Connorville" near Cressy and "Benham" at Avoca. "Benham" went on to become one of the largest privately owned properties in Tasmania.
In the 1960s and early 1970s Avoca gained national fame for what was headlined across the country as the “The Avoca Shoot”. This referred to the Avoca Wallaby Shoot, an annual event organized by the Avoca Football Club to raise funds for the club and at the same time cull the wallabies which were in plague proportion on properties in the Avoca area.
Hundreds of shooters would converge on Avoca each year where they would pay an entry fee to the footy club, head into the hills and if we believed the headlines in many Mainland papers “Mass slaughter would take place”.
The local newspaper, Valley Voice, reported in May 1970: “If nothing else, this shoot has, each year, brought quite a deal of fame, or more to the point notoriety, to this otherwise sleepy Fingal Valley town and especially to the Avoca football Club who runs it.”
One animal liberation deputation that approached Tasmanian Senator Reg Wright using words like: cruelty, inhumanity, sadistic and indiscriminate in relation to the shoot, lobbied him to organize a party to shoot the Avoca Football team. These people, however, were completely out of line and lacking in facts because the Tasmanian Animal and Birds Protection Board along with the R.S.P.C.A. condoned the shoot as a necessary culling program. Both of whom saw the shoot as being well organized and a far better alternative than other culling methods such as 1080 poison where all animals and birds are threatened and the carcasses left to rot; whereas in selective shooting only plague animals are targeted and the meat was either taken by the shooters or given to charity. But at the end of the day, animal lovers won their case; the shoot was stopped and Avoca Football Club folded soon after.
The couple of hundred people who still remain in the Avoca area display a community spirit as strong as the walls of Bona Vista. It is a spirit that has carried the community through the good as well as the bad and will ensure the survival of the town for generation after generation into the future.

Jim Haas

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“Benham”

In the April of 1926 the Examiner Newspaper ran an article relating to a fire at Avoca, part of which read: “............Rats are believed to have caused a spectacular fire, which totally destroyed “Benham” the beautiful Avoca home of
Mr A. F. A. O’ Connor. The damage is conservatively estimated at £15,000.
It was reported that flames leapt 150 feet in the air and were visible for the radius of many miles. While an heroic band of county people were endeavouring to save valuable furniture, painting and family belongings from the blazing building, 2,000 cartridges in the gun room exploded............”
The structure rebuilt and established as a homestead when Mr A. F. B. (Barney) O’ Connor was married and moved there in 1936.
Ironically, this was the second time the “Benham” homestead was damaged by fire. The first time was in 1889 when the original home built by Captain James Grey was completely burnt to the ground.
The “Benham” story goes back to 1827 when the land which now makes up the estate was granted in lots of 2,000 acres or so to a number of people, including Captain Grey, John Burnett, Mathew Foster, Major Abbott, William Roberson, and Edward Butler.
In 1844, however, Roderick O’ Connor purchased the grants and went about establishing “Benham”, which eventually grew in size to around 66,000 acres and at one time was the largest privately owned single landholding in Tasmania.
Roderick O’ Connor was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1784. Accompanied by two sons, William and Arthur, he came to Van Diemens Land on board his own ship the Ardent in 1824. He was the son of a rich Irish land owner and one often wonders why he would have left the comfort and stability of his wealth to come to such a foreign untamed land. But, then, his wealth soon increased in the new land. On his arrival he became very good friends with Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur who gave him his first land grant of 1,000 acres on the Lake River. He was also made Commissioner of lands and then inspector of roads and bridges where he had control of hundreds of convicts, many of whom he was able to have work on his own estates. As land Commissioner, he came to the St Pauls Plains in 1827 and had a hand in choosing the site and naming the town of Avoca.
O’Connor left the public service when Arthur’s governorship came to an end in 1836, but he remained very much in the public eye by being extremely vocal on many issues. Apparently, he was a quarrelsome man and had many debates with Government officials, neighbours and colleges to the extent he was labelled the “red hot Irishman”.
But it seems Roderick’s main mission was to accumulate land and at the time of his death he owned eleven properties, totalling some 65,000 acres (26,305 ha) and another 10,000 acres (4,047 ha) of leasehold. His two main properties were “Connorville” near Cressy and “Benham”. He died at “Benham” in July 1860 and was buried in the Avoca Roman Catholic Cemetery.
After Roderick’s death, son Arthur inherited his estate because the other son, William, had died five years earlier.
At one time “Benham” was one of the world’s top fine wool growers and one of the largest producers of wool with over 30,000 sheep producing up to 800 bales of super fine wool per year.
“Benham” has always had a major influence on the Avoca community and although staffing levels have been reduced considerably in recent years, at times during the hay days of high wool prices in the 1900s, over fifty people were employed, including five or six fulltime fencers. Around the homestead with cottages, men’s quarters and numerous outbuildings, the area takes on the appearance of a small village in its own right.
The property has also played a significant role in the development of sporting and social facilities, in particular football and the once famous Benham Ball.
Descendants of Roderick O’ Connor have maintained ownership of “Benham”, with current owner Frank taking over from his father Barney, who died in December 1971.

Thanks to the book “St Pauls Plains Avoca 1834 – 1984” written by David Masters
for information on this story.

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