fingal valley history/towns

Avoca
Avoca is the first township as you enter the Fingal Valley from the West. The area was settled in the 1820s, but the township was not established until a Police Barracks was built in the early 1830s. Its main historical attraction is St Thomas Anglican Church, consecrated in 1842
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Cornwall
Cornwall was so named when six miners were brought out from Cornwall in England to open up the coal mines in readiness for the Fingal Railway to be completed in 1886
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Conara (The Corners)
Conara, or Corners as it was known to our early settlers, is the beginning, or gateway to the Fingal Valley. Its history goes back even further than the Valley's when it was known as Willis' Corner, or more colloquially, Humphrey's Waterhole.
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Cullenswood
Cullenswood developed as a village and service centre for the Break O' Day Plains after Robert Vincent Legge built his church in 1847
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Fingal
The township of Fingal come about after a Convict Station was established in 1827. The town has a number of convict built freestone buildings including the school, which was built in 1884 and was the first State School in the Fingal Valley. Fingal was also the Headquarters for the first Municipal Council to the area, which was formed in 1863
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Mathinna
Gold was discovered in Mathinna in 1852 and in the 1890s, with the Golden Gate Mine emploring some 300 men per shift, it was the third largest town in Tasmania after Hobart and Launceston
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Mangana
The first gold to be found in Tasmania was at Mangana in 1852
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St Marys
St Marys was surveyed as a township in 1857 and soon took over from Cullenswood as the main service town for th Break O' Day Plains
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St Marys 1903
Local Historian, David Clement, has written a wonderful comprehensive insight into life in St Marys as the town and its people entered the Twentieth Century.
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