In 1820, Jonathan Griffiths, a ship builder and whaler, sailed from Port Jackson in New South Wales in his vessel ‘The Maid of Richmond’ andarrived in Van Diemen’s Land just as the first George Town settlement was being moved to Launceston.

Griffiths had originally arrived in New South Wales with the Second Fleet as a convict at seventeen years of age. After serving his term, his adventurous spirit took him to Launceston where he set up a boatbuilding business. He was later granted 7000 acres of land on the west bank of the Tamar river, including Freshwater Point which was to become his headquarters. The Homestead was commenced in 1824 and built using a triple layer of convict bricks in the early Colonial style. A substantial jetty, thought to be the first on the Tamar, was built on the Point to enable the family to ship out timber cut from the property, as well as to bring in stores.

Jonathan’s eldest son John inherited the property and expanded his father’s estate. One of his earliest major projects was the construction of the first bridge over the North Esk River at Tamar Street. The timber for the bridge was cut at Freshwater Point.
The next phase in Freshwater Point’s history began just after the turn of the century, when it was bought by Carl Axel Nobelius, a nurseryman who developed the property as an orchard. Due to his knowledge as a nurseryman and love of trees, Freshwater Point’s garden developed and attracted considerable interest. It became a draw-card for garden lovers.

Nobelius cultivated an experimental orchard with more than 300 species of fruit trees growing down to the riverbanks. He was a cousin of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, who left more than eight million pounds to establish the Nobel Prize.

The orchard at Freshwater Point became the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. It surpassed the production of Mr Jones of IXL fame, who also had vast areas of orchards in Tasmania and whose family coincidentally lived at Freshwater Point for several decades in the 19th century. The property reached maximum production in the 1920s when 40,000 cases of fruit were picked, per year, for shipment to the mainland and overseas.

BACK TO MAIN HISTORY PAGE