National Trust of Australia (Tasmania)

Landscape, Longford c 1840 Henry Mundy (1798-1848)

Louisa Ann Meredith was amongst the first of many observers who have and indeed continue to comment on the “English” quality of Tasmania’s rural landscapes. Together with our island’s temperate wilderness, Tasmania’s rural landscapes are central to both Tasmanian and visitor perceptions of Tasmania being so different from the remainder of Australia.
The elements of Tasmania’s rural landscapes that are seen as being “English” are a mixture of features found in a variety of English rural landscapes rather any single landscape. In particular they reflect the farming practices arising from the parliamentary enclosure of lands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain.
Tasmania’s evocative “English” rural landscapes have been shaped by a combination of these agricultural practices, the island’s climate, fertility, relief and the built cultural elements introduced into the landscape. For more than a century these landscapes have been sustained by Tasmanian agricultural enterprise while in turn underpinning the islands tourism industry. Today as agricultural practices continue to change to meet current market demands, transport infrastructure changes to accommodate more and larger vehicles and the functions of rural settlements evolve or disappear. Tasmania’s distinctive rural landscape is now at risk.
	Top: Landscape, Longford c 1840 Henry Mundy (1798-1848) Collection: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Right: Hawthorn Autumn, Kempton 1990 Copse of exotic trees Pateena Road, Longford 2006 Hawthorn Fencing Chudleigh 2009