My Tasmania...The Nile

On Easter Saturday i had a wedding make up to do for a Bride and the Bridesmaids... whose sister and wedding party i had done the wedding makeups for 7 years ago..she lives on the Nile Road out past Evandale..... So on the way back i stopped at this little church (we go out there a bit in the summer for the dog to swim in the river) I saw that there had been a attempt to paint it and it looked as thought there might be some restoration work going on.....



As you can see who ever is doing the painting work ....either didnt have a ladder maybe or else they are afraid of heights......????



How sad that there is no longer a reverence for a consecrated piece of property!!!! This once was a house of God where god fearing people worhsipped their God, where young love was joined in matrimony, babies where blessed, harvest were consecrated, and bodies where prayed over before they went to their final resting place in the cold earth... it felt sad that the beautiful windows that once let in the sunlight on a glorious summers day ...now had jagged pieces of glass protruding from its timber frames...broken in anger or just wicked fun???? What happened to the congregation of this little chapel?????? Did they move away, lose the faith or just grow old and die leaving it without anyone to worship within its walls????



The arched door was wired closed and with a twist it welcomed me into its vestry through the cedar doors to the chapel...now ringing with the hollow empty sound as my shoes walked across the dusty wooden floor... No longer that smell of incense or flowers on an alter, they were long gone from this chapel...now my nostrils were assaulted with the strong smell of possum urine. As my eyes moved up to the vaulted curved ceiling the evidence was there in the yellowish brown stains running across the ceiling and down the walls....there was also evidence of birds building their nests in the ceiling too..... for even though it was void of the sound of them the evidence was there in the foyer ...the empty martens nest and its droppings, long since dry, in chalky streamers down the vestry door, as it flew to and fro to its now deserted home still affixed so masterfully to the wall high above the arched doorway......


As I stood in the motes of dust I had stirred up my eyes were drawn to the back wall of the tiny chapel and there above the desolate alter hanging on the wall for no one to see...hung these statements .....the most prominent .."Christ died for our Sins" ..... some one knew... how fitting for this Easter Saturday where my thoughts!!!!!



Stepping up onto the bare alter my eyes were drawn to this A4 piece of paper ...you can read it for yourself.... as i read it i thought to add a line to the first part... " the congregation may leave us for a while"....."this building may crumble and fall"...but.... (read on)

I am told this area all belongs to a man called Cameron and the story goes if you are found "poking" about on his property he has been known to fire a gun above your head to warn you to keep off his land.... i am glad he was not around on Easter Saturday...but perhaps the reason he wasm't was the lonely little Chapel wanted some one to remember to visit on the Easter Season.....



Now just out the back is what we call the "Outside Dunny" or the "Outhouse"
There are lots of documented writings about the "Dunny" so i am not about to try to compete with them...just to give you a visual of what they looked like...in "the good old days"





No sorry i couldn't find "the red back on the toilet seat" either....

But just directly across the road was this sad little 6 roomed cottage.... no windows to keep out the weather or sticky beaks like me....

This little cottage has three chimneys and the evidence that it was built in three stages...so there was a chimney for each addition.... perhaps when the family out grew the rooms...

It doesn't take the humble introduced species called the Blackberry long to make an uninhabited house look just that!!!!!

All hand hewn planks lined the whole of the inside and the roof was hand hewn shingles covered with iron at a later date ....on the back half of the home....

The front door with the passage that goes through to the back door... all the rooms went off the passage on either side.... a great way to cool the house in the summer but oh so drafty in the winter!!!!


There was evidence of at least four layers of wall papers ...the first being a newspaper layer ....but this layer of wallpaper lasted well and was a delicate lacy pattern.... a femine touch in a pioneer home perhaps ....showing there must have been a little extra money at one stage.....

One dreams of being able to restore this little cottage and have a thriving tourist industry in that little village called Nile...if only someone else like MR Cameron had these dreams and could catch the vision!!!!!!