kunanyi / Mount Wellington is so deeply etched into the Hobart landscape that it is impossible to imagine the city without its grand silhouette.
Name
The mountain was initially referred to as Table Hill or Table Mountain before it formally became ‘Mount Wellington’ in the 1820s.
In 2013, the mountain was given the dual name of ‘kunanyi / Mount Wellington’ in accordance with the Tasmanian government’s dual naming policy where indigenous names, where known, are paired with colonial names.
History
Tectonic movements and volcanic activity formed kunanyi / Mount Wellington millions of years ago. Erosion has since exposed its most prominent feature: the ‘Organ Pipes’, a thick horizontal sheet of dolerite on the eastern face.
Tasmania’s indigenous people – specifically the muwinina tribe – were the first humans to lay eyes on it. They called it ‘kunanyi’ or ‘poorawetter’. Aboriginal artefacts have been found in the mountain’s foothills in recent times.
In 1788, William Bligh – the British Royal Navy officer who was commander of the HMS Bounty at the time of the well-known mutiny on that ship – became the first white man to note the mountain’s existence. The first European to climb it was George Bass – a British naval surgeon who explored several parts of Australia – in 1798.
When naturalist Charles Darwin visited Hobart in 1836, he climbed kunanyi / Mount Wellington. He later described it in his 1839 book, The Voyage of the Beagle:
“In many parts the Eucalypti grew to a great size, and composed a noble forest. In some of the dampest ravines, tree-ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner; I saw one which must have been at least twenty feet high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. The fronds forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy shade, like that of the first hour of the night. The summit of the mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular masses of naked greenstone. Its elevation is 3,100 feet [940 m] above the level of the sea. The day was splendidly clear, and we enjoyed a most extensive view; to the north, the country appeared a mass of wooded mountains, of about the same height with that on which we were standing, and with an equally tame outline: to the south the broken land and water, forming many intricate bays, was mapped with clearness before us.”
The mountain was greatly exploited for its natural resources during the nineteenth century. People started voicing concerns about the depletion of its resources around 1870, but it was not until 1906 that the mountain was officially declared a protected area.
In 1895, renowned meteorologist Clement Wragge built the first weather station on kunanyi / Mount Wellington. It burned down in 1909, but its remains can still be seen today.
Since the establishment of Hobart in 1804, the Springs – located half-way up kunanyi / Mount Wellington – have provided fresh, clean water to the local population. A hotel was built there in 1907 at a cost of £3,300 (around $277,174 in today’s money), but it no longer exists. Local architect Robert Morris-Nunn has proposed a visitor centre and restaurant for the site.
Several walking tracks had been built on the mountain by 1930. Between 1934 and 1936, an unemployment relief scheme saw Pinnacle Road constructed.
kunanyi / Mount Wellington was devastated in the 1967 bushfires, but its vegetation has since regrown and is now flourishing.
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In 2019, the Mount Wellington Cableway Company requested permission from the Hobart City Council to build a cable car from South Hobart to the top of kunanyi / Mount Wellington.
The proposal sparked debates and discussions among the local community due to concerns about a cableway’s potential impact on the environment, landscape, and tourism.
The Hobart City Council turned down the Cableway Company’s application in July 2021 because it did not meet the requirements of the Hobart Interim Planning Scheme (2015) and the Wellington Park Management Plan (2013). Undeterred, the Cableway Company appealed the decision, and the matter was referred to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which also rejected the proposal on multiple grounds.
Today
Today, kunanyi / Mount Wellington is managed by the Wellington Park Management Trust, whose mission is to:
“preserve [its] natural, cultural, recreational, tourism and drinking water qualities […] for their own value and for the safe enjoyment of all people.”
Photo Gallery
kunanyi / Mount Wellington (Slow TV)
Bibliography
- Mount Wellington (Wellington Park Management Trust)
- Mount Wellington (Great Australian Secret)
- Mount Wellington (Companion to Tasmanian History)
- The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
- The Springs (Wellington Park Trust)
- Wellington Park Heritage Audit, Volume 2 (Wellington Park Trust)
- The Springs: Initial Conservation Policy (Wellington Park Management Trust)
- The Springs Visitor Hub (Hobart City Council)
- What if Hobart wasn’t Hobart? (YouTube)
- ‘Mount Wellington’, Launceston Examiner, 8 Nov 1898, page 6
- The Pinnacle Road, Mt Wellington (Tasmanian Year Book, 2000)
- Tasmanian dual naming policy announced atop Kunanyi (ABC Local, 2013)
- Mount Wellington Cableway Company Pty Ltd v Hobart City Council and Others [2022] TASCAT 128
Tas That Was is a column that includes:
- anecdotes of life in Tasmania in the past;
- historical photographs of locations in Tasmania; and/or
- documentaries about locations in Tasmania.
If you have an anecdote or photograph you’d like to share with us, please send it to [email protected].
Callum J. Jones studied English, History, and Journalism at the University of Tasmania. He has written fiction and non-fiction for Tasmanian Times since 2018, and can be traced by the smell of fresh coffee.
Follow him on Twitter (@Callum_Jones_10) and Facebook (@callum.j.jones.creative).
