Pillinger Drive

Pillinger Drive was the first proper road on kunanyi / Mount Wellington, built between 1895 and 1899 at the cost of £1,223 (a little over $251,300 today).

Wanting to be economical, the state government assigned a group of prisoners to build the road. Several unemployed men from Hobart joined them in 1896.

People used Pillinger Drive to travel to the Springs in horse-driven carriages. Stables were built at the Springs to accommodate the horses, and a carpark was constructed nearby when people began driving cars there in the early twentieth century.

Pinnacle Road

For a while, most visitors to kunanyi / Mount Wellington were content with stopping at the Springs and going no further. Those who wanted to go all the way to the Pinnacle did so on foot. Yet it wasn’t long before the Hobart City Council and the state government began thinking about constructing a road from the Springs to the Pinnacle.

On Tuesday, 28 May 1918, the Daily Post reported that, when an alderman proposed building the road at the Hobart City Council meeting the night before, “no one volunteered to give the motion that necessary helping hand, and it consequently faded away into nothingness”.

Despite this, the idea persisted until 1934, when work on Pinnacle Road began after a survey found a practicable route to the summit from the Springs.

The state government hired unemployed men to build the road, while the Hobart City Council paid for equipment and building materials, as well as worker transportation and supervision.

Construction was slow because of difficult working conditions, cost blow-outs, and worker dissatisfaction, but the road was finally completed by January 1937. It was officially opened on the twenty-third of that month by Sir Ernest Clark, the Governor of Tasmania at the time.

Pinnacle Road cost approximately £26,000 (over $2 million today) to build. It has since been closed many times due to heavy snowfall, unsafe conditions, or traffic congestion. The Hobart City Council currently maintains it.

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.

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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. He can be traced by the smell of fresh coffee.

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