Standing on Stanley’s waterfront beneath the towering volcanic plug known as The Nut, it’s hard to imagine that this peaceful harbour has been a place of significance for thousands of years.
Stanley before European settlement
Long before European ships arrived, the Circular Head region was home to the Aboriginal people of north-west Tasmania, who lived along this coastline and cared for Country for countless generations. The sheltered bays provided abundant marine resources, while The Nut stood as a prominent landmark in a landscape they knew intimately.
The arrival of European settlement in the nineteenth century brought profound and lasting change to Aboriginal communities through dispossession and the disruption of their traditional way of life. Today’s Stanley is enriched by recognising both its deep Aboriginal heritage and its later colonial history.
It was this same sheltered harbour that gave birth to the European settlement and, in time, to the story of the Jacobs family.
The Van Diemen’s Land Company arrives
Stanley owes its existence to the Van Diemen’s Land Company, formed in London in 1824 by a group of merchants and manufacturers involved in Britain’s booming wool and textile industry. Their ambition was to establish a vast Merino sheep enterprise in the new colony of Van Diemen’s Land, and the British Government granted the Company 250,000 acres in Tasmania’s remote north-west.
Edward Curr, a Hobart merchant who happened to be in London when the Company was formed, was appointed its first Chief Agent. One of his first tasks was to find suitable land for the new settlement.
Over the following months, the Company’s surveyor and architect, Henry Hellyer, explored the rugged north-west coast. Much of the country proved unsuitable for sheep, but he identified a few thousand acres of open grazing land around Circular Head and Cape Grim. More importantly, he recognised the value of the sheltered harbour beneath The Nut.
In an age before roads, the harbour was everything. It was Stanley’s highway to the outside world. Every person, every sheep, every horse, every building tool, every nail and every barrel of flour needed to establish the settlement arrived by sea. Without a safe anchorage there could be no Stanley.
The arrival of the Tranmere
The Company’s ship Tranmere reached George Town on 29 September 1826 after its long voyage from London, carrying farm labourers, artisans, livestock, farming equipment and the materials needed to establish an isolated community. After clearing customs, she continued north to Circular Head.
Nature, however, had other ideas.
When Tranmere arrived, fierce south-westerly gales whipped up heavy seas that made landing impossible. For weeks the ship waited offshore while those on board could do little but watch the coastline. Eventually, late in October, the weather eased enough for cargo to be unloaded, including twenty-five assigned convicts whose labour would help build the settlement.
Then disaster almost struck.
A violent easterly gale blew in while much of the cargo was still aboard, threatening to drive Tranmere onto the shore. It was an early reminder that life in the new settlement would always depend upon the sea, and that the sea could be both friend and foe.
Recognising the need for better facilities, Henry Hellyer designed and built a small timber jetty in the most sheltered part of the bay. Completed in early 1827, it became the settlement’s lifeline. Edward Curr later described it as “useful and substantial”, praising it as superior to any jetty Hobart Town had possessed only a few years earlier.
Even with the jetty, Stanley remained isolated. The Van Diemen’s Land Company regularly ran short of supplies, and Curr soon realised the Company needed its own vessels to keep the settlement connected with the rest of Tasmania.
Captain John Jacobs and Stanley’s maritime history
It was at this point that the Jacobs family became part of Stanley’s history.
In 1828, Captain John Jacobs was appointed Master Mariner for the Van Diemen’s Land Company. Over the next twenty-one years he became one of the Company’s most trusted men, commanding vessels including the Fanny, Edward, James Gibson and Martha. These small trading vessels carried livestock, produce, equipment and passengers between Circular Head, the west and north-west coasts, Launceston, Sydney and, later, Melbourne.
The work demanded extraordinary skill and courage.
There were few navigational aids, charts were incomplete, and reefs surrounded much of the north-west coast. Bass Strait earned a fearsome reputation, and shipwrecks were an accepted part of maritime life. In 1842 the schooner Edward disappeared on a voyage to Launceston and was believed to have foundered near Emu Bay. Many other vessels met similar fates around Circular Head, the Hunter Islands and Bass Strait.
From Company outpost to working port
Meanwhile, Stanley slowly grew from a Company outpost into a thriving working port.
The Van Diemen’s Land Company owned almost every building in the settlement, leasing homes and businesses to residents for an annual fee. Alcohol sales were prohibited, although Company servants received regular issues of ale and wine.
Around the waterfront sprang cottages, blacksmiths’ shops, inns, workshops and produce stores. With no formed road to Emu Bay for many years, coastal trading vessels became the district’s lifeline, bringing machinery, livestock, food, seed and household goods while carrying away wool, potatoes, hides and other produce.
The rhythm of life was governed by the tides, the weather and the arrival of ships. The waterfront was the heart of Stanley, where news from the outside world arrived with every sail on the horizon.
Stanley was officially proclaimed a town in 1842, with its first town map following the next year. As the Company gradually released land for sale, private businesses flourished and the settlement developed into an important commercial centre for the Circular Head district.
The story of the Bond Store
One building from those early years has survived to tell much of this story: the Bond Store.
The land on which it stands was purchased from the Van Diemen’s Land Company in 1852 by Frederick Ford, one of the district’s most successful farmers and produce merchants. The substantial stone building was constructed using locally quarried stone together with bluestone blocks carried to Stanley as ships’ ballast. Lime for the mortar was made from shells brought from Hunter Island aboard the trading vessel Prince of Wales and burnt in a nearby lime kiln.
Although many people believed it was a customs bond store, the latest research has shown that it was always used as a produce and grain store. In 1868 it was described as “a fine potato store built on a stone floor with beams 20 by 20.”
By then, Captain John Jacobs’ eldest son, James Jacobs, was managing Frederick Ford’s produce business. Living nearby in Alexander Terrace with his family, James oversaw the storage and shipment of potatoes, wool and other produce through the busy waterfront.
For twenty-five years he played an important role in Stanley’s commercial life, continuing the family’s close association with the harbour that had first brought his father to Circular Head.
Generations of the Jacobs family
The Jacobs connection continued well into the twentieth century.
From 1923, James’ grandson Owen Jacobs managed the Horne Brothers Land and Estate Agents and Merchants business after returning from naval service in the First World War and studying accountancy. The Bond Store remained part of that business until the 1970s before becoming part of Stanley Village during the 1990s.
Today, the old stone building has begun another chapter. Carefully restored by Owen Jacobs’ grandson, it has been given new life as boutique accommodation overlooking the original wharf. Fishing boats are still hauled ashore nearby for maintenance, while commercial vessels now operate from the deeper harbour a little further around The Nut.
Preserving a piece of Stanley’s story
For our family, this history is far more than something recorded in books and photographs. Captain John Jacobs, his son James, grandson Owen and the generations that followed all lived and worked around this harbour.
Restoring the Bond Store has been our way of preserving not only an important building, but also a small part of Stanley’s story.
Nearly two centuries after the first settlers arrived, visitors who stay at the Bond Store wake to much the same view that greeted Stanley’s earliest mariners. The tides still ebb and flow beneath The Nut, fishing boats still work the harbour, and the old wharf remains a reminder of the days when every ship carried the hopes of a new settlement.
The Bond Store stands today not simply as a beautifully restored stone building, but as a living link with the people whose determination, courage and enterprise shaped Stanley from its earliest beginnings.