Churches of Tasmania

Rokeby is an eastern suburb of Greater Hobart on the east bank of the Derwent River. It remained a small village until the State Government’s Housing Department built a large public housing estate in the 1970s. The Rokeby Police Academy, officially known as the Tasmania Police Academy, opened in March 1976 as the first purpose-built police academy in Australia. Police training had previously taken place in various locations, including Sackville Street and Argyle Street in Hobart. The state of the art facility included a mock courtroom, television studio as well as a non-denominational chapel. The chapel was situated within the main administrative building and was dedicated and consecrated to St Barnabas in March 1978 by the Anglican Bishop Robert Davies. I have yet to find photographs of the chapel which is no longer in use. The Police Academy at Rokeby. St Barnabas Chapel was located in the administration building in the left foreground of the photograph: Source: Tasmania Police...

Barnes Bay is a small settlement on the northern end of Bruny Island. Barnes Bay was the site of the ferry terminal between 1954 to 1983 and also a quarantine station in the 19th and early 20th century. The settlement and bay is named after one of the first settlers on the island. In 1845 the first Anglican church established at Barnes Bay and dedicated to St John. It was also used as a schoolroom. [ see No. 1535 ] St John’s was replaced by a new church built in 1896 on a nearby site. [ see No. 1543 ] The new church, dedicated to St Peter, served the Anglican community for a little over 70 years when it was burnt in the 1967 bushfires which raged across southern Tasmania destroying over 80 churches. In 1968 St Peter’s was replaced by a new church, a modern cement block building which was dedicated by the Archdeacon of Hobart, the Venerable Ian MacDonald, on Sunday 15 December 1968. The foundation stone of the old church, along with that of St Mark’s Anglican church at Dennes Point [ s...

St Aloysius Catholic College is an independent Roman Catholic co-educational primary and secondary school with campuses in Kingston Beach and Huntingfield. The school was founded in 1960 by the Sisters of Charity as St Aloysius Primary School. The Grade 5 to 8 campus is situated at Huntingfield on the outskirts of Kingston. It was constructed between 2008–2012 following Archbishop Adrian Doyle's acceptance of the school's proposal to extend into a Middle/Secondary School in 2007. A school chapel was built during the first phase of the school’s development. The Chapel at the Huntingfield Campus - Photograph https://www.staloysius.tas.edu.au/grounds-and-facilities Sources and Further Information: https://www.staloysius.tas.edu.au/

The first members of the Church of Christ arrived in Tasmania in 1865 and soon after established a ‘Meeting House’ at Northdown near Latrobe [ see No. 1084 ] In the 1870s churches were set up in Launceston and Hobart. Initially the group identified themselves as the ‘Christians’. After 1885 they were known as the 'Disciples of Christ' and from 1915 as the 'Churches of Christ'. A church was established at Hobart in early 1872 by an American evangelist, Oliver Anderson Carr, who began preaching at the old Particular Baptist Chapel on Harrington Street. A prominent member of the congregation was John Bradley, who was later to become Chairman of the Hobart Stock Exchange a Member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly. Services moved to the Odd Fellows Hall and then to the “People’s Hall” on Bathurst Street. In July 1872 the former “Mechanics School of Arts” building on Collins Street was acquired and worship took place there for the next 9 years. The Mechanics' School o...

Cape Barren Island is the second largest island in the Furneaux Group. It is situated at the southern end of Flinders Island and separated by the Franklin Sound. The island is also known as truwana, an Aboriginal word meaning 'sleeping water’. In 1881 Cape Barren Island Reserve was established for the descendants of Aboriginal women and European sealers living in the Furneaux Islands of Bass Strait. The Church of the Epiphany is the second Anglican church built on Cape Barren Island. The history of the first church and the involvement of the Anglican Church in establishing an aboriginal mission is described in a previous article on ‘Churches of Tasmania’ which can be found on the link here: No.1590 - Cape Barren Island - Church at The Corner. By the 1930s the original church, built in 1893, was in a serious state of disrepair. In 1937 Reverend S.C. Brammall, the Flinders Island chaplain, complained: “If the wind blows before they go into the building…they do not go in”. Despite th...