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Chudleigh is a small rural village west of Launceston in northern Tasmania, Australia. The town is in the Chudleigh Valley, between the Gog range and the Great Western Tiers. The area is primarily used for farming, though timber and lime production have been significant industries. The fertile flats of the valley are of alluvial origin, from the Permian era. The Chudleigh show, run by the Agricultural and Horticultural society, is held each February. Since 1889 they have held 125 agricultural shows making it one of the state's oldest such events. The area had been the lands of the Pallittorre Aboriginal Tasmanians for thousands of years. Interraction with European settlers, and the settlers deliberate actions, drove them from the lands and decimated their population. Chudleigh was first settled by Europeans in the 1830s for agriculture and lime production. The town was laid out, probably prior to 1835, to have up to 5000 residents though the population never became large. An early resident, John Badcock Gardiner, named Chudleigh, probably after Chudleigh in Devon, England. During the 19th century a town hall, four churches, a school, an inn and a post and telegraph office were built. Over time the churches, school, inn and post office have closed. A rail line, from Deloraine to Mole Creek served the town from 1890 till its closure in 1985. Chudleigh has a population, as measured by the , of 335. The town has a privately run wildlife park, a shop selling and making honey products, and a few other stores. As part of a beautification drive in 2001 the main street was planted with roses, and the town is now promoted as a "village of roses". ==History== Aboriginal Tasmanians have lived on the island of Tasmania for thousands of years. The earliest archaeological evidence for Aboriginal habitation of Tasmania is from the valley of the Forth River, 35,000 years before the present.〔Jupp, p.110〕 Prior to European settlement, Chudleigh was part of the lands of the Pallittorre aboriginal tribe. Their range included Deloraine, east of Chudleigh, and the Gog mountain range to the north-west where they mined ochre in the Toolumbunner ochre pits.〔Jupp, p.111〕 The Pallittorre people lived in the area and used to have a camping ground where the later Church of England cemetery was established. Land clearing, road construction, disease and conflicts with settlers drove them from their lands and decimated the population. Their population in the area has been estimated to drop from 200 to 60 during 1827-30.〔 At the time of settlement the Chudleigh area had been bogs and wild bush.〔 During the early 1820s the Van Diemen's Land Company created a stock route from Deloraine to Emu Bay (now Burnie) that ran via Chudleigh and Mole Creek. The company built facilities, including a store, in Chudleigh.〔Evans & Terry, p.9〕 Europeans settled the area west of Deloraine from the early 1800s,〔Reunion Committee, p.3〕 and cattle were being grazed—illegally—in the Chudleigh area from as early as 1823.〔Evans & Terry, p.10〕 John Badcock Gardiner, who probably named Chudleigh after the village with the same name in Devon, England, was granted 850 acres in the area after arriving in Tasmania in 1829 with his family.〔Australian Garden History Society, p.7〕 The town's area was first granted to Lieutenant Travers Hartley Vaughan in 1830. Vaughan sold the land in 1837 to Henry Reid, who was later briefly a member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council.〔 An early industry in the area was limestone mining and lime production.〔Reunion Committee, p.65〕 By 1831 a lime burning industry had been established. The lime was sent to Launceston for use in construction.〔Australian Garden History Society, p.5〕 The town of Chudleigh was surveyed and marked into town blocks, many of them . The date of this survey is not recorded but it was likely done by John Batman, founder of Melbourne, prior to 1835. The town was laid out to hold a population of 5,000, as it was intended to be a railway junction on a line from Launceston to North West Tasmania. Later road and transport developments caused the idea of a such a large settlement at Chudleigh to be abandoned.〔Reunion Committee, p.9〕 Dan Picket, an ex-convict who has been granted a ticket of leave, built the first hotel, the two-storey Chudleigh Inn, around 1850. The building was later reduced to a single storey.〔 This hotel or inn was noted as being used by 1851. A police watch house was completed c.1860.〔Reunion Committee, p.63〕 By 1862 extensive and scenic caves had been discovered in the area, attracting visitors. In the 1860s a single-room school building was constructed.〔 The school opened 1 July 1864 with 14 pupils and a single teacher, though it apparently closed sometime after and reopened 28 January 1883 with a larger class of 34 pupils.〔The Mercury in 1883 notes school attendance as more normally 20〕 In 1884 a new building, and teacher's residence, was completed at a cost of 1531 pounds. The new school was on the road to Mole Creek near the bridge over Lobster Rivulet, and had around 26–27 students. The school suffered regular flooding of the building, access roads and paths. Due to this flooding it was moved, in the 1930s, to next to the Methodist chapel in Sorrell street. The school was extended in 1936 and remained in operation until closed, by the Tasmanian education department due to low student numbers, on 30 September 1965. From then students had to travel to the school at Mole Creek.〔Reunion Committee, pp.26,32-33〕 The township of Chudleigh was formally declared in 1866.〔Evans & Terry, p.49〕 It continued to expand and by 1883 also had a post and telegraph office, two stores, two churches, and over a dozen houses. An agricultural and horticultural show was first held in 1889. The Chudleigh Agricultural and Horticultural Society has run the show annually since, except for breaks from 1914–28 and 1939–45 due to the two world wars. The show has been run on various grounds, but the present one has been used since it was purchased in 1932.〔Reunion Committee, p.59〕 Chudleigh's town hall was completed in 1895, and opened during a public event on 11 April that year. It was funded by public subscription and built local builder Davis Brothers on donated land. It was built as a weather board building set on stone foundations, with a corrugated iron roof. There was a near tragedy in the hall in late 1922 when a generator caught fire while the hall was being used by 300 people. The inwards opening doors and lack of a fire door were cited as significant problems. Chudleigh had a post office from 1865.〔Evans & Terry, p.28〕 Around 1899 it was moved to a new building〔Reunion Committee, p.57〕 though it has since been closed and the building sold as a private home. Chudleigh had a registered maternity hospital in the early 20th century.〔 For some time the town had an Australian rules football club. It closed in the 1930s, reformed in 1939, then finally closed in the 1980s. Telegraph communication followed construction of the railway line in the late 19th century. The first telephones were installed in Chudleigh homes in the 1930s, and mains electricity in the 1940s.〔Evans & Terry, pp.29,53〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chudleigh, Tasmania」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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