Deloraine artisan craft & heritage trail

A town that made things

Deloraine was surveyed in the 1830s where the road from Launceston to the north-west coast crossed the Meander River. Within a decade it had a flour mill, a brewery, a tannery, a smithy and three inns, all built in the Georgian manner by the same handful of masons and sawyers. The town has never stopped being a maker's town. Today the Huon pine turners, the weavers and spinners, the potters and the blacksmiths work out of the same river-stone buildings, and the craft fair that began in 1981 is still the largest working-craft fair in Australia.

This sheet is a walking route, about three kilometres on foot through the town, with a short drive to Chudleigh and Mole Creek for the outlying workshops. Studios keep irregular hours. Most are open Thursday to Sunday; many close for the winter. Knock, or ring ahead.

The Georgian river town, 1840s

Bonney’s Inn (1831)

West Church Street. The oldest surviving building in the town, a two-storey Georgian coaching inn in river stone with a slate roof. Now a private residence and occasional gallery.

Deloraine Hotel (1848)

Emu Bay Road. Still trading. The bar retains its original Blackwood counter and the cellar runs down to the river bank.

British Hotel (1840s)

Emu Bay Road. A plainer Georgian coaching inn with its stable yard intact behind.

Flour mill (1840s)

On the river below the bridge. The bluestone walls stand; the wheel pit is visible at low summer flow.

St Mark’s Anglican (1859)

Church Street, on the hill. Sandstone, early Gothic Revival, with a lych-gate carved locally in Huon pine.

Deloraine bridge (1888)

The present iron-and-stone bridge replaced the 1840s timber crossing. The river walk starts beneath it.

The Georgian buildings share a vocabulary: twelve-pane sash windows, fanlights over the doors, hipped roofs, and the dark basalt river stone of the Meander laid in neat courses with sandstone quoins carted from Westbury. The craftsmen who built them were, more often than not, assigned convicts. Their mark is the same chisel pattern on the quoins of half the town.

Huon pine and the woodturners

Huon pine, Lagarostrobos franklinii, grows only in Tasmania's wet west, lives for two to three thousand years, and is no longer felled. Every piece turned in Deloraine today comes from salvage: logs pulled from the beds of the Gordon and Pieman rivers, stumps from old cuttings, and timber buried in hydro dam sites and recovered under licence. The wood is pale gold, oily with methyl eugenol, and so resistant to rot that salvaged logs have lain underwater for a century without damage.

Three turners work within walking distance of the bridge. Their workshops differ, but the craft is the same: the log is dried for years, cut on the bandsaw to reveal the figure, and turned green or dry depending on the piece. Birdseye figure, the pin-knot pattern prized above all others, is sliced thin and kept for boxes and lids. Every workshop will tell you the smell is the thing that sells it; the oil stays fragrant for decades.

Tasmanian timbers you will meet on the trail

Timber	Colour	Working character	Typical piece
Huon pine	Pale gold, darkens to honey	Fine, soft, oily; turns like butter	Bowls, boxes, boat fittings
Blackwood	Golden brown to chocolate, fiddleback figure	Medium hard, polishes to glass	Furniture, guitar backs
Sassafras (blackheart)	Cream with black-streaked heart	Soft, even grain, fungal staining prized	Platters, veneers
Myrtle	Pink to deep red	Hard, fine, burl figure	Turned vessels, knife handles
Celery-top pine	Pale straw	Stable, durable, straight	Boat planking, cabinetry

Textile guilds and the Yarns Artwork in Silk

Deloraine's spinners and weavers formed a guild in the 1970s, drawing on the valley's fine-wool and alpaca flocks and on a thread of Scottish handloom tradition that arrived with the first settlers. The guild still meets weekly, runs a dye garden, and shows at the fair. Its public monument is the Yarns Artwork in Silk, four enormous silk panels made by more than 300 volunteers over three years and displayed in the Deloraine visitor centre. Each panel is a season of the Meander Valley: the Tiers in snow, the river in flood, the harvest, the craft fair. It is the best single introduction to what the valley looks like to the people who live in it.

The Deloraine craft fair

Held over four days on the first weekend of November since 1981, the Tasmanian Craft Fair fills the town's halls, churches, show grounds and marquees with roughly 200 working exhibitors. The rule that sets it apart is that the makers must be present and must demonstrate: a turner turns, a weaver weaves, the blacksmith works the forge. It is a working show rather than a market, and it is the reason a town of 2,500 people has more craft studios per head than any other in the state.

Plan accommodation months ahead. The fair weekend also coincides with the beginning of the platypus season and, most years, the last snow on Quamby Bluff.

Walking the trail

1. Start at the visitor centre on Emu Bay Road for the Yarns silk panels and the town map.
2. Walk west along Emu Bay Road past the British Hotel and the Deloraine Hotel to the bridge.
3. Drop onto the river walk, downstream past the mill ruin to Rotary Park, and look for platypus at the weir pool.
4. Climb Church Street to St Mark's and Bonney's Inn, the oldest corner of the town.
5. Return via the studios on West Parade and Parsonage Street: turners, a potter, and the guild rooms.
6. Drive to Chudleigh and Mole Creek for the honey farm, the leatherworker and the second cluster of turners, and pair it with the caves.

Allow a full morning for the town loop and a full day if you include the drive. For track times on the walks that frame the trail, use the planner on the field guide.