Macquarie Street, Hobart, 2004

Location

The National Archives established a presence in Tasmania in 1974. The Hobart office’s first home was in a former Catholic primary school in South Hobart. In 1981, the Hobart office moved to a purpose built repository at Rosny Park, on Hobart’s eastern shore.

In 2002, the Federal government sold the Rosny Park complex to the Tasmanian Department of Tourism, Parks, Heritage and the Arts for the exclusive use of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. In September 2002, after 22 years at Rosny Park, the Hobart office moved most of its collection to our current premises at 85 Macquarie Street, Hobart.

In addition to the 1400 metres of records stored at 85 Macqaurie Street, the Archives stores around 3600 metres of records at AAA storage – an off-site storage facility in the Hobart central business district.

The collection in Hobart

The Hobart office holds records similar to other state offices – immigration case files, alien registration documentation, inwards and outwards passenger lists, lighthouse logbooks, army pay records, large-format architectural drawings of Commonwealth buildings in Tasmania. There are collections special to Tasmania, notably records created by the Australian Antarctic Division, Tasmanian Government Railways and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Antarctic records of particular interest include photographs; hydrographic charts and maps, and the personal collection of Captain John King Davis, Second-in-Command of Douglas Mawson's 1911–14 expedition; Antarctic voyage and station reports, log books; records about husky dogs employed on Antarctic expeditions.

The Tasmanian railway collection includes about 100,000 large-format architectural and engineering drawings dating back to the 1850s, and several hundred metres of other material such as photographs, a technical library, personnel records and land records.

The meteorological records include a series of tidal readings and meteorological data recorded between 1837–77 at Port Arthur by Thomas Lampriere, the Deputy Assistant Commissary General at the Port Arthur penal settlement.

Hobart office, Rosny Park, 1981

Hobart

85 Macquarie Street
HOBART TAS 7000
Tel: (03) 6230 6111
Fax: (03) 6230 6134
GPO Box 309
HOBART TAS 7001