Fauna
The land is host to a variety of fauna including reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects and invertebrates, crustaceans mammals/marsupials and monotremes. Read more.
Climate
The weather is quite cool for approximately eight months of the year, with warmer, hotter weather really between November and March.
Fire Regimes
​
​
Flora
Tall, wet Eucalyptus obliqua/ Eucalyptus regnans / mixed (Nothofagus) forest with an understory of rainforest species. Read more.
The Land
An area of 3.8 ha/9.5 acres of privately owned tall, wet eucalyptus forest, located on a south facing slope in the hills west of Franklin at around 410-450m above sea level. The forest stands on 'Kermandie soils', clay loam soils, which are acidic (pH 5-6). They are formed from Jurassic dolerite.
​
Soils Brown Layer - deposited about 10 - 70 thousand years ago, during the Last Glacial (Laffan & McIntosh 2005).
​
Soils Red Layer - The red colour of the soils is indicative of in situ weathering of the Jurassic dolerite and the alteration of the dolerite to clays occurring over thousands of years during the relatively warmer interglacial period 70 - 130 thousand years ago (Laffan & McIntosh 2005).
​
Culture and History
According to a map made by early white observers around (1804-1830), the country where this land is, falls within the Traditional Aboriginal Territory of the South-eastern tribe, theTahuni Lingah. This tribe included the Melukerdee band of the Huon River, the Lyluequonny band of Recherche Bay, along with the Mouheneenner of Hobart and Nuenonne of Bruny Island. (Habitat Advocate 2021)
​
Under colonial rule, the first land grants for the area now known as Franklin were given in 1834. In 1839 after her arrival in Tasmania two years earlier, Lady Jane Franklin established the settlement of Franklin in the Huon dividing 640 acres of land into 50 and 100 acre blocks which she sold to poor settlers (Tasmanian Travel & Information Centre 2021).
​
There is evidence in several areas on the land, that it was logged, as several large eucalyptus stumps remain with the old timber scaffolding (for standing on while sawing), is still in place. A neighbour on an adjoining property states that the property was logged around 1970 - further investigation needed to confirm historical logging regime.
​
References:
​
Australian Plant Society Tasmania (Hobart) (2007) Rainforest Plants of Tasmania, TASMAP.
​
Ford, R.J. (1954) The Geology of the Franklin-Glendevie Area, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, vol. 88, p.157.
​
Kirkpatrick, J.B. & Backhouse, S. (2007) Native Trees of Tasmania, 7th ed., Pandani Press, Tasmania.
​
Launceston Field Naturalists Club (2008) A Guide to Flowers & Plants of Tasmania, 4th ed., Reed New Holland, New South Wales.
​
Minchin, R.F. (2005) Wildflowers of Tasmania - A Field Guide by R.F. (Bob) Minchin DCM, Peregrine Pty Ltd, Tasmania.
​
Our Tasmania (2021) Franklin, Tasmania,
https://www.ourtasmania.com.au/hobart/franklin.html
​
The Habitat Advocate (2021) The Tasmanians Part 5: The Traditional Tasmanians, pp.2-6,
https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The-Traditional-Tasmanians.pdf
​
Woodward, F.J. (1966) Franklin, Lady Jane (1791–1875), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/franklin-lady-jane-2065/text2573, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 1 January 2022.
​
