Aquila Barn – A sense of place

A geology widely researched, the farm foreshore is strewn with tidewater glacier depositions from a vast glacial moraine dating back some 300 million years, (a time when the land mass that is now Tasmania was part of the Gondwanaland super-continent and what was to become Wynyard, a mere 10 degrees from the South Pole).

Some 22 million years ago a process of siltation in the bay captured life of the day, among them, one of the first significant fossil finds in Australia - Wynyardia bassinia, an early marsupial possum-like creature. 

Remnant overlays of the volcanic larval flows of the Pliocene period 13 million years ago, created the basalt soils that today define the Wynyard regions as a cornucopia of productivity.

As an echo of an ancient past the farm foreshore abounds with fossils, while the sculptural beauty of ancient stone fish traps etch a more contemporary and poignant link to the aboriginal inhabitants of the Cape, the Tommeginer People. 

More contemporary still, three Norfolk Island pines meters from the barn, are a legacy of the colonial settlers drawn to the region by the rich basalt soils and heavily timbered forests.

The two story homestead built on the farm in the mid 1800's, and sadly burnt to the ground in the latter part of that century, served as Table Cape's first lighthouse, shining a beacon of hope over Freestone Cove.

The tranquil waters of Freestone Cove - a playground for dolphins, seals and migrating whales, disguise a darker mercurial quality that proved too treacherous for the fledgling port on the Inglis River. Today, Burnie is the bustling port town, while on the Inglis several small fishing trawlers, providing excellent fish to Wynyard, elude to a forgotten past.