Highway in Van Diemen's Land – History of the Main Coach Highway Between Hobart and Launceston | G. Hawley Stancombe & Eric Ratcliff | 1968 | Signed & Numbered 542/1000 [USED – HCDJ – Good]

G. Hawley Stancombe and Eric Ratcliff's history of the main coaching highway between Hobart and Launceston — the road that became the Midland Highway, and remains today the primary artery connecting Tasmania's two largest cities through the island's historic pastoral heartland.

The highway was surveyed and built by convict labour from the 1820s — a remarkable engineering achievement through the Midlands that created not just a road but a string of coaching towns, inns and staging posts that defined the character of the Tasmanian Midlands for the rest of the century. The coaching inns that served the mail coaches, the horses that pulled them, the convict gangs that built and maintained the road, the bushrangers who preyed on travellers, and the gradual development of the towns along its route — Oatlands, Ross, Campbell Town and the country between them — are all part of the story told.

The Book Cellar operates from the cellars of Foxhunters Return in Campbell Town — one of the original coaching inns documented in this very book, built around 1830 to service travellers on this road, and still standing today on the same highway that traffic between Hobart and Launceston has followed since the convict era.

This copy is signed by both authors and numbered 542 of a limited edition of 1,000.

At 271 indexed pages, published 1968, it is the standard history of the highway and the most complete account of what it meant to travel between Hobart and Launceston before the railways and the motor car.

Many more of our Tasmanian titles are yet to be listed online — see our full catalogues at justtassiebooks.com/catalogues.html.

BOOK DETAILS

• Hardcover with dust jacket.
• 271 pages, indexed.
• Published 1968. Out of print.

CONDITION

• Used, generally very good condition for its age.
• Dust jacket spine faded with small wear and tear to edges
• Some wear to edges of cover.
• Pages good condition.

DELIVERY & IN-STORE PICKUP

• Combined Shipping: Sourcing multiple titles for your Tasmanian history library? The Book Cellar offers combined flat-rate parcel delivery across Australia. Secure your books using our online checkout, or phone the bookshop directly on 03 6381 1545 to coordinate multi-volume shipping.
• Free Instore Pickup: Located in Tasmania or travelling the Midland Highway? Select "Instore Pickup" at checkout to pay no postage and collect your items directly from the counter at The Book Cellar, underneath Foxhunters Return in Campbell Town.