Best 27 Real Estate Agents In Carrick [2025]

Carrick Suburb Overview

Carrick is a small historic village 17 kilometres west of Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, on the banks of the Liffey River. The Meander Valley Highway passes through the town’s centre;this road was formerly the main road from Launceston to Deloraine and Devonport. Carrick has a well-preserved 19th-century heritage;fifteen of its colonial buildings are listed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register including Carrick House, St Andrew’s Church, the Old Watch house, Monds Roller Mill and the Carrick Hotel.

The first land grant at Carrick was in 1818 and a decade later William Bryan was building a wooden mill on the river’s bank. The town was formed in consequence of this mill’s construction and town plots sold in 1838. Carrick Post Office opened on 5 November 1841. Carrick never grew large

The 1846 stone building known as “Monds Roller Mill” is the town’s most prominent feature. The operation of this mill

The Anglican Church St Andrews has held services since the 1840s. For some time the town also had a Wesleyan Chapel. A private school opened in 1843 and a government one in the 1870s. By the late 1930s both schools had closed. Carrick hosts Agfest, the state’s largest single event and one of Australia’s largest agricultural field days. The 1848 Anglican church, 1833 hotel and a few other establishments serve the townspeople. A brewery, steam and water mill, butcher, schools and other hotels are all long since closed. Carrick has a long association with horse racing, starting prior to the race course’s formation in 1848. For a time the town held the oldest horse race in Australia. Today regular harness racing, speedway racing and cycling events have replaced this.

Carrick’s area is within the traditional grounds of the Northern Midlands group of Tasmanian Aborigines. Records held by Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania have no reference, as recently as 2010, of any aboriginal heritage or artifacts in the area. The first land grant at Carrick was made in 1818 to Thomas Haydock Reibey, father of Thomas Reibey. The grant was for 4,000 acres taking in the area of the later town. Early land use was for agriculture and by 1823, at least, there were only a few widely scattered settlers.

Captain William Thomas Lyttleton was granted over 1,300 acres near Carrick in late 1825 when he lived at nearby Hagley in Hagley House. What was then just a locality became known as Lyttleton after the Captain. The river that passed from the Great Western Tiers to nearby Meander River was then known as The Pennyroyal Creek, after a plant that grew profusely on its banks. William Bryan arrived at Hobart, from Ireland, in May 1824. He received land grants of 1,077 acres in the Meander Valley and later purchased 500 acres at Carrick, including 30 acres on the creek. Bryan began building a mill on his Carrick grant in 1826, on the same site as the later Monds Roller Mills. His business interests prospered and he purchased large amounts of land, including more at Carrick. By 1828 the first bridge over the river had been built, a simple log structure. Bryan’s mill was the impetus for foundation of the town. Van Diemen’s Land’s Land Commissioners recommended in early 1828

Mr W Bryan is building a mill a short way up the stream and we beg to recommend reserving 100 acres each side for the various purposes of a village which we called Lyttleton.

Over the next few years Bryan used his influence to rename, in memory of his homeland, both the town and the river, much to the disgust of Lyttleton. It was reported in 1831 newspapers that the road from Launceston to Carrick had been opened. The path of the road was announced in April 1831, and it was opened for public traffic in June. The State Government sold town allotments in late 1838, obtaining what was noted as a high price of

Samuel Pratt Winter was sent to Tasmania by his father, at Bryan’s request, to act as an overseer of the mill. He managed the mill from 1834, when Bryan went to London in the midst of a dispute with Governor Arthur, and leased it from 1837 onwards. A post office opened in November 1841, and at the end of the year the village had also four dwellings, a blacksmith shop, a police station, the flour mill and an adobe hotel built by John Archer. While passing through the town Louisa Anne Meredith took note of the buildings. In her guidebook, published in 1843, she referred to the “crazy weather board mill”. At the time the mill’s motive power came from an overshot water wheel supplied with water from the Liffey River via a long wooden trough. St Andrew’s church was built in 1843 by Thomas Reibey as a school. The initial church grounds of 14 acres were donated by Thomas Reibey. Winter was living at the mill cottage in 1846, when he arranged for the old wooden mill to be removed and, with John Kinder Archer, began building the blue-stone mill. The town greatly expanded in the late 1850s, fueled by the efforts of those returning from the Victorian gold fields. Over time many cottages in Carrick were built for workers on the Reibey’s Entally House outside nearby Hadspen.

By 1859 the town had two mills

A government school was established in the 1870s and grew to 65 students by 1901. Mond’s business expanded throughout the latter part of the 19th century and the prosperity of the town did likewise. He built a large grain store opposite the mill and opened offices and a depot in Launceston. Westbury Municipal Council built a public hall on the main road in 1883. The current weatherboard town hall dates from c1900 and the old hall is presumed to have been destroyed prior to this. At the town’s height in the 19th century, just after the return of men from the Victorian gold fields, the town had four public houses and a population of approximately 400. It had four public houses operating two of which, Prince of Wales and the Carrick Hotel, remained open in 1901. As of 1883 it was reported that the inns were kept open by the Carrick Races and fortnightly livestock sales. Carrick’s livestock sales were held at the Carrick Hotel and were the main fat stock sales for Launceston. At the turn of the century the town had no reticulated water. It relied on wells, rainwater and the inconstant river.

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