1. From 1903, the two-storey weatherboard Mt Royal family hotel overlooked over the beach from its 20 acre hillside site. It became the Clarendon Childrens Home (1945), was replaced by separate cottages and pulled down c.1976. Clarendon closed in 2006, and the land was subdivided.

Mt Royal HotelThe KB Sailing Club began in 1954 and moved into its foreshore clubrooms c.1960. Just beyond it was Kingston’s first but short-lived jetty. Completed in 1888 it was washed away in a February 1895 storm.

2. No 42 The Esplanade contains the oldest known house in Kingston. Its builder, William Nichols, who farmed the 30 acres behind the beach from 1814, made every nail and cut and shaped every board in its original four rooms. The house passed to Billy Williamson, whose job was to tie up and collect fees from the ferries and barges using the jetty. The stables housed his eclectic museum, the Old Curiosity Shop.

3. Along the Esplanade (created 1886) are examples of the summer homes of Hobart’s wealthy business and professional families, built in the early 1900s.

4. On the Beach Road corner was the grand two storey, verandahed weatherboard Australasian Hotel, built by George Lucas in the 1880s from whaling money. Both its bar and its silver service Sunday lunch made it the hub of life at the beach until the 1950s. The 100m. long second jetty extended into the bay, in front.

Jetty and Australasian Hotel5. Opposite was the Kingston family’s two-storey home and store, complete with verandahs and door opening across the corner. It stocked everything – but was closed on Sundays, when beach kiosks supplied ice creams and cordials.

6. At No 29 The Esplanade was Weller Arnold’s summer home. He owned Arnold’s Biscuit Factory and Tearooms in Hobart - and the famous Victoria Sponge recipe.

7. The river near the footbridge was a favourite swimming spot, complete with diving board. Regular floods often changed its route to the sea. Fishing for rock-cod, bream and flathead was popular as was rowing up the river.

8. Westward Ho at 41 Balmoral Road belonged to Hans Christian Bjelke-Petersen (uncle of Sir Joh). It is a good example of the black, sump-oiled, vertical board summer homes ‘down the beach’. His Danish family emigrated to Hobart in 1891 but Hans moved to Sydney where he built up a chain of 160 Physical Education Schools. He spent summers at Kingston Beach and retired here.

9. Robert and Len Nettlefold lived at Nos. 33 - 35 and 9 respectively, their houses called Troon and St Andrews after the Scottish golf courses. In his 40s Robert, proprietor of Nettlefold Motors (later Motors) and an outstanding sportsman, discovered golf. He bought the land to create the KB Golf Course, moved to Balmoral Road and had a connecting footbridge built. He and his left-handed son, Len,

become state champions with Len often playing for Australia.

10. No. 53 Beach Road, Rosebanks, was formerly the home of eccentric local doctor and cricket tragic, C N Atkins. He had a nurse run a five-bed maternity hospital here during the 1920s and ‘30s.

11. No. 46 Beach Road was home to another golfing family, the Toogoods. As club professional, Alf Toogood first lived in the cottage on the course. His sons, John and Peter, became representative golfers. In 1954 Peter defeated his brother John to win the Australian Amateur Championship – which generated the headline “TOOGOOD TOO GOOD FOR TOOGOOD”.

12.On the now Stihl site was an early ‘front room’ shop that Colin and Alan Walton later developed into Kingston’s first large self-serve grocery store, until the 1970s. The store finally closed in 2003.

13. The red brick hall (built in 1933) replaced an earlier weatherboard one. It was home to dances and balls, socials and concerts, badminton, youth clubs, card evenings … Friday night meant Perry’s Pictures - watched from the ‘comfort’ of a wooden pew, through a haze of cigarette smoke.

Beach Road c. 191014. The Citrus Moon on the Windsor Street corner was first the site of a holiday guesthouse, Northhampton House, that burned down in April 1934. It was rebuilt as the Geeves’ general store and then became the Young’s Yum Yum Tree, a health food shop.

KINGSTON BEACH

History Walk

Kingston Beach, mid 1920s

In its heyday, from the 1890s through the 1930s, Kingston Beach was a popular seaside resort. “Everybody who is anybody now goes to Browns River in the season,” said the Tasmanian Mail of 1903. At weekends and on holidays its beach was thronged with locals parading in their Sunday best, visitors staying at its hotels and boarding houses, and the “summer people”, Hobart’s prosperous businessmen and professionals, who had their summer homes behind the beach. Ferries brought day visitors to the jetty in their hundreds. A band played at the rotunda; the children enjoyed the maypole; kiosks sold homemade ice creams and drinks, even hot water for the picnic cuppa. Some fished, punted up the river – or even swam.

15. Look down Windsor Street, once lined with big gum trees, to see more holiday homes, built after the 1905 subdivision. Note the royal street names: Balmoral, Windsor, Victoria and Albert. At £60 each, the expensive blocks were snapped up by Hobart’s wealthy.

Windsor St., Methodist Church on right 16. Along Recreation Street (created 1909) is the rec. ground and its grandstand built by Dudley Jones (whose band played at local dances). It was, until recent times, home of local cricket and football teams; and from the 1920s also home to the Agricultural Show which featured foot and horse races, chopping, hay stooking, sheaf tossing, vegetable and fruit displays, cookery etc.

17. Well above Ewing Avenue (looking from Recreation Street) is a black vertical board home, first the holiday home of Judge Ewing, a W.A. and Tasmanian MP and the Administrator of Tasmania (1923/24). It passed to Ellis Davies, then co-owner of the Theatre Royal, and with his brother, owner of the Mercury newspaper. More recently, it was the home of Michael Hodgman, former State and Federal Liberal MP.

Kingston Beach was a favoured gathering place for Aboriginal people, as its middens attest. Its first settler, William Nichols, farmed 30 acres behind the beach and helped create a sandy track to the waterfront, the future Beach Road. Subdivision in the 1880s (southern side) and in 1905 (northern side) created streets lined with expensive blocks, where Hobart’s wealthy built summer homes and enjoyed their seaside playground, with enough partying for the locals to dub Balmoral Road “Immoral Road”. A post-WW2 housing shortage saw many holiday homes leased to young families - and the essentially holiday character of the beach changed. However the beach, the river and a distinctive architecture have maintained a definable ‘beach’ precinct.© 2013 Browns River History Group

in association with the Kingborough Council