Bicycle trip to Adamsfield

Party: Ted Holmes, Hugh Street, Alan Dyer and Allan Christian.
Time: It was probably about 1945/47

The trip was organised by Ted, who had some family connection with Adamsfield. In the 1920s, Ted's grandfather had a sawmill out from Maydena. The mill was burnt out in 1929 and Ted's grandfather established a handle turning plant, for axe handles and the like. There is a Holmes Street in Maydena named for Ted's family.

On Friday at 4pm we caught the train to Maydena from the Hobart Railway Station and reached Maydena at about 8:30pm. We had a terrific ride in the dark through a forest of towering giants along a track alternately steep up then steep down and with hardly any lights worth talking of (Hugh had no lights on his bike and I depended on a generator that needed some speed to be of any use) It was a great relief when, at about 11pm, we reached Chrisp's Huts.

We reached Adamsfield the next morning. The only resident was Mr S.L. Gerny (or Gurney?), known as 'the count'. Ted arranged with him for us to occupy one of the derelict cottages, 'MUDINN'.

On Sunday morning, we set off to find the Gordon River Gorge. We got drenched on the way back that evening.
We returned home on the Monday and I wrote ‘Had a super time – all too short – must go again.

Hi Allan,
I found your story about Adamsfield and the pictures very interesting.
My father was the policeman at Maydena in the late '50s and early '60s. He knew Mr Gerny quite well. On 7th October 1961 my father received a message that Mr Gerny was ill and that he should check on him. He got up to Adamsfield not long before mid-night to find him very ill. He drove him to the hospital at New Norfolk but Mr Gerny died a few days later. There was something on ABC Radio about it last year.

CLICK HERE for ABC

I knew a Ted Holmes who was a pharmacist who worked at the Royal Hobart Hospital. I'm not sure, but he might have been in his early twenties around 1945. He might have been the same man.
Regards,
Philip Branch.