Deddington, Tasmania

Deddington is a town near Evandale in Tasmania, Australia. The town is situated on the Nile River and lies in the foothills of Ben Lomond.HistoryThe first inhabitants of the Deddington area were Tasmanian Aboriginal people of the Ben Lomond Nation. Aboriginal artifacts indicating land use (hunting) and seasonal camps have been found along the Nile River and Patterdale Creek. It is uncertain which clans had specific use of the area but the Plindermairhemener clan is referred to as occupying the western South Esk region. The Palawa name for the Deddington locality, specifically the 'Nile River at Deddington,' was weetacenner (wee.tac.en.ner). It is likely that the Deddington area was a hunting ground as well as part of the seasonal migratory route for both the Ben Lomond Nation clans, referred to generally as the Plangermaireener, and also clans from the North Midlands Nation; who visited the Ben Lomond plateau in summer.Settlers were granted land around the site of the current town in the second and third decades of the 1800s. James Cox was granted land at Nile, Anthony Cottrell to the North at Gordons Plains, and Massey was granted land to the south at Mills Plains, now the Deddington district. It is likely that stockeepers, kangaroo hunters and timber-cutters ( convicts assigned to colonial landowners) moved in advance of settlers to the fringes of the Ben Lomond escarpment and up the South Esk Valley. As was common at the frontier, stockeepers both negotiated and came into conflict with the Aboriginal clans in the Deddington area.Aboriginal people often traded at the frontier with assigned men, the currency being food, sexual favours and hunting dogs. But, relations would often sour: sometimes with fatal consequences and the first recorded killing of convict stockmen at Deddington occurred in 1825, when Arnold and Booth (assigned men working for Barclay and Cox) were killed and mutilated at their stockhut in a dispute over ownership of hunting dogs and abuse of women. Unusually, a Plangermaireener witness, Temina, gave evidence under translation at trial in Launceston and he stated that the two men were speared to death and further mutilated by women of his people who 'crushed his head with a stone'