Half Way House Traditional Cache

The cache container is a tube and hidden outside the rail corridor. There is no need to approach, nor cross, the railway tracks when seeking the cache. The cache is completely obvious to a geocacher, and less so to muggles.  No swaps, and no room for standard size TB's.

~No cache specific information past this point~

The Half Way House 

A prominent feature  and the social  centre of Antill Ponds was its Half Way  House, a three storey hotel which  serviced  both  travellers  and  locals  with accommodation, meals and liquor. Adjacent stables were  also  a  changing  station  where  hard-driven coach horses were changed for fresh animals. 

Only the highway separated the railway station and platform from the front door of the hotel, a distance of about twenty metres. The attraction and proximity of warmth  and  hospitality  for  train  crews,  railway staff,  the  travelling  public  and  the  local  community resulted in numerous accounts of humorous behaviour, especially so in the earlier years when the hotel was licensed to sell  alcoholic refreshments. The licence lapsed at the end of 1932 and was never subsequently granted. 

Early  accounts  of the  Half Way  House  are scanty, receiving  only  brief  mentions  in  various  publica­tions. Two  of the best coverages  are to  be found  in Early Buildings ofSouthern Tasmania by E. Graeme Robertson,  1970,  which  gives  some  useful references  and  quotes;  and A  History  of the Lower Midlands by J. S. Weeding 1988 who mentions that the earliest Midlands Highway was routed by way of York Plains, through Sorell Springs, several kilometres to the east of St Peters Pass, thus avoiding the steep and more difficult terrain through the St Peters Pass. A half kilometre section of this original road can still be clearly seen, cut into the hillside to the east of the present  highway,  a  few  hundred  metres  south  of Antill Ponds and which originally extended outwards across  the  plain  to  Sorell  Springs.  Northwards  it followed the valleys to the east of the present highway to exit onto the Salt Pan Plains a few hundred metres west of the present 'Lowes Park' homestead. A striking panoramic  view  northwards  from  this  point  is 

illustrated by Joseph Lycett in his Views in Australia (1824 plate 19). 

At  this  period  the  'half way'  house  was  at  Sorell Springs,  having  been  built  by  John  Presnell,  a blacksmith  by trade,  who  arrived from England on the Midas on  13 January  1821. He was granted 300 acres  of land  at  Sorell  Springs  on  which  he  built the White  Hart  Inn.  A  licence  to sell spirits,  wine 

and  beer  was  granted  in  1822  but  following  the subsequent realignment  of the  highway through  St Peters  Pass  and  the  bypassing  of  Sorell  Springs, Presnell  acquired  land  at  Antill  Ponds  in  1830, pulled  down  the  first  White  Hart  Inn  and  had it re-erected  at  Antill  Ponds  so  to  again  catch  the travelling public and supply them with refreshments and accommodation. This building comprised seven rooms, suitable for an inn and valued at 500 pounds, together with a six stall stable and other outbuildings. 

This was also called the White Hart Inn; it bore this name  until  1842  when it was  changed to  the  Half Way House.