‘A.H. 1804’ – The Search for 19th Century Graffiti at the Supply River, Tasmania

There’s a flat grey rock at the Supply River, just below the old mill ruins near Exeter, where someone has cut their initials into the basalt. The carving is deep and deliberate; not an idle scratch but the work of a hammer and chisel. AH 1804.

Hilda Archer Johnson mentioned it in Bygone Days on the Tamar, almost in passing. I’d walked that river more times than I could count and had never seen it. So I went looking.

The first attempt, in autumn, was a failure. The river was running hard and the rocks were slick with algae. I came back in summer, when the water was lower, and there it was – exactly where Johnson said it would be, exactly as it had been for two hundred and twenty years.

The question, of course, was who AH was.

But who was Adolarius Humphrey? And why exactly was he going around carving up our rocks in 1804?

Who Was Humphrey

Adolarius William Henry Humphrey was born in London in 1782, the son of George Humphrey, a natural history dealer with a knack for moving in the right circles. George’s world was one of gentleman collectors and amateur scientists, and through it he had cultivated a useful friendship with Charles Greville, a well-connected naturalist with influence to spare.

When a mineralogist was needed for an expedition to Port Phillip, Grenville put forward young Adolarius. The appointment raised eyebrows then and raises them still. Humphrey was twenty years old, and his qualifications for the position remain, to put it charitably, dubious. But Grenville had spoken, and Adolarius packed his bags.

The Journey

Humphrey was not, by his own account, a natural sailor. His letters home are peppered with seasickness. But the ship eventually reached Port Phillip, and there Humphrey learnt that two of his shipmates were continuing on to survey Van Diemen’s Land. He applied to join them, and was accepted.

The crew made their way down the Tamar as far as the Cataract Gorge, then turned back upriver. On the morning of the 13th of January, 1804, they stopped at a small river – the Supply – to fill their water casks. While the work was done around him, Humphrey took out a hammer and chisel and got to work on the basalt.

On the morning of the 13th we went on shore to examine a waterfall which one of the seamen had seen the night before when in search of kangaroo. We found it excellent water and filled several casks at it. Whilst this was doing I amused myself with carving my name [A.H. 1804] in the solid Basaltic rock with hammer and chisel, in a place where it must be seen by any boat’s crew that may hereafter visit the spot for fresh water.

Adolarius William Henry Humphrey

He was, in his own words, simply amusing himself.

The Man on the Bench

Back in Van Diemen’s Land, Humphrey built a life. He was appointed Magistrate and Justice of the Peace, served as Superintendent of Police, helped establish an Agricultural Society, and issued licences for the baking and retailing of bread. The Colonial Secretary’s correspondence tracks his career in the methodical way of bureaucracies everywhere.

But there is one letter that stands apart.

In 1806, while Humphrey was in New South Wales, a young woman named Harriet Sutton left her parents to be with him. The newspapers of the time used the word seduced. When Humphrey returned to Van Diemen’s Land in 1807 for a second mineralogical survey, Harriet followed. Her parents wanted her back. In 1811, The Colonial Secretary wrote to Humphrey formally requesting he return her.

Humphrey ignored the letter.

In 1812, he and Harriet married. Governor Lachlan Macquarie, unimpressed by a magistrate who had so publicly disregarded both parental authority and a direct request from the Colonial Secretary, declined to support his permanent appointment to the bench. Humphrey, for his part, appears to have considered the matter settled.

Howe and Humphreyville

Not everyone was satisfied with Humphrey’s judgments from the bench. In one memorable instance, the bushranger Michael Howe – having taken exception to some colonial justice dispensed in his direction – came looking for Humphrey at his Pittswater property. Finding his absent, Howe and his associates did the next best things and ransacked the house, destroying what they could find.

Humphrey retired in 1828, still only in his mid-forties, his health failing. By then, he had settled on his estate in the Derwent Valley. A property he had named with characteristic modesty; Humphreyville. The area is known today as Bushy Park.

Humphrey died at Humphreyville in 1829 at forty-seven years of age. He and Harriet had no children. His will left everything to her for the term of her natural life, and after that to his nephew.

Humphrey had been in Van Diemen’s Land for twenty-five years. He’d helped build the first European house in Hobart Town, climbed Table Mountain, found salt pans near Tunbridge, sat on the bench, had his house ransacked by Michael Howe, and somewhere along the way he’d married the woman he refused to give back.

And in January 1804, killing time while men filled water casks at a river he would never visit again, he’d cut his initials into a rock. In a place where it must be seen, he wrote, by any boat’s crew that may hereafter visit the spot.

He wasn’t wrong.

What We Know

• Adolarius William Henry Humphrey carved his initials into the basalt at the Supply River on the morning of 13 January 1804, while the crew of his vessel filled with water casks at the falls. He was twenty-one years old. The carving – AH 1804 – remains visible today, below the ruins of the old mill.
• Humphrey died in 1829 at Humphreyville, his Derwent Valley estate. He was forty-seven years old.
• The inscription is the oldest known example of European graffiti in Tasmania.

More from Tasmania’s Past

Interested in more characters from Tasmania’s past? You may enjoy reading about Count McHugo and Mary Patches.

The Rise and Fall of Count McHugo: A Tale from Van Diemen’s Land

Mary Patches: The Story of Launceston’s Syrian Hawker

Further Reading

A Voyage to Port Phillip and Van Diemen’s Land with Governor Collins by A.W.H Humphrey.

Bygone Days on the Tamar by Hilda Archer Johnson.

Newman, Terry (2004) Tasmanian Graffiti: Humphrey’s ‘Hammer and Chisel’, 13 January 1804.

References

Colonial Secretary Correspondence, Ancestry

Colonial Times, 15 May 1829, Family Notices, p.4

G. H. Stancombe, ‘Humphrey, Adolarius William Henry (1782–1829)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 16 January 2022.

Hobart Town Courier, 16 May 1829, Gazette, p.2

Hobart Town Gazette, 21 April 1827, A Proclamation, p.1

Hobart Town Gazette, 8 August 1829, A Proclamation, p.5

Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser, 26 January 1822, Classified Advertising, p.1

Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser, 30 July 1824, Classified Advertising, p.1

Humphrey, AWH (2008), A Voyage to Port Phillip and Van Diemen’s Land with Governor Collins, Colony Press, Malvern.

Johnson, Hilda Archer (1998), Bygone Days on the Tamar, Regal Press Publications, Launceston.

Sydney Gazette, 27 Apr 1806, General Orders, p. 4

Sydney Gazette, 18 May 1806, Classified Advertising, p. 4

Sydney Gazette, 8 Jun 1806,Classified Advertising p. 1

Researched and Written by Jodie Lee
Tamar Valley Tales

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