The Australian town that turned a sorry past into a thriving present

The tufts of white bobbing through the blue sky above New Norfolk, a 40-minute drive from Hobart, are not unseasonable summer snowflakes but rather the seed pods of willow trees, which punctuate this River Derwent town. They fly over Saturday market stallholders at Arthur Square, who gather with trinkets and handmade treasures, en route to The Agrarian Kitchen, spread over two hectares in the complex that was once Tasmania’s only mental hospital.

Established in 1807 by Norfolk Island evacuees – one of the earliest European settlements in Tasmania – on the traditional lands of the Big River People, New Norfolk is as renowned for its circa-1941 industry-leading paper mill (the first in the world to produce newsprint from eucalyptus hardwood) as it is for its hops farming and fertile landscapes.

And so it is for Willow Court, a healthcare precinct that began in 1827 as a mental asylum for the chronically ill and morphed over 170 years to encompass a hospital for those with disabilities and mental illness. (This year, Willow Court joined 365 globally recognised Sites of Conscience, which recognise past struggle and adversity in pursuit of contemporary human rights.)

It’s also home to many passionate creative types who are writing the town’s next chapter. Off Arthur Square, Alexander Okenyo etches coffee orders onto daffodil-coloured sticky notes from behind the bar at Black Swan bookshop. The La Marzocco machine is plastered with dockets for flat whites and iced long blacks as their requesters thumb tomes between shelves. Alexander built the store in what was once his mother’s shed; next year, its footprint will double when he opens the extension he’s been building in his spare time.

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“You’re following your heart as much as anything,” he says about pursuing his dream here. “Which is a good place to start in this short life.”

New Norfolk has eclectic antique stores, a luxurious homewares shop, a celebrated concert band, an exhibiting artists collective, and a timber craftsman who creates bespoke Windsor chairs, among many others. Once, it had a hat shop, a suit maker, a florist – but it has always had a passionate community of pioneers contributing to the region’s prosperity.

“This town has always been really multifaceted,” Alexander says. “It can be framed in one way and totally miss what a thriving place this was. It had a real verve to it.”

Over in what was the bakery and then the Kodak shop, Rachel James handprints on a 100-year-old Chandler & Price letterpress. Her shelves feature pens from Japan and small-batch ink made in Launceston, but I leave with wooden stamps that tuck neatly into my pocket as I amble towards The Agrarian Kitchen.

During an hour-long garden tour, which runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, we wander through the walled regenerative garden where elderflower blossoms, peaches ripen and zucchini flowers wink from beneath abundant vegetation below the barricaded windows of what was the former maximum-security men’s ward.