Triabunna Church?  That’s an odd choice of topic.   Search for Triabunna lately, and the $10 million sale of the local wood-chip mill to a couple of wealthy entrepreneurs dominates the findings.  No wonder there’s media interest: the story’s main characters are founder of Kathmandu clothing company Jan Cameron and her colleague Graeme Wood.  He’s the creator of wotif.com and and a strong supporter of the Australian Greens.

The Triabunna woodchip mill has new owners

Throw in Gunns as the previous owner; ongoing negotiations with Forestry Tasmania and The Peace Talks and you have the makings of a blockbuster drama.  But we’re not giving an opinion about the state of the Tasmanian forest industry.  And we’re certainly not predicting whether or not Triabunna will become the tourism mecca of the east coast when (if?) the eco-tourism resort development goes ahead.

Triabunna Church: Talk About Peace!

We really just want to shine some light on the Triabunna church!

Stained glass windows: Buckland & Triabunna Church

We let Reverend Ross Ellwood know about the Buckland Church article we published, just to be polite.  He gave us his blessings (seriously!), and also asked us to publish a little something about the Triabunna church.  He did invite us to widen our protocol of religious conduct (a cheeky quote taken from the Buckland article) and visit the church ourselves.  But in the meantime, because we don’t want this cousin getting jealous of the Buckland church, we bring you the information and photos supplied straight from the Rector himself…

St. Mary’s Triabunna Church, by Rev’d Ross Ellwood

St. Mary’s Anglican Church was completed in Triabunna 1883.  It was built from local sandstone from the “Okehampton” quarry and contains one of only three stone altars in Anglican churches in Australia.

Stone altar at St Mary's Anglican Church

This and the Baptismal Font were crafted by local craftsman, Mr. Richards (now buried in the Triabunna Church Cemetery).

Baptismal Font: Triabunna Church

Over the last three years St. Mary’s has had major renovation moving the Altar forward from against the rear wall of the Sanctuary so that it can be used.  The Font has also been moved from the back, with the main doors being adjusted to swing out instead of in, to create a welcoming entrance to the Triabunna Church.

Welcome to the Triabunna Church!

The Sanctuary area has been taken back to the original sandstone and several convict marked bricks can now been seen.  Whilst the church was not convict built some of the stones used had been convict cut.

Convict markings on stones used to build the Triabunna Church

St. Mary’s now sits on a quiet cul-de-sac at the end of Franklin St. and is open whenever we are at the Rectory/Parish Office.

Blessings, Ross

St Mary's Anglican Church, Franklin Street, Triabunna Tasmania

See I told you… blessings!  How could we refuse?  Especially when we’ve already confessed to an obsession with taking photos of Tasmanian churches.  And the stained glass windows in the Buckland version took our breath away.  Looks like we really should visit the Triabunna Church in person, to see some of their stained glass features…

Stained glass features at St Mary's Anglican Church

For more information about the history of the Buckland Parish
contact Rev’d Ross Ellwood at the Triabunna Church.

Map of Triabunna Tasmania…

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