A sleepy timber milling town on the eastern shores of the Huon River. It supports orchards and dairy farming. Franklin South has become well known for the Craft and Apple Houses at the southern end of the village.

Where is it?: 45 km south west of Hobart, 6 km south of Huonville in the Huon Valley.

Ye Olde Franklin Tavern is a pleasant historic pub beside the road which proudly announces that it was established in 1853 and the jetty beside the river which was once used as a major point for shipping timber and fruit from the area. In the river at Franklin is the long narrow strip of land known as Egg Island.


The Wooden Boat Centre

The Wooden Boat Centre sits alongside the jetty and is a great place to visit. You can watch craftsmen and trainees building wooden boats from complicated plans. To fulfil their lifetime ambition, trainees pay for the unique experience and dedicate countless hours of labour in achieving their goal.


The Huon River

The Huonville Trail, driving south from Huonville and following the left bank of the Huon River and Estuary, is rewarding. It passes through numerous small towns on the way to Recherche Bay and Cockle Creek (76 km south), the most southerly point in Australia that can be reached by motor vehicle. This drive is part of the Huon Trail, which travels south from Hobart to the Huon Valley and D Entrecasteaux regions.




St Mary's Catholic Church, Franklin

Heritage Buildings

The Anglican Parish of the Huon is the southernmost parish in the Anglican Church in Australia. It has its beginnings in 1839 with the consecration of a wooden church (St Mary’s) built for the settlement by Lady Franklin. Following the ordination and appointment of the Reverend Thomas Stanfield, sufficient funds were raised publicly, and the foundation stone of the new building was laid on 9 February 1863 by Archdeacon Davies. Henry Hunter was appointed architect, and his original design included a nave, chancel, tower and spire. Only the nave and the base of the tower were completed initially. The contractor was John Rait, and the cost, 600 pounds.


St John's Anglican Church, Franklin

The old Church which stood adjacent to the new building until it was demolished. The change in dedication from St Mary to St John is not explained, though the new name may have been chosen to reflect the associations of Sir John and Lady Franklin with the earlier history of the community, in much the same manner as the name of St Davids (Hobart) pays homage to David Collins. St Johns has a commanding and picturesque setting, on a hillside above the town of Franklin overlooking the Huon River to the east. It is surrounded by an extensive churchyard which contains many early graves and monuments. St John’s still holds regular services as part of the Huon Anglican Parish.

Once part of the heart of the community, the 1860 Methodist church overlooks the river and its black swans. Now the home of Riverflow Yoga and Accommodation, this Heritage listed stone church is enjoyed by visitors and locals, for bed & breakfast, shared wellness, or individual retreat.


The first Federal Tavern began life in 1846 as a general store situated higher up on the hill. Licensee Elijah Brown decided to move the hotel closer to the road in 1853 – it became the Franklin Hotel and was later renamed the Federal Hotel. In 1979, Kon Reitler purchased the hotel and undertook an extensive restoration program, changing the name to Franklin Tavern. Location: Federal Tavern, Main Road Franklin.


Franklin Lodge

Franklin Lodge was originally constructed in 1850 in the bustling riverside community of Franklin, as a 6 bedroom 2 storey home which now features 4 bedrooms with ensuite, plus 2 other bedrooms & a 5th bathroom. All of the original features including open fire places, pressed tin ceilings, original doors, woodwork & ornate cornices are in place. Ornate fireplaces are scattered throughout the house & a large wood heater controls the temperature for the home. Franklin Lodge was re-constructed in 1900 in the Federation Queen Anne style. The outbuildings are weatherboard, with gabled corrugated iron roofs and decorative bargeboards. Location: Franklin Lodge, 3448 Huon Highway, Franklin.



Strathroy Bridge is a fine stone bridge built by convict labour in 1836 as one of the earliest major bridge on the Midlands Highway. The bridge is still in operation today. It is a fieldstone bridge laid to courses, featuring a central arch. pilasters, a string course, projecting panels and spiky rocks on its balustrade. Location: Hobart Road (former Midland Highway), over Jinglers Creek, 1km south of Franklin Village.

Strathroy homestead is an impressive grand Victorian Italianate house with a tower and elaborate cast iron verandah, set in fine grounds with numerous brick and timber outbuildings. A previous house, Kerry Lodge, was built on the same site in 1822 by T.B. Bartley (tutor to Lachlan Macquarie). Bartley died in 1876 and the property was sold to Mr C.B. Grubb who built the present fine house in 1887. The property includes a brick and stone shed, tiny timber cottage, brick and timber shearers quarters, timber stables, brick and timber outbuildings with decorative barges, a fine garden and driveway. Convict ruins exist on the property. Location: Midland Hwy, Franklin Village.

Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin

The town is named after Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), Lieut. Governor of Tasmania, 1836-1843. Beginning his career as a midshipman on the Investigator with Matthew Flinders, who was 12 years his senior. In later life becoming a Rear-Admiral and explorer, Franklin was born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, just 38 km from where Flinders grew up. Franklin was from a line of free-holders or "franklins" from whom they had derived their surname long before. As 5th and youngest son of nine children, he was destined for the church. However, he desired at an early age to be a sailor and overcame his father's resistance.

At the age of 15, he took part in the battle of Copenhagen on board the Polyphemus. Two months later, he joined the Investigator and became Flinders' most adept student. After the end of the war with France, he turned to science and exploration on land and at sea. Between 1836 and the end of 1843, he was Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania. His final task was the North-West Passage to the Pacific. The expedition embarked on Erebus and Terror on 19 May 1845 with 129 officers and men. It disappeared soon afterwards in the arctic waters and the search for it became one of the most taxing tasks of arctic exploration during the Ninteenth Century.

The mystery was finally solved in 2014 with the discovery of the remains of former Tasmanian Lieut. Governor's ill-fated 1845 voyage to the Northwest Passage discovered on the ocean floor off Canada. Sonar had captured images of one of the vessels, following a government-sponsored hunt that began in 2008. The discovery of the wreck was confirmed using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada.

The mystery has gripped people for generations, in part because no one knows for sure exactly what happened to the crew. Experts believe the ships were lost when they became locked in the ice near King William Island and that the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety. Sir John Franklin's wife spearheaded an attempt to find him, launching five ships in search of her husband and even leaving cans of food on the ice in the desperate hope he would find them.

Stories gleaned from the local indigenous people, the Inuits, suggest the expedition became locked in ice and perished. In desperation, it was claimed the stranded party resorted to cannibalism. However, Lady Jane Franklin refused to accept her husband met such a horrid fate and continued raising money to fund searches many years after he was last heard from and long after most authorities had given up hope of his survival. Despite a great number of search expeditions over the following decade, no sign had ever been found of the HMS Erebus or the HMS Terror.

Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of Governor Sir John Franklin, was very much a rare woman of her time. Long before feminism took off in the 1970s, Lady Jane followed an independent lifestyle, rare for woman at the time, and was so admired by the woman of Tasmania, she became an icon. She loved travel, climbing Mount Wellington, going with Sir John to the West Coast, exploring the mainland and New Zealand. Surely some local women admired this and when feminism took off in the 1970s, Jane gave her husband credit for any success, but most of the Franklins’ activities were due to her, especially the organisation which made them actually happen. Sir John’s major scheme was establishing the Hobart regatta. Lady Franklin established the settlement in the Huon that today bears their name.

The Franklins were shocked at the lack of cultural institutions and the indifference of early colonists. Jane was an exceptionally resourceful and talented woman who envisaged and brought about the erection of a classical building along the lines of a Greek temple… to ensure the continuance of cultural aspirations of the future colony. When completed the Museum contained sculptures, books and pictures.

“in 1839 Lady Franklin bought 130 acres (53 ha) of land near Hobart Town for a botanical garden, to which she gave the name Ancanthe. Here a museum of natural history was built for her, on the model of a Greek temple, and to it the collections she had been forming in Government House were removed. They and the accompanying library were dispersed in 1853” and the little temple was left to become a packing shed for apples. It wasn’t until a century later that it finally became an art gallery.

The Franklins left behind an improved cultural milieu. To encourage learning and improvement they founded the Tasmanian Natural History Society (later the Royal Society) and brought out a scientific journal; they encouraged education, both government and a short-lived Anglican secondary school; and Lady Franklin built a small classical temple surrounded by a native plant garden near Hobart, supported the idea of a museum and generally encouraged scientific and literary pursuits. Her interest in the fate of the Aborigines led her to adopt an Aboriginal girl, Mathinna.


Jane Franklin, 1816

Brief History

It is thought that the first white man to settle permanently in the area was a ‘bolter’, an escaped convict, who was found by timber getters in early 1820s. The man, whose name was Martin, had built a primitive camp near Price’s Creek. Later, as settlement began along the banks of the river, Martin became absorbed into the local community. He owned two boats with the unusual names of the Fighting Pig and the Crooked Eye and was well regarded.

The first land grants in the district were made to John Price at the present site of Franklin in late 1834. He was followed by John Clark who, in 1836, took up land north of Price’s Landing and the Kellaway family who settled on the opposite shore at Woodstock.

In 1839 Lady Franklin bought John Price’s land and divided it into 50 and 100 acre blocks which she had cleared and sold to poor, free settlers. She purchased 640 acres from John Price at Price’s Creek. Price had been the Muster Master of convicts in Hobart and the Commandant of Norfolk Island from 1846-1853. He was so intensely disliked that in 1857 he was murdered by convicts in Victoria. No fewer than 15 convicts attacked him and seven of them were hanged for the crime.

Lady Franklin had a vision of the kind of settlement she wanted to create in the Huon Valley and was prepared to back her commitment with financial assistance. She did much to help the settlers including, as she mentioned in a letter to her sister in England, giving one family a milk goat and the next year buying it back because they were in such bad straits. The district began to develop in the 1840s and 1850s when both apples and hops were grown with some success.