TASMANIA - Pictorials 1899-1912

Very nice set. I like them all, especially Dilston Falls

Sorry to be so late in picking up on this thread. I agree that the Tasmania pictorial set is beautiful.  I acquired my first set in 2008 from a dealer in Hobart when I was visiting Tasmania as a tourist, and I heard an interesting story about the 6p Dilston Falls issue.

While in Tasmania, I decided that I wanted to visit as many of the sites depicted on the stamps as possible while I was there.  The stamp dealer told me that today, no one knows anything about any waterfalls anywhere near the town of Dilston, and that those represented in the stamp have essentially not been seen since!

I tried to find a written reference on this point, but the best I could come up with is a link below in the "Companion to Tasmanian History" which briefly discusses the designs of the pictorial stamp set, and refers to Dilston Falls as "ephemeral".  I will keep looking and post more info if I find anything.

www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/P/Pictorial%20stamps.htm

Thank you, Ryan, this is exactly the sort of definitive reference I was looking for, but my search criteria must have been faulty.  I thought it was ironic that many collectors, including KirkS and myself, think that the Dilston Falls stamp is the nicest image in the pictorial set, but now we have the conclusive evidence that it was really the result of trick photography.  Well done, Ryan, and thanks again!

The "trickery", such as it was, was that the image made it appear as though these were substantial in size.  "He discovered that positioning his camera at a particular angle could make a cascade tumbling over a silt bank appear to be a sizable waterfall."  And in fact, the photo showing men standing on top of the falls is trick photography in itself, a superimposed image of men standing over top of another image of the falls.  According to this snip from Monty Wedd's book "Stamp Oddities" (a favourite of Rodney's, no doubt), the "falls" were only a couple of feet tall.  (Image nabbed from a thread on Stampboards which shows scans from the book.)  The book referenced earlier made mention that there is no such "Dilston Rivulet" (as Spurling named it), and that Lady Nelson Creek must be the one in question as it is the only one in the area that feeds into the Tamar.  Dilston Creek was a name in use at least until 1927, as I have found a newspaper article from that date which mentions it.

[Broken image link removed]

Lady Nelson Creek is dry for at least part of the year - the current imagery on Google Maps shows it to be completely devoid of water.

And speaking of Rodney (rod222 ), here's a note of his posted on rec.collecting.stamps.discuss back in 2002, in which he quotes the Australasian Stamp Catalogue - "Dilston Falls, depicted on the 6d value, existed only for a brief period in the 1890's when a two foot cataract developed at the junction of Dilston Creek and Tamar River as a result of a local flood.  A photo of the "Falls" appeared in a Launceston newspaper and was subsequently used as the basis for the erroneous stamp design."

Ryan