Beaconsfield /ˈbiːkənzfiːld/ is a former gold mining town near the Tamar River, in the north-east of Tasmania, Australia.

[1] The area around Beaconsfield was first explored by Europeans in 1804 when William Paterson led an expedition to Port Dalrymple and established a settlement at York Town.

Route C720 (Greens Beach Road) starts at an intersection with A7 and runs north-west until it exits.

When the gold rush hit Victoria and New South Wales in 1851 and the Tasmanian Government offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield.

In 1877 the cap of a payable gold reef was discovered on the eastern slope of Cabbage Tree Hill by brothers William and David Dally.

When the rush for gold was discovered there was only two shops, drapery and grocery but soon the little township swarmed with people.

There came circuses and the children got excited and followed to see the horses and elephants going through the town to get somewhere to camp and build their tents.

"The growing civic consciousness found voice in the demand for a new name for the town and in March 1879 Brandy Creek was renamed Beaconsfield, after Lord Beaconsfield, (Benjamin Disraeli)", (Town With a History by Coultman Smith, 2006) the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time "in a ceremony conducted Governor Weld after he rejected a suggestion that it should be named after him".

[4] The gold mine closed in 1914 due to regular flooding of the shafts but re-opened in 1999 with mixed success.

[13] On Tuesday 25 April 2006, a small earthquake caused a rock fall in the Beaconsfield gold mine.

[14][15] The municipal chemist at the time, Frank Grey, produced a report for the town council detailing evidence from studies in the USA that supported water fluoridation to improve dental health.

In an interview in 2019 Frank Grey's daughter, Jeanette, added a personal note about her father's fluoride promotion.

[17]: 2:07 On the 50th anniversary of this first water fluoridation in Australia a monument was erected in Beaconsfield at West Street, near the Grubb Shaft Museum "by the Australian Dental Association in gratitude to Mr Frank Grey, the Beaconsfield Municipal Council and the people of West Tamar in their role in the introduction of fluoride to Australia".