Henry Hellyer

Henry Hellyer (1790 – c. 1 September 1832) was an English surveyor and architect who was one of the first explorers to visit the rugged interior of the north west of Tasmania, Australia and made the most comprehensive maps of the area up to that time.

His achievements in Tasmania are well documented, and the Court of Directors of the VDL Co in London noted his resignation (March 1832) as follows: "Mr Hellyer, whose valuable services have been so great and whose name is so well known both to the Colonial Government and at home, by his unwearied exertions for the company, by his personal privation and risk in exploring the country, and by the admirable maps and plans which have been exhibited, has been recently appointed to an important situation under the Surveyor-General of the Colony".

However, for the sesquicentenary of the town of Burnie in 1977, a portrait was created by local artist Casey McGrath from descriptions, and used as the basis for 200 silver medallions and 4,000 anodised aluminium ones that were given to school children in the area.

[3] Henry Hellyer explored most of North Western Tasmania for his employer, the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co), and wrote extensive journals and reports which are held in various archives.

Overall, it seems clear that Henry Hellyer accepted the VDL Co view that their royal charter from King George IV made the Aboriginal people of North West Tasmania trespassers on company land.

In August 1830, while building a footbridge over the River Wey, his camp at Weybridge was visited by George Augustus Robinson and the "friendly mission" whose intent was to investigate claims of killings, including the Cape Grim massacre by VDL Co employees, and to remove all Aboriginal people from their land and relocate them to an offshore island.

Baddeley, Daniel and Pennebaker's analysis suggests that his final extreme distress could have been occasioned by gossip circulated about illegal sexual relationships with convict associates.

A further LIWC analysis of the internal inquiry conducted into his suicide, on behalf of the Van Diemen's Land Company, suggests there was a whitewash by those who might have been seen as involved in negative behaviour towards Hellyer.

[8] Despite the evidence concerning depression, in a letter to his sister-in-law in 1830 he wrote that he had been in excellent health ever since arriving in the Colony, "...except for two or three short attacks occasioned by over-exertion and fatigue after some of my long excursions in the bush".

[2] There is no hint of what these "attacks" may have been, but there is no doubt that his explorations were marked by extraordinary energy and copious note-taking on everything that took his interest, from cicadas,[9] through "young centipedes white as snow"[10] to land-crab chimneys.

[13] Henry Hellyer had by then advised the Court of Directors of the VDL Co that he would be leaving their service at the end of his contract, to accept an appointment with the Surveyor-General in Hobart Town, a highly coveted position that might have generated some envy among his colleagues.