Secret Service

It would be easy to consider locksmithing as the business of a bygone era, an old-time trade slipping into obscurity along with the wheelwright, the blacksmith and the candlemaker.

It's no such thing. Unlike some curios and cul-de-sacs of manufacturing history, this smith has achieved longevity. And the secret of his long life is … keeping secrets.

The manufacturing locksmith's art combines advanced metalworking and engineering expertise with mechanical ingenuity and metallurgical smarts. Putting it all together is old-school craft, the coordination of skilled hands, experienced eye and specialist tools.

Yet working in raw metal is unfashionable and dirty work; a difficult, even dangerous business. In many ways, locksmithing is not far removed from blacksmithing – a hazard to hands, eyes and ears.

It's incongruous, then, that the result of this sometimes risky process is safekeeping. Even the humblest lock commands a sense of privacy against an intruding world. Its essence is secrecy, and it is in that space the old-school locksmith has found stability in the uncertain world of manufacturing.

"Yes, we're old-fashioned," says the man with stained fingers, worn leather apron and a quiet smile. Michael Scott runs Jacksons Lock Manufacturing, the foundry and lock making side that is at the core of the Jacksons Security business empire.

Words like privacy and trust are largely unsaid by Scott. He prefers Jacksons' reputation to speak for itself. "People who use our locks appreciate what we do," he says with typical understatement.

Francis Jackson understood the value of reputation. It was July, 1884, just months after setting up his Launceston lock making business, that the 33-year-old Englishman was called to Beaconsfield Bank. Robbers had taken £2,600 cash and 30 ounces of gold – then relocked the safe and thrown away the key.

Told the safe was unpickable, Jackson made an inspection and then, with a touch of the theatrical, he asked the staff to retire. Moments later he called them back and showed them the open safe. It had been a notorious robbery, and the publicity brought Jackson a good deal of business, particularly from other banks.

Today that business is Tasmania's largest security organisation, with retail centres in Launceston, Hobart and Burnie and a turnover exceeding $7 million a year.

It is a business with feet firmly planted in both today's cutting edge and yesterday's traditions. Much of its turnover comes from 21st century electronic wizardry: security evaluations and upgrades, turnkey commercial systems, masterlock and restricted key systems. Just as important, however, is the old-fangled end of the business, centred on Jacksons' Launceston factory-foundry. About 95 per cent of its output goes north: in Sydney, domestic security gates are often completed with Jacksons handiwork; and in Melbourne, Jacksons' modern mortice Ozilock is a popular choice at large retailers like Handles Plus.

It was Francis Jackson's skills in locksmithing and expertise in working brass, learned at Chubb in England, that brought his fledgling company an early and important government contract for point locks for the Tasmanian Government Railway Co. Point locks, a padlock designed to prevent tampering with railway line settings, are still being made in Launceston today on contract for the Rail Corporation of New South Wales. The design has changed little in a century. The substrate is still brass and the locks are almost entirely handmade.

Gone are the gangs of apprentices engaged in the dirty, time-consuming labour of removing metal burrs from parts and, under the unforgiving gaze of a foreman, filing brass pieces to fit. Not a lot else has changed over the past 100 years, however, in the fabrication process of a Jacksons lock.

Machinery that was once driven by overhead leather belts is now powered independently, but the drill presses, benders and cutters, lathes and multiple milling machines – some installed a half-century ago – still work like new.

Around Jacksons' manufacturing floor are the components for literally a thousand press tools and dies. Huge sheets of heavy-duty, brightform stainless, along with galvanneal and galvabond steel plate, form the factory's feedstock. Engraving and half hard brass is bought in one-tonne lots.

On the floor, one production line might be fabricating the company's JM 560 mortice lock while another hand-finishes door catches for railway carriages. Elsewhere, locks for fire, safe and strongroom doors are being assembled.

And what can't be formed from sheet metal can be cast at upwards of 1,200 degrees Celsius in a specially built facility at the rear of the factory. Here is the company's capability for one-off work, couplings and valve systems for fire suppression, a raft of equipment for the marine business, propellers to chain plates.

But it is locks that are at the heart of Jacksons. Just as Francis won awards for his work, there's a good deal of pride in what the company produces today. Need a lock with a really small key? Or one of those huge old keys? This is where they are made, even now.

Just 20 years before Francis Jackson established his name, the American Linus Yale's cylinder lock changed the locksmithing trade worldwide. Jacksons chose to stay close to its European origins, however, committing to the older style mortice lock. It was a sound decision. Even today the company's best seller is a high-security, five-lever mortice.

The mortice and Yale's cylinder remain the most common door locks, and share essentially similar internal mechanisms. In a mortice lock, the protrusions on the key are shaped and sequenced to move a set of levers out of the way as the key turns, simultaneously moving the bolt into the lock or unlock position. In a cylinder lock, the key is shaped to lift a sequence of spring-loaded pins, usually brass, so the cylinder can be turned and the bolt moved.

The mortice lock has a kind of inner beauty: a cylinder lock is mounted on the surface of a door, but the mortice is set in a pocket inside the door frame. Michael Scott points to its advantages: the door can have any type of knob or handle to suit design preference, and the mortice can also internally accommodate most types of cylinder lock, or the old-style lever system.

Francis was still at the helm in 1919 when Jacksons Lock and Brass Works Pty Ltd was officially established. When the time came, he turned the business over to his youngest son, David Sydney Jackson, who'd started work at the age of 14.

Syd, as he was known, had a mechanical turn of mind. Beyond the lock business, he invented a swivel headlight system for cars, branding machines for the fruit industry and a lock with a key-operated resetting mechanism that in one movement rendered existing keys obsolete. The younger Jackson was also active in public life, involved with multiple philanthropic organisations and, in politics, representing the Federal seat of Bass through much of the 1920s.

The major shareholder in the business, Syd became reliant, especially during those parliamentary years, on Jacksons' foreman, a large-framed, deft-fingered individual named JE Scott. When Syd died childless in 1940, he left the business to the man he knew as Eric, the obvious choice to take Jacksons, the business and the name, into the future.

After World War II, Jacksons was not alone in finding business conditions difficult. Machinery was impossible to buy and materials rationed or difficult to find. But with its skill set in synchronized mechanical devices, the company added gunsmithing and sewing machine repair to its repertoire. Lock and key contracts with the military and the post office kept things ticking over.

By the time Eric Scott died in 1957, his sons Neil, Eric, Herbert and Bruce had learned the business. Retail outlets were opened in Hobart, and the waters tested in a variety of other businesses. A decade on, and a purpose-built factory was completed east of the city, in Ravenswood.

Today, that factory is the domain of Eric's grandson Michael Scott, while his siblings and other family members are dispersed across four entities under the umbrella Jacksons Security Pty Ltd. Their business embraces domestic, commercial and industrial security, ranging from sophisticated access control and alarm/response systems all the way to cutting $5 house keys.

On the manufacturing side, cheap imports and the introduction of buying groups at hardware chains have tested the resolve of the company and the skills of its artisans. But a lockmaker like Jacksons commands loyalty, and market niches remain to be explored. The demand for locks – or at least what they represent – does not change.

Back at the factory, Michael Scott is getting a call from a customer with a problem. "I don't like to hear about faults with our locks," he says. "We go to a lot of trouble to make sure there are no issues. Actually, the problem most of the time is because the bolt no longer lines up with the metal slot in the door jamb."

And sometimes the problem is the operator. Former PM Paul Keating is one of those who called and said he'd broken a lock by using the wrong key. "We got him sorted out," continues Michael.

"People will often say, 'But you've got a master key, right?' No, actually Jacksons doesn't."

So how do you pick a lock? "I really don't know," says the master lockmaker. "I just put locks together, make multiple mechanisms work. Frankly, I don't have the patience for lock picking. I can tell you that the best in that business have specially made picks to suit different locks," he adds. "And an old bloke called Jack Coomber in South Australia makes those."

With that insight into an enigmatic world, Michael Scott is saying no more. Consider it another Jacksons' secret.

It's hard to say when it began for Rob Whitney. Maybe when he was a kid, tearing around the abandoned buildings of his home town. Perhaps it was passed on in his teens, along with the skills of the mason. Or, as his mentor tells it, Rob had it in his blood all along.

Whatever the case, this stonemason has a deep, visceral connection to his work and to his chosen material. He works here and he lives here, close to the sandstone that is the bedrock of Oatlands. Growing up in this former military outpost, its richly coloured substrate has quietly permeated his being.

And now, today, it's his task to pass on the skills he's learned – that fusing of head, heart and hands – to a new generation of stonemason. Make that stonemasons – another apprentice joined the ranks just this year.

For Rob Whitney, the journey began 28 years ago on an unemployment program at Oatlands' Presbyterian Church. The job involved refinishing face stones on the building, as well as scaffolding work on the spire, 20 metres above.

"Robert was very good at it," says Nigel Hamilton-Smith, the mason who oversaw the job, now retired in Oatlands himself. "He took to stone dressing and hand-picking quickly. He was intuitive. I liked his work ethic, too – no short cuts, and still none today. He's a natural."

Rob Whitney was 17 at the time. When Hamilton-Smith offered him an apprenticeship as a mason after three months, he needed to go home first and ask his mum and dad. Of the eight blokes in the original scheme, he was the only one offered full-time work.

The first jobs were at the old university and railway station in Hobart. Work has since taken him across the city and across the state. Port Arthur bears his imprint and a lot of work comes through the Southern Midlands Council.

Through the company Heritage Building Solutions, Rob and third-year apprentice Simon Bryant juggle multiple projects; a building here, a bridge section there. Heritage specialises in conserving, restoring and revitalising heritage property by embracing new technologies and improving their environmental sustainability.

The use of sandstone as the primary building block of Tasmania's formative years came with advantages beyond its beauty. Stone was freely available, on site or close by, so transport was unneeded. It was the preferred building material through the Georgian era and, better yet, the state provided the incentive of cheap convict labour.

What's occupying Rob Whitney and apprentice Simon Bryant today is the Oatlands Gaol, part of a substantial garrison that included barracks, court house, watch house and officers' quarters. In the convict era, Oatlands was a major military outpost, its 90 or so buildings forming one of Tasmania's largest clusters of Georgian architecture.

Designed by John Lee Archer and completed in 1837, the gaol served for a century as a colonial and then municipal prison before its cells and central gallows were demolished, and the town swimming pool incongruously plonked down behind its massive sandstone walls.

It wasn't until 2007 that repair work on the gaoler's residence and surrounding walls began. It's a complex construction involving graduated elements of preservation, conservation and restoration – subtly differentiated repairs articulated by the Burra Charter, a national policy guide for heritage management.

Whitney and Bryant have completed a minimal impact preservation phase, the basic repair of exterior walls around the gaol site. Stone capping the walls and installing drains prevents further deterioration. The old swimming pool will go when the money is found.

The restoration part involves a handsome arched gateway that formed the gaol's entrance, but has stood for decades, re-erected on Oatlands' main street. Whitney disassembled the arch and laid out the stones like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle before rebuilding it where its makers intended, abutting the side of the gaoler's residence.

Reconstruction, according to the Burra Charter, is similar to restoration, in that it returns a structure to a known earlier state, but can introduce "new material into the fabric". In this case, the gaoler's house itself has been encircled with a strong band of stainless steel. The result is invisible to the untrained eye but, along with a new roof, adds structural integrity to the 180-year-old building.

How far a repair project will go along the preservation-conservation-restoration path is a paradoxical negotiation. The more you do, the less you have an original building, notes Rob. The corollary, of course, is to do too little and compromise the future of the structure.

A core question for owners and architects is this: what use is to be made of the structure? Georgian buildings – commonly a series of narrow-windowed, smallish rooms separated by single doorways – are inherently inflexible, often commercially non-viable. How can such a building pay for itself?

There are other limitations, too. "Restoration work to sandstone buildings, such as repointing and rendering, must not include cement-based materials," emphasises Brad Williams, the heritage officer with oversight of the work in Oatlands. Water travels naturally through sandstone but gets trapped by cementious surfaces, including concrete. The result is inevitably damage to the stone.

A related consideration for Rob Whitney is the other core material of wall building, mortar. The key ingredient here is not cement (which in any case, did not come into common use until the mid-1800s) but lime, whose usage dates back to the Greeks and Romans.

For the Oatlands project, rock lime is brought specially from Mole Creek; huge bags of it disgorge fist-sized chunks which are rendered into a watery sludge in 44-gallon drums. The lime immediately boils in an exothermic chemical reaction known as slaking.

With selected sands added, it will become mortar, gaining strength during a long, slow setting process (the lime is turning back into stone) yet retaining a plasticity that tends to heal any cracks that form. It's that workability that gives lime mortar an advantage over modern cement mortars.

Because the masons who laboured to create Oatlands had no real access to lime (the other common sources in the 19th century were chalk or seashells), much of their handiwork in Oatlands does not use mortar at all. Rob will tell you the majority of the sandstone buildings in Oatlands are actually held together with dirt. Yes, dirt.

It is not, however, that construction curiosity that causes most problems in sandstone buildings. The worst is wind, attacking through roofs made vulnerable by poor nailing, weak joints and shrinkage of under-dried timber. Over decades, wind-driven flapping and flexing of a roof can shift a wall off its original line: Masons call it "walking the wall".

Sandstone is also constantly attacked by water. Its porosity draws water up from the ground, and with it, damaging salts. From above, a failed gutter or roof edge channels rain into the wall, to weaken joints, undermine footings and erode the stone itself. Cold can turn water trapped in stone to ice; in so doing, it expands and cracks the stone.

While masons have long known that stone must lie in the building in the same orientation as it was formed in the ground, it's not uncommon here in Oatlands to find the stone laid on its edge, with the result that it tends to fret, or break away, at the face.

The upside of this litany of weather and construction issues, though, is that it represents a lifetime of work for Rob Whitney and the few dozen stonemasons still working around Tasmania. And for those to come, the apprentices.

Inevitably, Rob's skill has brought him back to Oatlands, and its massive beds of Triassic sandstone. He's worked on signature buildings like the Callington Mill, along with multiple houses, stores and barns. He feels at home here; there's a connection as simple, and as complex, as love. "I really like what I do," he'll tell you.

Technological change – machinery to move stones, diamond blades to cut and carbide-tip air tools to shape – have made some of the mason's task easier. But removing broken, water-damaged and fretted stone, matching stone and colour, laying new next to old, these are slow and painstaking tasks, more demanding of the human than of hydraulics.

Rob's favourite tools would not be out of place in the leather pouch of Sophroniscus, the father of Socrates and among the most famous of ancient stonemasons. These basics – a mallet, chisels and a straight edge – have served masons for thousands of years on the cathedrals and castles of Europe, the tombs of Egypt, the ruins of Rome and the temples of Aztecs and Incas.

It is with those hand tools that Rob Whitney now signs his work, chiselled neatly into a base course or on the back of a block, always somewhere discreet.

And in another way, too, he is making his mark on the richly coloured stone of Oatlands, and beyond. His newest apprentice already demonstrates much of Rob's skill, a good eye and a great pair of hands.

Meet the next generation of Tasmanian stonemasons. His name is Tom Whitney, and he is Rob's oldest son.

"Young people might be more interested in diesel electrics, but it's steam for me. They puff and wheeze, blow smoke and cinders, generate excitement as they work and shunt and go cross-country. These things are alive." —Tony Coen, driver, Derwent Valley Railways
They are everywhere you look in Tasmania, and sometimes where you can't. Warehoused in buildings both shabby and chic, in private garages and lean-to sheds, resting quietly in old railyards and freshly mown paddocks, each waits to be tended.

These are the last of the great steamers, those that ran on rails, others that went to sea, those that built the roads and their siblings that turned raw bush into fertile farms. They are traction and fixed engines, machines that cut, threshed and crushed, others that drove presses and powered pumps of every description.

Here is the embodiment of purpose. Fired by coal or wood, their massive boilers drove heated water vapour into pistons or across turbines, creating the power that fed the vats and spun the shafts, drew the water and expelled the fumes. The steam engine brought life to workshops, factories and towns everywhere.

On water too, such engines powered a paradigm shift, rendering sail obsolete and driving a new industrial age where goods came to market quickly and in prime condition, where passengers travelled at speed and in comfort. For port cities like Hobart and Launceston, where waterways were the highways, steam ships meant prosperity.

And then there are the locos, the sovereigns of the steam kingdom. Magnificent constructions, the biggest weighing more than 200 tonnes, they represented not only engineering excellence but power, even majesty. Literally and metaphorically, such an engine could transport a community.

"No other product of man's mind has ever exercised such a compelling hold upon the public's imagination as the steam locomotive. No other machine, in its day, has been a more faithful friend to mankind and has contributed more to the cause of industrial prosperity in this, the land of its birth, and throughout the world."

That insight, offered by railway official RF Hanks at the unveiling in 1960 of British Rail's last steam loco, goes a long way towards understanding our deep affection for steam engines, the earthbound and the waterborne, the mobile and the fixed, the glamorous and the labouring.

It is easy today to dismiss such machines as victims of their own weight and mechanical inefficiencies, fabrications of a bygone age that deserve only to rust quietly into obscurity. Spending time and money on engines whose simple workings are crudely engineered by modern standards is mere nostalgia.

The use of water – or water vapour – as a propellant is no huge advance over primitive waterwheels, says the science of physics. It's not surprising, then, that about 90 per cent of Australia's electricity is now produced by steam engines. In energy terms, we may reference coal or gas, but those are merely heat sources. The motive power – the driving force – is steam.

It's the conversion of water to its gas form that does the work: brought to a boil, a litre of water expands 1600 times in volume. Put that expansion to work and you've got yourself an energy source, pure and simple.

In truth, it's old technology, too. Two thousand years ago in Alexandria a man named Hero made a steam-powered children's toy called an aeolipile.

But to listen to those who know and love these steam machines, ancient and modern, is to discover that beyond the physical entrenchment of steam technology in our world, steam itself has somehow entered the human psyche. It's part of us.

Tony Coen, a driver with Derwent Valley Railways and one of the last of the old school, says steam engines have an energy, a character. "Young people might be more interested in diesel electrics, but it's steam for me. They puff and wheeze, blow smoke and cinders, generate excitement as they work and shunt and go cross-country. These things are alive."

Another steam loco driver, John Kingston, grew up with trains over the schoolyard fence near New Norfolk. "It was like magic," he says. "They appeared over here and disappeared over there. At four or five years old, that had a real impact, an interest I never lost."

And Tasmania furnishes prized collections of living steam machinery, private and public. Go to Pearns in Westbury or see Wee Georgie Wood working at Tullah. The Don at Devonport, Redwater Creek in Sheffield and the Transport Museum in Glenorchy offer steam train rides, too, while the Derwent Valley Railway at New Norfolk is readying its fleet.

Out west is arguably Tasmania's most famous steam train, the West Coast Wilderness Railway (WCWR). Purpose-built for mine work, the loco moves on an ABT system, a central rack and cog mechanism that enables the train to drag itself mechanically up steep sections.

While the railway is currently in a care and maintenance mode, it remains in experienced hands, including those of driver Mark Tregoning. This is a bloke who worked on Victoria's Puffing Billy steam loco as a kid, cleaning and raking out engine ashes, before going to work in a coal-fired power station. He qualified first as a fireman and then, in 2000, as a driver.

"The driver is top dog," he says of the steam loco hierarchy. "He's captain of the team. But he can't work without a first-class fireman, and neither is any good without the maintenance fitters. The whole thing is teamwork, and that includes the machines. It's a balance. Locos have moods and temperaments like children. The moment you think you've got a handle on things, they surprise you."

Articulate and passionate about steam, Mark reflects how some men like rebuilding the past, or buying old cars. "As far as I'm concerned, it's always been about steam, even at those power stations where I worked. To me, steam is a primeval force, something in my DNA."

Allie Hume agrees. She gained her reciprocating steam ticket at WCWR, and has set her sights on driving. "Yes, this is old school," she says, "[and] people are sometimes shocked to see a blonde in boots on the footplate." But she's earned that position, starting in 2001 doing commentary about Mt Lyell mine and ABT locos, learning on the job. About 500 hours of instruction later, her boiler ticket and fireman's exam under her belt, attitudes are changing.

And from a personal viewpoint, too. "I fell in love, actually, with these living, breathing pieces of machinery. Not just the ABT locos, but other steam engines as well. The steam thing just gets to your soul."

The seafaring versions of steam engines live on, too. In Hobart, Ross James is managing a major restoration project for the century-old ferry, Cartela, that will reinstall her original triple-expansion steam engine. Built at the start of last century, this was a sophisticated piece of engineering, and good for 500 horsepower.

Ross rejects the idea of steam as obsolete technology. "Even nuclear power plants actually generate electricity through steam," he says. "While the reciprocating piston has been replaced in modern steam engines by turbines (closely related to hydro-electric generators), steam is an energy source that has a life, even yet."

Like most steam engines, Cartela's puts its inner workings on full display. Steam enters at high pressure into the first cylinder, driving a piston that pushes the con-rod, which turns the crankshaft. This sounds familiar because it's the same basic mechanism as a car engine. The steam, now at a lower pressure, moves into a second cylinder, repeating the process, and then a third for one final use of the pressurised steam.

While everyday transport such as cars are no longer easy to comprehend or even to connect with, the steam engine requires the driver to be part of the process, even part of the machine, to know when to add water or fuel, to know what the engine is saying.

So perhaps part of the abiding bond between man and machine, reflected in the attribution of human characteristics to steam engines, is a form of communication, personal and fundamental, an interaction between nature and the man-made.

At New Norfolk, John Kingston is now approaching his 80th year, 25 of them as a steam loco driver. Of all the steam engineers in Tasmania, it is he that puts it best. "Steam is elemental," he says. "It combines air, water, fire – and earth in the form of coal. These are the essentials of life itself."

STEAM TRAINS AND MACHINERY IN TASMANIA

Wee Georgie Wood, Tullah West Coast Wilderness Railway – ABT, Queenstown Don River Railway, Devonport Redwater Creek Steam Railway, Sheffield Pearns Steam World, Westbury Transport Museum, Inveresk Tasmanian Transport Museum, Glenorchy Derwent Valley Railway, New Norfolk

It is a curious thing, the watch. Fabricated from fragments of brass held in place with minuscule screws, its power source is a sliver of machined steel that physically drives gears and wheels. The whole thing is put together by a human hand over many days.

Hard to believe, too, in the age of the silicon chip, when our focus is less what's now and more what's next, that we are still using technology essentially unchanged in six centuries.

It is the output of a watch, that on-demand display of time of day, that brings gravity to the cheapest timepiece. We humans, the merest speck in an almost infinite universe, bear on our wrists the marker of our part in the cosmos, our personal passage around the sun.

There have, of course, been improvements both subtle and significant in timekeeping over more than 600 years. It was 1571 when Elizabeth I began wearing one of the first personal timepieces, then dubbed an "arm watch". It was accurate only within an hour or two per day, although of course when you're queen, it is whatever time you say it is.

Clocks had appeared the previous century, but this Elizabethan timepiece moved matters to the personal and transportable, a practical device for a busy monarch.

What followed was two centuries of innovation, leaps and creeps towards improved accuracy, the addition of a balance wheel and later a bi-metallic balance spring to solve temperature issues, and critically, evolution of the escapement to control the spring's winding and unwinding.

"These are the same elements – the balance wheel, the spring, the escapement – that we're dealing with daily," says Stephen Sharp, a watchmaker in Hobart.

Demand for the old-school, mechanical watch – and their digital cousins – keeps Sharp and sons Joel and Liam busy in an appropriately minuscule space they occupy beside the lifts at a high-rise in the city's CBD.

The revolution that was the arrival of the quartz digital watches in 1970, paradoxically, brought a resurgence in the original Swiss watch industry. "In some ways, the pendulum has swung back to the high end of the watch business, to largely mechanical movements," says Sharp.

He does not dismiss the low-end digital watch, however. "It has its place," he says. "When the Chinese can make them for $2.99 apiece and a Tasmanian jewellery store can sell them for ten times that it becomes a separate market segment. You can have half a dozen watches, change them like earrings, and never bother repairing them."

As his regular watch, Sharp prefers a quartz-digital Swiss Army model with day and date; it's the one to which his every customer's watch is set. For something more formal at night, he'll strap on a favourite old Longines automatic.

"We're back to the place where the spring-driven mechanical watch again reigns supreme," he says. "It's not so much about time-telling, because a digital is more accurate, but it does say something about the wearer." An Omega starts at about $2000, and a Rolex at twice that, while towards the top end, a Louis Vuitton might be $45,000 or more.

Stephen Sharp likens the watch business to that of automobiles.

"This is the equivalent of a Bugatti Veyron," he says pointing to a $62,000 Vacheron Constantin in a catalogue. Like the much-lauded European super-sportscar, he notes, "The engineering is magnificent. More so, if the microscopic level of that engineering is considered."

At Allan Davey's workshop, a few kilometres away in Sandy Bay, a pair of experienced human hands is fabricating a replacement piece for a century-old fob watch. Davey, who has been a watchmaker for about half that time, shares business with fellow horologists around Tasmania.

"With the diminutive size of the Tasmanian market, we've learned to co-operate," he says. A small or family jeweller will rarely have a watch specialist on hand, so they act as the retail face of a clique of watch and clock outsiders. In Hobart, Launceston and elsewhere, much of the detail work is done, quietly, in another place.

Some, like Peter Reading in Dover, focus on clocks, particularly the longcase or grandfather clocks, even those as big as Hobart's GPO clock. And like Allan Davey, the use of a lathe to fashion a new part is part of the watchmakers' pedigree.

"In my time, the apprenticeship was six years," says Allan. "A lot of that was learning how to recreate a watch or clock part, largely when it's no longer available because the mechanism is so old, or replacements are expensive or difficult to obtain." Allan is one of those increasingly rare individuals who can fabricate in metal something as small as a pin head.

It's not uncommon for Allan to be presented with something from the late 19th century. While women already sported watches on their wrists by then, men did not commonly take up the practice until much later, opting instead for pocket or fob watches, usually on a chain.

The change came as a result of World War I, when soldiers were equipped with watches in order to synchronise timing of actions across multiple units. The British Horological Institute's journal noted in 1917 that the "wristlet watch was little used by the sterner sex before the war, but now is seen on the wrist of nearly every man in uniform and of men in civilian attire".

By 1930, wrist watches outnumbered pocket watches 50 to 1.

Steven Sharp's sons Joel and Liam, the latter in the final stages of his apprenticeship, will have a great deal more to know than did their dad when he came to Tasmania 25 years ago. At the same time, there are fewer young people with the skills Liam is learning. Australia's sole watchmaking school at Balmain in Sydney, had just six graduates last year.

While acknowledging the centre of the world for watches remains firmly in Swiss hands (Swatch is the biggest watch company in the world), Stephen has a great deal of respect for the Japanese brands. A service manager for Seiko as a younger man, he also cheerfully recommends Citizen and Casio.

Some of the prestige name firms like Omega and Rolex are opening their own speciality retail stores now, part of a broader strategy to maintain control over availability and price, "just like you go to a car dealership, where they sell and service just one brand", notes Stephen.

Asked what watch to buy, his standard reply is: "Depends what you want to do with it. There's certainly something for every taste. Is it a working watch or a dress watch? If you're going to go down the paddock with it, I suggest a stainless steel watch that's shock resistant.

"Need accuracy?" he continues. "Some quartz watches can be adjusted to about one-hundredth of a second, but that's something you simply cannot do with a $25,000 Rolex, no matter how beautiful it is."

"There's such a huge variation now, not just the digital/mechanical divide, but the hyrbrids with something of each: the self-winding, the solar powered, some even with GPS built in," says Stephen. "There's just so much to know."

The battle between watches and mobile phones, over which could pack in the most applications, has been won handily by the phone. At one time, a watch might include a calculator, barometer, altimeter, compass, video games, digital camera … one Seiko model actually included a TV set. Such enhancements met now-familiar problems: tiny screens and buttons, short battery life and geeky reputations.

Packing every contemporary technology into the smallest possible device was a problem familiar to John Harrison, the inventor of the original marine chronometer. Some five iterations over a 20-year span resulted in 1761 in what was essentially the first timepiece that worked on the ocean.

It was a critical issue – while a ship's north-south position could be established by the stars, its east-west (longitudinal) fix required an accurate measurement of time, as well as some serious trigonometry. The standard pendulum clock was useless.

Harrison solved the raft of problems – rough oceans and fluctuations in gravity and temperature among them –- with a remarkable chronometer. Just 12 centimetres in diameter, it incorporated a novel balance mechanism, caged roller bearings, a fast-beating balance wheel and a temperature compensated spiral spring.

After a great deal of resistance from the Parliament among others, Harrison was paid some £23,000 for his work. While that is several million dollars in today's money, it is only just enough, coincidentally, for the latest watch from the Patek Phillippe SA, of Switzerland.

More important, for those of us living on this triangular dot of terra firma we call Tasmania, there is good reason to celebrate Harrison's H5 Chronometer – it drove the ascendancy of the Royal Navy and the extension over 200 years of the British Empire into every corner of the globe, including the one we now populate.

Skins

There's something primal about animal skins, some kind of cave memory perhaps, something contained in our sensory mechanisms that instantly knows the skin of another creature – by touch, smell and sight.

It's kindled when you watch a select group of Tasmanians at work, cleaning and stretching new hides, rolling the raw material between practiced fingers, studying the imperfections and the cut, envisioning the finished bag, belt or boot and seeing it to the retail shelf.

Bryan Pearce is one of perhaps a few dozen Tasmanians in the skins game, one of an old school that sees a hide from paddock to product. At Hadspen, he tans raw hides from local sheep and cattle, mostly off farms. "The skin merchants don't want them, and the farmers would otherwise just throw them away," he says.

First job, as it has always been, involves rubbing salt in the hair and then rolling the hide up to sit for two weeks. Natural tanning processes using bark-derived vegetable tannins are largely replaced now by chemical tanning involving a bath in a solution of chromium or aluminium sulphate.

There's another wait, this time for a month, before the hide is ready to be stretched and dried over a steel frame; a cowhide will soon be ready to go down as a rug, or a sheepskin for further fabrication into bag or seat-cover, glove or slipper.

The 88-year-old's workshop is crammed with samples of every possible hide-based product; he does the sewing himself and is limited only by his imagination and his time with the local Legacy and Rotary Clubs. He waves a leather flyswatter at his interviewer.

These days, he has help a couple of days a week from granddaughter Belinda, now in her 30s and normally employed at Rio Tinto in Georgetown. "I got interested in what Pop was doing years ago," she says. "Back then, he had me feed a couple of cute little calves. Now he's taught me how to stake out cowhides," she adds, without a trace of irony.

In the past this former dairy farmer has handled possum skins too, "but all the permits and registration and royalties … it was a huge pain in the rear," he recalls. Regulations covering cowhides and sheepskins, by contrast are non-existent.

Bryan and Belinda are now rarities in the once-populous business of leather and leather-makers, theirs a story repeated across the nation. Over the past 30 years, the skins trade has been obliterated by an imperfect storm, by rising manufacturing powerhouses in Asia as Australia lowered its tariff protections, increased wages and added stringent environmental controls.

The result: a once-proud industry that saw leather through its entire cycle, with a few exceptions, is gone. And with it, the skills involved in the lengthy and labour-intensive processes that shape, colour and soften, thin and texturise hides before they're fabricated into the worn form.

What remains in Tasmania is a cottage industry.

Australia as a whole today produces about 24 million sheep hides and 8 million cattle hides, the vast majority Asia-bound in a semi-processed state, known in the industry as "wet blue" because of the colour the hide takes on when soaked in the chrome sulphate solution.

In Tasmania, Cuthbertson Bros remains the largest producer of hides; sourced from abattoirs, it ships to China at a rate of 250 container loads a year. Even now, the company says, that output and the jobs of 20 people are jeopardised by rocketing shipping costs and a Commonwealth subsidy scheme that defies fairness and common sense.

Blundstone, Cuthbertson's sister company and maker of the iconic leather boot, shifted its production and manufacturing from Hobart to Asia in 2007. With the loss of this downstream processing of leather, 360 jobs went too. Cuthbertson's original South Hobart tannery is today being prepared for sale.

"We don't produce belt hides or handbag-quality leathers in Australia any more," laments Ian Lake in Evandale. In his 25 years in the business, he's seen leather sourced from the venerable firm of Joshua Pitt in Melbourne replaced first by New Zealand tanneries and, when those closed, a shift to suppliers in Italy. "It's beautiful leather, but it's not local," he says. "We're not doing the most with what we've got," he continues, "and we're losing the technology and skills."

Lake Leather's counter to the trend is in the form of an Englishwoman, Georgia Wilkinson, whose craft credentials are recognised by membership of London's Society of Master Saddlers, formed in 1178.

Lake stops for a moment. "Yet I really believe this industry can be profitable," he continues. "In Melbourne, for example, Howe and Co has been successful with automotive leather because they put in the capital investment, the best machinery and modern production techniques." Howe produces leather for upmarket carmakers including Mercedes.

Some part of the answer to the underlying issues of economics may also lie in speciality leathers and niche markets, and indeed with the humble Australian kangaroo. He, or she, already furnishes about 1.5 million hides a year, and importantly, the hide usually stays on Australian shores all the way to the retail shelf.

Kangaroo skin is preferred by many of those in the leather business. "It's enormously durable, almost indestructible," says Kasha Siena, who produces hand-made belts for sale in her stall at Salamanca Market.

Her skins, usually sourced in the Northern Territory, bring with them the hallmarks and patina that reflect their bush origins. "It's not just the novelty of using the skin of something that's iconically Australian," she says, "but it's real. That's very attractive to my customers."

Kasha also works in cowhide, and can turn her attention to barramundi ("a gorgeous skin, but much smaller than most hides") and crocodile as needed. "Fact is, prices in Europe and America for crocodile skins are sky-high, pushing it out of the range of most Australians."

In a process called skiving, Kasha uses a rotary bladed machine to thin the edges of a skin to a thickness about that of a sheet of newspaper so that it can be rolled and glued into its final long, narrow form. It's a skill taught her by her father, something he brought with him from Poland where he'd specialised in making handbags.

Kangaroo skin is also favoured by Simon Martin, a specialist maker of leather whips in Devonport who draws red kangaroo leather from a company in South Australia. Simon's interest in whips was piqued at Agfest as a kid; while his parents refused his immediate demand for a stockwhip, "they encouraged me to save up and buy my own. And I did!"

In his early 20s, a chance encounter with his school trades teacher rekindled his interest, and he learned to plait thin strips of hide into a working stockwhip. "After my teacher died, his widow gave me his tools, and I still use them now," he smiles.

Today, his business has 12 months of forward orders – some 800 whips await completion – and he's branched into saddlemaking. "I love doing this," he says.

Simon will take the time to produce matched pairs, identical whips that are wielded one in each hand. It is a highly skilled and labour intensive process that involves up to 48 strips of hide that are carefully narrowed and then plaited.

And when he has time, he's working on what he believes is the world's longest whip. "It's 240 feet," he says, confident about being able to get it whirling and working.

The business of leatherworking in Tasmania – like so much of what emerges from our soil including the timber industry – is changed now, and changed forever.

"Large-scale commercial production is cheaper in China. That's the story in a nutshell," says Bryan Pearce. "But when I see what Belinda can do, when I see the joy that young people like Simon Martin take in working in leather, there are going to be things we can do better than elsewhere.

"Learn something from an old man!" he laughs, waving the leather flyswatter again.

There's something primal about animal skins, some kind of cave memory perhaps, something contained in our sensory mechanisms that instantly knows the skin of another creature – by touch, smell and sight.

It's kindled when you watch a select group of Tasmanians at work, cleaning and stretching new hides, rolling the raw material between practiced fingers, studying the imperfections and the cut, envisioning the finished bag, belt or boot and seeing it to the retail shelf.

Bryan Pearce is one of perhaps a few dozen Tasmanians in the skins game, one of an old school that sees a hide from paddock to product. At Hadspen, he tans raw hides from local sheep and cattle, mostly off farms. "The skin merchants don't want them, and the farmers would otherwise just throw them away," he says.

First job, as it has always been, involves rubbing salt in the hair and then rolling the hide up to sit for two weeks. Natural tanning processes using bark-derived vegetable tannins are largely replaced now by chemical tanning involving a bath in a solution of chromium or aluminium sulphate.

There's another wait, this time for a month, before the hide is ready to be stretched and dried over a steel frame; a cowhide will soon be ready to go down as a rug, or a sheepskin for further fabrication into bag or seat-cover, glove or slipper.

The 88-year-old's workshop is crammed with samples of every possible hide-based product; he does the sewing himself and is limited only by his imagination and his time with the local Legacy and Rotary Clubs. He waves a leather flyswatter at his interviewer.

These days, he has help a couple of days a week from granddaughter Belinda, now in her 30s and normally employed at Rio Tinto in Georgetown. "I got interested in what Pop was doing years ago," she says. "Back then, he had me feed a couple of cute little calves. Now he's taught me how to stake out cowhides," she adds, without a trace of irony.

In the past this former dairy farmer has handled possum skins too, "but all the permits and registration and royalties … it was a huge pain in the rear," he recalls. Regulations covering cowhides and sheepskins, by contrast are non-existent.

Bryan and Belinda are now rarities in the once-populous business of leather and leather-makers, theirs a story repeated across the nation. Over the past 30 years, the skins trade has been obliterated by an imperfect storm, by rising manufacturing powerhouses in Asia as Australia lowered its tariff protections, increased wages and added stringent environmental controls.

The result: a once-proud industry that saw leather through its entire cycle, with a few exceptions, is gone. And with it, the skills involved in the lengthy and labour-intensive processes that shape, colour and soften, thin and texturise hides before they're fabricated into the worn form.

What remains in Tasmania is a cottage industry.

Australia as a whole today produces about 24 million sheep hides and 8 million cattle hides, the vast majority Asia-bound in a semi-processed state, known in the industry as "wet blue" because of the colour the hide takes on when soaked in the chrome sulphate solution.

In Tasmania, Cuthbertson Bros remains the largest producer of hides; sourced from abattoirs, it ships to China at a rate of 250 container loads a year. Even now, the company says, that output and the jobs of 20 people are jeopardised by rocketing shipping costs and a Commonwealth subsidy scheme that defies fairness and common sense.

Blundstone, Cuthbertson's sister company and maker of the iconic leather boot, shifted its production and manufacturing from Hobart to Asia in 2007. With the loss of this downstream processing of leather, 360 jobs went too. Cuthbertson's original South Hobart tannery is today being prepared for sale.

"We don't produce belt hides or handbag-quality leathers in Australia any more," laments Ian Lake in Evandale. In his 25 years in the business, he's seen leather sourced from the venerable firm of Joshua Pitt in Melbourne replaced first by New Zealand tanneries and, when those closed, a shift to suppliers in Italy. "It's beautiful leather, but it's not local," he says. "We're not doing the most with what we've got," he continues, "and we're losing the technology and skills."

Lake Leather's counter to the trend is in the form of an Englishwoman, Georgia Wilkinson, whose craft credentials are recognised by membership of London's Society of Master Saddlers, formed in 1178.

Lake stops for a moment. "Yet I really believe this industry can be profitable," he continues. "In Melbourne, for example, Howe and Co has been successful with automotive leather because they put in the capital investment, the best machinery and modern production techniques." Howe produces leather for upmarket carmakers including Mercedes.

Some part of the answer to the underlying issues of economics may also lie in speciality leathers and niche markets, and indeed with the humble Australian kangaroo. He, or she, already furnishes about 1.5 million hides a year, and importantly, the hide usually stays on Australian shores all the way to the retail shelf.

Kangaroo skin is preferred by many of those in the leather business. "It's enormously durable, almost indestructible," says Kasha Siena, who produces hand-made belts for sale in her stall at Salamanca Market.

Her skins, usually sourced in the Northern Territory, bring with them the hallmarks and patina that reflect their bush origins. "It's not just the novelty of using the skin of something that's iconically Australian," she says, "but it's real. That's very attractive to my customers."

Kasha also works in cowhide, and can turn her attention to barramundi ("a gorgeous skin, but much smaller than most hides") and crocodile as needed. "Fact is, prices in Europe and America for crocodile skins are sky-high, pushing it out of the range of most Australians."

In a process called skiving, Kasha uses a rotary bladed machine to thin the edges of a skin to a thickness about that of a sheet of newspaper so that it can be rolled and glued into its final long, narrow form. It's a skill taught her by her father, something he brought with him from Poland where he'd specialised in making handbags.

Kangaroo skin is also favoured by Simon Martin, a specialist maker of leather whips in Devonport who draws red kangaroo leather from a company in South Australia. Simon's interest in whips was piqued at Agfest as a kid; while his parents refused his immediate demand for a stockwhip, "they encouraged me to save up and buy my own. And I did!"

In his early 20s, a chance encounter with his school trades teacher rekindled his interest, and he learned to plait thin strips of hide into a working stockwhip. "After my teacher died, his widow gave me his tools, and I still use them now," he smiles.

Today, his business has 12 months of forward orders – some 800 whips await completion – and he's branched into saddlemaking. "I love doing this," he says.

Simon will take the time to produce matched pairs, identical whips that are wielded one in each hand. It is a highly skilled and labour intensive process that involves up to 48 strips of hide that are carefully narrowed and then plaited.

And when he has time, he's working on what he believes is the world's longest whip. "It's 240 feet," he says, confident about being able to get it whirling and working.

The business of leatherworking in Tasmania – like so much of what emerges from our soil including the timber industry – is changed now, and changed forever.

"Large-scale commercial production is cheaper in China. That's the story in a nutshell," says Bryan Pearce. "But when I see what Belinda can do, when I see the joy that young people like Simon Martin take in working in leather, there are going to be things we can do better than elsewhere.

"Learn something from an old man!" he laughs, waving the leather flyswatter again.

He's an inventor, metal fabricator, welder and building contractor. A seeker of opals, a quarryman on Flinders and a rider of motorcycles. John Parish is not, however, an artist – at least in his own estimation.

Perhaps, but an astonishing output of bronzes says otherwise. So do intricate drawings showing a bird's flight mechanics, pencil sketches of native animals (with additions from the animals themselves), watercolours and ceramics, as well as representations of Aboriginal myth in multiple metals.

Put the question to John, and he nods towards his surroundings. "I don't think of myself as an artist," he says, "just a person who makes … something … out of all this."

This is Golden Valley, on the way to the Great Lakes, a hillside, where he has a studio and workshop. It is peaceful and beautiful, and more, a playground for everything that crawls and hops, burrows, slithers and climbs.

And it is these creatures, the native animals, that drive and inspire him. They are companion, muse and subject.

It's been a long journey for John Parish, with Lilydale, Tasmania among the first steps. There, as a 14-year-old, he and the neighbour kids went shooting. At 16, he was on a fishing boat out of Stanley, later at Lightning Ridge to fossick for opals, and then to Flinders Island to quarry.

"Drawing came in fits and starts," he says. "While I began early, I really took it up at Lightning Ridge when the mines were flooded out. But it was the beauty of that wild place, Flinders, where I taught myself to paint local people.

"This was the time when I thought, 'This is where I want to go, what I want to do.' I found myself committed to art."

Back on Flinders, he'd learned to weld. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but the local council made his desire to run a quarry impossible. As it turned out, welding was useful. The foundry where he today casts bronze and stainless steel is his own construct. Steel girders, hoisted into place using block and tackle, frame workshops and storage spaces, rigs for metal fabrication as well as a series of furnaces.

Next door houses generators that produce the power necessary for casting metals, as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius for his preferred material, bronze, or 1,260 degrees needed for cast iron work. Stainless steel, melded to the bronze for strength and colour, also demands huge amounts of electricity to turn it liquid.

But it is what is outside the workshop door that calls. "I like to let nature tell me what to do, to bring together the natural landscape and the creatures within it."

It's always been this way. A prompt came in the elusive form of the Tasmania tiger. "As a young man, I lived just across the valley from where we are now. There was something regularly taking our geese, and I heard that characteristic bark of the tiger, the yip, yip sound. I figured out the footprints matched."

Parish went into inventor mode, building a custom camera to capture nocturnal images. "I didn't get pictures of the tiger, which was disappointing," he admits, "but I did get interesting photos of Tassie devils, and that took me down an unexpected path – I decided to capture their footprints, their movements, by sprinkling a layer of soot on paper they would walk over.

"The results were, to my eye, not unlike art by a human being. So I did something similar with ants and rats." The resulting colour images, beautiful and surreal, are animals making art. Parish retains them in metre-square frames.

He's even worked with maggots, creating a paint-daubed labyrinth through which they move to get away from light. "Yes, yes," he chuckles at the inevitable question, "but they make beautiful art."

Among his interactions are currawongs, perhaps the cleverest of Tasmanian birds. He made a series of boxes, each with a more complex lock and each seeded with a date, a favourite fruit. "I watched them for days," he says, "and I have no doubt they were communicating with each other. I could see the thought process, the determination to unpick the lock and get to the food. They stop sometimes to sing, play and tease each other. My real sense is these creatures, and wild things generally, are much smarter than we know."

And perhaps this is why he listens to them. "If wild creatures feel comfortable, they want to live with you. Sure they like the food, too, but by creating peace and calm, they know they're safe and will come. Some actually come closer to hear my music." The locals appear to favour electronica, like Tangerine Dream, as well as classical music. But not rock.

If the physical forms of art and sculpture are the consummation of his work, Parish's internal feedstock is a deep desire to determine how things work. In the same way a sculptor studies the press of the human musculoskeletal system under the flesh, so John understands the physiology of his outdoor friends.

His detailed drawings of birds, for example, offer da Vinci-like sketches of the mechanics involved in a wing's movement. And if that art is beautiful, the final renderings are remarkable: Parish is able to form a skeletal framework of the bird in an interweaving of wire, a kinetic sculpture with wings that extend, flap or fold back against the body.

Drawing on that seminal time on Flinders, Parish also ventures into Aboriginal culture, especially that of the Moonbird people, among the pre-eminent mutton birders and sealers of the chain. Their mythology emerges in his figures of bronzed birds, giant wings protectively wrapped around a globe.

In the public realm, Parish's work is very different. Eight pieces that currently dot the village of Westbury, set in grassed areas and limned by trees and old homes, might be considered tourist signs. But that designation falls short of describing what is a remarkable accomplishment. The works are silhouettes of local figures and events with explanatory text, cut into quarter-inch steel. But by excising selected lines and the image's shadows, too, Parish co-opts whatever is behind the silhouette into forming part of the whole. The result is a rare conjugation of art and technology.

John first sketches the various elements, drawn mostly from his interpretation of old photos. His particular skill is creating on paper a drawing that in metal form will suggest shadow and crease, even facial expressions. He goes through as many as a hundred design failures before he gets to something that works.

The final design, as a computer file, is sent to a CAD (computer aided design) machine which uses a precision laser to cut the text and images into steel plate, multiple metres high and wide. The steel is curved slightly to give it greater strength and powder-coated to make it rust resistant. Most recently, Beaconsfield added four such pieces to mark its transition into a visitor attraction.

Elsewhere, his private work – especially the castings in bronze – are beginning to bring premium prices. Sydney galleries are calling. His workbench offers a catalogue of those local friends and neighbours cast in metal, among them squat Tasmanian devils and pairs of native hens with their chicks.

An ambitious piece is a semi-skeletonised Thylacinus cynocephalus – John's elusive tiger – its head turned the sky and mouth drawn back in a snarl as it attempts to rise from extinction. Its ribs form a cage around a Tasmanian devil, its own future, perhaps, a contemplation on extermination.

How he got here is difficult to trace, he admits. "Truth is, I don't really plan things out. They just happen," Parish says, "and I enjoy the flow."

Art school in Launceston was difficult. He dropped out, but was persuaded to come back, and became involved in a series of large installations including a massive set of aluminium gates resembling ropes. Other pieces went to Singapore, another closer to home at Launceston Grammar school, and some even to his own art lecturers.

John became Dr Parish in 2014 (his Philosophy doctorate addresses the survival of the devil and the quoll), but it is an appellation he won't use. Nor will he adopt the term artist. "I don't think of myself as an artist, just a person who makes art. I don't know why I do it, just that I cannot not do it."

As issues of life and death thread through his work, it's worth noting that Parish has been less than kind to his own body. He has been electrocuted, choked, and once even ran (accidentally, he insists) into a vertical mineshaft.

A little over a year ago, while working on the foundry roof, he slipped six metres to the ground. A last-second grab at a cable swung his body sideways, sufficient to drop him, remarkably, between an upright set of oxy-acetylene tanks and a jagged steel post.

He escaped death, but not injury. Recovery has been long and slow, and involved fusing sections of his upper spine with titanium rings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that very personal inclusion of a rare metal in his own body has spurred his latest quest to know more of the art of metal fabrication.

John Parish is now learning how to electroplate titanium.