EXTRACT FROM WEB PAGE - MAY 2008
CHRONICLES OF THE BURBURY FAMILY
Chapter 7 - Places and Personalities
Of the Tabarts, the original owners of Fonthill, I remember the widow of Lieut. Francis Gerard Tabart, a stern, proud old lady who still lived, with a daughter, Miss Susan, at Fonthill up till the time the property was bought by Wm. Burbury about 1878, or near to that time.
Lieutenant Tabart was a naval man and a friend of Sir John Franklin.How he came to settle in such a remote locality as Fonthill was when he acquired it, is incomprehensible. I remember that the treeunderwhich he first pitched his tent on the bank of the Fonthill lagoon wass till standing in the eighties. Close by was the log cabin, with loop holes to command the locality, as a precaution against blacks. Then the first more pretentious wooden house, and lastly the fine freestone three storied building still the homestead of the property, which was sold by Sydney Burbury about 1929 to the present owner, Mr. Harvey.The old Lieutenant had a vault made on the place, but none of the family, or anyone else, is buried in it. Of his family of sons the best known was Thomas Alfred Tabart, for many years Chief Inspector of stock in Tasmania, and one of the original Inspectors under The Scab Act. Thomas Tabart was a strong man who did his work with out fear or favour. He used to ride half-bred cobs bred by a pony stallion from cart mares. As I remember them, they were animals, and, I should think, poor hacks. However, Mr.Tabart used to sing their praises, and he should have known a good horse as well as the next T.A. Tabart was J.L.B.Tabart, once associated with Wilson and Burbury as a manager, and afterwards Council Oatlands Municipality, of which, indeed, he was once the known John Tabart of Herd & Co.,Launceston. at Stonehouse during shearing, Jack and I went to have a look at the Deep Creek one Sunday. Coming home we sighted a mob of the wild cattle then roaming about the locality. There steers which had gone bushas yearlings, and which no one was ever able to get away from the clean skins. We took to them, and galloped them the Stonehouse cattle yards. Jack had a thoroughbred Handroyd gelding named Handy Andy. I've seen rough country riders since but never saw anyone to beat Jack Tabart as he trailed those steers dogwood scrub. We drove them right through the house yard at The Snug, where Mr. F.B. Hall yelled out, as Jack put his horse at a great dead wood fence, 'He'll be killed, there are a lot of large logs there!' Handy Andy fence or log. A great horse, and a daring rider indeed! When we told our story at the homestead and expected a bouquet, we received only a rebuke from the Manager for hunting cattle on a Sunday.
Another son of Lieut. Tabart, Frank, went to New Zealand as a young man. Once when on a visit to Tasmania, he met William Burbury and took him for one of the New Zealand Burbury family.