The Editor's Notebook

This beautiful Thwaites and Reed clock was installed in St Luke’s Anglican Church in Richmond in 1922 and it’s chime finally stopped about four years ago after 80 years of hourly duty.

A major repair job put it back in service late last year, and it is back to chiming on the hour, every hour, day and night.

But all is not well in the historic tourist township.

A Sandy Bay couple, Maria and Chris Wallace, who bought a nearby house nine months ago are campaigning to to have its chimes stopped at night. Between them they spent three nights in the house and claim the hourly chimes stopped them from getting any sleep.

Local Margaret Johnstone, who organises a roster of 32 clock-winders, says she is amazed that anyone would want the clocks stopped.

This seems to be the view also of the Richmond Residents Association who voted unanimously to support the Anglican parish council of Sorell, Richmond and Sorell to maintain the clock’s status quo.

The Wallace’s in the meantime have finally found suitable tenants for the house — a couple who collect alarm clocks.

Australia’s oldest bridge, built by convicts in 1823, is being loved to death.

More than a quarter of a million tourists tramp across the historic convict bridge at Richmond each year, according to Richmond Residents Association spokesman Graham Abbott.

It was designed for pedestrians, horses and carts, but today huge tourist buses, hire cars and heavy vehicles stream across the convict relic.

“The bridge is a historically sensitive structure,” says Dr Abbott, and added that parts of the bridge parapets had been knocked off by traffic into the Coal River.

He said a 1995 study by the state transport department recommended a 15-tonne limit for vehicles on the bridge.

Curiously, a sign near the bridge now allows vehicles of up to 25 tonnes to cross.