Fingal is a rural locality in the local government area (LGA) of Break O'Day in the North-east LGA region of Tasmania. The locality is about south-west of the town of St Helens. The 2016 census recorded a population of 405 for the state suburb of Fingal.
It is a small town in Fingal Valley in the north-east of Tasmania.
History Fingal was gazetted as a locality in 1965.
The Fingal area was surveyed in 1824 by Roderic O'Connor and John Helder Wedge, and is believed to have been named after Fingal's Cave in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland rather than Fingal in Ireland.A letter found among the correspondence of the Lands and Survey Department, dated 30 November 1827, written by Roderic O'Connor (one of the Commissioners with Frankland, appointed to divide the colony into Counties, Hundreds and Parishes, and set aside reserves for townships etc) reads as follows: "The township which we have selected between Talbot's and Grant's is an admirable one as it embraces all the points from the South Esk and Break of Day Rivers ... we abandon the one on marked on the chart at the head of Mr Talbot's grant reserving only as much as will suffice for the Parish. We have called the Township 'Fingal' in honour of Mr Talbot whose family rank high in Ireland" (1/LSD 71/196) Letter from E R Pretyman 19/07/1961 (F/353). https://www.placenames.tas.gov.au/ The town of Fingal came into existence in 1827 as a convict station, and experienced a boom when Van Diemen's Land's first payable gold was discovered in nearby Mangana.Fingal: Quiet and attractive rural town, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 8, 2004.
Fingal Post Office opened on 1 June 1832.
In July 2025, the Fingal Post Office was close to being shut down but was Reopened in September 2025.
Geography Almost all the boundaries are survey lines. The South Esk River flows through from north to south-west.
Climate
Road infrastructure Route A4 (Esk Highway) runs through from south-west to north-east.
See also Electoral district of Fingal, former Tasmanian House of Assembly district
References
External links
Fingal Online Access Centre, Tasmanian Communities Online