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Closing Shop After 40 Years: Why Gra's Huon Valley Whirligigs Have to Go to Make Way for Luxury Holiday Rentals

In Cygnet, down in Tasmania's Huon Valley, retired tinsmith Graham "Gra" Pettigrew (73) hand-shapes whimsical garden whirligigs from reclaimed tin in an old apple-packing shed. Now the orchard has been sold to a mainland developer for luxury holiday rentals — and the little cottage Gra shares with his wife June has no room for a tinsmith's bench. So the last of his "Huon Valley Whirligigs" have to find good homes before early November. Get yourself a real one before his workbench goes cold for good.

Graham "Gra" Pettigrew (73) in the doorway of the old apple-packing shed outside Cygnet that's been his workshop for 40 years.

A Quiet Morning in Cygnet, Tasmania — Where Tin Still Has a Soul

The old packing shed barely measures 32 square metres. The walls are lined with tin snips, planishing hammers, soldering irons — tools whose wooden handles have been polished smooth from decades of use. A pot-belly stove ticks quietly in the corner, working off the chill of a Huon Valley morning. June's blue enamel mug steams on the workbench. The air smells of solder, enamel paint, and a little bit of old apples from the timber bins stacked up in the rafters.

Half-finished frames in the foreground, finished whirligigs lined up on the back shelf — every piece passes through Gra's hands twice.

On the bench: Gra's pride and joy. A pair of unfinished tin frogs, waiting to be set on a high-wheel bicycle. Beside them, small jars of enamel paint — gum-leaf green, butter yellow, fire-engine red for the top hat. Gra runs his thumb along the spokes of the wheel. "Easy does it," he says, with a small smile. "That's the most important thing fifty years in the trade ever taught me. If you're in a hurry, it's not worth doing. People today want everything delivered in two days off some app on their phone. But that's not how you build something that's still going to be turning in someone's garden ten years from now. That's how you build rubbish."

He looks out the small shed window, where the morning light falls across rows of apple trees white with blossom. "I'm not having a go at the young ones. But we've forgotten how to make things that last. A good piece of tin — if you shape it right, solder it right, paint it right — that'll outlive me, my kids, and probably their kids too. That was always my measuring stick. And that's exactly why my heart's heavy these days."

Gra's "Huon Valley Whirligig" out in the garden — even a light breeze sets the wheel spinning silently.

Why Most Garden Spinners Are Built for the Tip

Here's something most people don't notice until it's too late: most garden whirligigs sold today are basically built to be thrown away. They look pretty enough on the shelf at the big hardware chains, but put them outside and you'll see the truth by the second season. No real bearings — just a metal rod rubbing in a hole. The result? After the first heavy rain, that thing starts squeaking — that high, scratchy whine that ruins every windy afternoon on the verandah.

"People let themselves get fooled by a bit of bright paint," Gra says, dryly. "But take a closer look. Most of what you see at the big hardware stores is thin stamped sheet metal that starts rusting the minute the dew hits it. The frogs are plastic — goes brittle in the sun, cracks the first hard winter. And the stake? Three-millimetre hollow tube. First proper westerly that comes through, the whole thing's lying on its side."

For a man who spent half a century shaping copper gutters and rainwater tanks that had to last for generations, that's a personal insult to the trade. "That's not craft. That's a racket. You pay fifteen bucks at the hardware store, chuck the thing out after eight months, buy another one. Ten years later you've spent two hundred dollars on plastic rubbish. Buy one honest piece that lasts, and you're done for life."

Three of Gra's designs on the bench — every one built with sealed bearings and triple-tinned joints, not stamped sheet metal and a rod in a hole.

Fifty Years of Tin — and the Whirligigs That Wouldn't Spin Right

Gra started his tinsmith apprenticeship in 1968, in a little tin shop in North Hobart. By 1985, he'd taken over his old master's business and moved it into a disused apple-packing shed on an orchard just outside Cygnet. For fifty years he made copper gutters, rainwater tanks, hand-formed downpipes, weathervanes and chimney flashing for old orchards and homesteads right across the Huon and down the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. "My job was to shape tin and copper to last a hundred years out in the weather. There's an apple shed over in Franklin with a copper gutter I put up in '91. It'll outlast me by half a century, easy."

In 2017, Gra retired — and at first didn't quite know what to do with himself. "You can't just stop being a tinsmith. The sound of the hammer on tin keeps ringing in your sleep." That summer, walking through his neighbours' gardens and past the tourist gift shops over in Richmond, he started noticing something that bothered him.

"You'd see one whirligig sitting there dead as a doornail in a stiff breeze, and another one three metres away squealing away in the lightest puff of air. As a tinsmith, that drove me mad. Why? What was the difference?"

The puzzle wouldn't leave him alone. Gra went back to his shed and started experimenting. He shifted the pitch on the wheels by fractions of a millimetre. He tested sealed ball bearings against open ones. He worked out where the centre of gravity had to sit for a wheel to start turning on a single breath of air. He brought everything he'd learned in fifty years of tinsmithing to bear on a small problem nobody else seemed to be solving. A whirligig, the way Gra figured it, is just a small turbine — and a turbine answers to physics, not to a coat of bright paint.

Then there was the question of what to put on top.

The result is the Huon Valley Whirligig — a pair of frogs in top hat and bonnet riding an old penny-farthing bicycle. By a long shot his bestseller. But over the years, Gra has built up a small repertoire of other designs too: a cat-and-rat duo on a vintage motorbike, a praying mantis pair on a chopper, a hare on a tandem. Each one tested, balanced, and tuned the same way as the frogs — same triple-tinned soldering, same sealed bearings, same physics.

Gra's small repertoire — the Huon Valley Whirligig (frogs) is by far the bestseller, but the cat-and-rat and mantis designs share exactly the same engineering.

What Sets the Huon Valley Whirligig Apart from Everything Else

Gra works like a tinsmith — not a hobbyist. That's the difference between a piece that's still spinning three years from now and a plastic spinner that ends up at the tip after one winter.

Triple-tinned soldering. "That's my secret," Gra says. "In old-school tinsmithing, every joint gets tinned three times before you solder it together. The tin layer seals out moisture from the inside. Glued or just spot-welded joints — like the import junk uses — start rusting from the inside out, right where you can't see it. My joints last thirty years easy, because the water can't even get in."

Reclaimed Australian tin from old food tins. "The steel they use in food tins is first-rate stuff — tin-plated, lacquered, properly milled. It's a crime to throw it out after one tin of baked beans. I flatten it out, hammer it back into shape, and give it a second life. Every whirligig has its own little history baked in: one's got an old soup tin in it, one's got a peach tin from a cannery up in the Goulburn Valley."

Real sealed ball bearings — not a rod-in-a-hole. "I put two sealed ball bearings in every wheel. Costs me five extra bucks per piece and three minutes of work — but the wheel turns on a breath of air and never squeaks. You don't even hear it out there. That's the whole point: wind in your garden should bring peace, not noise."

Hand-painted enamel. "Enamel's the same paint they used on the funnels of the old Bass Strait ferries. UV-proof, salt-spray-proof, lasts for decades. June does the eyes — that's the finest work on the whole piece. Those tiny black dots in the frogs' eyes are what make them look alive. I can't get it as good as she does."

Solid 8 mm steel ground stake. "Nothing wobbles. You drive it in once and forget about it. Even a Roaring Forties westerly that flattens half the tomato plants in the valley won't tip it over."

Why Gra Can't Keep Working Past November

"That's it. I'm done," Gra says, looking slowly around the shed. For the 73-year-old, this old packing shed outside Cygnet was never just a workplace — it was his second home. It's where he spent forty years at the trade, and where he found his second calling after it. "When I came in here in the morning and fired up the soldering iron, the world was right with me."

But the reality of modern Tasmania has finally caught up with him. The old orchardist who owned the property passed away over winter. His three kids — long since moved to Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth — sold the whole place to a developer from the mainland. The plan is as simple as it is brutal: clear it all out and put up six "premium luxury retreats with authentic Huon Valley charm." For Gra and the two other tenants on the property, there was no negotiating. The notices to vacate were short, polite, and final.

Early November is the deadline — Gra has already started packing up his 40-year-old workshop.

No Room to Start Over

Gra has spent months looking for a new shed within driving distance of Cygnet. Nothing he can afford. "Anything that's still out there runs $400, $450 a week — that's more than I make on the whirligigs. And anything genuinely affordable is either already gone or being turned into another holiday rental." The 95-square-metre weatherboard cottage he shares with June simply doesn't have room for a workbench, soldering setup, and paint fumes.

"Try hammering tin in a thin-walled weatherboard with the neighbours six metres away," he says, dryly. "They wouldn't put up with it for two days. And the solder smoke and enamel fumes — that's not happening in the kitchen. June would kick me out, and rightly so."

Without a shed, his second calling is over.

Gra showing us the photos customers from all over Australia have sent him.

"I've Got Customers Whose Whirligigs Have Been Spinning Since 2018"

Gra pulls an old binder off a shelf and flips it open. Inside: printed photos his customers have sent him over the years. Whirligigs in gardens from Bruny Island to the Mornington Peninsula to a backyard in the Adelaide Hills. "This one here," he points at a green frog pair against a backdrop of gum trees, "I made for a family down on Bruny Island in 2018. Right on the water, where the salt spray usually eats everything in two summers. They sent me a photo last autumn: still spinning like the day they got it. A bit of patina on the tin — but that just makes it look better."

He flips another page. "The Hollands, up in Launceston. They bought three of these back in 2019, one for each of their grandkids' gardens. Photo here shows the enamel's darkened just a touch over the years, but the mechanics are bulletproof. That's what matters most to me — that my work doesn't end up at the tip after two summers."

That kind of longevity isn't an accident. It's the result of real reclaimed tin, triple-tinned solder joints, sealed ball bearings, and marine-grade enamel. "I spend about three hours of real work on each whirligig. Plus drying time. Plus June's eye-painting. What you get at the end is a piece you'll have for twenty years."

What Huon Valley Whirligig Owners Are Saying

The End of an Era in Cygnet — and Your Last Chance

Come early November, Gra will turn the key in the shed door for the last time. After 40 years at the bench, the tourist economy is winning out over honest craft. "The heart and the hands are still willing — but I can't outbid a developer with a fat chequebook," he says quietly. Since his daughter Kate (45) works as a graphic designer up in Hobart and isn't interested in taking over the trade, there's no one to carry the shop forward. What's left on his shelves is the final batch of Huon Valley Whirligigs — the last ones that will ever pass through his hands.

"It's Not About the Money — It's About Where They End Up"

To make sure these last pieces find good homes, Gra is releasing them at a significant closing-down discount. What matters most to him is that his frogs end up out in the wind in real gardens, not in a shipping container or worse. "I can't make heads or tails of this internet business. But my daughter Kate handles all that for me. She told me, 'Dad, there are still plenty of people out there who appreciate real craftsmanship — we just have to find them.'"

The Huon Valley Whirligig: What You Get

Where to Find the Original

The genuine Huon Valley Whirligig by Graham Pettigrew is available exclusively through Cedar & Tin Co. — an online marketplace specialising in authentic Australian handcraft. His daughter Kate runs Gra's small shop section there, so he can focus all his time on the last pieces at the workbench.

Daughter Kate (45) helps her dad with the online side — making sure his life's work finds homes before the workshop closes.

Early November: Workshop Closes for Good

"By then, I want every last whirligig to have found a real garden to call home. We don't have room for them in the house, and they're too good to scrap," Gra says, looking at his old workbench one more time.

Between the current closing-down discount and the start of the summer garden season, stock is running low fast. This is the last chance to own a real piece of Tasmanian craft — and at the same time give a 73-year-old tinsmith a fitting end to his second calling.

Risk-Free Trial: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee

Gra and Kate are confident you'll feel the quality difference the moment you open the box. That's why they're offering full peace of mind:

1. Stake your Huon Valley Whirligig in your garden and watch the wheel start turning silently on the first soft breeze.
2. Try the materials, the heavy-gauge tin, the sealed bearings, the hand-painted enamel for yourself.
3. If you're not 100% satisfied, just send it back — full refund, no questions asked.