Arthur Phillip Watts was born in January 1878 in Bethanga, a goldfield in north-eastern Victoria, near the NSW border.   In 1879, lured by the gold rush at Lisle in the north-east of Tasmania, Arthur’s parents, William and Eliza, and their 3 young children left Victoria for a new life in Tasmania where, over the next 15 years, another 7 children were born into the family.  Arthur grew up at Lisle and became a miner.

In 1911, John Burge, a storekeeper in St Helens, died suddenly and, two years later at age 35, Arthur married the widowed Barbara Burge, who was a few years his senior. They were married in 1913 in Launceston and appear to have carried on the St Helens business for some time.   Barbara had a daughter from her first marriage; however, she had no children with Arthur.  When Barbara died suddenly and tragically in 1927 aged 57, from an asthma attack, Arthur went to live with his widowed mother, Eliza, at Golconda, about 7 miles (aprox 11 kms) from Lisle.  Following his mother’s passing in 1940, Arthur, now in his early sixties, moved from Golconda to Lone Star, a thickly wooded area about 3 miles (almost 5 kms) from the Golconda railway station.  He built two huts and lived the solitary, and no doubt lonely, life of a hermit until his death in1957, aged almost 80. The hut which was his main residence was basic but always impeccably clean and tidy.  The water supply came via a clear mountain stream and Arthur had an orchard, and tame wallabies which were often his only company.  At the Hut’s entrance attached to the unpainted timber wall was a brightly polished art nouveau copper nameplate – “Bethanga”- the name of his birthplace.  This nameplate had previously adorned the Launceston home in which he and Barbara lived following their marriage. He was the only one of the 10 Watts children to be born at Bethanga and had left as an infant but, never forgot that it was his birthplace.