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Published: April 18th 2008
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main street of Zeehan
we spotted these wonderful hot rods outside the mining museum - they really enhanced the photo! The West Coast of Tassie is different - it’s commonly known as the west coast wilderness and some parts of the region, particularly the south-west corner, have never been explored to date. Interesting! We noticed the change as we drove from the North Coast through the tall forests to the mining towns of Rosebery and Zeehan and beyond. The drive was interesting, thick native beech trees that seem to meet in the middle of the winding, mountainous roads, to mining towns that appeared out of the misty cold rain and low clouds! We stopped for the night at Zeehan, and were surprised to find we couldn’t get a cabin at the local caravan park (full), so took a room in the local pub, which turned out to be above the bar. Quite difficult to sleep to the loud music drifting up from the juke box till after midnight, but I guess there’s not much else to do in Zeehan on a cold autumn night.
Zeehan had some beautiful old public buildings in its main street, and a great West Coast pioneer mining museum which set out the mining history of the coast very well. Actually there are working mines all
Driving to Zeehan
through the beech forest around this area and Zeehan and Rosebery are experiencing a bit of a mining revival with tin, zinc and nickel mines all active again. From here we drove to Strahan via the large Henty sand dunes, which we decided against sliding down as it was a bit steep! Strahan is a rather attractive port, but quite a touristy kind of town, and we decided to stay at Queenstown over the hill instead. Queenstown is quite the opposite, it has a real wild west feel about it, and has an interesting history too. It is surrounded by mountains, which were completely denuded of vegetation when we were there in 1975, as the timber was used to feed the huge boilers of the gold and copper mines there. Some regrowth has occurred as the new mining company has made efforts to regenerate the area, but it is still pretty bare and when it rains, the sides of the mountains become waterfalls. They also managed to kill off the two large rivers in the area, the Queen and the King - tailings from the mines killed off all river life and no one knows when or if they will become “live” again.
Henty Dunes
Blu writing his name in the sand! We took the West Coast Wilderness Railway trip the next day, which runs across to Strahan. It is a rack and pinion railway (so that it can go up the very steep incline). It was a great trip up through the rainforest and down the King river gorge.
Leaving Queenstown the next day in the rain, we drove up the hairpin bends to the top, which was far less exciting than driving down them on our last visit there! The drive took us through pretty scenic countryside to Lake St Clair National Park, but we didn’t linger as it was wet and cold. Stayed that night in a small, comfy country hotel, just outside Mt Field National Park. There are lots of nice walking tracks in both of these parks, we managed to do a few short walks between showers, but it was still really cold, so we headed off for Hobart. Called into Salmon Ponds on the way there, surprisingly, this proved to be a bit of a highlight - its a trout and salmon hatchery and we enjoyed feeding the fish, reading about the history behind trout "farming" in Australia, and there was a small but very interesting
main street, Queenstown
sure feels like we're in the wild west here... trout fishing museum as well.
Next episode - the final Tassie chapter!
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David E
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Amazing scenery
Wow - what amazing forest and scenery - looks like you are both are having a great time.