Queenstown - Mining Town

Today originally was planned to take the West Coast Heritage Railway from Strahan to Queenstown but the track is still undergoing the maintenance from the winter closure. Instead I started down at the Strahan railway station and took a look at the museum there. Back to my accommodation to hang out some washing then into Queenstown. Had some lunch and took a look at the Queenstown railway station. From there I went to the Galley Museum which has 19 rooms of stuff ranging from mining to every day living. I’m sure they’ve never said no to a donation and most of it has been there from the 80s with tiny typewritten explanations for the photos. Other parts had no information at all. It was interesting though. I was starting to build a picture of the copper mine and the impact it had on the community.

I went out east of Queenstown to the Iron Blow lookout which is the site of the original copper mine. The lookout is a boardwalk out over the mine, quite disconcerting. Great views though. Then to Linda to see the burnt out hotel.

Back in Queenstown I went up to the Spion Kopf lookout. It was quite a steep walk up but gave great views of the town.

The Paragon Theatre is showing a film about the Franklin Dam blockade. It’s told by the son of one one of the demonstrators and gives a great overview of the situation. Bob Brown features quite heavily and it was interesting to here from him.

Once the film finished I had booked a 4x4 tour of Mt Owen, one of mountains that tours over the town. I was the only one on the tour. It was half price because the government had provided funding as there has been a downturn in tourism due to the railway not running. The railway is a government initiative. So that worked out for me. I did wonder if it would be just me and the driver but wasn’t sure about that from an OSH point of view. One of the other employees and her partner also came along. I wasn’t sure if the partner was a tourist or not but when insisted I sit in the front I assumed I was the only paying guest.

The tour was fantastic. Mt Owen is just out of town and is home to the Horsetail falls and various mountain bike tracks. The 4x4 is more for the incline of the road as it is all bitumenised although they’ve just redone a very steep part of it which had been quite rutted and one of the other employees had declined to drive up there. The views were great. I could see the Macquarie harbour (Strahan was hidden), the Southern Ocean, Cradle Mountain, Frenchman’s peak, Mt Dundas and lots of other peaks I don’t remember the name of. We could also hear the sound of the melted snow running off the mountain.
The copper mine used pyritic smelting of the ore to get the copper. This lead to sulphur being released into the atmosphere and the heavy rainfall lead to sulphur getting into the soil. What trees weren’t felled for the timber died from the acid rain. The oval in the town is gravel because you couldn’t grow grass there. I saw several reference to “gravel not grass” regarding the local football team.
The pyritic smelting stopped around 1970 and the environment is gradually recovering. There is reed grass and small bushes at the top and we saw two lots of two bonnet’s wallabies on the way down the mountain.

Cloud did get in the way of the sunset but the bright moon in the opposite direction made up for it. That cloud will apparently bring 20mm of rain from midday tomorrow. I’ll be gone by then.
I’m glad I did the tour as it was nice to chat to a local who and a lot of information. We got back to the Paragon Theatre (they run both the theatre and tours) after 8:30 (sunset was 7:55) and by the time I got going it was 9pm. It took me 50 minutes to drive back to Strahan. I only met one vehicle coming the other way - there hasn’t been a lot of traffic on the roads anywhere - and I saw just two wallabies, both safely on the side of the road and showing no interest in crossing the road.Read more