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  • Day 3

    Burnie

    March 12, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    We travelled to Burnie on the way to visiting the ‘Nut’ (more on that later) and had some breakfast at a cafe just on the beach.
    Burnie is a port city on the north-west coast of Tasmania, Australia. When founded in 1827, it was named Emu Bay, being renamed after William Burnie, a director of the Van Diemen's Land Company, in the early 1840s.

    I also remember a Midnight Oil song called Burnie and suspect it relates to the following…
    The key industries are heavy manufacturing, forestry and farming. The Burnie port along with the forestry industry provides the main source of revenue for the city. Burnie was the main port for the west coast mines after the opening of the Emu Bay Railway in 1897. Most industry in Burnie was based around the railway and the port that served it.

    After the handover of the Surrey Hills and Hampshire Hills lots, the agriculture industry was largely replaced by forestry. The influence of forestry had a major role on Burnie's development in the 1900s with the founding of the pulp and paper mill by Associated Pulp and Paper Mills in 1938 and the woodchip terminal in the later part of the century.

    It also has a thriving population of little penguins along this section of the coastline with many burrows along the foreshore as well as an interesting breakwater which sits off the jetty area designed to protect the ships when loading cargo.
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