QUEENSTOWN
T A S M A N I A
Queenstown Tasmania : Wilderness Frontier
EXPLORATION
During the summer of 1881 Cornelius Lynch and Thomas Currie led expeditions inland from the former colonial convict labour site of Farm Cove on the Southeastern shore of Macquarie Harbour to the King River where the Queen River tributes. Their motivation was to explore the Queen River valley for exploitable stands of valuable Huon Pine and prospect for Gold. They found a huge tract of rainforest with the densest proliferation of ancient Huon and King Billy pines growing together. They also panned Gold in many of the Queen River's tributing streams. Thomas Currie led a prospecting party up the deep eastern gorge of a Queen River tributary noting a large spectacular waterfall. They continued onto the ridge between Mt Owen and Mt Lyell until physical exhaustion forced them to turn back for the Queen River valley without knowing they were just a few hundred yards from what soon would become known as....The Iron Blow.
Horsetail Falls - pre devastation
BONANZA
One of Lynches party then found a cricket ball sized chunk of Quartz stone heavy with nuggety Gold in a tributary to the lower Queen River. A Gold in quartzite ore body was identified and pegged, Lynch set off to file the claim and the King River Gold Mining Company was floated soon after.
At least a dozen more claims were immediately pegged and a cart-way was established through the Huon and King Billy pine rich rainforests to the settlement simply known as 'Lynches' that had been established at the King River Gold mines. This enabled supplies to be laboriously moved inland from the Harbour to the Piners and Miners shows. This first pack way into the Queen River valley became known as Lynch and Curries route.
Lynch and Curries route delineation to the King River crossing is drawn and labelled on this early sketch map
Other routes are soon established and beast power was then used to haul in machinery on low drays enabling a 10 head stamp mill to be commissioned at the King River Gold Mines. Powered by a very impressive water wheel and an abundance of flowing water, 'Lynch's Show' began consistently crushing ore.
PINERS & MINERS
The heavy mechanical sounds of the King River Gold Mine stamp battery could be heard throughout the Queen River valley as it crushed quartzite ore. Several other shows would soon begin crushing ores with water powered stamps.
King River Gold mine : circa 1884 (Image from Galley Museum)
Princess Gold : circa 1888 (Image from Galley Museum)
NEW CHUMS
In early 1883, brothers Bill and Mick McDonough aka the Cooney Boys, along with Steve Karlson, began mining gold on the eastern slopes of the ridge between Mt Lyell and Mt Owen thus establishing the Mt Lyell Mining Company at the Iron Blow site. Soon, a respected packer named Dixon and Mr James Crotty joined, believing more gold lay deeper, while merchant Mr. FO Henry accepted shares in lieu as payment for supplying stores and equipment. The area quickly grew into a mining town simply referred to as Mt Lyell, prompting the Tasmanian government to extend the cart-way from Lynches show around the western foothills of Mt Owen to Lyell.
In 1893, Anthony Edward Bowes Kelly recognised the site's copper potential. With minimal disclosure, he and a group of like minded BHP investors quietly acquired a majority share interest and transformed it all into the Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company. In 1894, the town was renamed Gormanston most likely to honour Jenico Preston, 14th Viscount Gormanston Governor of Tasmania who had been appointed the previous year.
BIG BUSINESS
The new board of the 1893 Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company, led by Bowes Kelly, needed three key innovations to achieve success. First, they required a cost-effective smelting method due to the lack of coal and dwindling forest resources. From their research, Kelly with investors William Knox and William Orr contacted American metallurgist Robert Carl Sticht who was striving to innovate smelting with a combustible sulphide ore fuelled process. The board offered him the position of chief metallurgist with a massive salary which he accepted. Robert Sticht and wife of just six months Marion relocated from the Montana mines. A town named Penghana was established at the foot of the enormous smelter works site.
COPPER BOOM
The Iron Blow mine and Sticht's smelters amazing success spurred demand for its pure copper, necessitating a railway to transport it to the lower King River port named Teepookana. Engineer Fred Cutten designed the rail corridor with two steep sections necessitating the use of locomotives equipped with the Swiss designed ABT rack and pinion system. Victorian based Garnsworthy and Smith were contracted to construct it but the challenges that arose overwhelmed the unprepared workforce. After appointing Edward Driffield, who employed and organised 400 additional labourers, the Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company railway was completed with grit and ingenuity using basic tools. In 1897 the town of Penghana was destroyed by fire but plans had already been made to relocate the town further down the Queen River valley close to where the railway passenger station had been sited. This led to the establishment of Queenstown which would become the main town of the Lyell District.
Queenstown Railway station circa 1899
NEW TOWN
Built around the success of the Smelter and Railway, Queenstown quickly grew to boast a population exceeding 5000. Robert Sticht was appointed the first General Manager of the Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company and a stately grand mansion was built in which Robert, Marion and their three sons Robert Jr, Hadwell and Chester would live. This mansion, built on a hill with a befitting grand outlook over Queenstown is named Penghana House in tribute to that original ramshackle shanty village beside the initial smelter.
Penghana House circa 1898
**COPPEROPOLIS**
By the turn of the 19th century, the company thrived from mines feeding a largely self-fueling smelter, supported by an effective railway and port. Nearby deposits of silica, limestone, and clay were advantageous but local forests were depleted and no coal was found for energy needs. The Mount Lyell Mining & Railway Company innovated by utilising hydro-powered electricity generation. Engineers surveyed local waterways for energy sources and even planned a dam on the upper King River as early as 1901 to create Lake Dorothy which was calculated to deliver 55000 shaft horsepower! A more efficient option was to pipe the outflow of natural Lake Margaret to a hilltop valve. A pilot plant generated energy by 1912 and the scheme and township was fully operational by 1914.
Lake Margaret powerstation circa 1918
The still currently operating Lake Margaret powerstation
BOOM & BUST
Combined with the nearby earlier townships of Gormanston, Linda, Lynchford, Comstock, and later the Lake Margaret village, the Lyell district population peaked at approximately 10000 and would maintain around 7000 people until 1970. The 1963 closure of the Railway and the 1969 closure of the smelter saw the workforce diminish. When mining went large scale underground in 1972 the implementation of mechanisation combined with the outsourcing of some supplies and services further eroded the employee numbers. The protested 1982/83 planned Franklin/Gordon Rivers dams incited enormous upheaval but the fast tracked construction of the King and Henty Rivers hydropower schemes employed 900 people and prosperity suddenly returned to Queenstown from the mid 1980's. This Government funded prosperity was brief and unsustainable.
By 1993 the Tasmanian Dams building era was over and Queenstown suddenly plunged to a new economic low.
12 hour shift rostered work regimes were applied from 1989 and the winding up of the community nurturing Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company saw the population diminish to 3000. Queenstown's population continued to decline after 1995 when principal contractors were invited to tender for the Mt Lyell mining operation. The workforce quickly became transient and Queenstown's resident population diminished to just 1700.
Orr street Queenstown
RENAISSANCE
The famous Mt Lyell ABT Railway was restored as a major tourism drawcard in 2003 and in just a few years was starting to show some fulfillment of the promised on flow of commercial activity for Queenstown. Alas, this didn't continue and has still not achieved much of the identified potential benefit to Queenstown's forever fledgling business enterprises.
By 2010, after a decade of stagnancy, despite record production figures from the Prince Lyell mine, Queenstown was noticeably evolving. A noticeable artistic presence spurned a regular heritage and arts festival. When banking institutions closed, a group of forward thinking locals had formed a financial company and operated a banking franchise. The regrowth of the forests had become clearly visual and the local saw mill found a new niche market recovering, salvaging and slab milling Huon Pine and other Thamnic rainforest timber species. Some of the high quality rock quarries from the original 1890's railway construction period are being reworked to supply crushed rock for civil projects, a few Hydro Tasmania employees are locally based and Tasmania's Parks & Wildlife service operate a Rangers station and works depot in Queenstown. Recognition of the NO DAMS controversy has become folklore and is now discussed with very little fear of confrontation. Change had already occurred.
The Mt Lyell mine ceased production in 2014 and Queenstown has since become recognised as a spectacular wild place of artistic expression, a place of nature based and unique heritage tourism experiences and a hub for River, Mountain and walking adventure activities. Strahan and Queenstown retain an interestingly unique and spirited heritage of pioneer pining & mining on the wild frontier. Queenstown's current population of slightly less than 2000 is now sustainable without being profoundly impacted by the upheavals of a remote mining dependant economy.
Queenstown and Strahan are on the fringe of Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA), recognised globally as a place of unspoilt ancient temperate wilderness. TWWHA is of infinitely greater universal value than any exploitable natural resource.