 |
 |
New Articles
Piners and Miners Recycled
By Greg Clarke
Around Strahan on Tasmania’s wild west coast the locals don’t clarion their expertise in recycling though, these days, there might be plenty of people willing to listen.
West coasters are no-nonsense folk and don’t make a fuss about much at all, yet their recycling efforts are impressive and have run to a far larger scale than making bottles and newspapers fit for re-use.
West coasters, you see, developed a knack for recycling towns, traditionally employing the efficiency of a ravished Tasmanian devil happening across fresh carrion: just about everything gets hoovered up.
The history of Tasmania’s once isolated west includes chapters of extraordinarily ancient rainforests, wealth from mining, greedy codgers with self-destructing vendettas, and redoubtable improvisation.
But you’ll need a good informant to help track down the rollicking history hereabouts and we have Julie. With a manner attentive as a butler she is showing us around Teepookana, by the banks of the King River about 10km from Strahan.
Everywhere beyond the river is garrotted by verdancy. Yet in the 1880s this was one of the largest ports in Tasmania, home to 500 souls. But the blackwoods and the Christmas tree-like sassafras defy any sense that man got the better of the rainforest though a single set of train tracks, barely inconveniencing insouciant myrtles, is an obvious hint for otherwise.
Trains ran from inland Queenstown, shifting payloads from the Mt Lyell copper mine, to Teepookana. When the King was eventually bridged the train line was extended to the port at Strahan and Teepookana lost its reason for being. West coasters packed up the town and moved it to other parts: the pub, for example, went up tracks to Lynchford. “West coasters are the ultimate recyclers.” says Julie.
That not a whole lot remains of Teepookana, an Aboriginal word for blue kingfisher, is testament of the west coast’s commitment to an ethic long before it was fashionable. Teepookana is not a one off. Other towns had a similar fate and even today parts of Strahan are furnished with questionably obtained colonial-era building products.
Strahan is the Tasmanian west coast’s unofficial capital and hunkers down by vast Macquarie Harbour. The village still operates as a working port and the narrow mouth of the harbour offers rock lobster boats a free way to the Southern Ocean. Strahan is also the western sentry of Tasmania’s World Heritage Area.
The WHA runs to about 20 per cent of the state. It includes temperate rainforest and the remarkable and contrasting slopes of jagged, naturally treeless mountains so rugged and inhospitable they are more flukily beautiful than backing a winner with three-figure odds.
Unlike almost the rest of Australia there is no shortage of water in these parts − average rainfall comes in at three metres − and fattened rivers barge through the titanic forest. The waters of the Gordon River (the fabled Franklin is a tributary) are made dark from the tannin in the surrounding buttongrass and the river is often filled with the reflections of this unpopulated wilderness. Ancient Huon pines are mirrored in the water with the sharpness of a photograph.
The lack of settlement can seem a stupendously generous bequest to those who now visit: the nearest coastal village to Strahan is an hour or so north. There is no settlement to the south until you hit Melaleuca, about a million WHA-hectares away, population just two.
But this oh-my-God wilderness was a tough place for the colonials. Rainforests take their name as much from the rain as the trees and the chaps who scarfed the path for the railway with pick and shovel reportedly smoked their clothes in order to try and stay dry.
Before the navvies and miners Strahan was a base for piners − men who harvested Huon pines old as Moses then floated them down the wild rivers to the harbour. The Huon pine contains an oil, methyl eugenol, which resists rot and is coveted by those who like to build boats without leaks. Huon pines live for thousands of years and are now protected but such is the timber’s value, buried offcuts from the piners’ era are still retrieved from the forests for milling.
Julie is our guide on the Piners and Miners Tour, a high-dive with twist into the wilderness and the history of the region. After Teepookana we continue to follow the railway line though we are not travelling by train, but rather what has been christened a hi-rail vehicle; a stretched 4WD Land Rover, a unique hybrid, that gets along on steel and dirt.
At Dubbil Barril, another stop on the line, Julie butlers coffee and muffins then stories us about two fellas, James Crotty and Bowes Kelly. Crotty was an erstwhile Victorian ‘gentleman’ who we are told spent most of his life trying to get revenge on Kelly after Kelly bought a mining lease from him far too cheaply.
Queenstown, the centre of western Tassie’s 19th-century mining boom, became Kelly’s town as the man who bought the cheap mine banked the riches from the copper he knew was in the ground. Kelly had good form striking it rich. He was one of the original owners of the BHP lease and later a chairman of the company. Crotty on the other hand thought he was shifting a failing gold mine and his essayings were suitably laced.
While Kelly’s good fortune extended to the construction of the railway most sensible folk predicted couldn’t be built because of the forested couloirs, Crotty set to out mine Kelly. As evidence of the local riches to be had there was a stock exchange at nearby Zeehan.
We travel 28km as a train of sorts then at the push of a button the hi-rail refashions itself into a 4WD. We hit the road. Our next stop is a vantage point over Lake Burbury. In the distance, beyond the valley, Frenchmans Cap is dandruffed with the scatterings of dolerite.
Far below us is the site of Crotty, once a smelting town. According to Julie revenge was high on Irishman James Crotty’s agenda and he raised capital in London to build his own version of Kelly’s empire. In time the town and an alternate railway from the mine to a port (Pillinger) on Macquarie Harbour were created. All of it with Crotty’s imprimatur.
Soon after we creep along a 4WD track then bid adieu to the Land Rover/train. It’s time to walk and by the Bird River we follow the old rail line that ran from Crotty toward Pillinger.
The rail line has been claimed by the rainforest and the 7.5km Bird River Walk, on the edge of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, is through a wilderness redolent of the scenes captured by iconic Tasmanian landscape photographer Peter Dombrovskis. The moss-covered trees and the mist on the river help make this a wildly eerie place. As for the railway line, it is almost unfathomable and only the occasional length of track and steel spike stave off feelings that Julie has set me up to be the victim of an elaborate hoax.
All too quickly it seems we come across an awning set for us to lunch under. Two colleagues of Julie’s have prepared tender wallaby steaks, sautéed scallops, trout not long out of Macquarie Harbour, and quail in garlic and rosemary. Tassie beer and wine runs with all of it. The trencherman’s feast (and the Cascade beer) is as first rate as the wilderness.
After lunch we poke about Pillinger. The last resident left in 1943 but unusually a couple of relics remain including a Pullman train carriage − the Moroccan leather seats have long been recycled − and the walls of brick kilns.
Crotty died in 1898 before his towns and railway line were realised. And while his venture thrived, Kelly bought out this part of the James Crotty legacy in 1903, moved all the operations to his Queenstown smelter leaving the towns of Crotty and Pillinger to the same fate as Teepookana.
Pillinger had a wharf 240-metres long but the posts left in the water run to nowhere. By comparison there is a freshly installed micro mooring nearby and Second Nature is roped to it. The 12-metre craft is our ride back to Strahan.
It’s a 20-nautical mile trip in not so much a boat as a rich man’s trophy. Our skipper offers “she’s got all the bells and whistles,” including an upstairs deck where we could linger over a cheese platter and more drinks.
The harbour is ringed by forest and there isn’t a sign anyone else is on this planet until the dolphins make their cameo. Dolphins are occasionally spotted in the harbour, and the pod surfs in Second Nature’s wake, before skiving off.
On the boat there is time to reflect on the story we’ve been told. Not only did Kelly, the gambler who reportedly ended board meetings with games of two-up, considerably outlive his rival, he comes out of Julie’s tale much the better.
On board the cruiser, while devouring the perky wasabi-inflicted cheese, Crotty is condemned to eternal second place with the revelation he reportedly offered his wife a greater inheritance if she joined a convent after her often absent husband’s demise.
Given the context of the story we couldn’t help but wish Bowes Kelly shimmied off with her too and while the notion is surely extraordinary this west coast undoubtedly has more surprises hidden up its wilderness.
More information:
The nine hour Piners and Miners Tour leaves Strahan daily. The hi-rail carries a maximum of eight passengers.
Wet weather gear including Gortex cagoules and gaiters are included. Breakfast, morning and afternoon tea, and gourmet lunch with Tasmanian beer and wine are also included.
The Piners and Miners Tour costs $345 per person