CosBeauty Magazine #81

Feature
day
6
Queenstown & Strahan
Leaving Hobart, drive northwest across the
undulating peaks and valleys of the Wild
Rivers National Park (part of the Tasmanian
Wilderness World Heritage Area) to emerge
onto the infamous ‘moonscape’ above former
timber and mining centre Queenstown (3.5
hours), and then onto the sharp contrast of
idyllic Strahan (a further 40 minutes) on the
northern tip of Macquarie Harbour.
The dramatic drive – down a steep,
spiraling road with over 90 sharp bends – into
Queenstown (population now under 2,000)
on the slopes of Mount Owen is described
truthfully as ‘a spectacular testament to the
brutal reality of Tasmania’s mining past’.
Once the world’s richest mining town,
copper mining and mass logging in the early
1900s (when the population of the town and
surrounding district was 10,500) have created
what government travel guides now describe
as a ‘surreal and rocky moonscape of bare
coloured conglomerate’.
The mountainous area was first explored in
1862, but when alluvial gold was discovered
nearby in the 1880s the Mount Lyell Gold
Mining Company was formed and in 1892 the
mine also began searching for copper. By 1900
Queenstown was the centre of the thriving
mining district, boasting numerous smelting
works, brickworks and sawmills.
Peaceful Strahan (population 700) is a
harbour-side village, belying its dark convict
past, nestled on the edge of the Tasmanian
Wilderness World Heritage Area and gateway
to the World Heritage Listed Franklin-Gordon
Wild Rivers National Park.
Historically Strahan is full of stories
from the days when convicts and pioneers
toughed it out in Tassie’s rugged ‘wild west’.
Nearby in Macquarie Harbour is notorious
Sarah island, a windswept and barren site
established as a brutal convict prison in 1821
where inmates labored under the harshest
conditions in the rainforest, felling ancient
pines for boat building.
More uplifting are the breathtaking daily
boat cruises which depart from Strahan’s wharf
for the journey to Heritage Landing and the
densely wooded, pristine temperate rainforests
of the lower Gordon River – showcasing
majestic Huon pines that grow to an age over
3,000 years.
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