Historic Queenstown, the largest settlement on Tasmania’s west coast, is best known for its copper mines and smelters.
The town, with a population of more than 2,300, occupies the Queen River Valley, but it takes imagination to picture how it must have looked before the surrounding hills were deforested by 19th century mining practices.
While you are in town, you can visit Miners Siding and the Galley Museum, or venture underground on a tour that reveals Queenstown’s rich mining history. These tours claim to be the only that take you to the working face of a mine.
In a dramatic contrast to the scarred hills, wilderness walks in nearby areas take you through dense, wildlife-inhabited forest to disused tramlines and mineshafts, lookouts and waterfalls – including Tasmania’s highest, Montezuma Falls.
You can explore the region’s natural beauty on the West Coast Wilderness Railway to the port of Strahan – one of Australia’s great historic train journeys. If you’re a sports enthusiast, you’ll be impressed by the town’s gravel football ground (they breed their footballers tough on the west coast).
Queenstown was first explored in the 1860s by Charles Gould but wasn’t settled until 1881, when Cornelius Lynch discovered gold in a nearby creek. Throughout the town’s 110-year mining history, diminishing gold resources resulted in a shift to copper mining. Large copper smelters, fuelled by surrounding timber, polluted the area and left the landscape sparse.
Queenstown’s spectacular natural waterfalls and its equally impressive man-made quarries and mines are a two-hour drive from Burnie, or three hours along the Lyell Highway (A 10) from Hobart.
Be prepared for wet weather and strong winds anywhere on the west coast. In Queenstown, the average maximum temperature for June is 12 degrees Celsius (53.5 degrees Fahrenheit), for January 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit).
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