Waratah is a mere shadow of its former self. Like Zeehan, the boom times of a mining bonanza, which for some time was without precedent or equal, are well and truly in the past. Despite this, we discovered to our delight that this small town punches well above its weight in terms of tourist interest, historical significance and early engineering innovation.
And it is just a lovely little spot to wander about......not that it takes overly long to 'shanks it' around Waratah.
As I find myself doing more often, let me open this missive with a quote from the ever reliable 'Aussie Towns', a passage which sums up our Waratah experience precisely:
"Waratah is a rambling town which was once, reputedly, the home of the largest tin mine in the world. It lies at the edge of Tasmania's west coast wilderness. The visitor will initially feel as though they are not really in a town at all. It is part of the town's unique charm that it reveals itself slowly.
First there is the Philosopher's Hut and the Waratah Museum. Then, over the road, there is the Athenaeum Hall and the Kenworthy Stamper Mill. Then Lake Waratah with its unique iron bridge. The Waratah Waterfall. The exhibition of machinery used at the Mount Bischoff North Valley alluvial workings.
The Bischoff Hotel and the Dudley Kenworth Waterwheel which made Waratah the first industrial site in Australia to be lit by hydro-electricity. Slowly the history of the town comes alive ... and the result is fascinating."
Just think about it.......the largest tin mine in the world (which incidentally saved the Tasmanian economy).......the first site in Australia to be lit by hydro power......the first town in the country to have electric street lights.....a town with a waterfall in the main street.
All this in little Waratah.....what is the story?
Waratah, as Aussie Towns explains, does 'reveal itself slowly', mainly because it has grown (and declined) along a main street which is anything but straight.
Let me begin our exploration with another offering from Google Earth (with a few more of my amateur arrows) to set the scene.
We had come into the town along the road which runs in from the right side of this shot. Our camp ground is indicated by the red arrow and from this you can also see the prominent position of the town lakes complex. The Council and Post Office building is that immediately to the north of the caravan park.
The white arrow indicates the position of the town waterfall, fed by a stream which runs under the roadway at the end of the lake, with the massive gully beyond (which stretches away towards the old mine site). The blue arrow points to the building which is the Mount Bischoff Hotel. Hopefully this will all be of some use shortly!
We set out to find out all about Waratah, beginning in Smith Street, where the cluster of buildings here included the council offices and the large white structure of the Athenaeum Hall beyond it on the left, and on the opposite of the road, an 'old hut' and the town museum.
The footpath took us past this street art reminder of the mining history of the town,
beyond which we came to one of the many (very well done) information boards dotted around the town. After a quick pause here
we moved on to find out just what this old slab hut (an obvious replica) was all about.
The interior gave us a real insight into the way in which our pioneering forebears used the raw materials at hand to make all they needed.
Whilst the slab seats looked reasonably functional, I'm far less sure about the bed!
And of course, life is always easier with a wheelbarrow, although it did occur to me that the construction of this ingenious form of transport showed that these good folk had plenty of time on their hands.
But all this was really something of a sideshow, because with this note the real story of Waratah began to unfold.
As I find myself doing more often, let me open this missive with a quote from the ever reliable 'Aussie Towns', a passage which sums up our Waratah experience precisely:
"Waratah is a rambling town which was once, reputedly, the home of the largest tin mine in the world. It lies at the edge of Tasmania's west coast wilderness. The visitor will initially feel as though they are not really in a town at all. It is part of the town's unique charm that it reveals itself slowly.
First there is the Philosopher's Hut and the Waratah Museum. Then, over the road, there is the Athenaeum Hall and the Kenworthy Stamper Mill. Then Lake Waratah with its unique iron bridge. The Waratah Waterfall. The exhibition of machinery used at the Mount Bischoff North Valley alluvial workings.
The Bischoff Hotel and the Dudley Kenworth Waterwheel which made Waratah the first industrial site in Australia to be lit by hydro-electricity. Slowly the history of the town comes alive ... and the result is fascinating."
Just think about it.......the largest tin mine in the world (which incidentally saved the Tasmanian economy).......the first site in Australia to be lit by hydro power......the first town in the country to have electric street lights.....a town with a waterfall in the main street.
All this in little Waratah.....what is the story?
Waratah, as Aussie Towns explains, does 'reveal itself slowly', mainly because it has grown (and declined) along a main street which is anything but straight.
Let me begin our exploration with another offering from Google Earth (with a few more of my amateur arrows) to set the scene.
We had come into the town along the road which runs in from the right side of this shot. Our camp ground is indicated by the red arrow and from this you can also see the prominent position of the town lakes complex. The Council and Post Office building is that immediately to the north of the caravan park.
The white arrow indicates the position of the town waterfall, fed by a stream which runs under the roadway at the end of the lake, with the massive gully beyond (which stretches away towards the old mine site). The blue arrow points to the building which is the Mount Bischoff Hotel. Hopefully this will all be of some use shortly!
We set out to find out all about Waratah, beginning in Smith Street, where the cluster of buildings here included the council offices and the large white structure of the Athenaeum Hall beyond it on the left, and on the opposite of the road, an 'old hut' and the town museum.
The footpath took us past this street art reminder of the mining history of the town,
beyond which we came to one of the many (very well done) information boards dotted around the town. After a quick pause here
we moved on to find out just what this old slab hut (an obvious replica) was all about.
The interior gave us a real insight into the way in which our pioneering forebears used the raw materials at hand to make all they needed.
Whilst the slab seats looked reasonably functional, I'm far less sure about the bed!
And of course, life is always easier with a wheelbarrow, although it did occur to me that the construction of this ingenious form of transport showed that these good folk had plenty of time on their hands.
But all this was really something of a sideshow, because with this note the real story of Waratah began to unfold.
Until now, the name 'Philosopher' Smith meant nothing to us, but that was short lived. I would now suggest that there has been nobody who strode the early Tasmanian development stage with more impact.
After a less than happy childhood (he was abandoned by his convict parents) and some time spent in Victoria, James Smith took up farming land in the north-west Tasmania in the early 1850's. But that was only one of his interests.
A tall and hardy bushman, Smith was a tough, resourceful and determined amateur explorer, one who would think nothing of going for several days on just one meal when his interest was aroused as he roamed the difficult country of the north-west.
On 4 December 1871, this remarkable man made the discovery which was to alter the course of Tasmania. Following a sample of tin ore back along a creek to its source, he located a rich deposit of tin oxide near the summit of Mount Bischoff.
Despite the significance of his discovery, Smith had great difficulty in attracting interest and investors. He sold a small farm and arranged enough capital to begin mining himself. The first bagged oxide, taken along the bush track from Waratah to the coast, was shipped to England via Melbourne.
Well, that soon sparked some interest!
The returns from this first shipment led to the formation of a company which took over the mining operation in 1873.
In 1875, one Ferd Kayser, a man almost as interesting at Smith himself, arrived on the scene. A German by birth, he emigrated to Adelaide in 1853 and then moved to Melbourne in 1854. Kayser then headed off to the goldfields, was naturalised in 1861, and became a mining manager at Bendigo in 1863. In 1875 he was appointed as the manager of the Mount Bischoff mine.
Kayser was not a man to be trifled with, and was grandly unpopular in many quarters, particularly amongst the miners of Cornish descent, but he did think about his work force. He built them good houses, a hospital and a grand temperance hotel at Waratah, and Waratah soon became Tasmania’s first dedicated mining town.
But he did more than that. The Mount Bischoff mine and dressing sheds were lit with power produced by hydro-electricity, the first in an Australian industrial plant. In another Australian first, in June 1883, Kayser arranged for the extension of this power network to include public electric lighting throughout the town.
At its peak the town population reached over 5,000, a figure which has fallen to just under 300 today.
So what had happened to the man who kicked all this off?
Although when the company was formed Smith was given cash and shares, and a permanent directorship, he had no real interest in managing the operation and he severed his connection with what was to soon to become the richest tin mine in the world. When the company paid its first dividend in 1878, Smith had sold most of his shares at a pittance of their worth, or, in some cases, given them away!
In what I consider an entirely appropriate expression of gratitude, the Tasmanian Government did acknowledge the importance of Smith's work by awarding him a public testimonial of 250 sovereigns, a silver salver and an annual pension of 200 pounds. The address which accompanied the gifts stated that as a "result of his discovery commerce had developed, property had increased in value, and all classes of the community had been benefited".
How true that was. Smith's discovery led directly to the drive to prospect for minerals on the island's west coast. The finds of gold and copper at Queenstown, silver at Zeehan, gold at Corinna, zinc at Rosebery and galena at Tullah were a direct result.
More significantly, just before Mount Bischoff came into full production, the colony was in the grip of a financial crisis, one which was leading to increasing demands that it should be subsumed by Victoria. The returns on mining on the west coast turned that all around.
Tasmania's independence and its economic future were assured. None of this would have happened had it not been for the dogged determination (and the ability to know what he was looking at) of one man.....James 'Philosopher' Smith. Consistent with his gentle nature and abhorrence of fuss and bother, Smith went back to farming and just before his death, spent some time as a member of the Tasmanian Parliament.
In the initial 70 years of operations, the Mount Bischoff tin mine produced in excess of 80,000 tonnes of tin. Sluicing, using the water diverted from the town waterfall stream, made early extraction easy, but that was discontinued in 1893 (thanks to 'Tasmania Archives and Heritage office' for this photo of the mine 'dressing sheds').
After that mining continued opencut on the face of the mountain, and underground. The underground mine closed in 1914, but surface mining continued for some time before it also ceased after the price of tin slumped in 1929. The mine was reopened by the Commonwealth Government in 1942 to support the war effort, but it finally closed in 1947.
Now owned by Bluestone Mines, the Mount Bischoff mine is currently on 'care and maintenance' whilst continuing exploration is undertaken to assess the feasibility of further ore extraction.
Well, I think that might just be enough about tin mining at Mount Bischoff, but as I hope you now understand, this mineral deposit has a unique and pivotal place in the history and development of Tasmania.
And this is what this place of such prior economic importance looks like today, as seen from the Smith Street area looking out across the gully below the town waterfall.Right next to 'Philsophers' hut, we found the weatherboard building which was the original town Police Station and Court House combined. It now houses the town museum.
Law and order itself was another fascinating aspect of the early years in Waratah.......there was none, well not formally as we understand it that is!
This was a mining town in every sense of the word. The Mount Bischoff Company imposed its own law, with the company manager acting as the Magistrate. This invariably put him in an unenviable position given that many who came before him were his own employees, most of whom would be appearing on charges relating to drunkenness of disorderly behaviour.
Managing social order changed with establishment of the Police presence in 1879, much I suspect, to the relief of many, although this 'Letter to the Editor', written apparently in 1924, would suggest that even then all was not social sweetness and light in Waratah.
Suggestions of a vigilante mob to deal with chook thieves and those whose language was 'variegated'.....this was serious stuff indeed, and as for those who prowl with a match-box.....well!
I'll have a bit more to say about social order (less tongue in cheek) as we continue our wander around this end of town and finally get to take a look at the local hotel.
I'll have a bit more to say about social order (less tongue in cheek) as we continue our wander around this end of town and finally get to take a look at the local hotel.
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