"Can ecological vandalism on a massive scale be considered one of the
wonders of the world? Probably yes, because the first time anyone sees
the valley at Queenstown (and you always enter it from the hills above
the town) they spontaneously gasp in amazement.
Having passed through densely timbered Tasmanian wilderness they are suddenly confronted with a moonscape produced, in the space of only twenty years, by the savage cutting of the pristine forests to fuel the local copper smelters and the corrosive, deadly sulphur fumes from eleven furnaces. The heavy west coast rain (it averages around 2400 mm a year) did the rest. Erosion stripped the hills of their soil and a man-made desert was left. Yet, for all this, here is an intensely beautiful and wild area.
When the grey clouds tumble in, driven by the Roaring Forties; when the hills are smudged with forbidding mists; the Queen River valley, for all its damage, is unforgettable. It really is one of the wonders of the world while, at the same time, being a reminder of our capacity as a species to destroy and pollute the planet."
This piece from 'Aussie Towns', for me, says it all. And also, from a personal point of view, Queenstown was a classic case of the factual errors of partial knowledge and the value of a personal visit.
I had always (erroneously) thought the wasteland around the town was the result of the dumping of mining tailings, but now know this is not so. The combination of ceaseless tree clearances, the toxicity of the smelter fumes, resulting acid rain (which killed off all the remaining vegetation) and subsequent erosion, all combined to do a much better job....a 'perfect storm' of environmental vandalism!
This in turn did serve to expose the colours of the underlying rock which paints the Queenstown landscape with what we see today.
As we shall see later, in some areas Mother Nature is now healing the environmental wounds with a salve of regenerating greenery, but in many places the complete absence of any top soil and the steep slopes mean that a full recovery is virtually impossible.
But as 'Aussie Towns' notes, there is a wild and exotic beauty in what remains, something which draws folk like us to the town, and I will be the first to admit I found it utterly captivating.
So as the header question asks, how did it get to this? As you might imagine it is a long story....in fact the entire history of the development of copper mining in this area is a saga of discovery and counter-discovery, shrewd investment, bitter rivalries, back breaking labour, and the use of two innovative technologies, one a railway and the other the smelters.
I have been hard pressed to condense all this into something which would not take all week to read, and have decided to rely on one source which does explain quite well some of just what went on here.
But let's begin at the beginning. In 1883 three miners discovered gold on the rocky outcrop known as Iron Blow. Others soon arrived and now the real and complex saga of the development of Queenstown and its nearby mines began in earnest.
To tell some of it I am going to rely with thanks and relief on one of the many reference sources I have researched to bring this blog to you.
The most excellent website of the 'Western Wilderness Railway' provided this tale to two emigrant Irishmen and of the development of the Queenstown copper mining industry, and what a tale it is.
"James Crotty was an Irish prospector, who travelled to the Victorian goldfields as an 18 year old to seek his fortune. When gold was discovered in western Tasmania, Crotty decided to try his luck. He camped at Mt Lyell in 1884, bought a one-third interest in a 20-acre lease at Mt Lyell called Iron Blow, and set about looking for gold.
And find gold he did. In fact, it was said that if you pulled grass up by the roots at Iron Blow, the gold would sprinkle out of it. When James Crotty walked the 100 miles to Waratah to register his find in 1886, he declared, 'I'll be that rich, I'll buy Ireland and make it a present to Parnell'. This young man already looked set to guide the fate of the west coast, but his path was a winding one.
The truth has been lost to time, but the result of the scandal was that James Crotty could not find a single person willing to put eighteen thousand hard earned pounds into his mine. Being an enterprising man, Kelly negotiated the price to a much lower sum, and a now-desperate James Crotty was forced to accept the deal. He signed a contract that put Kelly in charge of the operation. And so, in 1891, the Mt Lyell Mining Company was formed, with Bowes Kelly at the helm.
For Bowes Kelly, the future was not paved with gold, but with copper. Because while the gold reserves at Iron Blow were diminishing, Bowes Kelly had discovered it was in fact the richest copper mine in the entire world.
A furious James Crotty swore revenge, resigned form the company, and began a feud between the two men that would eventually shape the west coast and determine the success or failure of the whole region.
to take a closer look at the ghostly grey walls of what was once a thriving establishment here on the old Lyell Highway mining town of Linda.
As we had made our way into Queenstown for the first time, I recall being non-plussed by the sight of this large, obviously once opulent building standing here in almost complete isolation on the side of the main road. I still have no idea what this building housed, and sadly, the Linda cafe next to it, which was by all accounts a place of superior fare, is also now closed. But whatever the reason for this building, its size and architecture spoke of far better times.
On to the turn-off and the road which took us
to the viewing platform atop Iron Blow. What incredible scenes a wander to the end of this impressive high rise path presented.
In front of us and slightly to the right, we could see out over what remains of the once bustling mining town of Gormanston and
on to the distant smudge of blue water which was part of the northern end of Lake Burbury.
This shot shows the dark ribbon of the Lyell Highway snaking its way through the valley below.
The red arrow I've obviously added points to the old Linda cafe site we had just left.
Panning further back to the right, we had another view of the bare hills,
and by using the zoom, some of the remaining buildings of the once thriving town of Gormanston
Swinging the lens ever further to the right brought us yet another shot of the bleak, denuded landscape through which the A10 winds on its way to 'Queenie',
and this close-up of the same scene shows a car park on the side of the highway with the road to Iron Blow coming off to the right. The trail which wends its way around the base of the hill in the other direction leads to another local waterfall, the Horse Tail Falls.
And directly below us was the site where it all began, the original open cut workings of the Mount Lyell copper mine, long since defunct and now a pit filled with water of this distinctive colour.
To the left, beyond the open cut pit, some of the old mine infrastructure, mine workings and
a large tailings dump told a tale of busier times around Iron Blow.
On the edge of the lookout car park, this patch of crystalline metamorphic rock, more formally known as 'schists', stood showing off all its various colours in the glowing sunlight.
It was here at this lookout that a series of information boards gave us our first inkling of what had happened to Gormanston, Linda and many other small towns in this area.
We now know much more,
but here it was told in a different way.
This was not the only batch of boards we were to find on this sortie. After leaving Iron Blow and before reaching Queenstown, we stopped off at the parking bay high above the town where we were to gain yet another perspective of the extent and the value of mining in Tasmania's west.
Here too were names which were soon to become much more than merely that, particularly those of Waratah, Corinna and Zeehan.
Here too we began to gain the answer to the question of the Queenstown moonscape,
and the role played by the now infamous Mount Lyell smelters.
So what, I hear you say. There have been, and are, smelters operating all over the country with nothing like the Queenstown outcome. What was different here?
The answer lies in the method and fuel.
Let's begin with the fuel and a statistic which is almost beyond belief. Between 1896 and 1923 over three million tonnes of timber was stripped from the surrounding mountains to fuel the fires of the furnaces.
It has been estimated that these fiery monsters were consuming 2,040 tonnes of timber each week. By 1900 the valley had been totally denuded. It was time to start on the hills.
If that were not bad enough in terms of environmental damage, it gets worse, much worse.
Let me now introduce you to the term 'pyritic smelting', technically defined as 'a process of smelting pyritic ores without previous roasting and with little or no fuel by utilising the heat resulting from the combustion of their high sulphur content.' Of course you all knew that!
Another of the plaques told us more.
What a great idea! What a success story! Well, not really. Sounds all fair and good, but as is so often the case, the devil was in the detail. This smelting process produced sulphur fumes, tonnes of the stuff, all of which belched unrelentingly from the smelter smoke stacks.
Here is another old photo, courtesy of 'appleisleprospector', which shows the Queenstown smelters in full flight with the toxic fumes spreading unrelentingly across the landscape.
In what can only be described as a sad commentary on the times, the locals were so proud of this enterprise, and it was making so much money, that a promotional postcard of the smelter operation was produced.
There was no doubt that this mine and its smelted product was one of the most successful of its time, but at a fearsome cost.
The sulphurous fumes combined with water in the atmosphere (and there is never any shortage of that around Queenstown). The mountains and valleys were continuously drenched with a vicious acid rain which put paid to what little ground vegetation remained after the felling of the timber.
As explained previously, erosion then stripped all the top soil from the denuded slopes exposing the rock below....
..........the infamous 'Queenstown Moonscape' was born! (thanks 'aussietowns')
.
Apart from the few trees which survived within the town itself, all was bare, albeit colourful when the sun was shining (which is not too often in Queenstown!).
This shot from 'similarworlds' captures the highway snaking into Queenstown through the barren hills beyond Iron Blow.
Although the smelting operation was closed down in 1921, there was yet another problem. As if the timber felling and smelter fumes were not bad enough, there was the water pollution. Between 1893 and 1994, the mine waste and tailings were dumped directly into the King River system. The acid toxicity typical of this copper mining waste devastated the King through a process known as acid mine drainage.
Notwithstanding that this practice was halted in 1995, heavy metal contamination from the mine continues to plague the King and Queen Rivers and the outfall in Macquarie Harbour.
This is the Queen River as it flows directly through the heart of Queenstown today. If ever a picture told a story!
Fortunately, as we were to see later on the Wilderness Railway trip, the King River appeared to be in much better shape, in colour at least.
Apart from all this environmental damage, this mining operation has not been without its own major disaster.
On the late morning of 12 October 1912 a fire broke out in the pump house on the 700 ft level of the North Mount Lyell mine. With no emergency warning systems, many working underground were unaware of the fire until alerted to the danger by fellow workers running along the levels and drives shouting warnings.
Although 73 managed to scurry to safety, for 42 labouring underground that day was to be their last alive. They were trapped and killed by the smoke and a lack of oxygen.
One miner knew what fate had in store for him. This remarkably poignant letter was found pinned to the mine wall by a rescue team when the smoke had cleared.
Unsurprisingly, given that this was the largest mining disaster of the time in this country, an enquiry followed in the form of a Royal Commission. And again the Mount Lyell mining enterprise was shrouded in controversy.
Whilst the Commission formally found that an unidentified disgruntled employee had deliberately lit the fire to discredit the company and its treatment of it employees, this outcome was roundly challenged.
A Tasmanian MLC and ex mine worker claimed that most of the evidence presented by the company was false and untested and that this disaster followed years of concerns about safety in this mine. A strong claim was made for the argument that the real cause of the fire had been a short circuit in the mine's sub-standard electrical system.
The matter has never been resolved beyond reasonable doubt.
So, folks, there you have my take on mining in Queenstown. There can be no doubt that the copper mining here played a significant role in the development of the west of Tasmania, but as we have seen, this came at a cost to the environment and to the health of those who lived and worked here (another subject altogether!).
But environmentally at least there is an encouraging post scrip. As this 'aussietowns' shot shows,
as does this panoramic photo courtesy of 'wikipedia',
the hills around Queenie may not be alive with the sound of music, but the rustle of new leaves in the continually expanding regeneration of much of the landscape is a very welcome sound to most.
There is still a mine in Queenstown. I found it very difficult to photograph as is evident from this shot we took coming in from Strahan, (you can just see the smoke stack)
so I've lifted this one with thanks to 'abc'.
This plant has been in caretaker mode for a number of years, but with copper prices on the increase and a funding commitment from the Tasmanian Government, a restart with a much 'greener' operation is being planned.
We actually spoke to a number of locals who have stayed put for some time, hoping that the mine would be rebooted. As one told me, "I've lived and worked here all my life. Where else would I go? I'll just hang around and see what happens."
As were were to see, many of the Queenstown houses appeared consistent with that outlook, but that's a story for another day (a much shorter one!).
Having passed through densely timbered Tasmanian wilderness they are suddenly confronted with a moonscape produced, in the space of only twenty years, by the savage cutting of the pristine forests to fuel the local copper smelters and the corrosive, deadly sulphur fumes from eleven furnaces. The heavy west coast rain (it averages around 2400 mm a year) did the rest. Erosion stripped the hills of their soil and a man-made desert was left. Yet, for all this, here is an intensely beautiful and wild area.
When the grey clouds tumble in, driven by the Roaring Forties; when the hills are smudged with forbidding mists; the Queen River valley, for all its damage, is unforgettable. It really is one of the wonders of the world while, at the same time, being a reminder of our capacity as a species to destroy and pollute the planet."
This piece from 'Aussie Towns', for me, says it all. And also, from a personal point of view, Queenstown was a classic case of the factual errors of partial knowledge and the value of a personal visit.
I had always (erroneously) thought the wasteland around the town was the result of the dumping of mining tailings, but now know this is not so. The combination of ceaseless tree clearances, the toxicity of the smelter fumes, resulting acid rain (which killed off all the remaining vegetation) and subsequent erosion, all combined to do a much better job....a 'perfect storm' of environmental vandalism!
This in turn did serve to expose the colours of the underlying rock which paints the Queenstown landscape with what we see today.
As we shall see later, in some areas Mother Nature is now healing the environmental wounds with a salve of regenerating greenery, but in many places the complete absence of any top soil and the steep slopes mean that a full recovery is virtually impossible.
But as 'Aussie Towns' notes, there is a wild and exotic beauty in what remains, something which draws folk like us to the town, and I will be the first to admit I found it utterly captivating.
So as the header question asks, how did it get to this? As you might imagine it is a long story....in fact the entire history of the development of copper mining in this area is a saga of discovery and counter-discovery, shrewd investment, bitter rivalries, back breaking labour, and the use of two innovative technologies, one a railway and the other the smelters.
I have been hard pressed to condense all this into something which would not take all week to read, and have decided to rely on one source which does explain quite well some of just what went on here.
But let's begin at the beginning. In 1883 three miners discovered gold on the rocky outcrop known as Iron Blow. Others soon arrived and now the real and complex saga of the development of Queenstown and its nearby mines began in earnest.
To tell some of it I am going to rely with thanks and relief on one of the many reference sources I have researched to bring this blog to you.
The most excellent website of the 'Western Wilderness Railway' provided this tale to two emigrant Irishmen and of the development of the Queenstown copper mining industry, and what a tale it is.
"James Crotty was an Irish prospector, who travelled to the Victorian goldfields as an 18 year old to seek his fortune. When gold was discovered in western Tasmania, Crotty decided to try his luck. He camped at Mt Lyell in 1884, bought a one-third interest in a 20-acre lease at Mt Lyell called Iron Blow, and set about looking for gold.
And find gold he did. In fact, it was said that if you pulled grass up by the roots at Iron Blow, the gold would sprinkle out of it. When James Crotty walked the 100 miles to Waratah to register his find in 1886, he declared, 'I'll be that rich, I'll buy Ireland and make it a present to Parnell'. This young man already looked set to guide the fate of the west coast, but his path was a winding one.
The gold at Iron Blow proved to be difficult and costly to extract. Crotty couldn’t know it at the time, but Iron Blow was the cap of a massive copper deposit. There was some gold at the surface, but the real riches lay in the hidden copper, deep in the earth.
The mine consumed Crotty’s money, but he persisted with it – borrowing money and working in the Sydney sewers to support it. As the gold began to dry up, he advertised for investor, and in 1891, Mr Bowes Kelly of Broken Hill Proprietary Limited (B.H.P) arrived to assess the mine.
[Now enter the second player of serious significance]!
Anthony Edwin Bowes Kelly was a wealthy, respectable gentleman and a founding Director of the lucrative Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd (B.H.P). In 1891, Kelly saw an advertisement in his local newspaper from a fellow Irishman, Mr James Crotty, who was seeking an investor for his gold mine at Iron Blow in Tasmania – at a price of 18,000 pounds.
Bowes Kelly travelled to Tasmania to look things over. He arranged to have some ore samples from the mine sent to Broken Hill for analysis. James Crotty had his own samples analysed. But when the two samples were returned, one showed more gold than the other. Had someone tampered with the results? If so, who?
The truth has been lost to time, but the result of the scandal was that James Crotty could not find a single person willing to put eighteen thousand hard earned pounds into his mine. Being an enterprising man, Kelly negotiated the price to a much lower sum, and a now-desperate James Crotty was forced to accept the deal. He signed a contract that put Kelly in charge of the operation. And so, in 1891, the Mt Lyell Mining Company was formed, with Bowes Kelly at the helm.
For Bowes Kelly, the future was not paved with gold, but with copper. Because while the gold reserves at Iron Blow were diminishing, Bowes Kelly had discovered it was in fact the richest copper mine in the entire world.
A furious James Crotty swore revenge, resigned form the company, and began a feud between the two men that would eventually shape the west coast and determine the success or failure of the whole region.
Copper was soon pouring out of Iron Blow, and making a fortune for Bowes Kelly, who began construction of a railway to transport the copper to market [the now famous Western Wilderness Railway which is now an iconic Queenstown tourist attraction].
While Crotty had become a wealthy shareholder, he was furious with Kelly, and swore revenge. He bought another lease of land at North Lyell and began a rival company – the North Mount Lyell Copper Company.
During road building for Crotty’s new mine, workers stumbled upon copper deposits that were even purer than Iron Blow. So James Crotty began planning his own railway, along the King and Bird Rivers to Kelly’s Basin.
The North Lyell Railway was longer, flatter and straighter than Bowes Kelly’s Abt railway, and could take larger locomotives. New towns sprang up along the line, including the towns of Crotty, where the copper ore was smelted, and Pillinger, which began to rival Strahan as the major port on the west coast – with its own sawmill, brick works, ore crusher, stately hotels, stores and beautiful homes.
Crotty was prospering, with better locomotives, richer towns and purer copper than Bowes Kelly. He travelled to England to attract more investors, and denounced Kelly and his Abt railway as a failure.
Investors begin to move from the Kelly side to the Crotty side, and James Crotty looked set to overtake Bowes Kelly as the success story of the west coast.
But it was not to be. One Saturday morning in 1898, the North Lyell Mine smelters collapsed, and production slowed to a crawl. Then, in London, James Crotty fell ill, and within a few short weeks, passed away.
Soon after James Crotty’s death, his mine manager fled the country, and investors demanded their money back. The Board of Directors had no choice but to merge with the Mount Lyell Mining Company, under Bowes Kelly.
After the merger, Bowes Kelly decided to close the North Lyell Railway. The railway lines were pulled up, towns abandoned, and the wilderness took hold once again. Even the little town of Crotty, named for this extraordinary Irishman, now lies submerged beneath the dark waters of Lake Burbury."
As you might imagine, Kelly became exceedingly wealthy despite several other Tasmanian investments which were far less successful. It is said that in his mansion on Glenferrie Road, Malvern (most who made a motza in Tassie had a big home in Melbourne) the family dined off gold plate, although interestingly the value of his estate on his death was not huge.
Apart from his Tasmanian ventures, Kelly did much for this country. As his official biography notes:
"For at least four decades Bowes Kelly enhanced Australian mining and manufacturing. He combined financial daring with shrewd appreciation of mining or industrial possibilities and gave extraordinary time to running Australia's main manufacturing venture, B.H.P.
Skilled in manipulating the stock-market, he never speculated for his own financial gain in mines which lacked a solid basis for mineral wealth. His investments instead encouraged the growth of companies which both gave employment to thousands and broadened the base of Australian economic life."
Today, our return trip from Lake Burbury and beyond brought us to where this all started, the Iron Blow and its lookout, but before reaching that vantage point we stopped briefly on the side of the highway
to take a closer look at the ghostly grey walls of what was once a thriving establishment here on the old Lyell Highway mining town of Linda.
As we had made our way into Queenstown for the first time, I recall being non-plussed by the sight of this large, obviously once opulent building standing here in almost complete isolation on the side of the main road. I still have no idea what this building housed, and sadly, the Linda cafe next to it, which was by all accounts a place of superior fare, is also now closed. But whatever the reason for this building, its size and architecture spoke of far better times.
On to the turn-off and the road which took us
to the viewing platform atop Iron Blow. What incredible scenes a wander to the end of this impressive high rise path presented.
In front of us and slightly to the right, we could see out over what remains of the once bustling mining town of Gormanston and
This shot shows the dark ribbon of the Lyell Highway snaking its way through the valley below.
The red arrow I've obviously added points to the old Linda cafe site we had just left.
Panning further back to the right, we had another view of the bare hills,
and by using the zoom, some of the remaining buildings of the once thriving town of Gormanston
Swinging the lens ever further to the right brought us yet another shot of the bleak, denuded landscape through which the A10 winds on its way to 'Queenie',
and this close-up of the same scene shows a car park on the side of the highway with the road to Iron Blow coming off to the right. The trail which wends its way around the base of the hill in the other direction leads to another local waterfall, the Horse Tail Falls.
And directly below us was the site where it all began, the original open cut workings of the Mount Lyell copper mine, long since defunct and now a pit filled with water of this distinctive colour.
To the left, beyond the open cut pit, some of the old mine infrastructure, mine workings and
a large tailings dump told a tale of busier times around Iron Blow.
On the edge of the lookout car park, this patch of crystalline metamorphic rock, more formally known as 'schists', stood showing off all its various colours in the glowing sunlight.
It was here at this lookout that a series of information boards gave us our first inkling of what had happened to Gormanston, Linda and many other small towns in this area.
We now know much more,
but here it was told in a different way.
This was not the only batch of boards we were to find on this sortie. After leaving Iron Blow and before reaching Queenstown, we stopped off at the parking bay high above the town where we were to gain yet another perspective of the extent and the value of mining in Tasmania's west.
Here too were names which were soon to become much more than merely that, particularly those of Waratah, Corinna and Zeehan.
Here too we began to gain the answer to the question of the Queenstown moonscape,
and the role played by the now infamous Mount Lyell smelters.
So what, I hear you say. There have been, and are, smelters operating all over the country with nothing like the Queenstown outcome. What was different here?
The answer lies in the method and fuel.
Let's begin with the fuel and a statistic which is almost beyond belief. Between 1896 and 1923 over three million tonnes of timber was stripped from the surrounding mountains to fuel the fires of the furnaces.
It has been estimated that these fiery monsters were consuming 2,040 tonnes of timber each week. By 1900 the valley had been totally denuded. It was time to start on the hills.
If that were not bad enough in terms of environmental damage, it gets worse, much worse.
Let me now introduce you to the term 'pyritic smelting', technically defined as 'a process of smelting pyritic ores without previous roasting and with little or no fuel by utilising the heat resulting from the combustion of their high sulphur content.' Of course you all knew that!
Another of the plaques told us more.
What a great idea! What a success story! Well, not really. Sounds all fair and good, but as is so often the case, the devil was in the detail. This smelting process produced sulphur fumes, tonnes of the stuff, all of which belched unrelentingly from the smelter smoke stacks.
Here is another old photo, courtesy of 'appleisleprospector', which shows the Queenstown smelters in full flight with the toxic fumes spreading unrelentingly across the landscape.
In what can only be described as a sad commentary on the times, the locals were so proud of this enterprise, and it was making so much money, that a promotional postcard of the smelter operation was produced.
There was no doubt that this mine and its smelted product was one of the most successful of its time, but at a fearsome cost.
The sulphurous fumes combined with water in the atmosphere (and there is never any shortage of that around Queenstown). The mountains and valleys were continuously drenched with a vicious acid rain which put paid to what little ground vegetation remained after the felling of the timber.
As explained previously, erosion then stripped all the top soil from the denuded slopes exposing the rock below....
..........the infamous 'Queenstown Moonscape' was born! (thanks 'aussietowns')
.
Apart from the few trees which survived within the town itself, all was bare, albeit colourful when the sun was shining (which is not too often in Queenstown!).
This shot from 'similarworlds' captures the highway snaking into Queenstown through the barren hills beyond Iron Blow.
Although the smelting operation was closed down in 1921, there was yet another problem. As if the timber felling and smelter fumes were not bad enough, there was the water pollution. Between 1893 and 1994, the mine waste and tailings were dumped directly into the King River system. The acid toxicity typical of this copper mining waste devastated the King through a process known as acid mine drainage.
Notwithstanding that this practice was halted in 1995, heavy metal contamination from the mine continues to plague the King and Queen Rivers and the outfall in Macquarie Harbour.
This is the Queen River as it flows directly through the heart of Queenstown today. If ever a picture told a story!
Fortunately, as we were to see later on the Wilderness Railway trip, the King River appeared to be in much better shape, in colour at least.
Apart from all this environmental damage, this mining operation has not been without its own major disaster.
On the late morning of 12 October 1912 a fire broke out in the pump house on the 700 ft level of the North Mount Lyell mine. With no emergency warning systems, many working underground were unaware of the fire until alerted to the danger by fellow workers running along the levels and drives shouting warnings.
Although 73 managed to scurry to safety, for 42 labouring underground that day was to be their last alive. They were trapped and killed by the smoke and a lack of oxygen.
One miner knew what fate had in store for him. This remarkably poignant letter was found pinned to the mine wall by a rescue team when the smoke had cleared.
"Seven hundred level. North Lyell mine, 12-10-12.It is difficult to imagine the horror and fear which must have been experienced by these unfortunates as they waited for the inevitable.
If anyone should find this note convey to my wife.
Dear Agnes. - I will say good-bye. Sure I will not see you again any more.
I am pleased to have made a little provision for you and poor little Lorna.
Be good to our little darling.
My mate, Len Burke, is done, and poor old V. and Driver too.
Good-bye, with love to all.
Your loving husband, Joe McCarthy."
Unsurprisingly, given that this was the largest mining disaster of the time in this country, an enquiry followed in the form of a Royal Commission. And again the Mount Lyell mining enterprise was shrouded in controversy.
Whilst the Commission formally found that an unidentified disgruntled employee had deliberately lit the fire to discredit the company and its treatment of it employees, this outcome was roundly challenged.
A Tasmanian MLC and ex mine worker claimed that most of the evidence presented by the company was false and untested and that this disaster followed years of concerns about safety in this mine. A strong claim was made for the argument that the real cause of the fire had been a short circuit in the mine's sub-standard electrical system.
The matter has never been resolved beyond reasonable doubt.
So, folks, there you have my take on mining in Queenstown. There can be no doubt that the copper mining here played a significant role in the development of the west of Tasmania, but as we have seen, this came at a cost to the environment and to the health of those who lived and worked here (another subject altogether!).
But environmentally at least there is an encouraging post scrip. As this 'aussietowns' shot shows,
as does this panoramic photo courtesy of 'wikipedia',
the hills around Queenie may not be alive with the sound of music, but the rustle of new leaves in the continually expanding regeneration of much of the landscape is a very welcome sound to most.
There is still a mine in Queenstown. I found it very difficult to photograph as is evident from this shot we took coming in from Strahan, (you can just see the smoke stack)
so I've lifted this one with thanks to 'abc'.
This plant has been in caretaker mode for a number of years, but with copper prices on the increase and a funding commitment from the Tasmanian Government, a restart with a much 'greener' operation is being planned.
We actually spoke to a number of locals who have stayed put for some time, hoping that the mine would be rebooted. As one told me, "I've lived and worked here all my life. Where else would I go? I'll just hang around and see what happens."
As were were to see, many of the Queenstown houses appeared consistent with that outlook, but that's a story for another day (a much shorter one!).
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