Places I Visited in Tasmania

Holly
Jul 2
5 min read

Updated: Jul 2

From late April to early June, I stayed in Tasmania, exploring new places and doing some work picking pepperberries. Here are some pictures of the various places I visited in Tassie. A couple of these places were where I actually stayed, but most of them were just visited on one of the day trips I did with Sally. Often if we had to drive between the same two destinations, we would go there one way and come back another way in order to see more countryside.

Waratah

Founded in 1871 after James "Philosopher" Smith discovered tin at Mount Bischoff, Waratah was where the tin was processed after being mined from Mt. Bischoff - the richest tin mine in the Southern Hemisphere at the time. The tin was brought from Mt Bischoff to Waratah on a tram, and was processed in stamper mills which were run by hydroelectricity produced by many mills along the top of the waterfall that Waratah is built around. In its heyday, there were 115 stamper mills running all at once, which were turned off at midnight on Saturdays and turned back on Monday mornings, meaning that the population of Waratah only heard the birds and the waterfall on Sundays - the stamper mills were incredibly deafening!

Fun fact: did you know that the discovery of the tin mine at Mt. Bischoff in 1871 was part of what actually saved Tasmania, which was going through economic struggles at the time, from becoming an annexation to the state of Victoria?!

At the height of productivity in the early 1900s, Waratah had a population of about 2,500 people, but the population has now dwindled down to 10 times less than that - only about 250 people. Due to the hydroelectricity, Waratah was the first town in all Australia to have electric streetlights, in 1886.

There are many ghost or non-existent towns in this area of Tassie, towns that sprung up to support housing for mining and logging companies then vanished when the mines closed or the trees were all chopped down. One of these is Magnet, an old mining town not very far from Waratah. I did not go to Magnet, although it is possible to get there by a 4WD track where the tram line used to be, but we did drive through Luina, Parrawe and Daisy Dell, towns which no longer exist. It is kind of eerie but also great fun, driving down a street with curbs and drainpipes but no buildings (the buildings were all pulled down to use the materials elsewhere), as in Luina; or seeing trees that would have been planted right around a homestead or store, as in Parrawe; or seeing ancient signs that advertise a place that is no longer in use, like the sign at Daisy Dell showing where the town's oval used to be for playing sports etc.

Mount Bischoff. The tin mine at Mt Bischoff closed in 1947, but you can still see the scarring from the mining.

The top of Waratah Falls. There used to be many buildings and sluices etc for the hydroelectricity and stamper mills right around the rim of the falls and partway down the cliff.

Waratah Falls. You can still see the remains and foundations of some of the old buildings that were along the edge.

One of the dams for pumping water to the falls for the hydroelectricity.

There are still stones here where the small trees in the foreground are marking the walls of a house. One of the elderly ladies in town was born and raised in this house (near where the train station used to be, which also now looks like this), and still lives in Waratah to this day.

An old bottle dump in the middle of the rainforest, with bottles dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. There was a much bigger bottle dump elsewhere, but I didn't get photos of it.

Remains of a leather shoe at the bottle dump. There were also very rusty old cans and pots, along with glass bottles and broken shards of glass and china.

Whyte River Lookout

Only a few minutes out of Waratah, this lookout has a beautiful view!

Dip Falls

Near Mawbanna - right on the edge of the rainforest!

Stanley and "The Nut"

On the northwest coast of Tasmania, Stanley is a very old and picturesque little town built right next to a volcanic plug rock formation known as the Nut.

Highfield House

With a good view of the ocean, the town of Stanley, and "The Nut", this house was built by convicts for Edward Curr, the owner of the Van Diemen's Land Company, way back in the early 1830s.

Ruins of convicts' quarters, just down the road from Highfield House

Burnie

A coastal town.

Looking over the Bass Strait again - somewhere out there about 500kms north is the mainland!

Corinna

A tiny town built on the Pieman River, Corinna primarily exists as a tourist attraction, and the only way to cross the river to get to other towns further south is on the Fatman Barge.

A rather amusing sign next to the barge.

The river is very still - pristine waters untainted by manufacturing!

Granville Harbour

A west coast town.

There is lots of giant kelp washed up on the beach here!

Zeehan

Zeehan was a very nice and little town. (Saying that, most of the towns I went to/through in Tasmania are actually quite small.....)

This "Zeehan School of Mines and Metallurgy" from 1892 quite took my fancy! It is now part of the West Coast Heritage Centre.

Strahan and Macquarie Heads

Sarah Island (which I did not go to), just outside the harbour, was one of the most brutal penal colonies back in the early 1800s. At Strahan, I saw the longest-running play in the Southern Hemisphere, called "The Ship That Never Was", which is based on the true story of escaping convicts from Sarah Island.

Hell's Gates at Macquarie Heads is so named because it is a very narrow passageway with an island in the middle, with dangerous shoals, sandbars, and currents that pose a threat to ships coming in. Many a ship lies wrecked beneath the waters in Macquarie Harbour.