A feature story for The Saturday Paper, May 28, 2016
For hikers who have spent four days on a guided walk through rainforest, the last stop on the bus trip back to Launceston Airport is the tiny town of Waratah, 70 kilometres south-west of Burnie. The town is known as “The Gateway to the Tarkine”, a region that officially doesn’t exist.
Excerpt below:
For hikers who have spent four days on a guided walk through rainforest, the last stop on the bus trip back to Launceston Airport is the tiny town of Waratah, 70 kilometres south-west of Burnie. The town is known as “The Gateway to the Tarkine”, a region that officially doesn’t exist.
Tarkine Trails guide Trevor Beltz drives the group through the sleepy main street and parks the bus at Mount Bischoff, a hill at the end of town with a strikingly hollowed-out face. The hikers spill out of the bus and walk up a gravel track to a viewing area that reveals the site of arguably the most significant event in Tasmania’s history: the discovery in 1871 of a mountain of tin.
In the grips of an economic slump and facing annexation to Victoria, the discovery of what would become the world’s largest tin mine sparked a mineral boom that quickly made Tasmania rich. The past makes a great story, but at the end of the tour Beltz casts his arm over the now silent, open-cut pit and asks the group, “Do you really think this is the future?”
Waratah clings to its mining history through informative displays, a fantastically noisy reconditioned ore crusher and a dusty museum in need of some curating. The place might look as dormant as the mine but, according to some, it is perfectly placed to cash in once more, only this time not from what is under the ground but what is on top of it.
In one sense this story is Tasmania all over – the enduring tussle between industry and conservation. But the mining companies are starting to look like Monty Python’s Black Knight, maintaining he’s fighting fit while his arms and legs lie scattered on the ground.
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For the full story, visit The Saturday Paper.
