Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
March 2024
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Down the west coast

There was an old friend I wanted to visit while I was in Tassie, but she lives in Penguin, which is a 3.5 hour drive from Hobart (assuming you don’t stop along the way). As a result I decided to take Mum and Dad along and make an overnight trip of it, to revisit some of my old haunts on the North-West coast, and then, if we felt like it, come back via the longer route down the west coast.

Tasmania’s west coast is rugged country, with the term referring not only to the coast but the vast uninhabited hinterland. It is sparsely populated, with a few fishing and mining towns; roads are few, and make their sinuous, undulating way over terrain that reflects its tortured geological past. The 430km route takes nearly 6 hours without stops, and there is one particular section — the climb out of Queenstown — that is a real nailbiter, as the narrow road sidles up the denuded steep hills alongside some scary drop-offs and twisting around sharp hairpins.

The mining town of Queenstown is one of the most bizarre places in Tasmania. It is home to a big copper mine; my great-grandfather mined here and my grandmother was born here. My great-grandfather was one of the miners trapped in the 1912 Mt Lyell mining disaster that killed 42 (later 43) people, and, in fact, he died a year later of causes incident to that event. Pollution from the mine’s smelter has killed the vegetation from the surrounding hills, so that Queenstown has been likened to a moonscape, although in recent years the shrubs have started to return since smelting no longer occurs. The town itself has a frontier feel but with a hint of ghost town as well as its population has declined. One of my sisters has been working here for the past few weeks on an art project, and was very surprised to get an SMS from us when we were an hour out of town suggesting we meet for lunch!

In addition to mining, the west coast is also home to some major hydro-electric projects. The area gets a lot of rain, sitting as it does in the path of the roaring 40s, and the rivers cut gorges through the rugged terrain. Many of these rivers have been dammed to create hydo-electric power stations.

Of course, dammed rivers tend to create lakes, and although I have mixed feelings about the whole dam thing ( 🙂 ) I have to admit some of the lakes are beautiful. We detoured to visit a couple that I hadn’t seen, including Lakes Mackintosh and Burbury. Their size (big) further highlighted just how vast the whole western part of Tassie is; and the few people seen further highlighted its isolation and emptiness.

The cloud formations we encountered during the morning created beautiful reflections at Lake Mackintosh, and at its southern end it was like looking at a watercolour painting. By lunchtime, further on at Lake Burbury, the skies were clearer and the day was surprisingly warm.

As we continued back to Hobart we enjoyed the views of the extensive mountain ranges, and noted the remarkable changes in the vegetation as altitude, geology, and aspect changed. We could see Frenchmans Cap with snow on top and we called in at Lake St Clair, the end of the famous Overland Track, and I was reminded that there are a few bushwalks I’d still like to do (or do again).

Anyway, it was a good day. There are more and better (in my opinion) photos here.

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