Queenstown and its lunar landscape has become a tourist attraction and large parts of the landscape are now revegetated and are really quite beautiful and our sunsets are quite spectacular.
The main tourist attraction in Queenstown, is the Abt Wilderness Railway. This is a restored railway which once operated between Queenstown and Strahan to ship copper from the mine out by boat. Sections of this have been open for over 18 months. It has recieved visitors from all over the world coming to Tasmania just to travel on one of the only rack and pinion railways in the world. This has provided a huge tourism boost to Queenstown and the West Coast and it isnt built all the way through to Strahan yet,though will be completed for this coming tourist season.
The railway station has been rebuilt beautifully. In side the main station is a coffee shop and function room which can seat up to 90 people and have the best (in my opinion) cappuccinos and foccacias in town. They also have a huge gift shop which has a selection of Tasmanian specialty gifts, Tasmanian timber products, Tasmanian wine, hand made jewellery, books, clothing, toys, postcards, cards etc. Inside the gift shop is a replica of a carriage which is made out of Tasmanian Sassafras and Huon Pine.
Queenstown has been a mining centre since 1883, when gold was discovered at Mount Lyell, and it looks like a typical mining-town, with its wide streets, two-storey hotels, and identical, pokey tin-roofed weatherboard houses. In 1893 the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company was formed and began to mine copper at Mount Lyell, which it has continued to do ever since. The weird-looking mountains here, chalky white and almost totally devoid of vegetation, are the result of a lethal combination of tree-felling, sulphur, fire and rainfall. Between 1896 and 1922 the eleven furnaces at the Mount Lyell smelters consumed huge amounts of timber, and the rainforest cover in the surrounding hills has taken decades to begin to re-establish itself; even so, the sulphur fumes emitted by the same smelters have killed off much the regrowth.
Because sulphur had been absorbed into soil and tree stumps, bushfires swept the hills summer after summer, and rainfall finally eroded the remaining soil. Since the smelters closed in 1969 there has been some regrowth on the lower slopes, but it’s estimated that the damage already done has had an impact that will last some four or five hundred years. In late 1994 the Mount Lyell mine closed down, but the lease was taken over by Copper Mines of Tasmania, who foresee another ten years of operation with the remaining ore. Tailings from the mine are now dumped into a multimillion-dollar dam instead of the town’s Queen River, where aquatic life is beginning to return. The Queen eventually flows into the King River, however, and the moonscaped banks of the King River delta near Strahan attest to the lasting and wide-ranging environmental damage of the past century.
There are tours of the Mount Lyell Mine (daily: May–Sept 9.15am & 4pm; Oct–April 9.15am, 2.30pm & 4.30pm; 1hr 30min; additional tours during summer); it’s hard to stifle a lingering cynicism, even though the plans for reforestation are explained. Bookings and departures are now from the ABT Rack & Pinion Railway line from Queenstown-Strahan. It is completed, operates part way and will open for the full journey soon, travelling along the path of the original railway line - that transported copper ore from Queenstown to Strahan to be shipped out to the world.
Next door to the mine is the Parks and Wildlife Service office (tel 03/6471 2511), the base for the Franklin Lower Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and the place to pick up the department’s rafting and bushwalking guidelines. While in town, you could also check out the old photographic displays in the Galley Museum (Mon–Fri 10am–12.30pm & 1.30–4.30pm, Sat & Sun 1.30–4.30pm; $2), housed in the old Imperial Hotel. Queenstown has recently upgraded colonial accommodation and old homes in the area and made them into four and five star Bed and Breakfasts. Queenstown may not always be a destination in itself, but there are things to see for anyone who would like to pause on the way through.
From Queenstown you can drive to Strahan on the B24 (40km), which starts as a steep, winding road through bare hills, or you continue along the A10 (called the Lyell Highway from Queenstown to Hobart) 86km east to the first fuel at Derwent Bridge, surrounded by the World Heritage Area (see Franklin Lower Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, and Cradle Mountain–Lake St Clair National Park).
p/s We received comments from some local folks, who found our description too negative. And - ofcourse it is not our aim to offence anyone. Queenstown is indeed different and worth a stop for a change. Perhaps even only to meet the friendly locals - decide for yourself.