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Pillinger, Tasmania
Pillinger is an abandoned port and townsite in Kelly Basin, on the south eastern side of Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania. It was constructed for James Crotty's North Mount Lyell mining company to ship ore from the North Mount Lyell mine, utilising the North Mount Lyell Railway that took the ore to the smelters at Crotty and on to Pillinger. East Pillinger was a company town, and West Pillinger was the neighbouring government town. East Pillinger had 3 wharves, a sawmill, brickworks and ore crusher. West Pillinger had stores, hotels and a police station. ''Kelly's Basin'' Post Office opened on 15 July 1898, was renamed ''Pillinger'' in 1899 and closed in 1924. Pillinger was the name of an old Tasmanian family, some of whom were politicians. When the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company took over the North Mount Lyell operations, most of the town and port facilities were either removed and utilised elsewhere, or left to rot. As a result, a number of ruins ...
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Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ...
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Tasmania
) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_date = Colony of Tasmania , established_title2 = Federation , established_date2 = 1 January 1901 , named_for = Abel Tasman , demonym = , capital = Hobart , largest_city = capital , coordinates = , admin_center = 29 local government areas , admin_center_type = Administration , leader_title1 = Monarch , leader_name1 = Charles III , leader_title2 = Governor , leader_name2 ...
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Kelly Basin
Kelly Basin is a bay on the south eastern side of Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania. It was named after James Kelly an early explorer of the Tasmanian coastline. It was the location of the terminus of the North Mount Lyell Railway, and the ghost town of Pillinger. In the late 1890s when John Watt Beattie was showing his photographs of the west coast country to Hobart and Launceston audiences, it was designated as ''Kelly's Basin''. The North Mount Lyell Railway close in the 1920s, and the former railway formation - known as 'Kelly Basin Road' was the land route to access the area. In the 1990s following the failure of the Franklin Dam project to proceed - parts of the Kelly Basin and Bird River area became part of reserves associated with the western boundary of the new South West World Heritage Wilderness area.(1993) ''Kelly Basin-Bird River area site plan'' Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania In the Southwest National Park, and as part of the body of wa ...
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Macquarie Harbour
Macquarie Harbour is a shallow fjord in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. It is approximately , and has an average depth of , with deeper places up to . It is navigable by shallow-draft vessels. The main channel is kept clear by the presence of a rock wall on the outside of the channel's curve. This man-made wall prevents erosion and keeps the channel deep and narrow, rather than allowing the channel to become wide and shallow. A reported Aboriginal name for the harbour is ''Parralaongatek''. The harbour was named in honour of Scottish Major General Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth Colonial Governor of New South Wales. History James Kelly wrote in his narrative ''First Discovery of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour'' how he sailed from Hobart in a small open five-oared whaleboat to discover Macquarie Harbour on 28 December 1815. However, different accounts of the journey have indicated different methods and dates of the discovery. In the commentary to the ''Historical ...
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West Coast, Tasmania
The West Coast of Tasmania is mainly isolated rough country, associated with wilderness, mining and tourism. It served as the location of an early convict settlement in the early history of Van Diemen's Land, and contrasts sharply with the more developed and populous northern and eastern parts of the island state. Climate The west coast has a much cooler and wetter climate when compared to the east coast. Frequent low pressure systems hit the west coast causing heavy rain, snow, and ice. The West Coast Range blocks these systems from impacting the east, therefore making the West Coast a rain catchment with some areas receiving over of rain a year. In winter temperatures at sea level hover around , and when not raining, morning frost is common. The temperatures are much lower inland from the coast with maximums in winter often failing to surpass . Typically, the snow line in winter is around 900 metres (3000 ft), however sea level snow falls several times each winter as ...
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North Mount Lyell
North Mount Lyell was the name of a mine, mining company, locality (sometimes as North Lyell) and former railway north of Gormanston on the southern slopes of Mount Lyell in the West Coast Range on the West Coast of Tasmania, and on to the ridge between Mount Lyell and Mount Owen. North Mount Lyell Copper Company The company was short-lived, however the mine, orebody and workings lasted long after the company was absorbed into the workings of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company following the failure of the smelters at Crotty. The stages of building the infrastructure of the mines, the smelters, and port at Kelly Basin were photographed by John Watt Beattie. Founder The company was founded by James Crotty, and was for a few years a fierce competitor with Mount Lyell. Geoffrey Blainey gives a description of the rivalry and final amalgamation in ''The Peaks of Lyell''. As Blainey points out, the North Mount Lyell workings eventually proved vital for the Mount Lyell ...
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North Mount Lyell Railway
The North Mount Lyell Railway was built to operate between the North Mount Lyell mine in West Coast, Tasmania, West Coast Tasmania and Pillinger, Tasmania, Pillinger in the Kelly Basin of Macquarie Harbour. History At the start of the Twentieth century it was constructed to take ore from Gormanston, Tasmania, Gormanston east of the West Coast Range to the Crotty, Tasmania, Crotty smelters. From there it was be shipped out at Kelly Basin. The North Mount Lyell Railway had exceptionally easy grades compared to its competitor the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company which ran its Abt rack system railway through very steep grades from Queenstown, Tasmania, Queenstown to Regatta Point, Tasmania, Regatta Point. Design challenge The railway route ran across a belt of karst terrain in the area near the current Darwin Dam – and the engineers of the 1890s were possibly the first in Australia to have designed for the possibility of sinkholes when planning the route. Operation The ...
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Crotty, Tasmania
Crotty is a former gazetted townsite that was located in Western Tasmania, Australia. The township was located on the eastern lower slopes of Mount Jukes, below the West Coast Range, and on the southern bank of the King River. The locality had had a former name of ''King River'' Townsite The town reserve was gazetted on 5 June 1900. The town survey was completed in November 1900. By 1902 there had been development of over 150 dwellings, and 700 people living in the town. The last residents to move away left in 1928. In photographs found in Geoffrey Blainey's The Peaks of Lyell, the foreground shows a bridge, the Baxter River bridge. This was a crucial connection for people travelling between the railway stopping places. Smelters failure At the turn of the twentieth century, the township had had a smelter and railway connection with the North Mount Lyell mine. The North Mount Lyell smelters failed, despite attempts in 1901 and 1902 to correct issues. The company was ab ...
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Mount Lyell Mining And Railway Company
Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company was a Tasmanian mining company formed on 29 March 1893, most commonly referred to as ''Mount Lyell''. Mount Lyell was the dominant copper mining company of the West Coast from 1893 to 1994, and was based in Queenstown, Tasmania. Following consolidation of leases and company assets at the beginning of the twentieth century, Mount Lyell was the major company for the communities of Queenstown, Strahan and Gormanston. It remained dominant until its closure in 1994. The Mount Lyell mining operations produced more than a million tonnes of copper, 750 tonnes of silver and 45 tonnes of gold since mining commenced in the early 1890s – which is equivalent to over 4 billion dollars worth of metal in 1995 terms. History In the early stage of operations, Mount Lyell was surrounded by smaller competing leases and companies. Eventually they were all absorbed into Mount Lyell operations, or were closed down. In 1903 the North Mount Lyell Copper Co ...
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The Peaks Of Lyell
''The Peaks of Lyell'' is a book by Geoffrey Blainey, based on his University of Melbourne MA thesis originally published in 1954. It contains the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, and through association, Queenstown and further the West Coast Tasmania. It is unique for this type of book in that it has gone to the sixth edition in 2000, and few company histories in Australia have achieved such continual publishing. Blainey was fortunate in being able to speak to older people about the history of the West Coast, some who had known Queenstown in its earliest years. The book gives an interesting overview from the materials and people Blainey was able to access in the early 1950s, and the omissions. Due to the nature of a company history, a number of items of Queenstown history did have alternative interpretations on events such as the 1912 North Mount Lyell Disaster, and there were residents of Queenstown living in the town as late as the 1970s who had sto ...
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Lou Rae
Lou Rae is a Tasmanian author and historian of the West Coast of Tasmania. His publications have included articles about Rosebery, Tasmania, the Emu Bay Railway The Emu Bay Railway was a Tasmania, Australian railway company. The railway was significant during full operation, in that it linked the Tasmanian Government Railways system at Burnie with that at Zeehan that further linked to the Mount Lyell ... Queenstown, Tasmania and the Mount Lyell Railway otherwise known as the ''Abt Railway'', as well as the Sandfly Colliery Tramway. His publications about railways on the west coast of Tasmania have gone into multiple editions, as well as modifying for the changes in the fate of the railways. He also has been a postgraduate student at the University of Tasmania, culminating in his 2005 PhD thesis about the Mount Lyell area. His session at The Unconformity event in Queenstown in October 2016 addresses the issues of sources and historiography of the Western Tasmanian regio ...
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