The Peaks Of Lyell
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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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Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny of Distance''. He has published over 40 books, including wide-ranging histories of the world and of Christianity. He has often appeared in newspapers and on television. He held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He received the 1988 Britannica Award for 'exceptional excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of mankind', the first historian to receive that awardEncyclopædia Britannica,"Book of the Year, 1988", Chicago, p. 15 and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2000. He was once described by Graeme Davison as the "most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the ...
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University Of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb north of Melbourne's central business district, with several other campuses located across Victoria. Incorporated in the 19th century by the colony of Victoria, the University of Melbourne is one of Australia's six sandstone universities and a member of the Group of Eight, Universitas 21, Washington University's McDonnell International Scholars Academy, and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Since 1872, many residential colleges have become affiliated with the university, providing accommodation for students and faculty, and academic, sporting and cultural programs. There are ten colleges located on the main campus and in nearby suburbs. The university comprises ten separate academic units and is associated with numerous institut ...
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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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Queenstown, Tasmania
Queenstown is a town in the West Coast region of the island of Tasmania, Australia. It is in a valley on the western slopes of Mount Owen on the West Coast Range. At the , Queenstown had a population of 1,808 people. History Queenstown's history has long been tied to the mining industry. This mountainous area was first explored in 1862. It was long after that when alluvial gold was discovered at Mount Lyell, prompting the formation of the Mount Lyell Gold Mining Company in 1881. In 1892, the mine began searching for copper. The final name of the Mount Lyell company was the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company. Early in 1895 a Post Office was opened at Penghana, at the Queen River fork and crossing, about a kilometre north of present-day Queenstown on the road to Strahan; James Robertson was appointed the first postmaster. The only other substantial building nearby was Robertson & Hunter's store. Queenstown Post Office opened on 21 November 1896 and the Penghana office c ...
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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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1912 North Mount Lyell Disaster
The North Mount Lyell disaster (also known as the Mount Lyell disaster and North Mount Lyell fire) refers to a fire that broke out on 12 October 1912 at the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company operations on the West Coast of Tasmania, killing 42 miners. The mine had been taken over from the North Mount Lyell Company in 1903. Events Sometime between 11:15 and 11:30 am on 12 October the pump house on the level of the mine was reported on fire. As the mine lacked an emergency warning system, those aware of the fire were forced to run along its levels and drives warning others. Of the 170 miners working in the mine, 73 managed to escape that first day. However many, including those who had been working in remote stopes, were trapped. Outside the mine, uncertainty surrounded the status of the fire and the number of miners remaining inside. Initial rescue attempts proved difficult, and repeated attempts to enter the mine failed. The rescue plan involved the transportation of brea ...
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Robert Carl Sticht
Robert Carl Sticht (8 October 1856 – 30 April 1922) was an American metallurgist and copper mine manager, active in Colorado and Montana, U.S.A. and in Tasmania, Australia. Sticht was the developer of the first successful purely pyritic smelting in the world. He was also an important book and art collector, a large part of whose collections were acquired by the Public Library of Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria in the 1920s. Early life Sticht was born at Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S.A., the son of German-American parents from Brooklyn, his father's name was John C. Sticht. Sticht studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and graduated from there with BSc in 1875, then went studied metallurgy at the Clausthal Royal Mining Academy, Germany, where he graduated with honours in 1880. Career Returning to the US, Sticht was appointed chief chemist and assistant metallurgist at a Colorado smelting company and erected smelters in Colorado and Montana. In 1893, on the rec ...
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State Library Of Tasmania
The State Reference Library is the reference library in the state of Tasmania, Australia. It is part of Libraries Tasmania. Libraries Tasmania includes a state-wide network of library services, community learning, adult literacy and the State’s archives and heritage services. History The first "Tasmanian Public Library" opened in 1849, in a house in Hobart, funded by a government grant and yearly subscription of members. It became accessible to the public in 1860, but was forced to close in 1867 owing to debts. In 1870 a new, free public reference library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ... opened in the Hobart Town Hall. American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie funded the move to new premises in 1907, with the requirement that a free lending service should be esta ...
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The Companion To Tasmanian History
''The Companion to Tasmanian History'' was a book produced in 2005 by the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies at the University of Tasmania, in conjunction with the Tasmanian Government celebrations of the Bicentenary of Tasmania. The project to compile the volume began 2002 with an editorial committee comprising Michael Roe, Henry Reynolds, Stefan Petrow and Alison Alexander from the University of Tasmania, as well as Michael Sprod of Astrolabe Books, and Barbara Valentine from Launceston. The alphabetical section contains some 1073 articles ranging through biographical sketches, places and issues that cover the whole length of Tasmanian history. Thematic articles : Appendices As well as the articles, the volume contains Appendices of Aboriginal places names, and all Government officials and members of Parliament since establishment of the colony. Publication details There was a digital version of the companion produced in 2006. See also *History of Tasmania *Histor ...
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1954 Non-fiction Books
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – 1954 Blons avalanches, Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau rebellion, Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 m ...
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