Mount Zeehan is a mountain in

Western 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 mo ...

, west of the

West Coast Range The West Coast Range is a mountain range located in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. The range lies to the west and north of the main parts of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. The range has had a significant numb ...

. It has an elevation of above sea level. The closest town is

Zeehan Zeehan is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia south-west of Burnie. It is part of the West Coast Council, along with the seaport Strahan, and neighbouring mining towns of Dundas, Rosebery and Queenstown. History The greater ...

, about 4.93 kilometres (3 mi) away.

History

The indigenous

Peerapper Northwestern Tasmanian, or Peerapper ("Pirapa"), is an aboriginal language of Tasmania in the reconstruction of Claire Bowern.Claire Bowern, September 2012, "The riddle of Tasmanian languages", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'', 279, 4590–4595, doi: 10 ...

name for the mountain is recorded as ''Weiawenena''.

European naming

On 24 November 1642,

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

explorer

Abel Tasman Abel Janszoon Tasman (; 160310 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach New ...

became the first European explorer to sight and document the Heemskirk and

. Tasman sailed his ships close to the coastal area which today encompasses the Southwest Conservation Area, south of

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 th ...

, but was unable to send a landing party ashore due to poor weather and did not make contact with any

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

Tasmanian groups. In their circumnavigation of Tasmania between 1798–99,

George Bass George Bass (; 30 January 1771 – after 5 February 1803) was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia. Early years Bass was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George ...

and Matthew Flinders named the Heemskirk Range mountains Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan after Tasman’s ships, the warship ''Heemskerck'' (

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from aroun ...

for "Home Church") and the 200 tone

fluyt A fluyt (archaic Dutch: ''fluijt'' "flute"; ) is a Dutch type of sailing vessel originally designed by the shipwrights of Hoorn as a dedicated cargo vessel. Originating in the Dutch Republic in the 16th century, the vessel was designed to faci ...

''Zeehaen'' (Old Dutch for "Sea Rooster") in honour of Tasman's voyage of exploration. Although Dutch in origin, Bass and Flinder's Anglicised naming of Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan created some of the oldest British place names in Tasmania. Only a few Dutch place names in Tasmania originate from Tasman's 1642 voyage. Most place names were not assigned in

Van Diemen's Land Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration of Australia in the 19th century. A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land in 1803 before it became a sep ...

until after the settlement of

Hobart Town Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/ Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...

Risdon Cove Risdon Cove is a cove located on the east bank of the Derwent River, approximately north of Hobart, Tasmania. It was the site of the first British settlement in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, the island state of Australia. The cove was name ...

in 1803, although some place names originate from Bruni d'Entrecasteaux's French expedition in 1792. It was not until after the 1815 discovery of

by explorer and mariner James Kelly that many place names on the West Coast were assigned.

Mining

Silver-lead deposits were discovered at Mount Zeehan by

Frank Long Frank Long was a trackcutter and prospector. In 1882 he discovered the Zeehan-Dundas silver-lead field on the West Coast of Tasmania. Life and career Frank Long was Tasmanian, having been born to ex-convicts in Launceston in approximately 18 ...

in 1882. The

Zeehan mineral field Zeehan mineral field is a mining area near Zeehan in Western Tasmania, Australia. The field is frequently associated with the short lived shallow silver deposits in the field, which peaked in the 1890s and early 1900s, and had faded by the time o ...

contains more than 100 legacy mine sites, many of which are affected by

acid mine drainage Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering ...

, costing an estimated A$100,000 per hectare to purify.

Township of Zeehan

Mount Zeehan Post Office opened on 1 August 1888. The township was named Zeehan in 1890.

Tourism

Constructed as part of silver-mining operations in 1904, a 100 metre long railway tunnel leading to the former Spray Silver Mine has become a popular walking destination with tourists. The Spray Tunnel was closed in January 2022 after cracks were discovered in the ceiling. A three-hour return walk to the summit of Mount Zeehan is accessible via a 4WD track.

References

{{Western Tasmania , state=autocollapse

Zeehan