Garibaldi

Two miles more, and we emerge from the forest into a few acres of cleared ground. How changed is the scene! Thirty houses–more like sheds with full dome roofs–stand on both sides of a long narrow street. Each house has the same architecture, or the want of it. Each is built close against its neighbour as if appealing for protections. There are no fences, no gardens, no comfortable look about any. One or two seem to hide away behind poles which may be embryo verandahs. Inside the rooms are small, and crowded with all sorts of things, useful and otherwise. Celestials in European clothes are popping in and out, and if bland smiles are evidence of happy, good nature, these citizens of Chinatown are full of it. Every house sports its Chinese lantern and red paper with Chinese hieroglyphics printed thereon. Fruit, sweets, soups, and all manner of refreshments are given liberally to visitors, and the whole place is a hum of activity.

Leaving the one main street we go a few hundred yards to a separate building of larger dimensions. This is the josshouse. Hundreds of visitors are round about it and here, too, we find most of the Chinese congregated. Beautiful and costly lanterns are hung by the josshouse door. Round some lanterns are paper mandarins, etc. revolving on stately procession. Inside the building one is almost overcome with the strong incense and heated air from multitudes of burning tapers. Heavily decorated silks. etc. shut off most of the end view, where, perhaps, Joss himself has his abode for the time. Most of the decorations are very elaborate, and some are exceedingly beautiful. About thirty yards in front of the josshouse stands a huge gallows, so high that our thoughts go back to the story of Haman; a long rope from the cross has a suggestive look too. While are looking and wondering at all this a fearful sound splits the air besides.
Rest of story.
The Mercury, 1 March 1912

Garibaldi WC
Tin Pot Row, Chinese Tin Miners’ at Garibaldi
Weekly Courier, 21 May 1914

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Lefroy

(This post is a copy of this post.)

Lefroy, population 2000. Once upon a time.

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Gold was found at Nine Mile Springs at various times, maybe even the first place on the island where it was found, but an 1869 discovery was the find of significance. (I think it was alluvial gold, being the sort you pick up off the ground/out of rivers so it attracts inviduals and small groups. Your typical gold rush scene. Most of the gold though the district is in reefs, which requires investments of time and money, and companies.) This discovery attracted a small but increasing number of miners. I found a picture of some from 1870! A year later at the opening of a new mine, the population was given as 120

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Weldborough

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Weldborough: Former mining town in the middle of the rainforest, established in the 1870s. That’s the whole town, other than a few houses. Once upon a time it was much bigger (and if you go to Google Maps and look at the town in map view, you can see the outlines of the now-gone roads in the property boundaries).

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I regret to say our time did not permit us to visit the Argus, Garibaldi, and ether mines in that vicinity, our business taking us on to Weldborough. This place is a good-sized township, and situated on a large plain, it also being known by the name of Thomas Plains. There is a Chinese camp, butchers’ shop, hotel, store, also a Government school and resident schoolmaster, who, we found, gave every satisfaction. On this large plain there is a very nice farm which is an ornament to the place, the owner being Mr. Bryce. I may mention here that the scenery is very pretty, the plain being surrounded on all sides by a myrtle country.
Launceston Examiner, 4 August 1888

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St Marys

Not a lot of photos from here, because we just stopped to post something and get a milkshake.

Settlements were established in the Fingal Valley in the 1820s and 1830s for mining and farming, but access was unreliable due to flooding and there’s not much point mining and farming if you can’t get goods out (or in). So the government decided to build a pass through the mountains to connect the valley to the coast. In the early 1840s, a probation station was built near here, and another one on the coastal side and, from memory, about 400 men put to work building St Marys Pass. In the years that followed, a settlement grew up at the base of the mountains and eventually became a town that took its name from the nearby pass. In 1857, the tourist information kiosk in the photo says.

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Avoca

The Fingal Valley was a mining area, tin, coal and one large gold area. Now it’s just coal, that I’m aware of. There are a lot of mineral deposits through here, but nothing substantial enough to support a large scale mining operation. Despite the name, the river that runs through here is the South Esk.

The Esk Highway (A4) runs through here, connecting the Midlands to the East Coast. There are three towns along the highway, and the first of these is Avoca.

Avoca
I really should know more about this town than I do and I have lost my local history book so you’ll have to make do with looking at the pictures and making up your own descriptions.

Avoca was first settled in the 1830s. The population now is about 200 or less.

Hotel
The Union Hotel built 1842. You can see the typical Georgian hotel lines behind the additions.

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Fingal

(Note: the paragraphs that start with bold text are from the town’s visitor information panel. I take no responsibility for errors of fact. Errors of spelling or grammar are probably due to my typing though.)

The town of Fingal was established in the 1820s. According to the census, the population in 2006 was 450. It is a town that has obvious signs of being bigger and busier in the past than what it is now.

The town spreads out along the main road (the highway) so I thought I’d show it from west to east, starting here. So fire station and then an odd building on the corner.

This puzzled us. Mother thought it might be a lodge or something. I said my map just had it as ‘hall’ but looking at it now, it only has ‘War Memorial’ in that spot. Mother decided it looked like a council chambers, but I thought that was elsewhere.

When I went back to the car, I looked at the information board we’d parked in front of. (I took a photo of the information section but when I went to take a photo of the accompanying map, the camera decided it wouldn’t take photos when I’d zoomed in, so I had the information on me but couldn’t match it to whatever we were looking at.) Anyway, once I found the spot on the map, we found out it was:

Original Fingal Council Chambers c. 1882 Partially burnt down after being flood in 1929. Valuable municipal records prior to 1929 were totally destroyed. The building was the original Council Chambers with the Municipal Gaol being located underneath. It has been used as a Town Hall since 1974. The edifice is subject to rising damp.

[Especially when the river floods?]

The street that runs down the front of the damp council chambers leads to the railway and the railway station. When passenger services were stopped back in Tasmania in the 1970s, the stations were mostly removed. Those few remaining were converted to other uses. So I wasn’t expecting much when we went down there.

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Derby

I’ve never been to Derby before.

It’s an old mining town: tin, discovered in the 1870s. The town grew up — the population was about 3000 at one point — the mine went away, the town dwindled. The population at the 2006 census was 300. Although it is still a busy little town, except on Saturdays at 4 pm, because of the Tin Centre.

Street - pub
Like many small towns along the highways, Derby is strung out along that road. Unlike most of those small towns, there are not lots of back streets full of houses. What you see along the main road is pretty much it.

It also feels like the town is clinging to the side of a hill.

Pub
Dorset Hotel

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Linda Valley & Royal Hotel

This is Linda, population not very many.

The internets are being unhelpful at giving up useful information, and I obviously have boxes of books to unpack somewhere. So I’ll have to rely on what I know, which is, um, not much. Still former mining town, you can probably tell the story yourself 🙂

I did find some old postcards in the State Library’s collection, so you can see that early in the 20th century it was town of some substance, with multiple hotels (I think four at one point) and boarding houses, a hall and shops. It was, at one point, the main town for workers at the nearby North Mt Lyell mine, and the end point of the railway. A busy little place, with a population in the hundreds.

Then it faded over the years, and the buildings went away, until it is as you see it today.

It does, however, have a phone box!

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Gormanston

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Gormanston, population 170. About one tenth what it was about a century ago when the town was home to employees of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, along with all the services a town needs: shops, hotels, local government, school, post office.

Gormanston
Cut from a photo from the State Library of Victoria. Their photo is larger, if you want to look at details.

Another early view of the town

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