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| The Gaiety
Theatre/Grand Hotel |
Zeehan (including Trial Harbour and
Granville Harbour)
Historic mining town in the wilds of Western
Tasmania.
Located 293 km north west of Hobart, 38 km north
of Queenstown and 155 km south of Burnie and 172
metres above sea level, Zeehan is a classic
mining town. While the older sections of Zeehan
are genuinely very interesting and give some
indication of what the town must have been like
when it had a population of 10 000. The new
sections are really identikit mining town and is
no different from any one of a thousand mining
towns. Standard issue permulum houses abound.
There is a modern library. A modern police
station. Zeehan has spread down the main street
with the old part of the town, which is worth
exploring, being located at the far end of the
town.
This contradiction has been well captured by
the poet Graeme Hetherington who has written of
the town:
Brand new and temporary
With one-night rooms, brick-veneer, fake stone
Bars, Dining Room, Reception, cars
The motel stood, spread here and there,
A boom town's bag of gold dust
Among the areas of swamp,
Heaps of mullock, caved-in shafts,
And sections of a fallen water race
Once raised up high
On thin and spreading stilts.
Still the town is worth visiting. The main
street is a reminder of a bygone era and the
local Museum is outstanding.
Zeehan was one of the first places in
Tasmania ever seen by Europeans. As early as
1642 Abel Tasman sighted the mountain peak which
was subsequently named Mount Zeehan after the
brig in which he was sailing. It was Bass and
Flinders, travelling around the Tasmanian coast
in 1802, who named both Mount Zeehan and Mount
Heemskirk after the two boats used by Tasman in
his epic voyage.
The area, which was wild and rugged, remained
unexplored until the discovery of tin at Mt
Bischoff in 1871. In the years that followed
prospectors rushed the area and a certain mining
craziness set in. In 1879 tin was discovered at
Mount Heemskirk north of the present site of
Zeehan. It led to a boom which saw more than 50
companies staking claims over some 6400 hectares
of what would prove to be hopeless and useless
country. There were even leases sold on the
beaches along the coast. By the 1880s there were
only a dozen mines working in the Heemskirk
area.
In late 1882 four miners moved further south
and in December a man named Frank Long
discovered silver-lead near the present day site
of Zeehan. It led to the largest mining boom on
Tasmania's west coast with Zeehan being dubbed
the 'Silver City of the West' and, within a
decade, Zeehan growing to become the third
largest town in Tasmania. This is hardly
surprising. Long's first samples had yielded 70
ounces of silver per ton.
By 1884 there was a paling hut, the Despatch
Hut, at Zeehan and John Moyle, employed by the
Despatch Syndicate, had become the first mine
manager in the district.
Over the next decade Zeehan boomed. At its
height in 1891 there were 159 companies with
mining leases in the area. Trial Harbour was the
port and there was a muddy and difficult road
from the Trial Harbour Hotel to Zeehan.
By the 1890s the town had developed an air of
sophistication. There was a Zeehan Stock
Exchange which boasted 60 members. Each year,
from 1890-1910, the mines earned an average of
£200,000. The main street was full of elegant
buildings including banks, theatres and hotels.
By 1910 the ore bodies which had sustained
Zeehan began to give out and the town slowly
declined. By the 1950s it had a population of
only 650 and the last silver mine in Zeehan
closed down in 1960. It looked as though it was
about to become a ghost town. However, the town
continues to exist and prosper because many of
the men who work at Renison Bell, which is only
15 km away, live in the town and commute to the
mine.
Things to see:
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The Gaiety Theatre/Grand Hotel
It is hard to imagine that when Zeehan was a
roaring town in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries that the Gaiety Theatre, which seated
1000 people, was the largest concert hall and
theatre in Australia. Such was its prestige that
during that time it saw Enrico Caruso, Dame
Nellie Melba and the infamous Lola Montez all
treading the boards and entertaining the wealthy
miners. It has even been claimed that Lola
Montez, outraged at a review in the local paper,
horsewhipped the editor although this story is
said to have happened in Ballarat. A favourite
with the miners was the All Male Welsh Choir
which packed out the theatre. Next door the
Grand Hotel charged city hotel rates (ten
shillings a day) and offered city services.
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| The School of
Mines and Metallurgy (now a Museum)
|
Zeehan Museum
The Zeehan School of Mines and Metallurgy was
established in 1892 and ran courses in geology,
assaying and surveying. Today it has been
converted into the Zeehan Museum. It is a
fascinating museum which offers the visitor an
excellent overview of the history of the west
coast of Tasmania from convict days through to
the modern mining towns. It has one of the
finest collections of minerals in the world.
Next door are a series of beautifully preserved
old engines from the local areas. There has been
a substantial amount of money spent on the
museum to make it into a very genuine tourist
attraction.
Trial Harbour
Located 23 km east of Zeehan, Trial Harbour is a
popular fishing destination for the locals. It
was once the port for Zeehan. Today it is really
little more than a holiday destination.
Granville Harbour
Located 33 km north-east of Zeehan, Granville
Harbour was originally opened up as a soldier
settlement after World War I. Today it is a
popular fishing destination for the locals and a
holiday destination (there are few permanent
residents) for miners from both Queenstown and
Zeehan.
