July. August 99Queenstown’s sulfur cloud could sometimes be seen from
Macquarie Harbour, more than 20km away, and that rocky
river soon ran silvery grey with toxins. When the tent city
around the smelters caught fire in 1896, a new town was pegged
out a kilometre downriver and named Queenstown. By that
time Mount Lyell Mining was so successful that three steamships
a week transported its copper ore from Strahan to Melbourne.
By 1901, at a peak population of 5051, Queenstown had
a railway, a stock exchange, marching bands, 14 pubs and
12 football teams that practised and played on a gravel oval.
In 1912 a copper mine fire broke out with 170 men underground,
42 of whom ultimately died during the disaster. Some bodies
weren’t recovered until the f looded mine was pumped dry the
following year. Many survivors soon went off to war. When
completion of the Lyell Highway in 1932 provided access to
Hobart, there was concern in Queenstown that it would weaken
its unique community spirit.
After Mount Lyell’s smelting ceased in 1969, nature began
clawing its way back. The Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Com-
mission’s proposal to build the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam
(within what became Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National
Park) offered hope to a West Coast littered, by then, with ghost
towns. The ensuing battle from 1978 to 1983 (see Big riverSulfurous rain, caused by
the smelting, denuded
the landscape.