Whilst living in Tassie for four years, I found the town of Queenstown to be the butt of jokes even within the local fraternity.
Comparisons with the movie Deliverance were often mentioned along with banjo impersonations, but I rather liken Queenstown to the steelworks town depicted in The Deer Hunter.
When gold and copper were discovered there in the late 1800s the population peaked at around ten thousand. There is still mining activity but the population is under two thousand these days.
The legacy of the mining is large areas of ‘moonscape’ on the surrounding mountains, some interesting architecture and a notorious football ground that sits in the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame.
The ground and it’s club have produced AFL stars such as triple Brownlow Medallist Ian Stewart and premiership coach Chris Fagan.
According to Stewart, the oval taught him to have very good balance and not fall over. You can very quickly see why.
The oval can’t grow grass and was built from gravel from the mines. The boundary line is a small ditch with the capacity to break a leg bone, the 50m line and centre square markings are scrapes and within the crushed gravel are rocks.
There are bluestone and other sedimentary gems that we used to call ‘boondies’ when we were kids in WA. They are real and they are everywhere.
I’m convinced the oval was designed by a sado-masochist group. Oval prepared by the sadists and games played by the masochists. It’s extraordinary.
There is a certain sadness about the town itself. It was another regional town in Australia decimated by the two world wars when our brave and naïve young men volunteered.
I first visited twenty years ago and now the main street is a shell of its former self. Two big pubs and a number of shop fronts are boarded up and are no doubt victims of Covid.
There are now some outstanding mountain bike trails that are attracting tourists and I’ve always thought that with some serious investment, Queenstown could become an adventure and eco-tourism destination like it’s namesake in NZ.
There are hints of French-inspired buildings mixed with beautiful colonial homes and then there is the ‘dongers’. What was once temporary housing for miners has become cheap permanent residency and they are scattered in small patches around the town.
What was very evident was how clean the town was and there was definitely very little graffiti, something that flagrantly offends us on the mainland. For all its ill-gained reputation, the locals take pride in their surroundings.
Many tourists tend to visit Cradle Mountain then Strahan and head back to the boat at Devonport. We were on our way to Lake St Clair which is the bottom of the World Heritage hike from Cradle Mountain, completed over six or seven days.
To get to Lake St Clair from Cradle Mountain or Strahan by car, you need to go through Queenstown. It’s definitely worth a stop and next time we will definitely stay during the footy season and witness the criminally insane who have chosen to play on that oval.
