By Lucy Wilson
An inspired gathering occurred in Queenstown in
Western Tasmania last weekend.
“Oh, is that the town that looks like a moonscape?”
Yes.
It’s the mining town that 100 years ago thrived; it
must have with fourteen pubs, and another thirteen in nearby surrounding
towns like Linda and Gormanston. The North Lyell mine, affectionately called
“Mount Mother Lyell” had a disaster that ravaged the heart of an isolated
community and left 42 men dead. The second biannual Queenstown Heritage &
Arts Festival marked the centenary of this disaster on 12 October 2012 and over
the weekend wove family history and reunion, with mining and environment, with
contemporary art. It was a
compelling mix. Set in an extraordinary town with the copper brown-coloured
Queen River running through. Surrounded by the scarred hills left bare and orangey
moonscapesque from 130 years of miners plunging ever closer to the core of the
earth to leach out its ore.
