Australia
Queenstown
A century of smelting stripped every tree, leaving a moonscape of orange and grey lunar terrain.
The hills have no trees. A century of copper smelting stripped everything — every shrub, every fern, every lichen — leaving a moonscape of orange and grey mineral terrain that the forest has not reclaimed. Queenstown is what happens when industry wins completely, then leaves.
Queenstown on Tasmania's west coast was founded on copper mining in the 1890s. The combination of logging for fuel and sulphur dioxide emissions from open-air smelting denuded the surrounding hills of all vegetation, creating a lunar landscape of exposed geological strata in orange, grey, and pink. The Iron Blow — the original open-cut mine — is now a turquoise-water pit visible from the rim walkway. The Abt Railway, a rack-and-pinion heritage line, climbs through the denuded hills to Strahan, passing through rainforest that shows exactly what the hills once looked like. The moonscape is gradually being reclaimed by vegetation, making the current landscape a temporary state — one that looks stranger with each year of regrowth.
Solo
The moonscape, the mine pit, the railway — Queenstown is a solo meditation on what industry does to landscape, and what landscape does to recover.
Couple
The eerie beauty of bare mineral hills, the heritage railway, and the story of destruction and slow recovery — Queenstown is Tasmania's most thought-provoking destination.
- A century of copper smelting stripped every tree from the surrounding hills — the moonscape remains.
- The landscape shifts from orange to grey to pink — geological strata exposed by industrial erasure.
- The Iron Blow gorge — the original open-cut mine — is now a flooded turquoise pit ringed by bare rock.
- Rack-and-pinion railway climbs through the denuded hills — a journey through Tasmania's industrial past.
Tracks Cafe — warming meals in a heritage building on Orr Street, the town's surprisingly lively main drag.
Empire Hotel bar — cold beer and toasted sandwiches in a gold-rush pub that has outlasted the mines.
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