Truganini’s Throne
is distant about one mile from Leda Falls on the western bank of the same stream. It is a remarkable example of weathered granite about 40 feet high. Large gum-trees grow out of the joints of the rock 70 to 80 feet in height. This is also well worth a visit from the tourist.
The Tin Mines.
The vallies intervening the granite hills are the scenes of the operations of the miners. These vallies are chiefly occupied by button-grass marshes through which creeks and smaller streamlets flow and which take their rise in the higher mountain ranges in the interior. This button-grass which may not be widely well-known grows in tussocks from one foot to three feet in height and detached. Its leaves are long and wiry, and its seed-vessels consist of spherical, hard rough knobs about the size of marbles, closely resembling the old brass buttons of that form, from which it derives its name. These knobs are supported upon long smooth wiry stems often four and five feet in length. In passing through one of these marshes these knobs frequently spring back with considerable force, and owing to their hard rough nature, and the flexibility of the stems are capable of inflicting pain on the exposed face and hands. The creeks running through these valleys are fringed with belts of dense ti-tree among which is the flowering melaleuca of the botanist, banera, or the river-rose and tall cutting-grass oftentimes so thickly interlaced as to form an almost impenetrable barrier. The soil on the hill-slopes is usually poor and gravelly formed by the decomposition of the coarse porphyritic granite of the district and yet it is thickly clothed with ironbark gums, peppermint gums, prickly acacia and those arboraeolian harps the sombre-hued Casuarina, on which, to indulge a figurative expression the zephyrs love to play with viewless fingers. The tin ore, for the most part is obtained at a depth from the surface of the vallies of from four to six feet, in a pebbly drift occupying the depressions of the granite which is usually decomposed so as to present a soft clayey consistency. It would seem to be what is known as “erratic”—that is it has come from a distance as the pebbles with which it is associated have been supplied by rocks which are not to be met with in the locality.
At 10 miles inland to the west is the Land of Goschen, a flat well grassed plateau on the banks of the George river, with a mountain rising out of the midst. Four miles further on Gould’s Country is reached, with its lofty mountain ranges of granite and deep gullies, densely covered with myrtle, sassafras, and tree ferns. Here are situated the principal tin mines of the East Coast.
Profoundly grand are the gullies of this region as the road winds along the mountain heights. Now on the right hand, now on the left the sides of the mountains sweep down into apparently bottomless ravines. High above the tops of trees over 300 feet in height in many instances the eye of the traveller sweeps the terrible chasms so thickly covered with tree-ferns and other shade and moisture-loving vegetation as to be sunshine proof. The scene of St. Mary’s Pass is a combination of the grand and picturesque. That of Gould’s Country is the awfully grand alone. Here there is a slab some miles in length traversing the sides of the mountains. There are two inns, several stores, and cottage dwellings. Sixteen miles further to the West is Thomas Plain on which stands the township of Weldborough surrounded for many miles by tin mines. This is reached by a narrow pack-track from Gould Country which is knee-deep in mud except in the very height of Summer. All the tin ore raised here has to be packed out on horses to Gould’s Country and Morina and owing to the continual traffic of the heavily-laden horses and the exclusion of wind and sunshine by the dense vegetation the track is a very “Slough of Despond.”
Thomas Plain is situated in the centre of the Ringarooma district and enclosed by an amphitheatre of lofty tree-crowned heights. Several cool pellucid never failing streams flow through it. It is the most picturesque in Tasmania.
Such are the salient features of the North East Coast of Tasmania, and I believe the visitor in search of a salubrious clime and choice scenery will allow that these fully repay the journey.