Tasmania North West Attractions

Burnie (pop. 20,500) is the fourth largest town in Tasmania. Founded in 1829 and named after the director of a land development company, it originally consisted only of a few huts, a warehouse and a blacksmith's shop. It was given a great boost by the opening of a tin mine on Mount Bischoff (75km southwest), the ore from which was shipped from Burnie's deep-water harbor. In 1938 a large paper mill was established in the town, using wood from the great expanses of forest round the town. Burnie is still an important industrial town, with foodstuffs factories (milk products, chocolate) as well as the paper mill.In Burnie Park is the mid 19th C Burnie Inn, one of the town's oldest buildings, restored and re-erected here. The town's principal attraction is the Pioneer Village Museum in the Civic Centre Plaza, which carries visitors back to the early days of the settlement. A number of handsome old houses with wrought-iron ornament bear witness to Burnie's prosperity in its heyday, for example the richly decorated police office in Wibon Street, built in 1908 as a doctor's house.Burnie holds a carnival, with a full program of sporting and other events, annually on January 1st.

In the wild and rugged country of northwestern Tasmania is the mining town of Savage River, with Tasmania's only opencast iron mine. The deposits of iron ore were discovered around 1870, but they could not be worked until means were devised for transporting the ore from this inaccessible region. It took almost 100 years until a solution was found in 1967. The ore is now formed into a slurry which is pumped through an 85km long pipeline to Port Latta on the northwest coast, to the west of Rocky Cape National Park, where it is processed and exported, mainly to Japan.