Part 2

and one can well conceive the fair and fleet goddess selecting such a spot to bathe her limbs. Yonder dwelling, partly visible through the trees, which flourish to the water’s edge, is the Summer retreat of F. Groome, Esq. of “Harefield” at St. Mary’s. This lake is like the others which we have passed――an inlet of the sea enclosed by a large and high sandbank. Wild ducks, teal, and the never-absent cormorant, haunt it in vast numbers, for it abounds in fish. Here for the first time since leaving the eastern extremity of the pass we come upon granite the prevailing rock of the stanniferous district we are about to enter. A very interesting and instructive tale of cosmical change does this same granite tell, but time and circumstance alike forbid us staying to listen to it now. It will have been observed that there is a most decided change in the character of the vegetation in these parts. The gum trees no longer have the white, smooth bark which mark them a few miles to the south-east. Instead of this the bark is rough, thick, and deeply furrowed. They are the iron bark, or redgum of the colonists, an exceedingly hard, and durable wood and it is much prized for sluice boxes by the tin miner. Five miles more, and as the sun is setting over the blue and distant mountains in the west――an abrupt turn of the road occurs, and lo! the truly magnificent

GEORGE’S BAY

opens to the view, with its numerous points, promontories, inlets and emerald flats. It is justly considered to be the most picturesque bay in the colony, and as a fishing ground is second to none. All the year round fine flounders can be had while crayfish are a drug. There are some very fine oyster beds which yield largely of these molluscs. The township of St. Helens consists of about twenty houses. There are three hotels which is just two too many. The Telegraph hotel is considered the principal one. There is a Bank, Post Office, and Telegraph Office in one neat building. A Police Office and Commissioner of Mines combined. There are two general stores. The climate of George’s Bay is unquestionably the finest in Tasmania. It is warmer than the Capital and not subject to such sudden transitions of temperature. There are very keen frosts in Winter, and also occasional frosts in Summer, but the sun beams out with resplendent glory through soft blue skies, flecked with fleecy clouds, after them. St. Helens is approached through Jason’s Gates, spanned by a bridge at the mouth of the Golden Fleece, an estuary which an artist would love to transfer to canvas. Here the names again carry the memory back to the beautiful poetical legend of the ancients. The traveller is now in the region of tin mines. Try where he may, in the sands of the sea shore, the gravel of the roads, he will obtain tin ore, but it exists only in payable quantity from three to six miles from the coast.

There is a fine river the George, rich in sylvan scenery, and teeming with fish. The chief features of the district are the hills of granite, with their smooth rounded crests. These swell up in all directions, giving the country a highly undulating appearance. There are some very rare scene studies for the artist in the ravines. The LEDA FALLS on the Saxleby tin claim is one of these. The stream is divided into two falls at the edge of a granite precipice in a deep rock-bound gorge.

Within one mile of the Falls is a singular “weathered” granite mass which I have named Truganini’s Throne. These spots and several others in the neighborhood are well worth a visit, I may be excused for quoting here a description of these two scenes which I lately published in the _Australasian Sketcher_.

LEDA FALLS.

These Falls are situated on the Saxleby tin claim, seven miles from George’s Bay, and in the centre of the tin mining district. A stream which takes its rise in the high granite hills of the district after flowing through button-grass marshes, and dense thickets of banera, cutting-grass and ti-tree, suddenly plunges down a deep romantic rocky gorge. Here it is broken into numerous miniature falls――now eddying round the walls of a granite basin which it has carved out through untold ages, and anon babbling among the moss-covered stones which interrupt its course, till when halfway through the gorge it leaps over a deep vertical precipice with deafening roar. At the verge of this precipice the stream is intercepted by a projection of rock which divides it and causes it to fall in two streams into a depression of the granite. At the sides of the ravine, huge overhanging masses of worn granite――some of them thousands of tons in weight, give rise to numerous recesses of sepulchral gloom. Over their portals hang festoons of delicate climbing plants and feathery-fronded ferns grow in profusion, gum-trees, acacia, dogwood and others whose branches meeting overhead form a canopy which excludes the noontide sunshine. If I might venture to call to aid metrical composition I would describe it thus:――

Forth from its secret mountain source it flows Through em’rald swamps and tangled ti-tree dells; Now making music soft ’mong granite stones, O’er-mantled with bright moss of green and gold; Now stealing dreamlike, through deep sunless shades, Where never ripple ruffled its cool breast. Thus flowing sea-ward in its chequered course Till where a deep dark chasm twixt two hills All unexpected opens to the view. There at the verge divided into twain It plunges down into the gloom profound Where noise and mist and wild confusion reign.

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.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.