Valley of Adventures
History
Gold, coal, tin and the railway in each valley town.
A short history of the towns inside the Fingal Valley ridgeline, from convict stations to the gold, coal and tin that built them.
Fingal · Mangana · Mathinna · Tower Hill · Evercreech · Avoca · Royal George and Llewellyn · Rossarden · Storys Creek · Cornwall and Mount Nicholas · St Marys · Ben Lomond plateau
Fingal
Fingal was named by a government surveyor in about 1824, and it was a convict station in the 1830s. Some of the old cells still stand.
The railway arrived in 1886, and coal was mined nearby. Fingal has had a postal service since 1832, and the Fingal Post Office building was completed in February 1890. The railway station and the post office were entered on the Tasmanian Heritage Register (provisionally in 1998).
Every March the Fingal Festival hosts the World Coal Shovelling Championships.
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Mangana
In February 1852 Tasmania's first payable gold was found at a spot called the Nook, now Mangana, and about 200 diggers rushed in.
Quartz crushing started in Sailors and Sharkeys Gullies in the late 1850s, and reef mining took over from panning. The Sovereign mine, opened in 1859, is recorded as Tasmania's first lode gold mine.
The township had its own post office by 1915.
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Mathinna
The Golden Gate mine made Mathinna a gold boom town in the 1890s. It was Tasmania's second-largest gold mine. The nearby Tasmanian Consols mine also worked the field.
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Tower Hill
Tower Hill has twin peaks, East Tower (1,118 m) and West Tower, right in the middle of the valley with a near 360-degree view of it.
Gold was washed near Tower Hill Creek in March 1852 and a reef was found in 1869, though the Sunbeam mine recorded only a tiny amount of gold.
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Evercreech
Evercreech Forest Reserve sits near the headwaters of the South Esk. It protects giant white gums known as the White Knights, and the reserve was created in 1977.
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Avoca
Avoca sits where the St Pauls River joins the South Esk. Earlier it was called St Paul's Plains and Camp Hill, and it takes its name from Thomas Moore's song "Sweet Vale of Avoca".
It was a convict station in the 1830s, became a township in 1866 and got a station on the 1886 railway. In 1882 coal from Storys Creek came down to Avoca by packhorse.
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Royal George and Llewellyn
At Royal George, tin was worked on Roys Hill from about 1911 until 1928.
Llewellyn was a siding named after the old Llewellyn Inn. Engines took on water pumped from the South Esk, and the line crossed Stony Creek on a 40 ft embankment.
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Rossarden
Tin and wolfram were found in Aberfoyle Rivulet in 1916, and the Aberfoyle mine opened in 1931.
By 1960 it was Tasmania's biggest wolfram producer and its most important tin mine. Aberfoyle ran the Rossarden and Storys Creek mines until 1981.
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Storys Creek
Coal was dug here from 1882 and packed out by horse. Tin mines followed from 1891, with wolfram from 1895.
Storys Creek was the State's main wolfram producer in the early 1920s, and the plant shut in 1971.
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Cornwall and Mount Nicholas
Cornwall Colliery opened in 1886, and the Mount Nicholas and Jubilee mines followed.
By 1900 the valley's mines were sending about 2,000 tons of coal a week, used on all the Government locomotives.
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St Marys
St Marys began as a convict station in 1821 and was proclaimed a town in 1864. It was the end of the Fingal line when the railway opened in 1886.
By 1900 it had two hotels, a bank, three churches and a racing club.
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Ben Lomond plateau
The eastern side of the Ben Lomond plateau forms the valley's western rim. The mountain was named after the Scottish peak in the early 1800s.
An 1841 expedition made the first scientific study of the plateau and found coal at Coalmine Crag.
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