Last weekend I went to a little town way down south in Tassie for a little festival. The Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival
http://www.qhaf.org is held every second year on the second weekend of October. It is amazing!!! And not so little - there were way too many things to see and do, most of which were free including art exhibitions and installations, book launches, poetry readings, music and singing and food and ...
The Angel of the West arriving to bring hope to a town struggling with economic problems and recent job losses. She is made from bamboo and tissue paper, and lit up by candles inside.
She had a 'mind blowing experience' when the candles caught her alight and burnt her head off! Pretty sure this was not planned!
We started our weekend with a book launch at LARQ Gallery. Brett Martin's novel is based on the life of Marion Oak Sticht, who was born in the US but came to Tasmania when she married Robert Sticht, the mine manager in the late 1890's. They built a rather grand house called Penghana, high on a hill overlooking the town. This was the location for an exhibition of Maxine Brown's beautiful water colours. Penghana is now run as boutique B&B accommodation.
http://www.penghana.com.au/
Films and singing at the fabulous art deco Paragon Theatre.
http://theparagon.com.au/
Both evenings included a street party under a huge marquee in the main street, various music acts including the Wolfe Brothers, plenty of food, and light shows projected on to the Empire Hotel.
This year's festival theme was "The Power of Water" inspired by the 100th Anniversary of Hydro Tasmania and the fact that it all began with the Lake Margaret Power Station just north of Queenstown. Shuttle buses ferried visitors to Lake Margaret all weekend. 100 years old and still producing electricity for Tasmania. The village just visible among the trees is now abandoned.
Originally made from Tasmanian King Billy pine, the pipes have been replaced in recent years with Alaskan yellow cedar. While the last section of pipeline seen in the above picture is steel, most of the pipeline higher up the mountain is still made of wood. Below is a section of the King Billy Pine pipe for display purposes.
Close up of an old machine used for making curved wooden planks for the wooden pipeline.
Joel testing the weight of old tools used for maintaining the power station.
Interior of the station - very very loud even though only two of the turbines were operating, apparently to reduce the noise level for us visitors.
Lake Margaret village in the early to mid 20th century. It was the wettest town in Australia - three metres of rain per year! It would have been a cold, wet and isolated place to bring up a family, but there were many stories of happy childhoods here.
Seven houses and two halls still stand, empty but clinging to existence.
Art installation on the floor of one house. In the shape of a power turbine, it is made from thousands of dead ladybirds. The insects are attracted by the humming of the power station.
Art in the form of rocks arranged where cabbages, carrots, rhubarb, turnips and other vegetables were once grown.
Back in Queenstown, there were too many art exhibitions to see! We managed to look at several but not all of the many art exhibitions including one in this quirky building which is the former Cascade Brewery Depot.
Inside were a series of rooms filled with exquisite prints and etchings portraying the lives of the women and children who lived at Lake Margaret, hence the washing hung up outside as art.
You can buy this historic building for $100,000!
This special train journey through wilderness and along a steep rack and pinion track is on my to do list.
Other tours that were offered over the weekend and which are regular tours, but which we did not have time to do, were the Mt Lyell Mine tours and the Lost Mines and Ancient Pines tours -
www.queenstownheritagetours.com/
Our weekend ended with a quick helicopter flight over Queenstown. This is not something that is regularly available so we did not want to miss out. Taking off from beside the historic Mt Lyell Mine Managers office with Mt Owen in the background.
Queenstown's heritage listed gravel football oval.
Part of the town looking west toward Strahan and the aerodrome.
Horsetail waterfall on the side of Mt Owen.
Part of the Mt Lyell mine site.
More of the mine site and part of the 99 bends road up Gormie Hill, aka the Lyell Highway heading east from Queenstown to Hobart. It is a potentially hair raising and stomach churning very windy road up out of the valley.
Queenstown - a unique landscape, fascinating history, friendly people, interesting architecture and a great attitude.
