Queenstown 

Location: On the A10, 30km inland from the midwest coast.

Historic Queenstown, the largest settlement on Tasmania’s west coast, is best known for its copper mines and smelters.

The town was established in the 1890s when copper was discovered in the surrounding mountains. The mountains, stripped by mining of all their vegetation, became a tourist attraction, but technology has progressed and the vegetation is now slowly returning. While you are in town, you can visit Miners Siding and the Galley Museum, or venture underground on a tour that reveals Queenstown’s rich mining history. These tours claim to be the only that take you to the working face of a mine. The town has an interesting collection of timber architecture left from early mining days and is the main focus of the national project to restore the old and rare Abt railway.

You can explore the region’s natural beauty on the West Coast Wilderness Railway to the port of Strahan – one of Australia’s great historic train journeys.

There is an excellent museum that covers a hundred years of mining and community development in the area. The road into and out of the town passes through stark mountain scenery and drivers need to keep their wits about them. Queenstown’s spectacular natural waterfalls and its equally impressive man-made quarries and mines are a two-hour drive from Burnie, or three hours along the Lyell Highway (A 10) from Hobart.