After Tarraleah we continued on to Queenstown. The Snook snapped some photos as we went.

We had been told that coming into Queenstown was like driving on the surface of the moon, that the hills have been so stripped of trees and polluted by mining that nothing will grow. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Yeah, the road into town is kinda bleak, and a lot of the houses in town seemed to be abandoned shacks. (We found out later that the closing of the mines meant that a significant portion of the population left.) But some parts of Queenstown were still charming.

Like our accommodation at the Penghana Bed and Breakfast. This amazing mansion was built for the General Manager of Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Company in 1898 atop a ridge overlooking the town. We stayed in The Owen master suite.

The view out our window was spectacular.

I quite liked this patchwork quilt hanging in the stairwell. It had been made from neckties of men who worked in the area.

Dinner options in Queenstown are rather limited, and to our surprise the highest rated restaurant on Trip Advisor (Maloney’s Restaurant at the motel) was fully booked! So instead we headed to the only pub in town, the historic Empire Hotel, where I had a truly excellent chicken parmigiana.

And hey, Alfred Deakin (Australia’s 2nd Prime Minister) once ate here!

Country pubs make the Snook contemplative. Or maybe he was just full of chickie-chickie-parm-parm.

The next morning we breakfasted at Penghana and then headed to the West Coast Wilderness Rail for the “Rack & Gorge” trip to Dubbil Barrel and back. I loved that the driver of our steam train was a lady!

The train cars weren’t original, we found out, but instead painstakingly rebuilt to match the old ones. There were only two cars, and since we didn’t spring for first class we were in the normal one right behind the engine. (First class had tables.)

Map of our journey. While the trip goes all the way to Strahan in summer, we were only going to Dubbil Barrel and back. See that elevation chart in the corner? Yeah, the steep bit is 1:15. That’s nuts.

Our first stop was Lynchford, where we panned for gold. These are the bags of rocks waiting to be examined. (One girl in the group found a small nugget that was apparently worth about $50. We didn’t find any in ours.)

The train takes frequent stops so it can take on more water. (It uses a lot of steam climbing that hill!)

The King River is “arguably Australia’s most polluted river.” A sign nearby said that environmentalists reckoned it would take 1000 years to recover from the damage caused by mining. (To be fair, our guide was a local and he said it won’t take nearly that long. It’s apparently already starting to see improvement.)

Rinadeena Saddle was pretty much the very top of the steep bit. We walked up to a footbridge to watch the train getting refilled. I made a timelapse video.

The Snook played some more with his tilt-shift mode.

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