The other Overland Track: the Linda Track to Tasmania’s West Coast

by | 18/01/26 | Tasmanian high country history

In the centre of Tasmania is an entertainment zone where the rules of decency are blurred. He-men brandishing ski poles, their bare nipples lasering the path to the Narcissus jetty, bleeding kids wondering if leeches are protected by UNESCO, beautiful, unwashed young couples smelling like a long-drop and swarms of flies experiencing the disappointment of tofu all help pickle the romance of the Overland Track between Dove Lake and Lake St Clair.

What about the original Overland Track? How did that compare as a mountainous hikeathon? Ye olde Trip Advisor is silent on that one. Snaking a path between the Nive River district and Mount Lyell, this Overland Track was Hobart’s nineteenth-century conduit to mining riches. The Linda Track, as it was otherwise known, bore a hint of James Calder’s 1840s trackwork but its heart was late-Victorian. Its comforts were too. No boardwalks, no signage, no tent platforms, no rangers, no chai-latte-tendering, guided private expeditionary services. Only a few bridges over major streams but plenty of opportunities to die of exposure. The history of the Linda Track is spiced with the same arguments about public safety as that of the present Overland Track—but at least it had Tom Moore as a guardian.

Tom Moore in middle age. Anson Brothers photo courtesy of Margaret Elliston.

Tom Moore and the Mount Lyell Iron Blow

Anyone who has been a prisoner of their own tent will wonder at the curiosity, the ambition and the dedication of Thomas Bather Moore (1850–1919, aka Tom Moore or TB Moore). Each night in the bush, after retiring rain-sodden from the mud and a feed of echidna or wallaby, by candlelight in his tent Moore kept his immaculate diary, sometimes adding lines of philosophical verse, botanical notes or observations of comets and earth tremors. Moore’s solitary exploration work, endurance and scientific interests made him a legendary figure on Tasmania’s West Coast.

His chance to be known as a successful mineral prospector went begging—and this is really where the story of the Linda Track begins. In February 1883 Moore and a party of three including his brother Jim (JLA) Moore searched for an access route from Lake St Clair through to the West Coast. Near Mount Arrowsmith they established a supply depot. During the trip Moore named many features which are seen along the present-day Lyell Highway.[1] Entering the Linda Valley, Moore’s party climbed into the divide between Mounts Owen and Lyell, and while traversing what is now Philosophers Ridge discovered copper and iron pyrites. They also noticed the dark-coloured formation of boulders later known as the Iron Blow. According to Moore, another prospector and track-cutter, Tom Currie, found gold at or near the Iron Blow before being forced to withdraw from the field by illness.[2]

The Mount Lyell Iron Blow in 1884, presumably showing the three original lessees and one other. The fourth figure at right is almost ghostly. From NS3245/1/243 (TA).

Moore’s party was in no hurry to examine the Iron Blow. The appearance on the scene of ‘new chum’ prospectors, the brothers William and Michael McDonough, plus Steve Karlson, did not worry the Moores either, since they believed they only wanted to prospect the creeks for alluvial gold.

When Moore next visited the Iron Blow site, he was surprised to discover that the McDonoughs and Karlson had pegged a 50-acre prospecting area around the Iron Blow. Moore later conceded that underestimating the ‘new chums’ had cost him the chance to peg one of Tasmania’s greatest mineral treasures.[3] However, had Moore pegged the Iron Blow, it is possible that he would have fared no better than the prospectors who did. Their shares were surrendered for want of money, service providers and sharp investors being the beneficiaries of their plight.

Sections of the Linda Track disappeared under the later Lyell Highway (in red). The longest identifiable section today is that across Mount Arrowsmith (in black). TOPOGRAPHIC BASEMAP FROM THELIST © STATE OF TASMANIA
 Bushwalkers on the Linda Track beneath the King William Range, 1928
Jack Thwaites photo, NS3195/2/1475 (TA)
The Linda Track snaking across a hill above the Lyell Highway, 1948.
Jack Thwaites photo, NS3195/1/313 (TA)

Cutting the Linda Track

Moore’s only consolation from his Iron Blow blunder was obtaining track-cutting work that served the discovery. The goldfield attracted a lot of attention in Hobart. In November 1885 he applied for the position of superintending overseer in the construction of the proposed track from the Marlborough property on the Nive Plains via the Collingwood Valley to the King River goldfield. Engineer of Roads William Duffy recommended Moore’s appointment because his knowledge of the country would be valuable in determining the route and securing the best line.[4] Moore accepted a salary of £4 per week, his duty being to mark a track in advance of the work gangs.[5] He showed the value of his experience immediately upon arrival at the Clarence River when he suggested a better way to supply the men and larger work gangs. He recommended setting up a store and employing a storekeeper. Pack-horses which conveyed supplies, Moore contended, could also be used in the haulage of logs and timber.[6]

The 1915 iteration of the Iron Store complex of buildings. From the Tasmanian Mail, 21 January 1915, p.18.
One of the gargantuan chimney butts at the Iron Store site today. Nic Haygarth photo.

Building the Iron Store

In his track work Moore chose to follow the general line of his 1883 route to Mount Lyell, settling on a route over Mount Arrowsmith.[7] He decided to erect the so-called Iron Store at King William Creek, on the site of his 1883 supply depot, the materials being packed in from Hobart. George Bray was appointed storekeeper. No additional hut was built simply for shelter at this time, although before the season closed Moore’s fellow overseer George Walch erected a slab stable to accommodate four horses.[8] Moore resented sharing command with Walch, whose management style frustrated him. He sought to undercut the other man by suggesting efficiencies and better methods of bridge building.[9]

Meanwhile, the track builders worked nine hours per day instead of the prescribed eight through the autumn, with the understanding that they were paid for days when the weather made it impossible to work. Moore proved a difficult man to control from head office. When ordered to stop work in April 1886, he refused, claiming that there was at least a further month of good weather ahead. Engineer of Roads William Duffy complained that ‘It will be impossible to work with a gentleman who refuses to obey such simple and necessary routine orders’.[10]

The Collingwood River Valley looking west, with Pigeon House Hill in the background at right, and Redan Hill,
site of the first Wooden Store, in the foreground at left. Shane Pinner photo.
Platform of the original Wooden Store today, beside the Linda Track at Redan Hill. Nic Haygarth photo.

Building the Wooden Store

Duffy got over it. The Lands Department needed Moore’s knowledge and drive. Moore requested the construction of another stores depot and shelter hut in the Collingwood Valley which would ‘eventually be useful as a halfway shelter hut’.[11] This hut was among the future needs he listed in his diary:

Stable at the Collingwood River 24 long 9 ft wide

6 ft being 12 front high & four stalls & chaff house 4 ft wide

(Palings 280 6 ft 200 5 ft) (4.6 wide)’

Huts required

From store depot [Iron Store]

Timber can be obtained without much difficulty.

West bank of Franklin R.                                          7 or 8 miles

West bank of Collingwood R                                     15 to 16 —

The Bubbs Victoria Pass                                          25 or 26 —

Huts to be built of six feet palings

18 feet long 10 feet wide 6 feet high

rafters 7 feet long, partition for sleeping 8 wide

with 4 feet chimney (store room 10 x 10 wide)

with door lock & key 2 ft sq window in gable with hinges & fastenings

Packings required                                                 6 ft   525[12]

While Moore’s plans for huts at the Franklin River and Bubbs Hill were shelved, the so-called Wooden Store and stable were built on the edge of the Linda Track at Redan Hill, overlooking the Collingwood River. These buildings lasted only a dozen years, gradually being destroyed by travellers, with the bunks pulled out, the door ripped off its hinges, the window broken and the timber chimney attacked with an axe.[13]

The Mount Lyell Iron Blow, battery, loading ramp and haulage, 1890s. James Huntley Clarke collection, NS6313/1/67 (TA).
Loading facility and haulage at the Iron Blow today. Nic Haygarth photos.

Gold at Mount Lyell

In the winter of 1886 reports of fabulous gold assays circulated from the Mount Lyell Iron Blow. Inspector of Mines Gustav Thureau compared the Iron Blow to the famous gold deposits of Mount Morgan in Queensland, predicting a bonanza of ‘practically inexhaustible’ gold at Mount Lyell.[14]

The Iron Store showed its value as a shelter when excited investors despatched mining ‘experts’ to inspect Mount Lyell. In February 1887 Iron Storekeeper Bray took pity on one of them, Theophilus Jones, the itinerant, poverty-stricken journalist who was wending his way back to Hobart after being abandoned by the newspaper that sent him out. Jones reported gratefully that

Mr Bray, with that fine feeling, often displayed by those used to fatigue towards another on the march, insisted on my being seated to gain all the rest possible, whilst he went to the stream for a billy of water to make the ever refreshing tea, and when the infusion was ready helped us bountifully to his stores of tinned meat, etc.[15]

The Mount Lyell Gold Mining Company was registered in Launceston in 1888, echoing the momentous establishment of the Mount Bischoff Tin Mining Company there fifteen years earlier.[16] Unfortunately,  Mount Lyell also had a much more complex ore body than Mount Bischoff, and was more isolated requiring more capital investment than the Launceston company could raise.

Alfred Taylor, from the Tasmanian Mail, 11 December 1919, p.20.

The trail runner for the telegraph line

The present Overland Track measures 65 km from Dove Lake to Narcissus, with four intervening huts. The original Overland Track was 98 km from Nive Plains to Mount Lyell with initially just two huts. 1890s telegraph lineman Alfred Taylor would challenge modern ultra athletes skipping from Cradle to St Clair in a day. Broken culverts and fallen trees forbade horse travel along the Linda Track in the early years. Thus Taylor often hotfooted 138 km in three days from the Clarence River to Strahan. The ravenous tiger cats at the Iron Store may have prompted Taylor to sprint 58 km on the first day to avoid it by reaching the Wooden Store. A swig from the brandy flask would help him sleep through the cold (in winter) and the mosquitoes (in summer). Next stop was the Queen River Hotel, 45 km further on, where a jug of beer awaited him. Strahan, the end of the journey, was another 35 km beyond that. If a steamer was in port, Taylor would take the 6.5-day voyage to Hobart, otherwise retrace his steps to his home at Dee River.

The telegraph line from the Iron Store to Strahan, connecting Hobart to the western seaboard, was the work of brothers John, James and David Pearce in 1891–92. Taylor supervised their contract work and then continued as lineman. He described a daily menu of bully beef, bacon, wombat and honey stolen from hives in the myrtle forest; and a daily routine of being soaked to the skin and camped knee-deep in mud among swarming tiger cats. Leeches didn’t seem to bother him.[17]

Taylor the human snow plough

The annual Cradle Mountain Run now pushes marathoners the full 80 km from Cradle to the southern end of Lake St Clair. How would they have fared on the Linda Track without duckboards, thermals and satellite phones in the great snows of 1894 and 1900? Taylor turned yeti in these conditions. On Mount Arrowsmith he ploughed through snow drifts up to 5 m deep. Sometimes 60 cm or more of snow were frozen hard on the top of each tree used as a telegraph pole. Bashing the base of the tree to unfreeze it, he would sometimes receive the bulk of the snow down the front of his shirt, giving him a counterweight to the icicles hanging from his nose and moustache.[18]

Taylor got no help from fellow travellers. By 1896 the only way to keep the rain out of the Wooden Store was to stuff clothes in the open window hole.[19] Two years later ‘the old barn with chimney and door down and windows out’ was replaced by a new iron ‘Wooden’ Store, stable and cattle yard built much closer to the Collingwood River.[20] However, the location proved just as boggy as the old one, with mud several feet thick being reported after the ground was churned up by horse traffic.[21] The mosquitoes there were reportedly ‘intolerable’.[22]

Garland bewitched by the serpent at the Iron Store
From Free Lance, 14 May 1896, p.14.
Sydney Page, Weekly Courier, 29 April 1920, p.23.

Sydney Page’s coach service

In 1896 a writer calling himself Arthur Conway penned a screed about a storekeeper losing his sanity ‘in the house of the ungodly’, a tin hut on the Linda Track known as the Iron Store. In the solitude, with only the tigers and devils for company, Hugh Garland succumbed to the snake.[23]

The serpent might have been trampled by the hooves of the coach service in the following year.[24] The Mount Lyell Copper Mine was then the subject of Australia’s last national mining boom of the nineteenth century.[25] Foot traffic on the improved track increased to the extent that Sydney Page, son of the late stage-coach entrepreneur Samuel Page, tried a coach and horse service between the rail head at Macquarie Plains near Glenora and Gormanston, the miners’ town for the Iron Blow. The stage-coach section had stopovers at the Jenkins residence, Dee River, and the Lake St Clair Accommodation House, before travellers reached the coach terminus of the Iron Store. On day four they set off on horseback across Mount Arrowsmith, overnighting at the Wooden Store beyond the Collingwood River.[26]

The service didn’t last long, because while Page’s nags were kicking over the gibbers northern interests were waging a ‘railway war’ to send a line westward. In 1899 the Emu Bay Railway Company laid rails into Zeehan, completing a connection with Mount Lyell. The Linda Track remained Hobart’s overland route to the west until in the late 1920s—about the time Ron Smith conceived the idea of the present Overland Track—the Lyell Highway obliterated much of it. Further tales of the original Overland Track will follow.

[1] These included Artist Hill, in keeping with nearby Painters Plain, and Junction Peak, at the junction of the Franklin and Collingwood Rivers. In the Collingwood River Valley Moore named several features  (Redan Hill, Raglan Range, Scarlett Hill, plus the Inkerman, Balaclava and Cardigan Rivers) to complement Charles Gould’s Crimean War reference of the Alma River. Further west he christened Nelson River after his godson Nelson Brent, the Princess River in keeping with the King and Queen Rivers and Thureau Hills after Inspector of Mines Gustav Thureau  (TB Moore diary, 1974–87 compilation, ZM5618 [TMAG]).

[2] TB Moore diary, 1974–87 compilation, ZM5618 (TMAG); TB Moore, ‘In the early days of Mount Lyell: the first discovery of gold on the Mount’, Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 5 December 1896, p.4; TB Moore, ‘Discovery of Mount Lyell Mine’, Zeehan and Dundas Herald, 12 May 1919, p.1.

[3] TB Moore, ‘Discovery of Mount Lyell Mine’.

[4] William Duffy, notes written on the back of Moore’s application, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[5] TB Moore to the Minister of Lands, 3 December 1885, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[6] TB Moore to the Minister of Lands, 21 January 1886, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[7] TB Moore diary, 1874–87 compilation, ZM5618 (TMAG).

[8] Overseer George Walch to the Director of Public Works, 1 May 1886, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[9] TB Moore diary entry, 15 March 1886, ZM5620 (TMAG); Moore to Minister of Lands, 26 March 1886.

[10] William Duffy, Engineer of Roads, memo for Overseer George Walch, 28 April 1886; William Duffy, Engineer of Roads, memo dated 19 May 1886, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[11] TB Moore to William Duffy, Engineer of Roads, from Iron Store, 3 March 1886, PWD18/1/966 (TA).

[12] TB Moore diary, 1886, ZM5620 (TMAG).

[13] ‘On the Overland Track: Gormanston to Arrowsmith’, Mount Lyell Standard and the Strahan Gazette, 4 September 1900, p.2.

[14] Gustav Thureau, The Linda Goldfield: its auriferous and other mineral deposits, Department of Mines, Launceston, 1886, pp.1–3.

[15] Theophilus Jones, ‘The west coast goldfields’, Tasmania’, Daily Telegraph, 10 February 1887, p.3.

[16] ‘Mount Lyell Gold Mining Company’, Daily Telegraph, 21 January 1888, p.3.

[17] A Taylor, ‘Ten years on the Ouse–Zeehan telegraph line’, Tasmanian Postal-Telegraphic Journal, vol.1, no.1, November 1900, p.7.

[18] A Taylor, ‘Ten years on the Ouse–Zeehan telegraph line’, p.8.

[19] M Wilkes Simmons, ‘Westward ho!: the experiences of a Hobart tourist party’, Mercury, 24 November 1896, p.2.

[20] ‘The west coast’, Mercury, 26 August 1898, p.3; A Taylor, ‘Ten years on the Ouse–Zeehan telegraph line’, p.8.

[21] ‘On the Overland Track’, Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 4 September 1900, p.2.

[22] ‘The Wombat’, ‘Tramping across Tasmania’, Weekly Courier, 4 June 1908, p.35.

[23] A Conway, ‘The guardian of a bye-way’, Free Lance, 14 May 1896, pp.14–16.

[24] ‘The way to the west’, Daily Telegraph, 23 February 1897, p.2; ‘Rural jottings’, Launceston Examiner, 16 March 1897, p.7.

[25] Geoffrey Blainey, The peaks of Lyell, Melbourne University Press, 5th edn, 1993 (originally published 1954), pp.58 and 79.

[26] ‘The way to the west’, Daily Telegraph, 23 February 1897, p.2; ‘Rural jottings’, Launceston Examiner, 16 March 1897, p.7.

Dogging in the snow near Lake St Clair

by | 11/01/17 | Story of the thylacine, Tasmanian high country history

A hunter’s log cabin in the Cuvier Valley (Fred Smithies photo, from the Weekly Courier, 3 July 1929, p.27). From 1927 the Cuvier Valley was part of a game sanctuary. This was not the first time that Smithies, a member of the Cradle Mountain Reserve Board, had photographed an illegal hunting hut in the Lake St Clair Reserve.

In 1906 a newspaper contributor calling himself ‘The Rover’ wrote an account of four months’ hunting in a mountain valley near Lake St Clair. The party of four was from Queenstown. They started for the lake through heavy rain in April, each member bearing a pack weighing 23 kg up the Linda Track, precursor of the Lyell Highway—while a mule carried the rest, a mere 141 kg! First stop was the ‘cockatoo hut’, which at the time was a well-known shelter at the Franklin River.[1] Next day, high on Mount Arrowsmith, the grave of John Largan, who had frozen to death there in 1900, served to warn them of the dangers of the highlands.[2] Arriving at Lake St Clair on the second evening after their long tramp, they spent two days exploring the surrounds before settling on a ‘beautiful valley’ 11 km from the lake. Over four days the party built a log hut with a bark roof as their base.

Then, instead of laying down their snare lines, they ‘waited with feverish impatience for the first fall of snow’. Unleash the hounds! ‘The Rover’ knew what many hunters knew: that in heavy snow wallabies were easy prey for dogs:

‘As we had been at the business before, no time was lost in getting to work, two of us going out and two remaining in camp every alternate day … The same remark applies to the dogs, for they soon knock up if the work is not divided between them. The best plan is to take four dogs at a time, for if the kangaroos [Bennett’s wallabies] are plentiful the dogs will kill faster than a man can skin them, it being a common occurrence to have four or five killed within as many minutes. The fastest kangaroo falls a victim to the slowest dog when pursued through three feet of snow’.

The two men back at camp were kept busy pegging out skins, fetching wood for the fire and cooking supper. No mention was made of a skin shed—but the existence of one is implied by the volume of skins obtained and the duration of the expedition. Mouldy or frozen skins were worthless. They needed to be cleaned and kept dry. The skin shed, a unique Tasmanian invention, was developed at about the beginning of the twentieth century. Its inception was one of the reasons for an escalation in the Tasmanian fur industry, enabling longer stints and greater, more valuable hauls in the highlands where possum furs in particular grew thicker.

After one month the mule was revisited at the Clarence River, and divested of its load—which presumably it had not borne in the interim. The snow was then two feet deep, and in June it got deeper, with metre-long icicles draping the eaves of the hut. Now the ‘rough-coated mongrel’ dog showed his superiority to the purebred, with wallabies being slaughtered in all directions.

One day the hunters found the tracks of a ‘hyena, or Tasmanian tiger’. The dogs took up the scent

‘and in a few minutes discovered the enemy. Their angry growls brought us on the scene, when it was plainly to be seen that the tiger intended to fight to the bitter end. With a cry of encouragement to the dogs we urged them on, and immediately they were engaged in mortal combat with their fierce opponent. The struggle was a long one, but at last the combined strength of the four dogs began to tell, and the battle was over. We found on examination that the tiger was one of the largest of its class, measuring 5 ft 6 in [1.69 m] from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail’.

‘The Rover’ claimed a haul of 91 dozen (1092) wallaby skins—and a weight loss of from 15 to 22 kg per man.[3] The mule, not the men, would have borne the skins back to Queenstown. Providing they were in good condition, they would have fetched something in the region of £80–£140 on the fur market, or an average of about £20–£35 per man.[4] While this would have been a very useful income supplement, better money was to be had in an open season on brush possum.

How credible is this anonymous tale? Let’s start with the hunting season. No year is given, but the events described, if they are real, must have taken place in the period 1901–05. Which season is it likely to be? Throughout the period 1901–05 the season for wallaby was four months, 1 April to 31 July, with closed season for possums in 1903 and 1904 and a one-month season (July) in 1901, 1902 and 1905.[5] So wallabies would have been the focus for many hunters during these seasons, and almost without exception in 1903 and 1904. As for the very heavy snow falls, there was plenty of snow at Cradle Mountain in July 1905 when hunter Bert Hanson disappeared in a blizzard. Hanson and his mate Tom Jones were also using dogs to hunt down wallabies.[6]

A map showing Cuvier Valley hunting huts visited during a police raid on the Lake St Clair Game Sanctuary in 1927. From AA580/1/1 (Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office).

What was the ‘beautiful valley about 10 miles long by two in width, and bounded on each side by high ranges extending as far as the eye could reach, rising almost perpendicularly from the valley below’? Allowing for a little poetic licence, it could be the Cuvier Valley west of Mount Olympus, where hunters like Bert and Dick Nichols operated two decades later.[7]

What about the thylacine: was the carcass submitted for a government thylacine bounty? Plenty of applications were made for the bounty in the spring of the years 1901–05, but without knowing the origin of each application it is very difficult to track down ‘The Rover’ or his mates from Queenstown.[8] Given the value of the wallaby skins they obtained, carting a single thylacine carcass back to Queenstown in order to submit it for a £1 bounty may not have been a priority for them anyway.

In short, the story is plausible. I hope there are further missives from ‘The Rover’, giving more insight into the task of feeding the world’s craving for furs.

[1] See, for example, JW Beattie, ‘Out west with salmon fry’, Mercury, 18 February 1903, p.6; ‘Alluvial gold’, Mercury, 25 August 1935, p.8.

[2] See ‘Mount Arrowsmith tragedy’, Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 3 September 1900, p.2.

[3] ‘The Rover’, ‘A Tasmanian winter camp’, Weekly Courier, 26 May 1906, p.37.

[4] In August 1901 ‘kangaroo’ skins free from shot were fetching £0-1-6 to £0-1-8 each (‘Commercial’, Mercury, 17 August 1901, p.2); in August 1905 ‘kangaroo’ fetched from £0-1-11 to £0-2-6 (‘Commercial’, Examiner, 12 August 1905, p.4). My calculations assume that all the skins obtained were Bennett’s wallabies, when it is likely that some were pademelons. ‘The Rover’ does not specify.

[5] Editorial, Daily Telegraph, 30 July 1901, p.2; ‘To correspondents’, Zeehan and Dundas Herald, 31 July 1902, p.2; ‘Current topics’, Examiner, 31 March 1903, p.4; ‘Warning to possum poachers’, Examiner, 19 June 1903, p.6; ‘To correspondents’, Examiner, 13 April 1904, p.4; ‘Kangaroos and opossums’, Daily Telegraph, 3 May 1905, p.2.

[6] ‘The Tramp’ (Dan Griffin), ‘The mountain mystery’, Daily Telegraph, 5 August 1905, p.6.

[7] See Gerald Propsting to the Secretary for Public Works, 4 August 1927, file AA580/1/1(Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office [afterwards TAHO]); ‘Lake St Clair Reserve: allegations of poaching’, Mercury, 26 May 1927, p.10.

[8] Government thylacine bounty payments in the years 1888—1909 are recorded in LSD247/1/2 and LSD247/1/3 (TAHO).