NO LONGER ENDANGERED

Tasmania

Location: Garibaldi Township Ruins, North East Tasmania

Threat:     Destruction by Flooding

Garibaldi Township was settled by Chinese tin miners in the 1890s, and was abandoned during the First World War. Students from Scottsdale High School have been visiting the site as part of a local history study for twenty years and recently began documenting and caring for the ruins. They have cleared an

access route, uncovered a number of structures and surveyed the site, and are working with the local council to provide interpretative signage as part of a Chinese Heritage Trail in north eastern Tasmania.

All this work will be destroyed if the ruins are flooded as proposed as part of the Summer Rains project.

Tin mining was important in the early settlement of north eastern Tasmania, and these ruins hold considerable local historical interest, and form a major focus of the Scottsdale students’ study of their local area. Students are preparing to interview former Garibaldi residents, and have an on-going program of archeological work on the site. They have revealed several pig ovens, and have worked to collect and describe the relics which litter the site, and plan to clear the water races and sluice gates. Fittings from the joss house are now exhibited in the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston.

This is a wonderful example of a community caring for its heritage. The work of these Scottsdale students should be celebrated and acknowledged, and the place they care for should be protected so it can continue to reveal its stories to them, and through them to the wider community.