Ghost town Dundas hard to find, but it does have a new museum

Updated

Mike and Eleanor Phelan live in Dundas, a ghost town in the forests of western Tasmania, where they say life could not be busier.

The Phelans' love of the lifestyle that goes with prospecting and mining has kept them together for 46 years.

Increasingly they are also mining the past, with the opening of their own history room next to their house.

They have long been the only inhabitants of the abandoned and overgrown township, their house the site of what was once a general store right in the town centre.

Today the view from their home, in every direction, is of trees.

Rainforest has reclaimed almost all of what was left when a town that quickly grew to over 1,000 people in the 1890s just as quickly disappeared.

"There was a count of 1,081 people at one stage, but at that time there were only 76 women," Eleanor Phelan said, opening the door of the recently established, shingle-roofed Dundas History Room.

"There was a school, a couple of teachers. I have a train timetable on the wall over here.

"The train schedule was pretty busy actually, though it's hard to imagine now. Trains leaving for Zeehan, trains leaving for Strahan."

Using an old map of the town supplied by an elderly former resident, Harry Mayne, they have also found and opened up High Street, Hardy St and Maxwell.

What 'opened up' means is that it is now possible to walk through the bush where once it was too dense.

You are walking where just 100 years ago, there were numerous two-story buildings.

Fire removed old Dundas, rain often uncovers it

Eleanor only recently found the remains of another dwelling, bits of a pram, a bed and other relics.

She says she looks forward to good rainfall because it often helps to unearth new finds.

"Walking through the bush here you see little squares where dwellings used to be, little huts" Ms Phelan said.

"There's remnants of chimneys, lots of bricks, we find plenty of bottles. Most of it you have to dig for. There was a big fire here that wiped out a lot of what used to be."

Dundas is now so lost in the western temperate rainforest that when Mike Phelan recently hurt himself cutting wood, paramedics had a hard time finding the place.

It sits about 2.5 kilometres off the Murchison Highway between Rosebery and Zeehan along an unsigned and narrow gravel road.

A surprising number of visitors have been able to find their way to Eleanor's little history room, including one recent traveller from Brazil.

There are half a dozen other small mining leases in the area but the Phelans are the only people who call Dundas home at the end of the day.

A couple of years ago, a group of five young bushwalkers got themselves lost in the Dundas area and slept rough for a night before Mike and Eleanor found them and gave them all beds and a hot shower.

You could not have got lost in Dundas in the 1890s as Dundas was a silver mining boom town, a boom that was so short that the sound of it barely had time to echo around the West Coast Range.

The first prospectors and miners got there in the 1880s and the Mount Dundas Post Office was open by the end of 1890.

The name was shortened to Dundas in 1892.

Like nearby Zeehan — the silver city — mining and speculation saw Dundas expand very quickly in the 1890s.

On the south side of Mount Dundas a similar boom was happening at the same time around copper at Mount Lyell.

The copper mine would continue for more than 100 years and the town of Queenstown maintains its hold in the western wilds, long after Dundas slipped into the trees.

"There were five pubs here at one stage, the first one got burned down," Ms Phelan said.

"The Miners Arms Hotel was down by the bridge where you came in. It had 26 rooms, a ballroom, everything.

"It's amazing what they brought out here. They built the railway in just 14 months, pick and shovel, built a railway from Zeehan to here!"

The Phelan's found the concrete remains of a turntable where the train would once be turned and pointed back towards Zeehan.

They have recently put a sign at the site and at other locations including where the town's own Junction Brewery once stood.

The couple mine the rare crystal formations known as crocoite in one of the old underground mines at Dundas, the Dundas Extended, as well as quarrying an unusual mix of serpentine and stichtite closer to Mount Dundas.

Their passion for rocks is only rivalled by their passion for the history of Dundas and for their growing collection of artefacts and stories in their history room.

"There were still a few people out here in the 1930s and 40s and I think the Whelans were the last people here in about the 1950s. They had a farm," Ms Phelan said.

"I'm hoping one day that this little history room will be a treasure in more ways than one. You know, when we're gone, hopefully it will keep going.

"Things don't get preserved until it's too late. People think 'why didn't I keep that!?' but it's too late once it's gone."

Topics: history, arts-and-entertainment, mining-rural, zeehan-7469

First posted