Travelways

THERE'S something cheerful about driving into Scottsdale and getting the thumbs-up.
Just one thumb, actually. The big digit was carved by the late North-East artisan Joshie Janoschka and a panel explains that one day a tree fell across his gate and instead of chopping away the nuisance he set about creating something unique.
The Big Thumb became his gift to the town and gives the spud diggers a worthy rival to mainland counterparts such as the Big Pineapple and the Big Prawn.
There's a small shelter and benches where weary travellers can pause at Janoschka's creation, which gives a hint at the appropriate pace for embarking on the Trail of the Tin Dragon.
The trail celebrates the North-East's mining history and the many Chinese who worked the tin at famous old mines such as Briseis at Derby and Anchor at Lottah.
I head further along the Tasman Highway and stop at the Derby Tin Mine Centre where Jodie Terry is starting her second month as manager.
If the Trail of the Tin Dragon has a capital, this is it. The newly renovated centre has a cafe, a wonderful array of exhibits and a picture theatre where visitors can watch an 18-minute film on the region's heritage.
There are reminders of the 1929 floods, when the Briseis Dam collapsed and killed 14 people, in the same period of torrential rain that inundated Launceston.
There's no sign of rain this day, however, as I drive past the magnificent grandstand at the Derby cricket ground. Every time I glimpse that ground from the highway I want to don the whites and roll the arm over; perhaps have a Pimm's at the tea interval.
Further along is tiny Moorina with its golf course and a flash, new sign to a Chinese Monument that might be in the cemetery. I make a brief attempt to find the monument, fail and continue to my destination: the Weldborough Hotel.
Today's Weldborough is small and quiet; it seems an unlikely place for Tasmania's first casino.
Yet in the 1880s the boom mining centre's Chinatown had just that.
Maj jong was the game of choice and Europeans joined Celestials in chancing their hand.
"In the roaring days of the Weldborough mines the lights were never dimmed,'' wrote the historian W. H. MacFarlane.
Weldborough had up to 700 Chinese in its heyday, more than half of the number in Tasmania.
The town's Chinese temple was such a fine example of a Joss house that it was sent to Launceston's Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in the 1930s for safe keeping.
"Weldborough became practically a Chinese village,'' MacFarlane wrote. The walls of the Weldborough Hotel are covered in old photos of families, Chinese and European, who broke the ground of the surrounding countryside to make their living.
There are photos of the construction of the massive Mount Paris Dam, built to provide water for the mines. It has been decommissioned but is still worth a visit to marvel at the determination of early engineers.
At the pub, a worker has finished a day pulling swedes on an organic farm at Pyengana. A couple from Channel have pitched a tent and are reconnoitering bushwalks for a return in spring.
Publican Martin Montgomery's father Mark is pouring glasses of cider from the tap and the atmosphere is convivial.
The conversation is about wild places, like Tasmania's south-west coast, and matters of moment like the difference between swedes and turnips.
The four customers put the cooking skills of Mark's wife Felicity to the test and she passes with flying colours. The other guests give a Janoschka-worthy thumbs-up to chicken curry and pan-fried trevalla and I love the scotch fillet with blue cheese sauce.
The fish is from the wharf at St Helens, the scotch fillet from a butcher at Ringarooma. Mark Montgomery says that they are trying to make great meals that people will come back for; they seem to be getting it right.
I stay that night in one of the pub's seven rooms. They are old-fashioned, clean and so comfortable that I can't make much of a dent in MacFarlane's History of the North-East before zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
About 130 years ago miners were sleeping three shifts a day in the Weldborough hotel's beds. Tonight is much quieter.
No bright lights, no casino; just the sounds of Mother Nature working up a storm.


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