A quick drink at the Weldborough Hotel
Earlier this week, after a trip to Eddystone Lighthouse, we stopped into the Weldborough Hotel for a drink. It was such a sunny afternoon and the beer garden of the hotel so inviting that we couldn’t drive by.
Beer garden at the Weldborough Hotel
Weldborough is an small mining town that was established during the boom years of tin mining in Tasmania’s north east. At one point it had the largest Chinese community in Tasmania and the town’s Joss House can now be viewed at the museum in Launceston. The town sits in a lovely little valley and at Weldborough Pass there is a beautiful fern forest.
The hotel has gone through numerous ups and downs but seems to have recently been taken over by enthusiastic new owners who are providing a Tasmanian micro-brew focus. They are stocking products from all 14 Tasmanian micro-brewers.
Front bar at the Weldborough Hotel
I had the Cider Rose from Dickens Cider, which we discovered at Festivale. It is a cider blended with a pinot noir from Moores Hill. This cider is lightly carbonated, has very luscious red appearance and a subtle apple and citrus taste. Served chilled, it really is a refreshing drop on a hot day.
S. had a Forester Real Ale from The Two Metre Tall Company. Based in the Derwent Valley, this company is using hops and barley not commercially grown anymore, going to great lengths to seek out the seeds and propogate them. The Forester Ale was a lovely amber colour and had a very strong hop and malt flavour with a beautiful bitter finish.
Weldborough Hotel
We really enjoyed our experience at the Weldborough Hotel. It was a lovely place to stop in to and have an afternoon drink and soak up some of the sun’s afternoon rays. The barperson was fantastic, very friendly and knowledgable about all the micro-brews and able to provide recommendations. We hope to try a meal there before we leave. A classic bar menu is on offer, using as much locally sourced and organic produce as is available.
Digging up good ol' hospitality
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 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.
In the North-East, like a pig in mud
The town is a regular stopover for groups of road cyclists, quad bikers, motocross riders and bushwalkers. Next week, the hotel is booked out for a group of mycologists, who will explore and celebrate the abundant fungi of the Blue Tier. It's a big deal - workshops, forays, exhibitions and talks on the humble mushroom and its colourful, soft-roofed cousins.
At the hotel, Mark and Felicity Montgomery are standing in for their son Martin, and his partner Sue Campbell, who are away at a wedding in Canada. The senior Montgomerys moved to Weldborough from Ballarat and Mr Montgomery has enjoyed exploring the history of the town and seeing how different people find different reasons to visit.
There was a twitcher who found and photographed 10 of Tasmania's 12 endemic bird species within two kilometres of the town.
Then, there were the four siblings who came from Launceston and Melbourne, who were surprised to find an old photograph displayed on the hotel wall of their father standing proudly in the 1911-12 Weldborough cricket team.
There are also the fisherfolk who come to hunt down a trout in the Weld.
And there are general tourists, stopping off so they can spend some time exploring this fascinating region.
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