Here's just a small sampling of the historical treasures that shape the ‘Corinna Wilderness Village’ experience today.
The village of Corinna is, as the sea eagle flies, 60km north of Strahan, 70km west of Cradle Mountain and 18km from the Southern Ocean. It sits at the southern end of takayna/Tarkine, the largest temperate rainforest in Australia – and is the northern most point where the famous Huon Pine grows. This ancient unbroken tract of rainforest shows a world beyond human memory and is a living, breathing link with the ancient super continent Gondwanaland.
For 40,000 years, takayna has been home to the Tasmanian Aboriginal tarkiner people who inhabited the Sandy Cape region of Tasmania's west coast. The Aboriginal community know it as ('tar-keen-nee') and continue a strong cultural connection to this special place today. The word Corinna is the Aboriginal name for a young Tasmanian Tiger.
There is debate over whether the Pieman River was named after Alexander Pearce or Thomas Kent. Alexander Pearce, “the Pieman”, was a convict transported to Macquarie Harbour, who escaped, and killed and ate his companions to survive. Thomas Kent of Southampton, was a pastry-cook nicknamed the Pieman, who was transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1816.
Both men had escapes that led to the Pieman area as far as many stories are concerned. The Pieman River has a long history. The river was originally called the Retreat and was renamed the Pieman in 1823 by Captain James Kelly. The coastal transect on the wild west coast between Granville Harbour and Pieman Head presents a wild coastal system seen by very few people in the world.
There was a time when schooners laden with Huon Pine left the river through the Heads, and when steamships, not much bigger than the Arcadia II, came up the river and discharged their cargoes at Corinna and the nearby Donaldson’s Landing.
WHYTE RIVER GOLD DREDGE, NOVEMBER 1900
At the opening of the Tarkine Hotel in September 2008, two of the Ellis brothers, Alec and Mort, returned to Corinna, the town they had stewardship of in the 1970’s. The Ellis brothers brought the legendary Arcadia II to Corinna, where she has remained in continuous service for almost 50 years. They also constructed the Whyte River walk, one of the great short walks in Tasmania.
CORINNA MAIN STREET NORTH, CIRCA 1970
After the boom times, there has only been one ferryman or family resident at any one time in Corinna since 1899. John Ahrberg oversaw activities at Corinna from his home at Pieman Heads, from 1899 to 1937. In 1940 a reserve was established.
The remnants of the town were leased to a variety of families over the years with most of the old buildings being lost and some new structures being erected as time passed.
The Polson family, who had been in residence for many years, sold the leasehold to Tarkine Wilderness Pty Limited in September 2005. The Polson's re-established the punt crossing and operated the scenic cruise to the mouth of the Pieman on Arcadia II. These services are still being operated today by the caretakers of Corinna.
CORINNA MAIN STREET SOUTH, CIRCA 1950
These were colourful days for Corinna, with a population of 2500 people and sailing ships and steamers making the hazardous entrance through the Heads to bring in eager prospectors and suppliers.
It was far from the quiet, peaceful place it is today. Prospector-historian Mark Ireland, who knocked around the West Coast in the boom days, said it was the toughest town he had ever been in – and there were some rough and tough towns in the west in those years.
Eventually, the town declined in population when the Emu Bay railway to Zeehan was opened in 1900.
THE STAR HOTEL, CORINNA, CIRCA 1890
Corinna, which was once called Royenrine, was the aboriginal name for a young Tasmanian tiger. Corinna’s rip roaring days were in the gold rush of the late 1800’s, when it had two hotels – one on each side of the river, being the Star Hotel on the south, and the Corinna Hotel (formerly the Trial Harbour Hotel) on the north, owned by Gam Webster. Corinna was born when prospectors pushed overland south from Waratah to the Heemskirk, Zeehan and Lyell regions. They cut a track from the river at a point some 19km from its mouth and at this exact crossing point Corinna was established when gold was found in the Pieman’s tributaries.
The Corinna gold rush was at its peak from the mid 1870’s to the early 1880’s and the largest nugget of gold ever discovered in Tasmania (7.5kg) came from Rocky River, a small tributary of the Whyte River, (itself a tributary of the Pieman) a few km upstream from Corinna in 1883. It aroused considerable excitement and attracted many men from other Tasmanian goldfields.
“By 1893 the town had more than 30 structures: including the two hotels, a post office, a number of stores and shops, slaughter yards and numerous residences.”
“You do not realise you are just a part of the story of the Tarkine.”
Corinna was inhabited by white settlers in 1881 and proclaimed a town in 1894, following a flood of people coming to the area in pursuit of gold. The Tarkine played a central role in the development of Tasmania's early mining industry, and remains of early mining activity can still be seen in many rivers and creeks in the area that were mined for gold, tin and osmiridium.
Now, the remnants of approximately 600 sites of historic mining activity in the area are still evident. Larger scale mining has, and still is, being carried out mainly at Savage River and Mt Bischoff, with the Silica mine also located nearby. With little evidence remaining elsewhere in the region, the township of Corinna is the only surviving remote area historical mining settlement in Tasmania.