It was raining yesterday so Suzanne and I went for a days drive though south western Tasmania---Waratah, Savage River, Corinna, Zeehan---along the edge of The Tarkine. The working mines--eg.,the open cut tin mine at Mount Bischoff and the open-cut magnetite mine at Savage River---were off limits. We didn't have the time to walk to the ruins near Waratah.

The painting below by Raymond Arnold is part of a collective set of 30 panels, plein-air paintings depicting geographical and mining aspects from the Savage River and Roseberry mining communities when Arnold was a community artist-in-residence in the early 1980s.


Raymond Arnold, Timber frame and rocks, construction site, from Traces, West Coast Tasmania, 29 from Set of 30 Paintings, Oil on canvas

Being an artist in resident is probably the only way to explore the mining ruins in any systematic way.