Kelly Basin, Tasmania - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kelly Basin is a bay on the south eastern side of Macquarie Harbour

Macquarie Harbour

Macquarie Harbour is a large, shallow, but navigable by shallow draft vessels inlet on the West Coast of Tasmania, Australia.-History:James Kelly wrote in his narrative "First Discovery of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour" how he sailed from Hobart in a small open five-oared whaleboat to discover...

on the West Coast

West Coast, Tasmania

The West Coast of Tasmania is the part of the state that is strongly associated with wilderness, mining and tourism, rough country and isolation...

of Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

It was the location of the terminus of the North Mount Lyell Railway

North Mount Lyell Railway

The North Mount Lyell Railway was built to service the North Mount Lyell mine in West Coast Tasmania at the start of the Twentieth century to take ore from Gormanston east of the West Coast Range to the Crotty smelters, and then on to Pillinger in the Kelly Basin of Macquarie Harbour, from where...

, and the ghost town of Pillinger

Pillinger, Tasmania

Pillinger, Tasmania is an abandoned port and townsite in Kelly Basin, on the south eastern side of Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania....

.

In the late 1890s when John Watt Beattie

John Watt Beattie

John Watt Beattie was an Australian photographer.Beattie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1890...

was showing his photographs of the west coast country to Hobart

Hobart

Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...

and Launceston

Launceston, Tasmania

Launceston is a city in the north of the state of Tasmania, Australia at the junction of the North Esk and South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River. Launceston is the second largest city in Tasmania after the state capital Hobart...

audiences, it was designated as Kelly's Basin.

In the 1990s following the failure of the Franklin Dam

Franklin Dam

The Franklin Dam or Gordon-below-Franklin Dam project was a proposed dam on the Gordon River in Tasmania, Australia, that was never constructed. The movement that eventually led to the project's cancellation became one of most significant environmental campaigns in Australian history.The dam was...

project to proceed - parts of the Kelly Basin and Bird River area became part of reserves associated with the western boundary of the new South West World Heritage Wilderness area.

Further reading