West Coast Piners
Encyclopedia
West Coast Piners were groups of men who worked 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...

, logging Huon pine. In most cases they used Strahan
Strahan, Tasmania
-See also:* Convicts on the West Coast of Tasmania* Macquarie Harbour* Railways on the West Coast of Tasmania* West Coast Piners-Further reading:* *...

 as their base, as it was the port from which the timber was shipped. The main eras of the Piners were the Sarah Island convict era (1821–33, 1846–47) and the period from the 1890s to the 1940s.

Most of their activities were focused on the rivers (and their tributaries) that flow into 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...

 – the King River and the Gordon River
Gordon River
The Gordon River is one of the major rivers of Tasmania, Australia. It rises in the centre of the island at Lake Richmond and flows westward for about 193km where it empties into Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania. Major tributaries include the Serpentine River and the Franklin...

 
The smaller rivers flowing into Macquarie Harbour on the eastern side are Pine Cove Creek, the Braddon River, the Clark River, and the Bird River. Also Birch's Inlet was an area where pine was trasnported from.

They were celebrated by an annual event at Strahan, known as the Piners' Festival, which was conducted for a few years.
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