Branxholm, Tasmania: Travel guide and things to do

Located 93 km north east of Launceston on the Tasman Highway, Branxholm is a typical north-east Tasmania timber town nestled into the rolling hills. It is notable for its saw mills (arriving from the west the first thing the visitor sees is the mills with its sawdust burners in the valley below), its hop fields and its distinctive sprawling street pattern which makes the small town spread across the valley floor.

There is a simple charm to Branxholm. The large Imperial Hotel is a wonderfully unpretentious old country pub. And, as if the visitor could have any doubts, the proximity of the saw mill, the Branxholm Pallets factory (which suggests that the saw mill specialises in timber for the factory) and the hopfields which come right up the edge of the sawmill and pallet factory, all suggest that the town's economy is totally driven by timber and hops.

The area was first settled by James Reid Scott who named it after a small village in his native Scotland. By 1870 there were only three buildings in the valley but three years later, with the discovery of tin, a shanty town had grown up. By 1877 the population was around 300. By 1883 the town had been proclaimed.

Tin mining gradually declined to be replaced by timber cutting and in 1970 the first hop fields were planted. Today this simple town offers the visitor good fishing in the Ringarooma River, panoramic views from Mt Horror to the north (on a clear day it is possible to see across Banks Strait to the Furneaux Islands), and an interesting, historic graveyard where some of the early tin miners (including some Chinese miners) are buried.