Old Film:: Railway to Maydena (1940s-50s)
The railway track that allowed timber to be transported from Risby’s Basin logging camp into Maydena for processing had a 3′ 6″ gauge. These photographs were scanned from 6cm x 9cm film negatives made by my grandmother Elvie Ruth Bonner (1901-1986). A section of this track can be ridden today by tourists on a pedal-powered railtrack rider. However, when my father was a boy, the railway into Maydena was a place of hard work and heavy industry with logging, transportation of osmiridian ore and as a weigh station for Tasmania’s post-war dam builders to-and-from Strathgordon. Even as an old man, whenever my father spoke about the wood train his eyes would light up like it was yesterday.
