Burnie, Tasmania
| Burnie Tasmania |
|
 A view of Burnie CBD and ports from a hillside suburb |
|
| Population: | 19,030 (2004)[1] |
| Time zone:
• Summer (DST) |
AEST (UTC+10)
AEDT (UTC+11) |
| Location: |
|
| LGA: | City of Burnie |
| Land District: | Wellington |
| State District: | Braddon |
| Federal Division: | Braddon |
Burnie is a port city on the north-west coast of Tasmania, originally settled in 1827 as Emu Bay. The town was renamed for William Burnie - a director of the Van Diemen's Land Company - in the early 1840s. The city boundary usually includes the outer town of Somerset. Burnie is governed by the City of Burnie Local Government Area
Contents |
Economy
Key Industries: Papermaking; cheesemaking; Burnie port is the fifth largest container port in Australia; heavy machinery manufacturing; forestry; farming.
Facilities and Education
Key Amenities: A wide range of shops and services including multi-function civic centre and art gallery, post office, police station, Supreme Court, public and private hospital, as well as numerous sporting and social organisations. Burnie is also home to the Cradle Coast campus of the University of Tasmania, a TAFE campus and Hellyer College.
Transport
Burnie Airport is located in the adjacent town of Wynyard, a 20 minute drive from the City of Burnie.
Burnie Port is Tasmania's largest general cargo port and Australia's fifth largest container port. It is the nearest Tasmanian port to Melbourne.
Burnie is connected with Devonport via the four-lane Bass Highway and a rail link which is used for freight purposes. Burnie is also connected to the West Coast, Tasmania by the Murchison Highway.
Bus service Metro Tasmania provides transport around the city and its suburbs.
Climate
The average temperature in summer ranges from 12.5 to 21 °C with drier days as warm as 30 °C, with around 16 hours of sunlight per day. In winter, temperature ranges from 6 to 13 °C, and only 8 hours of sunlight. Relative humidity averages over 60% for the year in the afternoon.
Burnie averages 994 mm of rainfall per year. Most of the rain is in the second half of the year from July to December.
 Weather averages for Burnie  |
|||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °C (°F) | 21.0 (70) |
21.2 (70) |
20.0 (68) |
17.7 (64) |
15.3 (60) |
13.4 (56) |
12.7 (55) |
13.1 (56) |
14.3 (58) |
15.9 (61) |
17.7 (64) |
19.4 (67) |
16.8 (62) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 12.6 (55) |
13.2 (56) |
12.0 (54) |
9.9 (50) |
8.3 (47) |
6.7 (44) |
5.9 (43) |
6.1 (43) |
6.8 (44) |
8.0 (46) |
9.6 (49) |
11.1 (52) |
9.2 (49) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 43.2 (1.7) |
45.5 (1.79) |
49.5 (1.95) |
74.8 (2.94) |
94.9 (3.74) |
103.6 (4.08) |
125.2 (4.93) |
110.5 (4.35) |
87.4 (3.44) |
87.5 (3.44) |
68.0 (2.68) |
65.1 (2.56) |
956.2 (37.65) |
| Source: Bureau of Meteorology[1] 1944-2008 | |||||||||||||
Sport
Australian rules football is popular in Burnie, the city's team is the Burnie Dockers Football Club in the Northern Tasmanian Football League. Rugby Union is also played in Burnie. The local club is the Burnie Rugby Union Club. They are the current Tasmanian Rugby Union Statewide Division Two Premiers. Their nickname is "The Mighty Emus".
Media
The Advocate is the region's newspaper, its main press and mailroom is located in Burnie.
Burnie has access to the ABC, SBS, WIN and Southern Cross television stations. The fifth channel, Tasmanian Digital Television, has recently started transmitting from the tower at Round Hill, East of the suburb of South Burnie.
There is one commercial radio station, 7BU at 558 kHz on the mediumwave band. Many Melbourne radio stations can be received in Burnie.
A Newspaper also runs from its head quarters located in the city. The Advocate has operated in the city since 1890 and covers the west and north-west of Tasmania
Notable people from Burnie
- Alastair Lynch, Australian rules footballer
- Eddie Jones, rugby union footballer and coach
References
- ↑ "Climate Data". BoM. Retrieved on August 2, 2008.