Liawenee, Tasmania

Liawenee is a town in Tasmania, Australia built near Great Lake and the River Ouse. The town is about 89 to 90 years old as of 2009. The town is known for its great fishing at nearby Great Lake and hosts several fishing events bringing people from all over Tasmania.^[2]

Origins

It was founded in June 1920 as a camp for the workers at the nearby hydro-electric undertaking as well as some other towns such as Miena. In its humble beginnings the population consisted entirely of the workers at the hydro-electric plant and their families, the houses were wood and canvas.^[3] In this time the camp boasted three cottages where married couples lived and a so called hospital that was only twice the size of a house making it more of a first aid clinic. The original layout included blacksmiths, bakeries and a chaff store which made up the requirements for a workforce making it a work camp rather than a village. During the second world war it became much larger but settlers consisted mainly of men who were paid handsomely for their work yet could find no place to spend it nor a place to deliver mail.^[4]

Geography

Liawenee is located along the Lake highway among the central Tasmanian mountains. The mountains surrounding Liawenee include Split rock, Willow Run Hill, Headlam Hill, McDowall Hill with the latter being the tallest. It is known as the twelfth highest locality in Tasmania and the nearest beach is 100 kilometres (62 mi) west south west from Liawenee’s centre. The rough terrain is great for bush-walking and mountain biking and the nearest populated area is Bracknell at 35 kilometres (22 mi) away.^[5]

Climate

Owing to its high altitude location in the far south of Australia, Liawenee is one of the few places in the continent with a subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc). February temperatures still range between 4 °C (39 °F) to 17 °C (63 °F) which is colder than most mainland Australian winters north of about Perth, Western Australia.^[6] Even though their summers are cool-mild they still have the occasional day where a northerly wind blows causing temperatures to climb into the mid to high twenties but rarely into the thirties, this is common of most of Tasmania and is nothing unique to Liawenee’s climate. The coldest day on record was set on 9 July 1997 where the temperature did not rise above −2 °C (28.4 °F). Days below 10 °C (50 °F) have been recorded in summer with the coldest day in summer being a mere 6 °C (43 °F) recorded on 8 January 1994.^[7] The town spends an annual average of only 0.7 days above 30 °C (86 °F) and 0.1 of that over 35 °C (95 °F) but in contrast it spends a massive 210.2 days below 2 °C (36 °F) and 142.4 of that below freezing. It spends about 136 cloudy days a year which peaks in July at 15 days and drops to an average of 8 days in February, but it still has about 206 days of measurable precipitation each year. The humidity is rather high but the lack of warm or hot weather means that it rarely makes things uncomfortable, its annual mean 9am humidity is 82% and its mean 3pm humidity is at 67%.

References