Burnie Arts Centre - Cafe Glass Doors

The Bicycle Track

Sport has played a major historical role in the history of Burnie. The first sporting carnivals were held on New Year’s Day in the early 1860s.

The oldest sporting organisation in Burnie, the Burnie Athletic Club, arranged the first New Year’s Carnival in 1887. The Carnival began with small picnic sports, running, cycling, and wood chopping. The 1891 Carnival attracted more than 1000 spectators, and by the turn of the century, the Burnie Carnival was the main athletic event in Tasmania.

The importance of the event was recognised in 2009 with the National Trust acknowledging the Burnie Athletics Club and Carnival as one of Tasmania’s top ten heritage icons. This award recognises the Club and Carnival for its enormous contribution to sport for over 130 years, and its prominence in Tasmania’s annual program of Carnivals for running, wood chopping and cycling.

The Railway Tracks

With the discovery of the west coast mineral deposits in the 1880s Burnie became the port for the Mount Bischoff tin mine and its town of Waratah, and its population trebled by 1891. With the west coast mineral windfall further south, the Emu Bay Railway Company extended to Zeehan in 1900, bringing unprecedented growth of Burnie’s business district and development of its outlying farms.

By 1900 the town’s population exceeded 1500. The railway company played a major role in both the town and the port transporting not only product from the mine but also people and for many years served as a passenger rail.

The coastline/ the emu tracks

Travelling to and from the water’s edge of the north coast of Tasmania has been a rite

of passage for Tasmanians and visitors alike for generations. Prior to invasion, the shores of Mutawaynatji (Emu Bay), Pataway (Burnie) and around the hill Natji (Round Hill) was part of the Country of the Pirinilaplu people of the northern tribe.

Pirinilaplu Country encompasses some 4,700 square kilometres including 113 kilometres of coastline. The plains toward the interior were home to grazing animals like wombats, possums and emus. It was the presence of emus that is believed to be the reason the colonists named the location Emu Bay, although the place name of Mutawaynatji has no links to the emu. Sadly, the Tasmanian emu was hunted into extinction within 50 years of colonial settlement.

The waves

Australia’s first volunteer Surf Life Saving clubs emerged in 1907 on Sydney’s ocean beaches and the practice of Surf Life Saving in Tasmania was not far behind with the minutes of the Burnie Tourist and Progress Association of February 13th 1919 revealing that it was resolved to ask the Emu Bay Council to install a surf lifesaving reel, line and belt on Burnie’s West Beach. Since that day and its official establishment in1921 the Burnie Surf Life Saving Club cemented itself as a significant player in the history of Tasmanian Surf Life Saving.

The extensive history of Surf Life Saving in Tasmania and throughout Australia has grown and developed for over 100 years and become part of local and national tradition and pride and an essential service to the wider community.