West Coast Council is a local government body in Tasmania, covering much of the western region of the state. West Coast is classified as a rural local government area and has a population of 4,167.[3] The major towns and localities of the region include Strahan, Rosebery, Zeehan and the principal town of Queenstown.
The West Coast has a rich mining and railway heritage as well as a historic convict settlement. It is the largest of the 29 Tasmanian councils by area, and the second least densely populated, after the Central Highlands. It takes in the West Coast Range as well as portions of the World Heritage areas.
The region experiences relatively extreme weather conditions, notably high yearly rainfall totals due to frontal systems, especially at Lake Margaret and Mount Read.
West Coast is classified as rural, agricultural and medium (RAM) under the Australian Classification of Local Governments.[4]
History
Local government in Western Tasmania evolved from locality based councils created in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries:
Gormanston Municipal Council (1907–1986)[5] - became part of the Lyell Council
On 2 April 1993, the municipalities of Lyell, Strahan and Zeehan were amalgamated to form the West Coast Council.[2][10]
Historically the region was more oriented towards the North - due to the main transport being by either rail to Burnie up until the 1950s and 1960s, or by ship out of Strahan until the mid twentieth century. There were no land based transport routes to the south. Consequently, many residents who could afford shopping trips would go to Melbourne in Victoria, rather than Hobart in Tasmania.[citation needed]
While further north Zeehan and Rosebery are settlements that developed from early quite separate mining operations, but were linked by their reliance upon the Emu Bay Railway
There a number of ghost towns or abandoned mining communities in the West Coast, with some such as Crotty actually submerged under hydro-electric scheme dams.
Councillors
As of the 2022 Tasmanian Local Government elections, the council consists of the following members:[11]
^"Gormanston Municipality". Daily Post. Vol. IV, no. 243. Tasmania, Australia. 14 October 1911. p. 4. Retrieved 18 April 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
