The Coal River Valley in located in the City of Clarence, Tasmania and is a primarily agrarian area to the west of the city, located between the townships of Cambridge, and Richmond. It is nestled between the Meehan Range, Pitt Water and the Pontos Range.
The Coal River Valley was one of the earliest areas used by the first British settlers outside of Hobart, and the nearby town of Richmond dates from 1823, when a bridge across the Coal River was constructed. The name Coal River comes from the abundant natural source of coal in the area. The first British settlers used the valley as a mixture of grazing, pastureland and crop growing.
Its primary land usage is as vineyards and produces very high quality slow maturing cool weather grapes.
The Coal River Valley is sheltered from the city lights of Hobart by the Meehan Range making it an ideal location for the University of Tasmania's Mount Pleasant radio telescope observatory.
Famous quotes containing the words coal, river and/or valley:
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
—Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960)
“I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“All the Valley quivered one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)