Two remote mining sites that helped bring Tasmania’s first feature film to life have been provisionally added to the state’s heritage register.
The Tasmanian Heritage Council has listed Burnt Spur and Flea Flat near Savage River for their significance as early osmiridium mining locations and as the backdrop to the 1925 silent film ‘Jewelled Nights’.
Hidden in dense rainforest in the state’s north-west, the sites preserve remnants of early 20th-century alluvial mining, including a 120-metre diversion tunnel and dry-stone-walled water channels.
According to the heritage listing, the sites “demonstrate aspects of early-twentieth-century alluvial mining” and offer a rare window into the working lives of miners during that period.
Flea Flat was the main filming location for ‘Jewelled Nights’, which the council recognises as the first feature film made in Tasmania.
The 1925 silent film was based on the bestselling romance novel by Marie Bjelke Petersen and tells the story of a Melbourne woman who flees an unwanted marriage by disguising herself as a male osmiridium miner.
The film was produced by Louise Lovely, one of Australia’s first Hollywood stars, who returned from America to establish her own production company.
The council describes Lovely as “a pioneer film maker in Tasmania” who “stood up for herself against the powerful studio system” in Hollywood.
The listing also acknowledges the sites’ connection to Marie Bjelke Petersen, an internationally successful author whose books sold an estimated 250,000 copies.
Petersen carried out extensive research on location for the novel and later championed the idea of turning Tasmania into “a second Los Angeles” through local film production.
Although Jewelled Nights was popular with audiences, it flopped financially, costing £8,000 to make but earning back only £5,000.
The loss brought an early end to Lovely’s three-film plan and Petersen’s dream of a Tasmanian film industry.
Beyond their film history, the sites are considered archaeologically significant.
“Burnt Spur and Flea Flat have the potential to inform an understanding of the living conditions of early-twentieth-century alluvial miners,” the council stated.
“These two sites are not unique in having this potential, but they are more
intact archaeological sites than many of their era.”
“Early-twentieth-century women’s shoes have been found at Burnt Spur, these belonging to presumably one of the few women known to have lived on the Savage River osmiridium fields, suggesting that wives and perhaps even children lived there.”
