The Peaks of Lyell

The Peaks of Lyell is a book by Geoffrey Blainey, originally published in 1954. It contains the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, and through association, Queenstown the West Coast Tasmania. It is unique in that it has gone to the sixth edition in 2000.

Blainey was fortunate in being able to speak to older people about the history of the west coast, some who had known Queenstown in its earliest years.

The book gives an interesting overview from the materials and people Blainey was able to access in the early 1950's, and the omissions. Due to the nature of a company history, quite a few items of Queenstown history did have alternative interpretations on events such as the 1912 North Mount Lyell Disaster, and there were residents of Queenstown living in the town as late as the 1970's who differed from the official company history.

Significant characters from the West Coast Tasmania history such as Sticht and Crotty amongst a longer list probably still deserve further work on their significance in west coast and tasmanian history, but the book has had significant 'presence' in being in print for so long, new scholarship on some of the items from the book have only emerged in the late 1990's.

In 1994, when the fifth edition was printed, the company closed down, and most of the records held by the company were donated to the Archives office of Tasmania.

By the 2000's a sixth edition was published.

Publication History

• Blainey, Geoffrey. The Peaks of Lyell, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1954, 310pp.
• History of Mt. Lyell [manuscript] (M.A. Thesis), University of Melbourne, 1955, 328 leaves.
• The first half of this history was presented as Geoffrey Blainey's Master of Arts thesis.
  • 2nd ed., Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1959, 310pp.
  • 3rd ed., Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic.; London, 1967, 341pp.
  • 4th ed., Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1978, 341pp.
  • 5th ed., St. David's Park Publishing, Hobart, Tas., 1993, 370pp.
• Blainey, Geoffrey (2000). The Peaks of Lyell (6th ed. ed.). Hobart: St. David's Park Publishing. ISBN 0-7246-2265-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)