Tasmania’s Derby delivers chills, thrills and spills
The remarkable rebirth of this former mining town continues with the opening of a new Nordic attraction.
“No matter how you look at it, Derby is an incredible story,” says Jason Hayden, owner of The Hub, the only pizzeria in this former tin-mining town in north-east Tasmania. Hayden arrived from the Gold Coast two years ago, drawn by word of the town’s miraculous revival as a mountain-bike centre.
His pizza dough is hand-stretched, left to rest for 24 hours, and finished in a wood-fired oven. The pizzeria has a well-chosen wine and beer list, and, like Derby itself, an upbeat vibe. And it’s good value, which is important for the clientele. Mountain bikers can drop $20,000 on two wheels, but they are reputed to count their credit-card swipes carefully.
The town’s history is fascinating, and as up and down as its bike trails. In the late 19th century, several rich tin lodes were found in them thar hills by the Prussian-born Krushka brothers. The town was booming within a few decades. At its height, the Briseis mine, named by the racing-mad Krushka boys after the 1876 Melbourne Cup winner, was one of the richest tin mines in the world and the local population had grown to more than 3000. But when the Briseis Dam burst in April 1929, flooding the mine and killing 14 townsfolk, things started to go downhill.
By 2014, when interest in the famed Derby River Derby rafting race had begun to wane, the town was in a death spiral. But two local councils saw beyond the scarred prospecting landscape, and in the surrounding lush temperate rainforest and rich red “hero dirt” they put down the foundations of a mountain-bike trail network. Blue Derby has grown from 20km in 2015 to more than 125km, with connections to another 66km of tracks in the eastcoast St Helens Mountain Bike Trails. Buoyed by the staging of two Enduro World Series and enthusiastic word-of-mouth recommendation, an influx of mountain bike riders from around the world has given the town-that-almost-died a new lease of life.
Even during the pandemic, property prices in the town have vaulted and new touches of luxury, including a floating wood-fired sauna on the lake and the well-equipped lofts of River Cabins Derby, are set to broaden the town’s appeal. The river cabins have been built with the well-heeled mountain biker in mind. There’s bike storage and a cleaning station, of course, but also a firepit, built-in barbecues in the decks and wood-fired warmth in two lofts designed for couples, as well as a larger cabin for groups.
I’ve come to town not for the trails so much as the exhilaration and novelty of a lakeside sauna. Nigel Reeves, an economist, management consultant and mountain biker, conceived of his Floating Sauna Lake Derby as a therapy for mountain bikers who might limp in after a day on the trails.
After a few minutes’ walk from town across a suspension bridge above the Ringarooma River and around the lake, I meet Reeves beside his floating sauna. A little black timber cabin sits beside a white changing shed on a tranquil lake known locally and prosaically as Briseis Hole.
Briseis is the “fair-haired girl” in Homer’s Iliad who is given to the hero Achilles as a war trophy, and when she is taken from him he sulks, withdraws from battle, and causes the invading Greeks no end of grief. I mention this to Reeves and he looks at me as if I might need a sauna, so I strip down to my bathers and take one of the wooden benches facing a wall of glass fronting the lake.
After a few minutes, sauna master Reeves appears, fully clothed, to add wood to the sauna heater he imported from Finland and ladle water over coals to create steam. It’s not uncommon for a panic reaction, he says, as soon as the brain registers the extreme temperature. “But if you just stay with it, breathe normally, relax, you’ll adjust.”
He recommends the traditional Finnish practice of alternating short sessions in the heat with plunges in the lake; from 80C inside to a water temperature of about 9C. I take the first plunge gingerly then build up to a full dive. With each skin-tingling immersion, I climb the pontoon ladder and return to the sauna with a feeling of elation that Reeves attributes to a natural cocktail of adrenalin, endorphins and dopamine. I’m light-headed yet alert and feeling bien dans ma peau, as the French say. Well in my skin.
“I’ve been doing Bikram yoga for 10 years,” Reeves says later over a coffee at the bike-themed Crank It Cafe, “and it’s allowed me to curate an experience that connects you to your body, to understand how your body responds in a primal sense to an encounter with the elements of fire and water, wind and fresh air”.
“We live in climate-controlled environments, but in a sauna your body is controlling the inner climate, adapting to the outer climate. This is an experience in some ways beyond communication or interpretation.”
The sauna was designed as a post-trail therapy, but I reverse the order by hiring a bike afterwards. I pedal down to the trailhead then churn up the hill through a glade of treeferns and myrtle towards an old mine shaft named the Derby Tunnel. I pause at the mouth. Should there be lights, I ask a bike-riding father and son at the entrance? They plunge in without answering. I take a deep breath and follow.
Inside it’s cool and pitch black, save for the light from my phone and a coin-shaped speck of light at the tunnel’s far end that seems to float up and down with the undulations of the track. I sense the structural corrugations in the tunnel roof going woosh woosh as I pass beneath and instinctively lower my head.
Flying out the other end – relieved and thrilled – I follow the winding downhill track and, at the first tricky corner, lose control. I pick myself up from a sandy embankment in which I’ve become embedded, dust myself down and ease back on to the bike.
Blue Derby’s trails have varying degrees of difficulty, from allegedly easy to black diamond runs, and many bear names that hint at the town’s history, such as Dambusters, Krushka’s and Chain Gang. After the tunnel experience, a leisurely circuit of the lake sounds like a nice idea. But it’s not quite the doddle I’d hoped for. A sharp turn at the end of a dip sends me into a wall of bush. Surely one slight miscalculation could see you fly into the lake. “Plenty have done exactly that,” confirms the owner of the hire bike.
When I return to my loft at Riverside Cabins Derby, local beers and aged cheddar from the nearby Pyengana Dairy await. I take a beer, and then another, and that night I sleep deeply.
Back in Hobart, I discover the Derby Tunnel is a haunt of the Tolkienish Tasmanian cave spider, Hickmania troglodytes, which grows to about 18cm from leg to leg and catches its prey in an escape-proof web.
In the know
River Cabins Derby has three cabins, two for couples and one for groups of four. From $270 a night on weekends, minimum two-night stay, including welcome pack with local sourdough loaf and craft beer.
One-hour sessions at Floating Sauna Lake Derby cost $45 a person. The facility can also be booked for private groups for $300 an hour.
Blue Derby Mountain Bike trails are open daily and are free to use. Bike hire is available in the town and several business offer organised tours and packages.
The Hub: Pizza and Beer is in the main street of town and offers just what it says: pizza and a range of local beers, ciders and wine.
Luke Slattery was a guest of Tourism Tasmania.
