Meander Valley Region
Meander Valley is a large and diverse area in Northern Tasmania which includes the mountains of the Great Western Tiers, extensive forests and productive land, the historic towns and villages of Deloraine, Westbury, Mole Creek, Meander, Chudleigh, Hagley, Carrick, Bracknell and Hadspen and Prospect Vale - urban suburbs of Launceston.
Lifestyle opportunities in the region range from urban living, country town living, village living, rural residential, rural and alternative lifestyle retreats. The Meander Valley has tremendous outdoor recreational assets, a strong arts and crafts community, active community involvement and many community facilities. It hosts three major special events during the year - Agfest, one of Australia's largest regional agricultural field days held in the first week of May, the Tasmanian Craft Fair, one of Australia's largest arts and crafts festivals in the first week of November and the Westbury St Patrick's Festival in mid-March each year.
The Meander Valley includes a number of larger employers such as Tasmanian Alkaloids (with over 200 employees) at Westbury, the Launceston Country Club Casino (with over 480 employees) and Unimin Ltd of Mole Creek and over 600 small businesses with between 1-9 employees. Not included in these numbers are 395 farm businesses in the Municipality.
Tourism has become the second most significant employing industry after agriculture and forestry including the downstream manufacturing plant of Tasmanian Alkaloids. This has been bolstered in recent years by the creation of the Great Western Tiers Tourist Route, running from Mole Creek to Prospect on the outskirts of Launceston. Its alpine environment is protected as a World Heritage area and the district includes limestone caves and hidden valleys which shelter farming villages first settled in the early 1800s. The area is popular for its walks, waterfalls, historic homes, gardens, artists and craftspeople.
Growth Prospects
Meander Dam
The recently completed Meander Dam and subsequently created Huntsman Lake is a major infrastructure project which adds to the potential for tourism, eco-tourism, agricultural, environment and recreational activity growth.
Irrigated agriculture has been given a recent boost for the dairy, vegetable and cereal crops (and new crops such as hazelnuts, wasabi, black truffles and ginger) by the approval to proceed with piping water from the Meander Dam to:
- Caveside -Dairy Plains
- Quamby Osmaston
- Rubicon-Sassafras areas
- Hagley
- and a Poatina tailrace to Whitemore scheme.
The Meander Dam holds 43,000 megalitres and its irrigation network will deliver 24,000 megalitres of water to farmers and agribusinesses. Economic benefits to flow from these projects are estimated to lead to an increase of $250 million at the farm gate and over 200 new full time jobs in the Valley. Other knock on benefits from the tourism industry are expected to create a further 150 full-time, part-time and casual jobs. In addition the dam project has provided a mini hydro power station and improved environmental flow to the Meander River.
Westbury - Trans Central Industrial Park
Over 50 lots are available for industrial development on Birralee Road at Westbury in close proximity to the Bass Highway and thus with ready access to the NW Coast, Central North and Southern Regions of Tasmania and adjacent to the trunk line for natural gas into the state. In addition to several businesses already on site, BOC plans to construct a Micro LNG production plant for a dedicated operation to provide alternative fuel to diesel for heavy duty vehicles. Construction is planned to begin in mid 2009 with the plant being fully operational by mid 2010.
Tourism
Opportunities exist in B&B accommodation, eco-tourism, heritage destination development food and outdoor activities building on the new dam infrastructure and world heritage forest alpine areas.
Equine Industry
The Horse Industry in Australia was estimated to be worth over $8billion in 2002 - of which animal husbandry, feed, training, stabling and accommodation contributed $3.1 billion and business related expenses contributed $2.4 billion, of which over half was labour. Meander Valley is at the centre of Tasmanian horse breeding and enjoys a near perfect climate for its pursuit. With the addition of irrigation to its many other attributes in the Valley, stud horse breeding and training is considered an attractive industry for growth promotion.
Forestry and the
Seed Industry also present significant growth prospects in the region.
