At the end of 1878, just as the excitement at Beaconsfield was fading for small miners and the action was in companies that had gone deep underground, people began to hear whispers of a new discovery on the east side of Mount Arthur.
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The rush that followed was the biggest ever seen in Tasmania.
Many miners who'd been at Beaconsfield joined in, including some of their leading citizens, and some of the crooks too.
It was said to be like old California.
Within months, the new town of Lisle had four hotels, six butchers, 26 stores (including five bakeries), nine boarding houses and 10 sly grog shanties.
Lisle was a diggers' rush - companies weren't involved in the early years.
The gold was alluvial and found in creek beds rather than in reefs that needed expensive excavating and crushing.
Men just tramped in with a miner's right, pegged a piece of ground, pitched a tent or erected a bark hut and started digging.
By mid-1879 Lisle had far overtaken Beaconsfield and was the undisputed third largest town in Tasmania.
But it was a tough life, with horrendously difficult access, and most miners left their families in Launceston, Beaconsfield or on the mainland.
The difficulty of supplying a big town with provisions, building materials and mining equipment plagued the new arrivals and substantially increased costs.
It was particularly frustrating for the farming community then existing in Lilydale.
The third largest town in the colony was on the other side of Mount Arthur, with huge demand and prepared to pay almost any price - and they couldn't get to it.
Goods had to go to Launceston and then back out again, so the profit was wiped out in transport costs.
For a short time three Launceston hotels became staging grounds for the assembly of wagon trains to Lisle.
However, Lisle was short-lived.
They never found reefs, and they never made the transition to an agricultural community.
The last of the Bessells, who'd discovered the gold, held out until leaving in the 1950s.
Then in 1963, the last Faulkner left and the town was finally gone.
Forestry cleaned up what remained and planted trees over it, and the story of Lisle ended.
Despite its short life, Lisle was a significant part of our Tasmanian history.
It was a pioneer of dredging and hydraulic mining, and contributed significantly to the long period of prosperity in Launceston in the last quarter of the 19th century.
