If you turn right at Avoca and drive 15 kilometres on, you'll find yourself in Royal George - one of Tasmania's many and fascinating old mining towns.
It's quiet now, but 100 years ago it was a busy site.
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Royal George lies in the valley of the St Paul River, between low ranges of granite hills.
It's good country for finding tin.
The original settler seems to have been Robert Cowie, who arrived in 1828 to take up a grant of 1200 acres.
Almost immediately his curiosity was aroused by a heavy, black mineral in the local creeks.
Local tradition says he gave a sample to the well-known surveyor, John Helder Wedge, who sent it to England, where it was quickly identified as tin ore.
If true, this was the first discovery of tin in Australasia.
Interest in Tasmanian tin grew in the 1870s and it wasn't long before prospectors were undertaking some small-scale alluvial mining.
They soon discovered indications of large primary lodes, but lacked the capital to develop them.
In 1890 an outcrop of high-grade tin ore was discovered at Roy Hill estate, on the west side of Royal George.
It was worked by the Roy Hill Freehold Co. until 1895, then let on tribute to Fritz Rubenach until 1898.
He seemed to make a living out of it for a while.
Only months after Roy Hill was found, another high-grade outcrop turned up at Brookstead farm on the north side of Royal George.
This was Robert Cowie's property, where the original tin discovery was made in 1828.
The new find was briefly worked by the Brookstead Tin Mining Co.
The most significant effort to exploit the resource didn't come until the Royal George Tin Mining Company was founded in Launceston in 1911.
Their main lease was 80 acres, on which there was a long (850ft x 80ft by 40ft deep) open cut with an adit at its base and underground workings on two levels below.
Sadly, after much construction and expenditure, they closed in 1922, having produced over 600 tons of pure tin.
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In 1955 some excitement was generated when uranium was identified in the old Royal George workings.
It was the first discovery in Tasmania, but drilling by BHP found it was too low-grade to be economic.
Ten years later the Cornwall Coal Co. became interested in the old mine's tin potential.
They dewatered the mine to enable underground inspection and evaluation, but after six years of exploratory work in and around the mine, they also lost interest.
CRA was the next big player to become interested.
In their final report in 1991 they said it was too small for them.
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They said the maximum potential size for the Royal George deposit was about a million tonnes at just 0.5 per cent tin, though the area as a whole remained prospective for further deposits.
