Last days in Tassie...

Stui here!

Well, we have braved the ferry without chucking up (it was quite a bit rougher than the trip over!) and now back to the mainland after almost 2 months in Tassie! We’ve had some fantastic experiences, even with the somewhat wet weather we have encountered!

After our couple of days at Lake St Clair, including our freezing paddle, we spent a very wet day driving through to the west coast at Strahan. On the way we took in the stark hills around Queenstown which have been pretty much completely denuded as a result of all of the trees being cut down to feed the copper mine smelters last century, whilst the pollution from the smelters poisoned any regrowth! With a lack of vegetation, the rain pretty much washed away the topsoil. We later found out that the current mine operators are spending millions on rehabilitating the hillsides.

Once in Strahan we booked ourselves into a cabin for a couple of nights of luxury, along with booking ourselves on the Wilderness Railway and a Gordon River cruise. The historic railway ran from Queenstown through to Strahan and was built to transport the copper from the mines to the port. Given the mountainous terrain, the railway uses the APT system, which is a third toothed rail fitted between the two standard rails which the engine engages via some additional cogs fitted underneath it. The extra rails allow the trail to climb gradients of 1:16, compared to a standard railway’s maximum gradient of 1:40. It was a great little trip, travelling alongside the King River which is now biologically dead – the pH of the river is between 3-4 which is acidic. This is another environmental disaster resulting from the Queenstown’s mining history!


The calm waters of Macquarie Harbour

 The next day the weather cleared, which was brilliant for us as we headed off on our Gordon River cruise. We motored out through the Devils Gates, which is the very narrow entrance to Macquarie Harbour, only about 80m wide and usually pretty rough! Thankfully it wasn’t too bad! From the entrance, we headed down to the actual Gordon River, cruising up the river to have a look at the spectacular reflections on the still water! Absolutely spectacular, with the reflections almost perfect! On the return leg to Strahan, we stopped at Sarah Island, another convict penal settlement. At the time of the settlement, the island was completely cleared, but most of the vegetation has now grown back with a few ruins spread over the island.

From Strahan, we headed up into the Tarkine region, staying a couple of nights at the Corinna wilderness settlement. To get there we had another ferry crossing, on the “Fatman” barge over the Pieman River. It’s actually a big pontoon on cables, and really wallows around quite a bit as you drive on and off!

Given the reflections on the river as we crossed on the barge, it wasn’t long before we dropped the kayaks in the water and went for a paddle down the river. We turned up the Savage River and paddled up to a shipwreck we had been told about. The wreck is of an old steamer that used to haul huon pine logs from the Pieman and surrounding rivers. It went down in suspicious circumstances, with some people suggesting it was scuttled for the insurance money!

I spent the next day out paddling the Pieman and Whyte Rivers, lucklessly trying to catch a trout while Michelle spent the day relaxing in the camper (it was another pretty wet day!).

Leaving Corrina, we took the back roads through the Arthur Pieman Conservation Reserve, which is a huge spectacular wilderness. We originally were planning to stop at Arthur River, but arriving there we found it is a popular spot for off road vehicles, with almost every shack having a few quad bikes parked out the front! Preferring slightly more peaceful surrounds, we decided to head through to the north coast for a couple of nights. The countryside is really beautiful, as are the little towns and coastline. We climbed the Nut in Stanley, which is the remains of a volcanic plug that towers above the town.

A forecast for a couple of days of sunny weather, we decided to head inland to Cradle Mountain National Park a couple of days early to see if we could jag fine weather to climb Cradle Mountain.

On the first day, we walked around Dove Lake in the afternoon. The walk had beautiful views of Cradle Mountain and the lake. We later drove back into the park to watch the sun set over the peaks, and see if we could spot some animals on the way back out. We didn’t see any Tassie devils, but we saw a couple of wombats. We stopped on the side of the road to watch one, who couldn’t have cared less about us – he wandered up to the car, using the mudflap as a back scratcher as he wandered under the ute! The engine was even still running!

Although we woke up in mist, the next day was even more beautiful, and we spent 8 hours hiking up to the top of the mountain and back down. The views were absolutely amazing in every direction. We had our lunch up on top of the mountain taking in the views, whilst it also gave us a breather, as the climb up was pretty full on, scrabbling up and over boulders. Not really a hike, as you needed to hang on tightly in several spots. I ended up having to help two older ladies back down, as they were really struggling to get down and getting more than a little bit worried. We all got back down, but they each took a tumble on the way down! We certainly jagged a couple of beautiful days!

Atop Cradle Mountain

As we left Cradle Mountain, we stopped in at the Chateaux to have a look at a wilderness photograph exhibition, and a special exhibition on the Tassie Tiger, including a rug that was made out of 8 pelts. It was really interesting and there are still a lot of people who believe they might still be surviving in the wilderness somewhere!

We spent my birthday visiting another cheese factory just out of Deloraine. Tasted quite a few different cheeses, including a Wasabi cheese! Given some of the stinking hot wasabi we have been eating with our sushi recently, it wasn’t hot at all, but still retained all of the flavour! So we bought a bit of that, along with some blue cheese! Following the cheese was a salmon farm, where we also stocked up on a small whole smoked salmon!

Given we hadn’t seen a Tassie Devil in the wild, we decided to visit one of the wildlife parks to have a look (although we did heard one from our camped up at Cradle Mountain one night!) Michelle reckons they are pretty cute – until they start growling and snarling at each other, or start chomping down on dinner! Their dinning is all very social and we were told they the snapping and snarling is just establishing the pecking order!

Unfortunately, it is the contact at dinnertime that is passing on the facial cancer through the population. We were told that they suspect that up to 85% of the wild populations have been wiped out by the cancer. The poor little devils (pardon the pun!) are really vulnerable and could be extinct if the research doesn’t come up with something soon!

The wildlife park also had several wombats - the Mack truck of Australia wildlife! As one of the wombats was reared from a really young age and used to humans, we were able to have a hold of a solid 10kg of wombat! They are really solid little things!

Our last couple of days were spent staying with our friends Paul and Carol at their house on the Tamar River just north of Launceston. We missed out on seeing the penny farthing races at Evandale as the rain was bucketing down and the races were cancelled. The cyclists we still riding around the streets, but as one of the riders said to us, barrelling down the road as fast as you can and then trying to take a 90 degree bend on a penny farthing is not a comfortable situation!!!

Anyway, we are now back in Melbourne , with the car booked in for it’s 100,00km service and the camper back with Cub getting a new door zip stitched in (we’ve worn the other one out! Thankfully it’s still under warranty!)

Hope everyone is cruising along! Catch you later!

Stuart & Michelle