Western waters

Day 12: We bade farewell to Cradle Mountain and headed off towards Strahan, stopping first at Montezuma Falls. It was quite a long, muddy walk through rainforest to the falls, very pleasant, but compared to the variety of yesterday’s walk a bit boring! Still, you shouldn’t complain anytime you are lucky enough to be out in pristine rainforest when you could be at work!

The falls were tall and thin, though not gushing strongly as it is towards the end of summer. There was a little suspension bridge here, which was quite an interesting experience, only taking the weight of two people and having plenty of holes in the floor so you could see many metres below as you rocked in the wind. Despite all the fish and chips, it managed to bear my weight!

We ate lunch in a bit of a bleak mining village before hitting the remote west coast and Henty sand dunes. Now these are big sand dunes and it was fun scrambling up them and messing about up the top. We were just escaping the rain which was brewing up over the mountains and managed to get some time up here before the soaking arrived.

Strahan was wet and wild and there was little to do but stock up in the supermarket and catch up with chores before making some dinner and playing a number of board and card games around our cabins. By this stage however, after seeing so many beautiful things and great weather it was not a problem at all that it was raining and the board games were a good blast from the past!

Day 13: Today the sun was out in the west but we were heading back east, eventually to Hobart. Our first stop was in the town of Queenstown, another mining town with the scars of industry. The town is somewhere in the low clouds which were carpeting the valleys as we set off early in the morning.

We then passed into Franklin-Gordon River National Park, home to some more waterfalls and the Franklin River, source of much of the bottled water in Australia.

Further east, we stopped at Lake St Clair, the end of the Overland track, looking peaceful and still as the cloud rolled in.

The road then wound its way past a series of dams and pipes, transferring water for hydro-electric power. The glamorous site for a picnic lunch was beside one of these power stations.

Here I am at the power station. There is a story behind the star jump…yesterday on the sand dunes a couple of the Japanese girls were trying to get photos of themselves mid-air. The pictures which eventually turned out looked quite good. I wondered if the same would happen here at the power station but I’m not sure I added anything to the already stunning natural beauty of the scene.

Old Carlos was losing us a little, a picnic lunch beside a power station, music getting progressively worse, tiredness kicking in. Thankfully Mount Field National Park perked us up and ensured a fine end to the tour. Here there were some majestically tall trees, beautiful waterfalls (the best of the many we saw on the trip) and wild animals. Walking to the falls, we came across this pademelon, a small wallaby type thing.

There were two sets of falls here, smaller but pretty Horsehoe Falls…


…and Russell Falls meandering down from a decent height.

The weather worsened and traffic got heavier as we neared Hobart and it was with a heavy heart that it was time to say goodbye to a few people, but several were staying on for a day or so and went out for some dinner and drinks. The tour was over and it was a fantastic foray into the highlights of this beautiful island, made even better by some good weather and great travelling companions. However, I had not finished with Tasmania quite yet…

Day 14: A drizzly day (apparently it had been like this in Hobart for the last four) left little option but to visit the Cadbury factory with a few other people who were left over from the tour. It was interesting, the smell at times amazing, and plenty of free samples to get you in the mood! The weather cleared a little in the evening and so we were able to get more fish and chips from one of the yummy barges on the waterfront and visit the bars of Salamanca Place on a Friday night.