Tale of two towns

We drove on the beautiful Lyell Highway to Strahan via Queenstown and marvelled at how different two towns (that are so near to each other) could actually be. Anyone who has been to Tassie would know about the hills surrounding Queenstown stripped bare by mining and pollution, and the town that time has forgotten.



For us, the difference between the two places was most clearly illustrated by Tim asking the butcher in Queenstown for kangaroo or wallaby. The butcher said ‘Oh no, that’s really old-fashioned. We used to sell it but not anymore.’ So wallaby as a poverty food is still quite a recent memory in Queenstown.

Then down in Strahan, at the pub that has been transformed into a brightly lit and pricey restaurant big enough to cater for all the tourists, there was wallaby on the menu, with a jus and some other fancy-pants accompaniments!

We were mainly in Strahan to go on a cruise on the Gordon River and Macquarie Harbour, which included the former penal colony of Sarah Island, none of which we could safely get to in the tinnie. The cruise was good, but I think a combination of sharing the experience with over a hundred chattering tourists, and having explored other beautiful rivers on our own, meant that we weren’t quite as blown away as we’d expected.


Strahan is in a beautiful position on Macquarie Harbour, but it all feels a little bit large-scale-tourism. And for good reason – the place was packed. So we moved on after a day, and took our time through the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, walking in off the road at every opportunity.

Cradle Mountain

We’d managed to leave all the tourist icons in Tassie until the end of our trip and Cradle Mt was the first where we got a shock about the number of people here! We realised we had been travelling somewhat off the beaten track. It all felt a bit much at first, loads of tour buses and Britz camper vans, and lots of information centres, cafes, Tassie Devil wildlife centres at the entry to the National Park. But then we started walking into the park and thought, OK there is a reason for all the tourist mayhem, this place is seriously gorgeous!

We set off to climb Cradle Mountain on a beautiful clear day. It began with an easy walk across plains, then up via the fabulous Crater Lake, and gradually up to the foot of the very rocky looking Cradle Mountain.



On the way up we seemed to encounter all the inhabitants of the Britz vans and people heading off on the Overland Track. Got chatting to an American couple who were also heading to the Summit, and started to realise how much Cradle Mountain is a ‘must-see-destination-for-the-overseas-tourist’! This couple had just a week in Tasmania and came straight off the plane here to Cradle Mountain, and were probably only going to Hobart and Freycinet as well.


The view from the top of Cradle Mountain was amazing – 360 degree views of mountain ranges and the South West Wilderness. It was almost too much to take in, and it was only as we were going down and started losing parts of the view, that we realised just how much we could see from up there!

Arthur Pieman

Had previously wondered who this Arthur Pieman fellow was to have a big conservation area named after him, but discovered it is the boundaries of the Arthur and Pieman Rivers that give this area its name – which also goes by the name of Tarkine. The coastal area came as a little bit of a surprise, having built up a mental picture of 100% ancient rainforest! But once we’d got our heads around the button-grass plains, the ‘wild-West-Coast’ was doing it for us.



We stayed at the settlement of Arthur River for a little while, which was also close to Marrawah, Tasmania’s most famous surf break, and where Tim and I broke the surfing drought. Tim’s shoulder has not been OK for surfing until recently, and I’m such a beginner that I’m not confident enough to go out on my own. But now that we’ve made a start, and are heading up the east coast, it will be on – surfing safari here we come!


We also got the tinnie into the Arthur River and explored the heavily forested river – this is where the Tarkine rainforest is hiding out, in the wet spots, funnily enough! It was very beautiful.



We then drove down the Western Explorer Road, which was apparently very controversial when first constructed. Which makes sense, as it doesn’t seem to really go anywhere – but just opens up the area for possible mining and logging? The road takes you to Corinna, on the Pieman River, which is a tiny little village, a ferry crossing and a lovely old boat made of Huon Pine that runs cruises on the river.

We also got the tinnie in to explore the Pieman, and it was seriously, jaw-droppingly beautiful with steeply sloped cliffs and rainforest.

Northern Tasmania

We took our time across the top of Tasmania, stopping at the Penguin Market, Wynyard, Stanley, and a few camping spots across the top.




Then went inland, into the Tarkine area, to look for a trail through the rainforest that we’d read about, where a company runs guided walks that were unfortunately a little out of our price range. We drove for a while through plantations and areas of clear-felling, and still could not find this trail.

We did go to the South Arthur Forests, which is managed by Forestry Tasmania. They have some cute euphemisms for forestry operations – big signs saying ‘This forest is a working forest’ (which makes you think of a forest clocking on and off) or ‘This forest is managed for multiple uses’ (which usually means clear-felling ahead).



But in amongst the plantations and regrowth, there were some beautiful patches of rainforest reserved in the South Arthur Forests, bisected by the big Arthur River and other smaller rivers. And some button-grass plains at the Milkshake Hills Reserve.


And the cutest baby wallaby we ever saw!

In search of a wombat

Formerly the Asbestos Range National Park, Narwantapu National Park was promoted as the centre of the wombat universe. Which we were pretty happy about, having not ticked the wombat off our extensive Tasmanian wildlife spotting list!

We’d been very keen on wombats ever since reading some interpretative panel about wombats which talked about how they like to poo on whatever high surface is around – even on the top of sticks! Trying to imagine a wombat getting up to poo on top of a stick has fascinated us ever since – but unfortunately we’ve yet to see it. We have seen lots of wombat poo, but more boringly just on boardwalks. Anyway we saw some lovely big wombats at Narwantapu and were happy!



We were at Narwantapu over the Australia Day Long Weekend, and on one of those days drove over to the other side of the inlet to Port Sorrell, where there were a HUGE number of people camped in caravans and big tents, and huge numbers of Australian flags. Is it just us, or does flying the Australian flag seem more & more like a provocative gesture? The whole vibe in this place was a little ugly, and I got the feeling that if you looked Middle Eastern you’d get some hassle in this place.


It was a relief to get back to the more geeky company camped in the National Park – where there are no generators and no dogs, and no big Australian flags flying.

Launceston again

We came back to Launceston thinking we were going to pick up our computer, but alas, we wouldn’t pick it up until we were leaving Tassie! We made the most of our time in a big town – fixing a tyre, adjusting some brakes, seeing a film, eating out.

We asked in a wine bar for a recommendation for a cheap and cheerful but good asian restaurant, and got sent to Me Wah, the fanciest chinese restaurant in town. Having just been for a longish walk around Cataract Gorge, we weren’t feeling so flash, but being Launceston, there were blokes in t-shirts and thongs, so we fitted in OK. But the dress code didn’t really fit with the over the top, obsequious silver service and the wine list that featured some French wines of $3000 plus! We were trying to imagine who would knock back a $3000 bottle of wine with their fried ice cream! The food was great though.

I (Nic) was happy to get out of Launceston because when I’m here I am tormented by the title line of a song that I used to know ‘Watching the Lights Go Out Over Launceston” by that formerly favourite Tasmanian band of mine from the late 80s early 90s The Fish John West Reject. I even still have the t-shirt, in mint condition! But anyway I can’t remember any more of that song, and so every time I see the word Launceston I get that same line running through my head – it was driving me mad!

The eternal quest for a trout

Trout fishing is a BIG thing in Tasmania and having looked in a couple of fly-fishing shops, it seems to be mainly another excuse to sell blokes an enormous range of hugely expensive gadgets.

And with Tim’s experience of trout fishing we’d have to say that trout are pretty elusive (so maybe all the really expensive gadgets are required?). Tim fished in rivers all over Tassie with just a couple of wee ones to show for it, but it wasn’t until we got to Woods Lake in the Central Highlands that he actually caught a decent sized trout. And this was after HOURS of trolling a lure around the lake! What made it worse was that when we’d first arrived there was an insect hatch, and there were trout rising up all over the lake to grab the insects. So they were there, just needing some of that expensive fishing gear!(flyrods, reels, waders etc).



Woods Lake was a great place to camp – unlike some of the other lakes which had fairly stark surroundings, this was surrounded by forest. The spot where we camped had a fantastic view of the lake.

Mt Field National Park

Mt Field is Tasmania’s oldest National Park, with waterfalls, rainforest, giant swamp gums, and alpine lakes and mountains. It was a stunning day when we arrived and we drove straight up to the alpine area to wander all over it. We had a hard time envisaging what it would be like ski-ing there in winter. And we marvelled again at the accessibility of beautiful mountain areas in Tassie!

Great Southern Land

We went down as far south as the road goes in Tasmania to Cockle Creek on the Recherche Bay, which like everything in that whole D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Huon Valley is a seriously beautiful area of small bays and winding coastline. Recherche Bay is also where the forest comes right down to the edge of the ocean, and there are so many mountains in the distance. Recherche Bay is famous for being where Bruni D’Entrecasteaux camped for 4 weeks on an expedition looking for La Perouse - and don’t all the names reflect that fact!



It was down at Cockle Creek that the sheer number of shacks in Tasmania first became really apparent – and so many inside the boundaries of the National Park. Apparently the State Government has been sorting out the tenure of these shacks for some time, but seemingly all in favour of the shack owners – because there still seems to be heaps of them on Crown Land! Like this one...


Cockle Creek is also where the South Coast Walk finishes – from all accounts a fairly intense week-long walk. Seeing so many hikers around made us really wish we were kitted out for overnight hiking – but since we are already carrying SO much stuff and had already spent so much money, we couldn’t really justify another whole set of camping gear! But we did do a wee portion of the South Coast Walk into the South East Cape – the southern most point on the Tassie mainland.

An island off an island off an island

Bruny Island is so close to the winding coast of the Huon Valley it is continually hard to figure out where it begins and ends. Its a short ferry ride over and then you step down a notch in pace. It must be the island off an island off an island thing, if Partridge Island, off Bruny Island was inhabited, it would be so chilled out as to be comatose.

Bruny was great, it began beautifully sunny with lots of stunning views from Cape Bruny lighthouse, and a long walk around the Labillardiere peninsula on a day so hot that WE EVEN SWAM IN THE OCEAN (twice!).





As we think we've figured out about Tassie weather, a beautifully hot spell is followed closely by a ferocious change in the weather, and this was a big one. The next day the dark clouds were rolling in, but we perservered with getting the tinnie in the water anyway. And the unsettled weather did something unusual to the teeming multitudes of flathead in the water, and they were almost flinging themselves into the boat. If we didn't get a bite immediately we were thinking something was wrong. We fished for as long as we could but the rain drove us in eventually, with a big haul of flathead. Funny thing though, once they'd been filleted they seemed quite small.

And thus began the three days of literally solid rain, which was a little dispiriting towards the end, despite our couple of explorations in the warmth of Elsie, mainly to escape the soggy campsite. We were camped next to a family from WA who had tried living in Tassie a few years earlier but were driven away by the rain, they said they were so homesick for sunshine they only stayed a year. We could understand this at this point. We were even mentally publishing bumper stickers "Tassie: Great Place, Crap Weather".


And then the rain stopped, the sun came out and we revised our bumper sticker to "Tassie: Fabulous Place, Interesting Weather". And we got to get out of the tent and out of Elsie and back to walking around the beautiful coastline and exploring the D'Entrecasteaux Channel in the tinnie, desperately trying to catch an escaped Atlantic Salmon from the many fish farms in the channel. But ending up with small sharks, 'couta, AUSTRALIAN salmon and more of the ubiquitous flathead.