NSW – Tasmania trip 2021: 7-14 February

Sunday – Zeehan
Rain, windy and cold… Temperature at noon on app: 11C feels like 7C!!
So a chill (actually more like ‘heat’) day. Didn’t feel like going anywhere, spent a fair bit of time updating last week’s blog inside with the heater on…!
Arno worked on his photos. A typical Sunday!

The plan was to go to Trial Harbour, but even that didn’t appeal!

Monday – Strahan
Cold, windy, wet. Overnight 4C – max 18

We drove into Strahan, half an hour’s drive, to explore this lovely little fishing town on the water.  It’s the entry point to see the magnificent Gordon River either over water or by air.

As we had done this by seaplane in 2012 (see here, here and here) we opted to do a few walks this time, which took us to the Hogarth falls, with tea-coloured water, and along the foreshore to the lovely historic railway station just outside the town.

There are a number of train tours that run from or to (from Queenstown), and very popular from what we could see; the diesel train returned from the half-day excursion, and many people got off sounding happy and enthusiastic.

Think the steam locomotive which was under maintenance may be used normally.

We enjoyed watching the happy and satisfied travellers, and then walked back to town, noticing some fishing boats with craypots (baskets to catch or keep the caught lobsters in).  A fair number of businesses were closed, but the pub was lovely, and we enjoyed our lunch there.

A lovely town, surrounded by water.

Tuesday – Derwent Bridge
We left Zeehan, in the direction of (the ‘town’ of) Derwent Bridge.  The Derwent is quite an important river in Tasmania, and like mentioned before, this town also was named with zero, zilch, nil degree of imagination. But there are still more to come..!

Anyway, before we got there, we passed through Queenstown.

The Mt Lyell mines have scarred a lot of the mountain faces, which we could not help but notice as we drove into the town.  We stopped for a coffee at the quaint railway station. This is the station where the longer train tour starts (to Strahan).

We walked around the town a bit, and felt sorry for the many closed storefronts, and we picked up some supplies.

Before leaving the town we stopped at and climbed the Spion Kop lookout. Quite an impressive view of this mining town in the valley of spectacular mountains.

We continued on our way, stopping for a walk out to the Horsetail falls on the sideface of one of the mountains. These falls are formed by many smaller streams that come together to form the ‘tail’ effect (with some imagination). The walk was a fenced boardwalk around the mountain, quite an awesome way to view the falls.

We free camped at the Derwent Bridge Wilderness Hotel, a great lodge with huge fireplaces (not on while we were there) and did our bit to support the business and had a nice meal with drinks there.

Went for a cycle to see if we could see the Wall, but that was locked, and we found out that you could only get in by booking the day before, so we skipped that.  We had thought it was sculptures in the outdoor, but it seemed to be an indoor exhibition.

We sat outside for a while, loving that longer daylight here in Tassie. The locals are right when they say that the temperature here reads differently than at home.  15 degrees in the sun here feels hot; 15 degrees at home in the sun definitely does not…! Probably comparable to the Netherlands in a way.

Wednesday – Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park
Up early, prepared picnic lunch, and headed into Lake St Clair NP, for one of the ‘short walks’.  We chose the 13km circuit, grade 4 to Shadow Lake.  It was beautiful.

We started the walk at 9.25 am, and got back at 3.45 pm – our watches advised we did around 16km, climbed 47 stories, and walked some 27k steps. We are not sure of the exact distance covered, but we sure got plenty of exercise.

We saw an echidna, a black snake, and plenty of little lizards, not much birdlife, but lots of trees and low ferns this time.

The lake was like a mirror, and we had our lunch on one of the big fallen over dead tree logs.

During our walk, we saw many bees (and heard them buzzing . Our guide on the Arthur River tour had explained that many bees get their honey from the Leatherwood trees. The flowers are high up in the canopies. We have seen many beehives along our trip.

Jen was a bit miffed that she hadn’t brought Epsom salts to soothe her tired toes in after that long hike.

Thursday – Mt Field National Park
Today we covered the few hours to Mt Field National Park where we were planning on spending 2 nights at the campgrounds, heralded as reasonable, nice, clean with all amenities and some power sites. We wanted to have a few days back on power as rain had been forecast and we really do need the solar panels to work during the day to keep our battery full for our new freezer. It’s an absolute godsend as we can keep so much more food with us but it does take a good chunk of our electricity when not moving. So, of course, we now must upgrade to a lithium battery at the end of our current one’s life…

So we had talked to some people who had been to Mt Field, and heard that the  campsite did fill up after 2pm, so we decided we should aim for an earlier arrival time.

The drive was absolutely beautiful, we got there before 1pm and found a nice spot.  ON the way we did stop at a berry farm in Westerway to buy fresh berries from the farm – large punnet each of blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.

We had been planning to drive out to the Gordon Dam on Friday, and walk the wall, but hearing the forecast for that day was going to be rainy and windy, we changed plans given the still day we had and after levelling the van, headed out with a packed lunch.

Another experience.  The long (well over an hour’s drive) road is quiet and a deadend (at the dam) and really in the middle of nowhere. The drive was picturesque all through heritage listed land, with National Park and also lots of water around – including Lake Peddar.  We met a couple at the dam from Hobart who had just been sailing for several days on the lake, and said it had been spectacular.

The dam itself is hard to describe, Arno’s pictures can hopefully portray it clearly.  It sits at the edge of a very high gorge (like a few hundred metres high). You can walk across the top of the dam wall, which is curved horizontally as well as vertically, and is also used to abseil (go figure!!).  Access to the top of the wall is via around 200 steel steps down, and the length of the wall (ie the walk) is 198m according to the information.

When we got back to the national park we drove in, as it is accessible by car for quite a few kilometres.  Stunning vegetation.

On our previous trip, we did the walk to Russell Falls, which are I think Tassie’s most famous.

Friday – Mt Field National Park
It turned out to be dry (though we did get lots during the night), lovely temperature and not windy at all!  We had a lovely relaxed day, did a few loads of laundry, found a wallet full of cards belonging to a fellow camper who had already left for the day (I was hoping she wouldn’t be gone hiking overnight!), and met her later in the day. All ended well, she hadn’t missed the wallet until the park information centre had tracked her down and called her. So we scored a lovely bottle of red wine from an extremely grateful neighbour.

We visited nearby town New Norfolk for lunch, some supplies, and to have a look around.

Around half an hour drive, we enjoyed the town, as it had a number of shops, but not that much of historic interest to us.

There are salmon ponds in the area, but again, we had visited there also already with Kendy when we were here September 2019.

We did really enjoy our stay in Mt Field, and would have been happy to have stayed several days longer but we had commitments.

Saturday/Sunday – Sorell
Packed up to go to Sorell to visit a few days with our friends Margaret and Andrew (whom we had met on our Japan trip).  They own 200 acres here, and, as at Phil and Deb’s in the Blue Mountains, we are welcome to camp here, with all the mod cons…

Again it was absolutely splendid to see them, and the weather just didn’t stop giving.

Lots of catching up since our last visit in September 2019, and we met their son and 2 of their grandchildren who dropped by.  These lucky people have both their sons and grandchildren living nearby.  I bought fresh eggs from teenage grandson Tom who is setting up a business of eggs and potatoes (20 chickens here, and a field of potatoes).

Arno went and played 18 holes at a wonderful golf club in Sorell as Marg & Andrew had an engagement Sunday, and Jen did some IT support, sun-baked and finally caught up on long-overdue blogging – which you are reading! There is just not enough time in a day!

We are leaving again tomorrow to head for Bruny Island, but have arranged to see these wonderful people again at their other property in Orford end of next weekend. With all their homegrown vegetables and fruit, we ended up with plenty of provisions to with us to our next stop!

Below some pictures of our most beautiful campsite (and also where the blogging was done today!)…

Some other photo’s of Andrew and Marg’s beautiful home and property.

Trip so far...