Tasmania Holiday March 2008
Page 1. All pictures, including individual collage components, link to larger versions. The panoramas are about 1/4 camera size - don't click them if you have a slow connection!
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The twin Finnish-built ferries, formerly operating between Greece and Italy, were purchased in 2002 and make the 352 km Bass Strait crossing in 9-11 hours, depending on conditions. We travelled on the Spirit of Tasmania II - here is her sister ship passing us at the half-way mark. Cars are carried for only $61 extra thanks to a Federal subsidy designed to minimise the disadvantage of being an island State. (Before the recently-increased costs due to extra security checks, cars were even carried free off-peak and for only $10 in peak seasons.) The car security checks are tedious and add at least an hour to the embarkation time. The crossing was comfortable - the ships are passively-stabilised with longitudinal fins - and uneventful, apart from sighting a pod of whales. We spent our time reading - in my case the alarming 'Regulations for the Disposal of Garbage at Sea' - and watching in disbelief as passengers fed vast sums of money into poker machines programmed to return at most 85% of it.
We arrived about 6 pm and cleared security by 7-ish. Our first overnight stay was near Sheffield, about 50km out of Devonport and by the time we had had a meal and driven there it was dark. We woke in the morning to this nice surprise view of Mount Roland.
In the stagecoach days being 50 km or so from Devonport or Launceston must have been spot on, but nowadays it is an economic death sentence. Sheffield has tried to arrest the flow of tourists heading for the mountains and the South by embarking on a project to cover just about every vertical surface in the town with painted murals. These range from real or imagined advertisements of yesteryear through landscapes and historical depictions to trompe l'oeil efforts such as the chapel where it is difficult even to locate the door. Alas we did not view them all, but then we were making our modest contribution to the Sheffield economy anyway. As we did our shopping we noticed one of the local characters taking his pacadoodle for a walk. He has a number of well-trained alpacas - this is Victor patiently tolerating Joc - and supplements his pension by posing for tourists (that is a donations box hanging on the alpaca's neck.) He also takes them to nearby Launceston, quite a large city, where they happily roam the malls together. Alpacas are patient and gentle animals, and are quite often taken to childrens' hospitals, old folks homes etc. They are easy to 'house-train', as they use their own discrete dungpiles. A jar of the appropriate alpaca pellets is all he needs, and hey presto, an instant dungpile in the park...
These Western Tiers peaks feature in the annual Kentish Lions Club Triple Top Mountain Run, held in November, whose contestants race about 20 km across the top of the three mountains in weather conditions which often include mud, snow and ice. Mount Roland is also depicted on the 2002 Australia Post 'International' $1.00 stamp. I couldn't resist turning back to look at what I thought was an old vintage motorcycle by the side of the road, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a 'Hardly-Davidson Photo Cycle' made entirely out of agricultural scrap with no bike parts whatsoever, which advertised a sculptor living nearby. We soon left the settled valley behind as the road wended its way through densely-forested hills, low peaks and scattered pine plantations, with the occasional bare mountain-top in the distance above the tree line.
A 14 km side road took us up into Cradle Valley, the eucalypts gradually thinning in favour of scattered stands of Tasmania's endemic conifers - Pencil Pines, Celery-Top Pines, and King Billy Pines, contrasted with the characteristic golden hues of the intervening buttongrass plains.
The last few km was a single-track road with passing bays, until we crested the final hill to see the unmistakable shape of Cradle Mountain, comfortingly familiar from countless photos and postcards, with Dove Lake nestled below.
The 6 km circuit of Dove Lake was more like our sort of walk, it is flat for much of the way with extensive boardwalks across the steeper and wetter sections. For a park with thousands of visitors each year it was remarkably clean and well-kept. The track follows the lake shoreline closely while still giving walkers a taste of the different vegetation types. At intervals side tracks branch off to tiny beaches lapped by the pale tea-coloured waters - the colour comes from peat and tannins - just the spot for a picnic lunch. At the Southern end of the lake the mountains plunge steeply to the water's edge, with patches of wet rainforest in the shady gullies, while just offshore the tiny 'Honeymoon Islands' seem to float on the water. From here other tracks branch off to different lakes and peaks, giving walkers a choice of returning via longer, more difficult (and more rewarding) routes.
We were happy to continue with the lake circuit, which next passed through a swampy section with tall pandani, Tasmania's endemic Richea plant which gives a strangely tropical air to this cool climate. They also grow parasitically on trees, as can be seen in the previous picture. There are no beaches on this side, just a few dark inlets amongst the pines. The mountainside is almost vertical, and in places the boardwalk is cantilevered out from the rock face above the water. There were also quite a few steps, which Joc found taxing, as the path rose up over a headland and steeply descended the other side. We started to meet some gasping tourists who had not read or chosen to ignore the recommendation to travel clockwise, and had been almost immediately confronted with a steep set of steps. Towards the end we even met some people pushing children in three-wheeled buggies. We advised them to turn back and go the other way, but they were Australians; "She'll be right!" they said, and we rested on the nice beach near the old boatshed and watched them return ten minutes later, red-faced and muttering. We spent a comfortable night in the campground, although we had to bar the door against two unusually assertive Japanese girls who were quite convinced that our cabin was the backpackers accommodation.
In the morning we had a coffee at the costly resort, so that we could visit their rather nice photo gallery, then headed back out to join the main road. We took an alternative route South which climed up behind Mount Murchison and provided great views back into the Western highlands of the National Park, but it was narrow, winding and bordered by Armco barriers with no safe stopping places over its entire length which made it difficult to enjoy the outlook.
Soon after we rejoined the main road we descended into the famous moonscape of Queenstown, where toxic fumes from the original copper mine have laid waste the surrounding hills, long ago stripped of their trees. The modern mine no doubt has pollution controls, and the hills are slowly regaining some hardy vegetation, although it is rumoured some locals sneak out at night and poison even that, for fear that the tourists won't come any more.
We didn't hang around Queenstown, but continued East for a picnic lunch at Lake Burbury, an attractive hydro-electric impoundment on the King River which is a favourite with anglers, being well stocked with trout. As we travelled along the Lyell Highway we had the Cradle Mountain - Lake St. Clair National Park on our left and the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park on our right. There was no traffic to interfere with our enjoyment of the wild landscape either. Further along the highway we caught a glimpse of the white quartzite peak of Frenchman's Cap (1443 m). It didn't look that far away, but the notice by the road said "Frenchman's Cap Walking Track, 3 - 5 Days Return". It is obviously quite an arduous walk, in fact the official recommendation is to do the 8-day Overland Track first for practice... We were hoping to get to Lake St. Clair in time for the 3 o-clock ferry, which makes two journeys daily to the Northern end of the lake to pick up walkers from the Overland Track who can't face the extra 20 km or so along the lake shore. The ferry - really a fast catamaran - takes tourists along for the ride if there is room to spare, the walkers having priority.
There seemed to be two ferries, but we discovered that the larger one was a typical example of Government bungling, having been brought there at great cost of road-widening, tree-moving etc. only to prove too feeble and underpowered to make headway against the fierce winds of the high country. The smaller craft had two powerful motors and sped us up the lake, Australia's deepest at 167 metres, stopping for a while at a jetty about half way so that we could experience the wet beech forest which comes right down to the waters edge. The rocky shore there had some of the most intensely-coloured lichens I have ever seen. Lake St. Clair is of course a hydroelectric source, and to comply with its World Heritage status, the former 9-metre variation in water depth has been reduced to 3 m which has somewhat reduced the number of dead and dying trees along the edge. It is surrounded by craggy mountains with names from Greek mythology - the pointy one is Mount Ida - and the pretty river inlet at the Northern end, where the walkers get picked up, is called Narcissus. On the return journey we were packed full - there is a radio link at the Narcissus hut to book a ferry place - and there were plenty of jokes about the 'authentic smell of the Overland Track' directed at the hikers who were doubtless looking forward to their first shower in eight days.
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After breakfast we headed into Sheffield for some food supplies and a look around.
The Dove Lake car park is literally the end of the road; from here numerous walking tracks radiate all over the peaks, lakes, tarns and alpine moorland of the beautiful Cradle Mountain - Lake St. Clair National Park. Those who don't wish to return the way they came must take Australia's favourite walk, the 6-8 day Overland Track to Lake St. Clair at the Southern end of the park.
