TASMANIA – 19 – 26 April 2024
Finally, after almost 12 months of planning, our day of departure has arrived. Rod, Jim and I were going to Tassie for 2 weeks … 4 days of caving, and cleaning out a rubbish filled doline, then 6 days with the Savage River cavers, helping them to do some track maintenance, and then 5 days back at Mole Creek for some recreational caving! Doesn’t get much better than that!
We left Rod’s (in Sydney) at 7am on Friday morning and arrived in Creswick (Vic) at around 7pm. By mid-morning, Rod wasn’t feeling at all well and Jim had taken over the driving. This was unlike Road, he doesn’t usually abdicate the driving, something was afoot!
While enjoying a Chinese takeaway dinner, I started to have some suspicions, “have you been out amongst people this week?” (Rod mostly works from home), “ah yes, on Tuesday night”. “Mmmm, we might pick up some RATs at a chemist tomorrow morning”. Which I did and low and behold Rod’s positive. We had intended to do Park Run on Saturday morning at Ballarat (or somewhere like that) but Rod said he wouldn’t be doing it. You know he’s sick when he doesn’t do Park Run!
We looked up the Ferry regulations, and you could catch the ferry from Geelong to Devonport (Tasmania) so long as you isolated in a cabin, which we would be doing, so we headed down to Melbourne. We made our way to Brunswick and organised to have lunch with Stephie (she’d had Covid a month ago so was ok to sit with us out in the fresh air). Then we headed down to Geelong and waited around for the ferry, not much else we could do, Rod’s feeling unwell, and by now I’m feeling “flu like”.
Waiting for the ferry which was late, by now it’s 10pm.
The cars all lined up at the ferry terminal waiting to load onto the ferry.
And, finally at around 11.30pm it arrives, and then it takes another hour for all the cars to be driven off, and then a half hour for us to finally drive our car on board.
Once on board we made our way straight to our cabin and bunkered down, I slept pretty much the whole way until we landed in Devonport. We quickly headed down to Rod’s car, and de-ferried and then headed down to Mole Creek where we had a cabin booked for the next 4 nights. I took a RAT and what do you know, I’m positive too! We cancelled all our plans and basically isolated for the 4 days. I spent most of that time in bed reading, and all things considered wasn’t that unwell, until I took some anti-virals and those did me in! By the 5th day though I was feeling much, much better.
Our plans for going to Savage River for 6 days were nixed – the people in that club were too frail for us to go anywhere near them, so, we booked some rooms at Smithton and started our road trip. Jim, who probably didn’t have COVID was our navigator and picked out points of interest for us to go to.
Day 1 of our Road Trip … 25 April – Smithton via the Tarkine Wilderness – first stop Sheffield.
Sheffield – in the main road a local was taking his alpaca for a walk, cute pet.
The highlight of Sheffield is that most of the buildings in the centre of town have lovely murals painted on the walls. I was still a little under the weather so didn’t hop out and take as many as I could have so this is just a sampling.
A replica of a “post office tree”, usually a hollowed out tree where mail could be dropped in the early 20th century. It was also a gathering place to socialise with farmers and cattlemen. This replica is in Sheffield.
Another nice mural.
And another one.
We’re on the main road now heading for Waratah and my instructions to the guys were “stop anywhere that there is a brown and white tourist sight”. This was our first stop “Lookout”, and we have to say that there was nothing to see there!
After passing through Waratah (nothing to see there either), we came to a sign for Philosopher’s Falls, so we followed the directions and came to the car park, still not sure what we were going to find. Apparently, Philosopher Falls was named after James “Philosopher” Smith, who discovered Tin in the Waratah area in 1871. It is unclear how he received the nickname “Philosopher”.
I have to say that the start of the walk was impressive, beautiful rainforest and a lovely easy well-tended track. The walk was written up as 1.5 hours.
And then straight away we started to see, right beside the track, wonderful fantastic fungus, all shapes and colours. If nothing else, this made the walk worthwhile!
These little beauties were the size of my smallest finger nail.
These were about the size of my fist, it’s possible they are bioluminescent, but one wouldn’t know until night fall.
The largest of these was the size of my thumbnail – they look delicious, could imagine them being eaten (if we knew that they were edible).
A difference species, again, thumb nail in size.
This interesting one was about 8cm tall, very pretty and delicate.
And finally, a lone red one, again about the size of my smallest finger nail.
About halfway along the track we came across a Hobbit’s house, only 30cm in height in a giant hollowed out tree. I was tempted to photoshop a little red door on it.
Eventually, the track came to a small bridge crossing the headwaters of the Arthur River. The track was constructed in 2010 and utilisesd a water race that was built decades earlier to supply water to Magnet Mine which was first opened in 1894, and was closed in 1940, having produced over 38,000 tines of lead, and 227 tonnes of silver. Imagine the time it would have taken back in the days to hand build this 1m wide water race.
A few hundred metres along the race, we came to steps, obviously this was the way down to see the waterfall. We had been able to hear it for some time but couldn’t see much of the creek, so, down we went.
And eventually we came to the lookout and the impressive falls. Sadly, we couldn’t see all the way down to the bottom.
And, then we had to retrace our steps, all 210 of them! Great job TasParks have done with this walking track, it’s in excellent condition and your interest was held for the whole 1.5 hour walk.
Back on the track, we’re now in Tarkine country, 150sqk of wilderness (with a road through it LOL), nevertheless, it’s an area I’ve long wanted to see. The first Brown and White sign was An Extinction Story so we turned off and followed the road. There was a great viewing platform looking over the wilderness area and an installation.
Initially, it was difficult to see what the sculpture was depicting, then I read the information panel below.
“The extinction story is my interpretation of the most iconic photographs of the Thylacine (often called the Tasmanian tiger) trapping era. The photograph dated 1869 features Mr Weaver and a Thylacine strung up by its legs in the studio. It’s a challenging and confronting image and it has always resonated with me as my grandfather trapped Thylacines and other animals in this area.” (Matt Calvert, Artist)
I have to say, when we were driving away from the installation, I wondered how Mr Weaver’s descendants felt about this iconic photo, probably not as bad as the descendants of the person who reportedly in 1936 did not open the door to the sleeping quarters of last Thylacine held in captivity and it died of exposure in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart. People still fantasize about there being Thylacines somewhere in the Tarkine, if there are any still surviving, the Tarkine would be the place they’d be!
By now it’s getting late and we’re heading towards the coast and can finally see the ocean. From there it was a straight run to Smithton and our accommodation. By now we’re all really hungry as there weren’t any stops for lunch or snacks, so we basically checked in, ate dinner and then called it a night. It had been a big day!
Day 2 of our Road Trip – 26 April
Back on our Brown & White sign tour and we decided we’d check out the Tarkine Trail, apparently a round trip that would take in all the sights. First stop … Trowatta Arch. I have to admit I wasn’t sure what to expect from this 30minute round trip walk.
Another lovely rainforest walk, with a stunningly crafted walk-way.
And a whole range of fabulous fungus! These little white ones were the size of my thumb nail.
And, check out this baby! about twice the size of a 50c coin, quite evil looking, you wouldn’t want to eat this one.
I think you could eat these ones, I’ve definitely seen something like this in the supermarket.
These little white ones were half the size of my smallest finger nail.
Again, these ones looked quite edible.
And then we got to these delicate ones.
And these yellow ones, stunning, about half the size of my hand.
and another really delicate one, about the size of my hand.
Then we got to the whole point of the walk, the Arch! The arch was created by the collapse of two sinkholes either side of the arch, one dry and one water-filled. The water-filled sinkhole was geomorphologically classified as a cenote – a steep walled water filled sinkhole and this one is regarded as one of the best exampleas in Tasmania, more than 20m deep.
A better view of it, I love the green water plant floating on the top, can’t imagine a cave diver wanting to plunge into that green stuff, but I’m sure they have.
This shot gives you an idea of the enormity of the arch and sink hole.
And another shot of it.
Back on the road, looking for more brown & white signs – they’re quite prolific now!
Crossing the Arthur River, remember when we crossed the headwaters back at Philosopher’s Falls?
And then there’s a sign by the side of the road, and you almost didn’t have to get our of your car for this beautiful sinkhole!
Followed shortly thereafter by another lovely walk through the forest to Chisholm Lake.
A half-hour walk gets you to the lake – a huge sinkhole!
It doesn’t come anywhere to the SA sinkholes that they have, but it sure is big, I didn’t want to walk too close to the edge in case the mud sucked me under LOL.
Typical Tarkine vegetation, lots of trees and ferns galore.
With a nice creek thrown in for good measure!
And, just when you think you’ve seen it all … the most luscious red fungus ever!
More fairy floss.
And what surely should be bioluminescent ghost fungus!
And, Rod found me these teeny tiny purple ones, again, about the size of my little finger nail.
I found this beautiful lichen on the ground, nature sure is versatile with the colour green.
Our final stop at Sumac Lookout – looking out over more of the Tarkine Wilderness, and what do you know, more bloody fungus!
We hadn’t taken any lunch with us, and by the time we got to the lookout, I was really, really hungry. We checked out what stop on the way back to Smithton had a knife & fork beside the name (international signage for “food here”). There wasn’t much, but Arthur River was beckoning us – fortunately there was a hamburger place open and as Rod said “they were the best hamburgers in Arthur River” – well, they were the only ones so not much competition!
From there it was a beeline back to Smithton and a shower and to prepare ourselves for the next day’s adventure! Thanks Jim for navigating us through the Tarkine Wilderness and thanks Rod for driving all that way.