Day 45: Teds Beach to Gordan Dam to Mt Field National Park

We got up and got going with reluctance the next morning. It was chilly and still grey and grim. But we had places to go and things to see.

First stop was "the end of the road" at the Gordan Dam. Built in the 60s and early 70s to generate electricity for Tasmania. It's the highest arch dam in Australia and Lake Gordan is also one of the largest in terms of volume (Lake Pedder is also one of the top 10 in volume in Australia).

It was misting when we arrived, but we rugged up with our plastic jackets and explored. There was a climb down a metal staircase to walk across the dam wall that we managed, though it was a little scary. The views were stunning. The photos only shows a glimpse!

Lake Gordan

It made me a little sad to think of all the beauty
that has been hidden by this artificial lake. The question that
hangs out there in many places in Tasmania is:
to harness (or use) or to protect?

More Lake Gordan

After that we drove back along the road we travelled the day before till we reached Tyenna where we had lunch in the van and then stopped for coffee/hot chocolate at the Swedish/Austrian/Australian cafe.

Our next goal was another national park, this time Mount Field. It's a very popular as it's fairly accessible to both Hobart and Launceston, but the one big plus for us was their campsite. You can't book it, but it's cheap and provides electricity, showers, and water. We drove right in and easily got a spot. Then we headed out on the walks. We ended up walking nearly 10 km and over 50 "floors". It's a gorgeous park. Like many places we've been it would have been good to stay longer and do more. Check out the photos of our walk, though!

Very tall trees

I think this is Lady Baron Falls

The annual shedding of bark seems to go on a long time.

The famous Russell Falls aren't hard to walk to

Coffee shop + general store + gift shop
It's been fun to go to coffee shops that aren't chains.

Day 44: Snug to Teds Beach

It was a misting, cold day. The landscape was almost
eerie and it certainly felt remote.

This day we aimed for another "end of road" adventure, the second in the week. We slightly misjudged things, though, as it was a public holiday (ANZAC Day), a rare one where grocery stores shut for the morning out of respect to those who have served to protect our nation. We've been mostly buying food as we go, the occasionally bigger shop, but often just a few things as we need them. This day we were driving into territory that didn't have shops, and almost got there before midday. Thankfully we were able to snag some meet and bread rolls at one of the last shops on the road, but they weren't cheap! It has continued to be interesting to find the remote areas of this little state, and realise that actually there's quite a lot of them, and small rural towns. There's very little "city" here at all.

Teds Beach

This road took us into the middle of the large area in central Tasmania that is designated national park. We stopped for the night close to the shores of Lake Pedder, a lake greatly increased in size in the 70s due to the Serpentine Dam. This is a free free camp. We had access to toilets only.

Lake Pedder

It was a fairly small campsite and was almost full with seven units staying overnight. Amusingly six of the seven had Queensland number plates! It was cold and people stayed inside, so we only met one of them, though saw another come back on his mountain bike, only to pull out his kayak and spend some time on the lake. It was cold and wet, I guess he wasn't feeling it so much because he was so active.

It was a slightly eerie landscape, not helped by misting rain. The area looked barren and desolate. This is the one place that we've camped where there was absolutely no internet coverage. Not even one bar "I'm trying and might give you occasional access". Our phones said "SOS only". No problem! We had plenty of other things to occupy our time, but on these very cold nights—the van has no heating—I've often been heading for the warmth of bed soon after 8.30 (and then read for an hour or more). It was under 10C when we got up and got going the next morning.

Ted's Beach is named after a Project Manager of the Gordan River Power Development (1969 till 1975) who fell in love with the area and wanted to encourage people to come and enjoy swimming, fishing, and boating. The beach is artificial in the only sense that they cleared the vegetation away and the water (when it rose after the dam became operational) created the beach from the rocky shore.

Day 43: all day at Snug

This was a wonderfully quiet day. I spent time blogging, as well as reading and playing games with David. The weather had turned colder, but we had a lovely northerly aspect on the van and sun poured in all day, keeping things very comfortable. 

Snug has a population of around 1,400. After lunch we went for a little walk exploring the local creek and a couple of bridges. A needed restful day. Also, hot showers in a decent bathroom are always wonderful after a couple of free camping days! We enjoyed a rare meal out in the evening at the local pub. It definitely looked like a sleepy country town.

On the right of the photo is north Bruny Island.
This island has about 800 permanent inhabitants,
but they receive thousands of visitors (perhaps as
many as 150,000 per year). We didn't go over there.

We took a short walk down the Snug River

It's a fun name! It's not so common in
English to use adverbs or adjectives as 
proper nouns.

Day 42: Cockle Creek to Snug

After several busy days, we decided to head to a place we could stop for a whole day. David chose "Snug" because it had a cool name (and a caravan park)!

We started the day, however, by walking a bit further along the road we'd been parked on to the true "end of the road", read some more information about some of the amazing pioneers who'd lived down here, including a family whose women ran their forestry business after all their menfolk and male workforce went off to war. We read about the French who came for scientific investigation, named a few things, made friends with the local original inhabitants, but also unwittingly, by their mere presence, killed off the whole tribe by introducing new diseases. We read about the huge whaling industry that also operated from this southern point, but died out pretty quickly, along with the whales.

More clear (cold) water: Cockle Creek

End of the road sign.

It's blurry because the road was bumpy: that's my story!

Then we headed north again. There's only one way out! We drove up to Huonville where we stopped for lunch and a short walk along the river, then drove through the famous Huon Valley to the town of Snug, on the NorthWest Bay (or is it the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, the boundary isn't clear).

Autumnal colour at Huonville

Smoky sunset at Snug

Sunset at Snug

Day 41: Sorell to Cockle Creek

This Monday morning we drove to the home of friends I knew when I was at high school. They moved to Tasmania when I was at uni. I stayed with them in the mid 90s when I came down here for a professional conference, but we haven't stayed in touch, aside from being Facebook friends. It's been 30 years and a lot of water has gone under the bridge! They had two little boys back then and I wasn't married. There was a lot to catch up on.

Not a bad view (though a bit streaking, after driving
on dirt). This is Cockle Creek.

After we spent time with them we stopped for groceries and then headed to the bottom of Australia. Our goal was "the end of the road" at a place called Cockle Creek. It turned out the end of the road was more than a half hour of dirt road, fairly rough dirt road. But we made it to this isolated spot on the bottom edge of the massive Southwest National Park. There are a number of places you can just pull off the road and stay for the night. They've even installed toilets, but that's the extent of the facilities.

We read the next day that this is closer to Antarctica than the top of Australia, but when I researched that a little I found that even Hobart is closer to Antarctica than the top of Cape York (brrr).

Cockle Creek

Day 40: Coles Bay to Sorell

Swansea Anglican Church, est. 1871

We did finally get to a church on our journey. This morning we drove about 45 min off the Freycinet Peninsula to Swansea and worshipped at Swansea Anglican today, there were less than 10 people in the building. David's sharp eyes saw a plaque on the wall commemorating Rev. Joseph Mayson, whose name also graces a local mountain on the peninsula.

Then, morning tea happened and numbers at least doubled, which we did not expect. There are interesting dynamics in Christian circles in this town. The Anglicans meet weekly and the Uniting Church meets fortnightly and some go to the Anglican Church on the Sundays the Uniting Church doesn't meet. But it seems they usually share morning tea each week.

View down the road from the church
across Great Oyster Bay to Freycinet Peninsula

We kept driving south after our substantial morning tea. We had lunch at Triabunna, yet another small town. Tasmania abounds with towns between 500 and 1,000 people!

Dead Island at Triabunna. There are some graves
there, but the origin of the name is unclear.

We weren't sure exactly where we were stopping that night, but ended up at a free camp in the town of Sorell, only 30 minutes from the centre of Hobart. It was very suburban after all the places we’d been recently (about 2,500 people). This town is one of Australia’s oldest towns, first established in 1808. We didn’t do any tourism here, though, as we had arranged to see some friends the next morning in eastern Hobart.

Day 39: Walking around Wineglass Bay area

Wineglass Bay

Today we walked a long way, much further than we usually do. Definitely hiking territory and we really aren’t hikers! We saw some amazing postcard-worthy views. It was a stunning day—cool and sunny, but not cold or windy or hot. Apparently Wineglass Bay is considered one of the top ten beaches in the world! 

We didn't swim, but a number were stripping down after the hike in (there is no road access, only hiking up about 1,000 steps and back down again over the pass). We'd packed a simple picnic lunch and ate that at the beach, then hiked back to our van on “the low road”.

One joy on this journey was being able to stop and "read the signs". There are a lot of informative signs around the state and it's felt like doing a jigsaw that I didn't know needed doing. The various bits of information we've read has filled out our understanding of this part of the world, so we have a bigger picture now.

Again and again we've come across this 
struggle: plunder or protect. It's something
that seems especially obvious to our modern
eyes in such a stunning place as this. Whales,
mining, and electricity (hydroelectricity) seem
to have been the three biggest arenas where
in the past people have been keen to take 
advantage of Tasmania's natural resources. But
that all came at a cost, of course.

One thing we've learned is that there was a lot of "explorer" and "scientific" interest in the area in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and much of that wasn't from Britain. The Dutch and French played a big part. The island is named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman (he was here in 1642!). The French left their names all over the East Coast: Freycinet Peninsula, Cape Baudin (named after the captain that Napoleon Bonaparte send in 1802), Cape Tourville, Cape Sonnerat, Cape Forestier, etc.

If you can, enlarge the photo to read some 
interesting historical background
about this peninsula (pictured on right).

The line of mountains on the peninsula are named after an American whaling ship captain. One of the mountains is even named after a long-serving local Anglican rector, Rev Joseph Mayson. We encountered his name on the next day too.

More stunning clear water at Wineglass Bay

Hazards Beach

So many wonderful views! The water is truly amazing. 

We walked from the red "You are here" directly
up the picture and then at Wineglass Bay took
a right and walked across the Isthmus to Hazards Beach
then around the coast back to "You are here". Our
phones reckoned we walked about 10 km, including over 90 "floors"

One portion of the walk around the coast

Day 38: Scamander to Coles Bay

Austral storksbill, also known
as a Wild geranium! Indeed
it looked like a geranium to us.
This is native to Australia and New
Zealand.

Feeling refreshed after a rest day, we headed south for one of the big tourist draws in this state, but you'll have to wait to tomorrow to see a photo of it.

We stopped on the way out of Scamander at the Winifred Curtis Scamander Reserve. Named after the late Dr Curtis, a Tasmanian botanist who had a lot of letters after her name, including Order of Australia. It was just bushland to us, but to someone in the field it must be a very special place. The brochure we got from the information centre says it's been largely untouched since European settlement. We did spot some little flowers that we realised later, when I looked them up, were natives.

Then we headed south via the inland route via St Marys, but carried on along a road called the Elephant Pass Road. This road was very windy, even more windy and narrow than many other Tasmanian roads and had no road markings on it. I'd hate to drive it at night! Amazingly it is designated as an "A" road—an "A" designation is apparently given to the state's most important arterial roads. 

Blowhole at Bicheno

While I am on roads, Tasmanian roads are something to be experienced. Whoever posted the speed limits was pretty unrealistic. Yes, we are driving a rather large box on wheels, but many times to feel safe, we're driving between 15 and 20 km/h lower than the posted limits! And it's not just that they are curvy, but that they are narrow, often without markings on the side, and the edges looks soft, so caution definitely seems necessary. It's a rare moment that we make it up to 100 km/hr and so we're allowing more time that we think we'll need to get anywhere. Also, we're making it a regular practise to pull off the road, where we can, if we get someone stuck behind us. Thankfully I haven't experience motion sickness here, though I have memories of feeling as such when our family came down here when I was 10, but of course I was sitting in the backseat then.

Rugged shoreline at Bicheno

We made it to Bicheno for lunch at a bakery, then walked through some historical sites, and around the shoreline to see a blowhole. Like many coastal towns in this region, sadly this used to be the base of whalers. We weren't stopping for the night here, so once again missed the penguins (they've been "sights to see" in other places we've been on the north coast too).

Large-flowered flat pea, native to Australia

We did a tiny bit of grocery shopping then headed south to a caravan park in Coles Bay on the Freycinet Penninsula. We were in time to catch a sunset there and enjoy another quiet evening before tackling a hike the next day.

Common or Pink heath, also native

Driving down the Freycinet Penninsula to Coles Bay

Sunset at Coles Bay