Day 26: Lake St Clair to Strahan via Queenstown

It was windy roads all day this day

We crammed quite a lot into this day. Sadly it was another Sunday where we couldn’t get to a church. We did listen to a couple of good podcasts that we’d downloaded prior to our journey (when we had WiFi, something that’s been hard to find).

Our first stop was at a place called simply The Wall. A number of people had mentioned it to us and as we were very close by at Lake St Clair we decided it warranted a visit. It’s a stunning large-scale display of wood carving. Three-D scenes from our history and nature have been carved into 3m x 1m panels of Huon Pine. The genius of it is that the carving is only about 25 mm deep (an inch), yet portrays incredible detail and deceptive depth. It’s 100 m long! No photos were allowed inside, so you’ll just have to visit yourself, or get a taste here. 

Along the long and windy road west from here we stopped at Nelson Falls and walked along a boardwalk off the road a couple of hundred metres. It was gorgeous, but also wet and cold. Some of the history of the place was written on signs around it and it's amazing to think that pioneers lived here once (some with young children) while they were building this road through the mountains. What a difficult and somewhat lonely life that must have been!

Nelson Falls

Then we continued on to Queenstown, a place that is well known for its sulfur-burnt hills. This is a mining area, has been since the late 1800s, but in the early years they didn't look after the environment very well (nor the health of the miners or their families or those supporting the mining effort). The town and local environment is still scarred from those early days. This isn't a "cute" town, though you can see some efforts to make it more attractive. For example, they've created some mountain biking tracks on the nearby bare mountains. Photo included for our mountain biking friend Mark.

We did grocery shopping in Queenstown. Curiously there are two IGA grocery stores only a block from one another in this small town (pop.=1,800). One stocks coffee beans (ground and whole), the other does not! This is a regional centre (the other place we could have driven to find a pharmacy two days earlier), which probably explains the two grocery stores.

Nelson Falls

We drove west from here to Strahan to find somewhere for the night. We ended up free camping at the golf course. A beautiful open area next to the actual course. There were a lot of others parked there also for the night. We didn't do any exploring, but did chat with our sons for a bit after we arrived. Our goal was to be close to the place where our next adventure took off from at 8.15 the next morning.

Nelson Falls: green everywhere

We saw many mountains this day

Queenstown

Parked at the golf course, we had a lovely view from our
dining room at the rear of the vehicle.