Tasmania 2017/18

Departing Melbourne on Spirit of Tasmania:    29 Dec 2017

Making a change from dragging suitcases and ourselves through all the hassle of airports and baggage weight restrictions, we decided to take the Spirit of Tasmania, which is a drive on- drive off ferry with a ten hour sailing time. Peak travel time, leaving on the 29th December, so the ferry was full, and finding a seat was a challenge, which could possibly be put down to the fact that, in our attempts to get into the Recliner Lounge section, for which we had not paid, Elly waited for someone to come out through the door, and then grabbed it before it closed. So there we were, in very comfortable chairs with a great view, in someone else’s booked seats!
Of course, the “someone else” turned up and we had to leave, and by this time in the “unwashed” area, most of the seats had been taken.  However, we managed, and the 10 hours went quite painlessly. Disembarking, we just found our car, waited for our turn, then drove off – no baggage collection or hire car queues. Wonderful!
From Devonport, which was our disembarkation point, we drove for two hours up into the Central Highlands and alongside the Great Lake, which is about 300 metres above sea level.
Friends of ours, Leon and Kerry Allen offered us the use of “the Shack” which they had recently purchased, and which is in a town called Miena, on the Southern end of the Great Lake, really just a few houses, a small store and two pubs. It was bitterly cold, so we settled in and lit a fire and had a glass of red wine.

Magnificent views  of the gully from highway

Great Lakes at sunset

Miena:  30 Dec

Daughter Eleanor had given us a pack of cards, each of which describes a walk to be done in Tasmania, one of which was a walk to Meander Falls, which is a small town about an hour from Miena, back up to the north. After a few wrong turns, we found a local who gave us directions, because we had found Meander but there were no signs to the falls.
Finally we arrived at the car park, and read the signs which gave a number of options, the one to the falls stating that it was a six hour return trip. Since it was already about 2:00pm we decided to give that a miss and instead do a walk to a place called Split Rock. The path was initially obvious and steadily climbing, then occasionally was a little more difficult to recognise as a path, which made things a bit uncertain until we discovered that there were small red arrows nailed to the occasional tree, so all we had to do was climb from arrow to arrow. Still it was sometimes uncertain as on occasion there was no arrow in sight.

Finally, after climbing for about ninety minutes we arrived at Split
Rock, which loomed over us. Underneath the rock was a cave and a trickle of water. This, we assumed was our destination. Actually it was a beautiful spot and we spent a little time there.

We then set out on the descent via the various paths and pseudo paths back to the car park. This time we had to follow the yellow arrows to ensure we were on the right track. Well, that is ok in principle, but we soon lost sight of yellow arrows after following a promising path and then – just scrub. I clambered back up the hill about 50 metres to try to find the last spot where we had yellow in sight, and it worked, so Elly had to scramble up as well because there was no way she could get across from below.
Finally we re-established the yellow track, and eventually we arrived back at the car park thankful that we hadn’t tried the Meander Falls hike.

We then headed back towards the “shack” via the western side of the Great Lake.

Back on the road, then dinner at one of the pubs in Miena and home to the Shack.

Hobart:  31 Dec

Central Highland Great Lake

New Year’s Eve, so we drove to Hobart  city.  On the way we passed, and stopped to investigate a place named “The Steppes” sculptures. This was an area which had 12 pieces of granite standing vertically, some about two metres, some up to 3 metres high, arranged in a circle, each one having a piece of sculpture on its inner face, depicting wild life in the area. There was a sign indicating the “Steppes Homestead” 900metres away, so we set off in that direction.
We found the Homestead along with a couple of old buildings, toilets etc. which had obviously been there for many decades, and are now under the care of voluntary organisations.
It appears that a gentleman named James Wilson was appointed Chief Constable for the Great Lakes District in 1864. A police station was built and James named this “The Steppes”. He also built a studio for his daughter Madge, who spent her life completing many water colour paintings and sculptures from native timbers. Madge’s death in 1975 marked the end of our a period of 112 years during which the Wilson family lived at the Steppes.

In Hobart we wandered around Constitution Dock to check out the Sydney to Hobart yachts. We found Wild Oats Xi which is enormous and lots of others including a yacht which had won the Sydney to Hobart in 1946 and 1947. Hobart was buzzing.

Later in the day we visited friends, family really, Sarah Gelbart and Shaun Ladiges, and new baby Netta, who had invited us to stay the night. They have a lovely house and magnificent garden almost at the foot of Mt Wellington.

That evening Sarah dropped us back in to the city because we had tickets to “ The Tastes of Tassie” which was a major food hall and entertainment bash set up for New Year’s Eve celebrations. We had seats near the water, procured by Elly previously for vast sums of money, so we could see the boats passing in and out of the docks, and hopefully be in a good spot for the fireworks.
Non stop entertainment was on stages at either end of the food hall giving the whole place a great atmosphere.
There were fireworks at 9:30pm, but the spot that Elly had found for photos wasn’t too good, so we hunted around and found a better spot for the midnight show. Lots of boats were milling around trying to avoid hitting each other, manoeuvring for a good position for the fireworks at midnight.

It was a pretty good show, not quite the Sydney harbour display, but not bad, and Elly’s new position worked well to photograph it all.
I had visions of immediately after midnight, 50,000 people trying to catch 50 taxis, but in the mad scramble Elly found an empty one and we jumped in. There were no rules and no queues, just everyone for themselves. We were lucky, because I’m sure there are still people trying to get home.

Hobart:  1 Jan 2018

Today we were invited to lunch by Sean’s parents, so along we went to their amazing house which is totally surrounded, even on the roof, with every variety of fruit and flower and berry that you could think of, and more. We were given a full guided tour. All their grey water is piped into the garden, and every plant is monitored, which must be a full time job, even though they both work. As well as having part of their garden on the roof, they now also have a bee hive up their as well. After the tour and a very nice lunch we drove back to Hobart to meet up with John and Bronia Witorz who were on the cruise with us, and who had just flown in from Melbourne that morning.

The cruise was on a very nice small ship, the Coral Discoverer, holding up to 75 people and was scheduled to head out from Hobart, to the south and then north to Wine Glass Bay, before turning to head around to the southeast coast, stopping each day at a different place, and returning to Hobart 7 days later.
We boarded at 4:00pm and were shown our cabins, which were beautiful and spacious with balcony has well.
We only had around 35 passengers so there was plenty of space, and everyone had name tags which was really helpful as we mingled with the other passengers. Of course there was a couple of passengers whom Elly knew, what a surprise!
Pre dinner drinks and then more with dinner, before pouring ourselves into bed as the Coral Discoverer gently headed south.

Hobart

Cruise:  2 Jan

The ship has a tender, called the Coral Xplorer, which is big enough to carry all the passengers who board via one of the aft decks, and is then lowered mechanically down to the water, whereupon the support plate is lowered below the water line and the tender just sails away from the ship, very clever.
This morning we boarded the Xplorer and headed to the coast to be picked up by a bus and taken to Grandvewe Cheeses, where they make a range of cheeses from sheep’s milk, along with vanilla whey liqueur and triple distilled sheep’s whey vodka and whisky. This is a family business run by mother, daughter and son, with the son in charge of making the booze. His spirits have actually won a lot of national and international awards. There is a sense of humour about the place, for example a sign saying that Silence of the Lambs was originally “ Shut up Ewes”.

On next to Pepperberry farm nearby where retired academic Chris Reid (no relation) has a complex and well organised system of producing pepper berries, of which, to tell the truth, I had never heard. The farm also has various outdoor sculptures to admire as you walk around. Chris also sells flowers, grown from bulbs which he imports from the Netherlands. He tries to stay ahead of the market by manipulating the flowers to grow out of season when the competition is reduced. The farm also grows several varieties of fruit.

Pepper Berries

Ned Kelly

After lunch we travelled up the Huon River to the town of Franklin where the Wooden Boat Centre is located. This is an old establishment which is primarily now a training facility where students sign up for a course and actually construct a boat. Obviously the more complex the boat the longer the course. There were a few boats being built, plus some restoration being done by volunteers. This place had a really nice feel about it, and you could sense that the people were dedicated and treasured their creations.

Huon Valley

Disembarking from the Xplorer

Hooded plover

If I was to compare our day with our voyage to Antarctica several years ago on a similar size boat, it was not exactly like walking among 200,000 penguins on a beach on South Georgia Island, but nevertheless an interesting day.

spectacular sunset

lighthouse with brilliant rainbow

Cruise:  3 Jan

Up this morning for a 7:00 am breakfast- not sure whether they mentioned that in the fine print, and at 8:00 am we boarded the Xplorer and headed for Freycinet National Park. There, we had the choice of two walks, the first, which we elected to do was a moderate to difficult two hour walk up and over a ridge line and Rhenish down into Wineglass Bay via 300 steps on the climb, but nice and easy on the way down. John and Bronia wimped out and took the short route. The view from the top, overlooking Wineglass Bay was magnificent, and to add to it, the weather was beautifully sunny.

We descended to the beach and lazed around for a while waiting for the Xplorer to come and pick us up, equipped with morning tea on the way back to the mother ship.

Wineglass Bay

red rocks of Wineglass Bay

This afternoon a walk was scheduled between two beaches on the northern end of Schauten Island, or, as an alternative, kayaking was on offer. Elly and I chose this option and did about 45 minutes kayaking in the bay. All good fun and we didn’t even get very wet.
Back to the mother ship for pre dinner drinks and dinner, we were the subject of some sport for a Pod of beautiful dolphins which played around us, in front of us and behind us. This is always such a treat to watch these fun loving creatures using humans for sport instead of the other way around.

They appeared again during dinner, comfortably matching our speed as we leapt up from our tables and crowded at the windows to watch them. After dinner we  were outside on the deck as we passed the Isle Des Phoques, which, for the ill informed means Island of Seals. This was a very small island with several seal colonies and lots of barking seals, which you could hear clearly as we made several passes by the island. Another early night as we had an 07:00 am breakfast next day.

Albatross

Cruise:  4 Jan

An 08:00 am departure on the Xplorer to Maria Island, which is quite famous as a Marine National Park, where fishing is prohibited in most areas and lots of oceanic research is conducted. We took the Xplorer to the Darlington Historical Settlement, which is somewhere both Elly and I would like to have spent more time, but the usual walk was scheduled so we only had a brief look.

Small pademelon not wallaby greeted us on arrival

Cape Barren Geese

There are some buildings dating back to the early convict times in the early 1800s as well as some in the late 1800s when there was some commercial activity and even tourism, so there are administration offices, a penitentiary, accommodation and many other buildings, all looking beautifully maintained from the outside at least. There is a commissary and even the remains of a mill which utilised windmill type blades to drive the grinding mechanism. This is no longer there, however, drawings show a windmill like structure which was manually rotated into wind so as to generate maximum force to drive the mill.

Our walk took us over rolling hills to some sheer cliffs at the bottom of which were laid out samples of fossilised rocks which had been found all in the one strata layer, which indicated some event or climate change which occurred some 290 million years ago. There had also been some quarrying along these cliff faces, and remnants of a rail line which was used to carry rock for cement around to three silos near the harbour. On our walk we spotted a couple of wombats and more kangaroos than I have ever seen in on place.

The Tasmanian Devil has been introduced to Maria Island in an attempt to isolate healthy animals without the disease which is decimating the Devils on mainland Tasmania. Unfortunately the trade off is that the local penguin population has been eradicated and the Cape Barren Geese are losing eggs and babies, so their numbers are decreasing.
John and Bronia had elected to stay and look around the village, so we met up with them when we returned.

Old Farming equipment

Wheat silos

In the afternoon we cruised south along the Tasman Peninsula in beautiful sunny weather. All the scenery was on John and Bronia’s side, so we sat out on their balcony and watched some spectacular scenery as the waves became larger. We declared happy hour and thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon off. The scenery was something that you would not normally associate with Tasmania; sheer, towering cliffs changing from stratified layered formation to those with vertical structures rising up from the water and caves and holes worn through the rock from millions of years of wave force.
As we rounded the south east corner of Tasmania the ocean started getting serious, and our ship was rearing up and crashing down – wonderful stuff. The sliding balcony door was hammering backwards and forwards and finally had to be locked. We were heading towards Port Davey on the south west coast, so we had to cross a reasonable amount of open ocean. The waves were about 2 to 3 metres and continued all night. Several people didn’t make it down for dinner, but those who did were treated to another dolphin display.

Cruise:  5 Jan

Elly has been spending a lot of time with our two photographers, Rob and Peter, who are on board doing publicity filming for the cruise company, since this is the first time that the Coral Discoverer has done the Tasmania expedition. Rob was in charge of the drone, which occasionally could be seen hovering near where we happened to be, and Peter, who was a tall, lanky guy with a good sense of humour, always seemed to appear from nowhere, taking photos and videos of us as we did our thing. I said to Peter that he always appeared everywhere we were, and he said, “I am like God, I am everywhere!” Peter also has a very expensive wide angle lens which Elly lusts after, and he generously let her borrow it for a while.
We had arrived at Port Davey, and into Bathurst Harbour with good weather, which is unusual, as, more often than not it is inaccessible to the cruise boats.

Sunrise at Port Davey

Moon still up at sunrise

This morning our schedule had us boarding the Xplorer at 8:00 am to visit Malaleuca Inlet, which is a vast area of predominantly swamp land, which was formerly aboriginal land. This area was cared for the King family from the 1940s onwards as the family mined for tin and fed data to the weather bureau and generally looked after the land. There is now an airstrip on which four aeroplanes landed while we were there. There is a very well maintained boardwalk  around the swampland and through the forest area, and in amongst the swamp malaleuca trees. The descendants of the aboriginal people of this area, who had been wiped out, have constructed some artefacts in the forest, such as shelters and a grass canoe beside the boardwalk , to maintain their contact with their heritage. The King family still uses the house, so we had to stay a respectful distance away.

There is a project running there to save the Orange Belly Parrot whose numbers had been reduced to just twelve. These birds fly across to Victoria, and when they return they are usually reduced in number. Cats are blamed for that, but also local Tasmanian Currawongs are apparently attacking the nests of the Parrots. We passed a ranger who had an air rifle, and his job was to eliminate any Currawongs he could find. The score was Ranger 1 :Currawongs nil! They have set up a feeding station for the Parrots, with a screened viewing platform for visitors, and when we arrived there was one little guy helping himself to the free seed. Apparently the program is working, because the latest count showed around 25 birds surviving.

A good get together for pre dinner drinks with a few other couples was great fun and too much Champagne was consumed. No dolphins this time.

Cruise:  6 Jan

Through the night we had made our way from Port Davey on the southwest coast back out to sea and around the southern cape through to the southeast coast, heading north inside Bruny Island to Southport. In the morning we boarded the Xplorer and motored our way through the Southport Narrows and into Hastings Bay, where we searched for a landing point along the coastline. This was the first time the company had done this, so it was all a bit of trial and error. We eventually found a spot where we could do a dry landing, and then scrambled up through the scrub until we reached a small railway line, which was our objective, and along a bit further there was a “station” and alongside this was a tiny cemetery with only three headstones. The headstones we for members of the Tyler family, who had operated a logging and timber company in that area for many years, although there is no sign of it now. Two of the gravestones were for two brothers of the Tyler family, one at 14 years and the other at 19 years. The 14 year old had fallen across the path of a circular saw and been cut in half!

A short time later a small train arrived pulling a few carriages of tourists. It was definitely of the “I think I can” variety. The train driver who was nearly as big as the engine unravelled himself and gave us the brief history on the cemetery and the mill. The area was called Ida Bay and the train line, which was used to transport the timber from the logging site, ran parallel to the shore along the Bay and finished at Deep Hole Bay. The Xplorer was waiting for us at a small beach nearby, so it was back to the Mother Ship.

In the afternoon we were scheduled to land on Bruny Island at Adventure Bay, however the weather was looking dodgy, and, apparently the wind on that side of Bruny Island was 45kts and increasing, so we had a plan adjustment which meant staying in a more sheltered area and visiting the old Bruny Island Quarantine Station. The boss, Bob, came to take us in tow and show us around. The station has been used as a quarantine establishment since 1909 and has been used to quarantine vessels, people, goods, and later, plants. It’s main claim to fame was when it was utilised to quarantine troops coming home after WW1 in an attempt to avoid the spread of influenza, and at one point housed 9000 troops.

Sunset

Cruise:  7 Jan

A short ride in the Xplorer this morning to a beach landing and then a 20 min walk to a path which led down to something called “The Remarkable Caves”.

We had moored overnight at Port Arthur and this was a prelude to visiting the Port Arthur historical site. The path led down over one hundred steps to the sandy bottom of a clear area from which you could look through to a clear opening of the rock wall, out to sea. This was beautiful as you could see in the rock cliff faces the changes that had occurred over the thousands of years, from sedimentary layers on the top to the dolomite formations underneath. As we made our way back to the Xplorer to transfer back to the Mother Ship, Elly suggested to Dave, the tour leader, that we could go back and do a walk that she had noticed in passing, a ninety minute walk to a blowhole. So off we went, retracing our steps until we came to the turnoff to the blowhole. This was a pleasant enough walk along a very soft, sandy path with some difficult bits, but mostly easy enough.

After walking for 45 mins, we arrived at the blowhole, to find plenty of hole, but no blow! We cavorted out on the rock headland for a short time, peering down the hole from as close as we dared before trekking back to meet up with the others at the pier.

After lunch we were ferried across to the Port Arthur historical site. What an amazing place it is! We had a tour of the area with a guide, David, who imparted a wealth of knowledge. Elly had been there about 20 years ago, but I had never seen it. What a beautiful serene setting to have been such a place of terror, both in the 1830s and later in 1996 with the massacre in the Broad Arrow Cafe and surrounds. Elly noticed a very great change in the intervening period, as the policy of “ Renovate as much as much necessary, but as little as possible “ takes effect.

Bumble bee in the garden

Gardens have been established to match what existed at the time for the pleasure of the wives of the administrators, and buildings have been restored to the degree necessary to make them either functional, or as realistic examples of the buildings themselves, from prisoner’s quarters to the Governor’s home. We did a pretty broad tour, but, even then, we didn’t visit all the buildings, as we had an appointment to keep at the brand new restaurant called the 1830, where we were feted with canapés and drinks provided by Josh, the captain, as a farewell gesture to his passengers.

End of Cruise and back to Miena:  8 Jan

Breakfast at 07:00 bags outside the cabin and farewells to people we had met on the cruise, and to the staff who had been wonderful for the whole cruise.

I thought I would add a few photos from Miena and surrounding areas

Aurora at Miena

Tree fern forest near Mole Creek caves

Mole Creek Caves

Sandstone Cliffs

Tamar Valley

Storm over Tamar Valley

Rainbow over Great Lake