| January 2007 |
Port Arthur glimpses surrounding The Separate Prison at night with the Ghost of the Piper.
After walking around Port Arthur all day we returned to join the Historic Ghost Tour at night. Only the one ghost was captured by my camera shown above. Led by the experienced and long time resident of Port Arthur, Shelly, gave us many good ghost stories as our small group traversed through the Penitentiary, Commandants House and the Separate Prison. Before we started she explained that when she sees one of the ghosts of Port Arthur she wont be waiting for anyone as she will be the first one running out of the building. Our group was taken into buildings by lamplight, the doors were shut behind us and the stories were told. The flickering lamps and the smell of the burning lamp oil helped to create the ghostly atmosphere we experienced. The Commandants House was supposed to have a particularly nasty ghost. While renovating the house two workers decided to sleep in a bedroom of this building. One night, a week after they started sleeping in the house, a worker awoke to the noises of his co-worker struggling, trying to breathe and had turned blue. He was unable to help him and he only started breathing again after being dragged outside the house. The next day mysterious fingermark bruises appeared on his neck!
After leaving Port Arthur we made our way towards Hobart via a gravel coastal track thru Dodges Ferry. Very scenic travelling along the water with many small fishing and holiday communities along the way.
At Hobart I bought a new CAV fuel filter to replace the Nissan fuel filter and some diesel conditioner. As I write this story, four weeks after fitting the filter, the motor is working sweet again.
We had a magical tour around the coast via Woodbridge, Gordon and Egg and Bacon Bay. In this bay we found a delightful, fully renovated, 3 bedroom cottage about to come on the market for just over $200,000. Only grass between the house and the beach in a protected bay with a few boats and a yacht moored. The houses are so cheap over here, only the weather lets it down. On thru Cygnet and back over the cloud covered mountains to the van at the caravan park in Snug. All along the Huon River foreshore are large oysters for the taking, just open and eat.
After camping at Franklin we again toured stopping first at the Enchanted Woods. Here I picked up a couple of small pieces of Huon Pine. A rare tree that is now protected and no longer allowed to be cut from the forests. It grows for up to a 1000 years and is a medium to hard wood. Originally used in ship building as it has oil in the timber (not the usual sap in other timbers) which stops it rotting and prevents insect invasion. Yachts of over 100 years old, made of this timber, are still seaworthy today. Later a friendly Tasmanian gave me some more Huon timber, part of a tree which he had found floating in the river the year before. The tree evidently floats higher than other timbers and weathers to a white wood on the outside while being a golden yellow on the inside. A typical piece of 300mm x 200mm x 50mm is sold for around $50.00 to the tourists for wood turning, very expensive! At Geeveston we browsed around a furniture gallery and both Sandy and myself loved a bedroom suite made of black hearted Sasafras. It was sold so we don't know what price it was but it was gorgeous! Sasafras is a light coloured wood with stripes of near black timber in the centre of each tree, caused by water entering the tree allowing a fungus to grow.
Arve Falls
We continued on to the Hartz Mountain National Park and took a short walk to the Arve Falls. Plenty of water flowing as was all the small creeks around the National Park. The track beyond the Tahune Airwalk was quite steep and very green with ferns, bushes and trees growing thickly right up to the edge of the thin mud/gravel track.
Views like this one, above, the norm. With so mountainous a terrain we were driving thru we enjoyed every glimpse that came into view as we twisted our way up, over and thru the Esperance Forest Drive. We stopped at a Cherry packing factory just outside Huonville where they had some special, just picked, large cherries. Every single one was a delight to eat, yum.
After travelling past Cockle Creek to Australia's southernmost road
we camped for free at Catamaran where we had toilets and ocean views out to Recherche Bay and beyond, the Tasman Sea.
Duckhole Lake track
Another drive took us high up the mountains to Coal Hill lookout where we had, unfortunately, cloudy panoramic views over these southern lands where you could see all the protected bays along the coast. I read somewhere that an early explorer stated that the protected waters here could safely harbour all the current sailing fleets of the world. Every part of the coast around here seems to be a protected bay. Many, many yachts are moored along the coast. Another walking trail to Duckhole Lake, a sinkhole, was via boardwalks and good tracks taking us thru even more picturesque greenery.
A lot of houses of southern Tasmania have large piles of timber or in many cases fences of firewood ready to keep the constant cold temperatures at bay. We were told that they use around one tonne ($30.00) every 2 weeks per household just to keep warm.
Heading back to Port Huon we followed the coastal track via Police Point and drove past the Tasmanian Salmon Farms. Huge circular holding nets at the mouth of the Huon River with large salmon constantly leaping out of the water.
Sandy did a three day jewellery course at Geeveston where she made a silver and copper bracelet, a nickel silver bracelet, a silver ring and a silver and copper pendant. She loved doing the course picking up some extra skills and confidence so that she can make some more jewellery whilst travelling.
At New Norfolk we managed to get a glimpse of Mc Naught Comet but not from Peppermint Hill lookout as this is only open when the refuse centre is open???? New Norfolk was established when the British decided to close down Norfolk Island which was proving too expensive to run and they needed to establish a presence on Van Diemens Land to stop the French claiming the island.
A Derwent River reflection of a Private Hotel at New Norfolk
On the highway to Oatlands we passed a few steel sculptures such as this one. Very good.
At Oatlands we followed a guided tour of the Stone houses of the town. The pamphlet that directed us around town described the Georgian architecture with the occasional Victorian adornments. Plaques on some of the buildings explained more about the actual history of the house. We now know that most Georgian buildings have 3 or 5 voids ( windows or doors ) on each floor level. The things you learn while travelling. 138 historic Georgian sandstone buildings are located within the town boundary. Callington Mill is the most iconic building in town. The mill is the third oldest windmill in Australia, built in 1837. Originally a flour milling complex, now a non-functioning tourist attraction including stone, wheat grinding sound effects. A few outbuildings were also open with more sound effects of the times past.
The reason that so many historic buildings have survived in this town is because first, the railway line bypassed the town then later, the main highway also did the same thing. These two events had devastating effects on the prosperity of the inhabitants to such an extent that they couldn't afford to knock down the old unused buildings which are now being restored.
From Callington Mill looking out over part of the colonial town
A whimsical stork sculpture on a chimney in Oatlands
At Bothwell we viewed more old buildings, now easily recognising the Georgian architecture. Ha Ha. A nice small park with a free washing machine and dryer for only $10 a night unpowered.
Steppes historic homestead's bakehouse and post office
The Steppes farm (1863) was left to the state by Miss Marjorie (Madge) Wilson who lived her entire life here till she passed away in 1975 at the age of 92. It was owned by the Wilson family for 112 years. Now able to be enjoyed by all who care to stop and walk around these old timber buildings. The bakehouse above still has the huge stone and concrete oven intact which takes up over half of the restored log building. The Wilsons would bake a batch of a dozen large loaves at a time. Their yeast recipe contained potato peelings, hops, parsnips and brown sugar. Madge ran the post office until 1967 and was the oldest postmistress in Australia, she also operated the telephone exchange with five subscribers. In her later years she lived in the smaller post office building as it was easier to heat with snow falling and temperatures dropping to minus 6 degrees. At 92 she was still collecting her own firewood. They were made of tough stuff!
The next two nights we stayed at the remote and pleasantly quiet Lagoon of Islands where we caught up with a bit of washing.
A lot of the remote roads and villages are only here because Tasmania embraced hydro electricity many years ago, workers camps and roads were established then to harness this power. We passed The Great Lake, Miena, Bronte Park, Tarraleah and camped at Wayatinah, all hydro electricity towns. The gravel track down to Bronte Park was very steep and luckily we didn't meet up with any of the kamikaze timber truck drivers until we were safely back on the bitumen.
From our free camp at Hamilton (including hot showers for only $1) we drove to Mt Field National Park (1916) with another forest walk to the photogenic and Tasmania's best known scenic attraction, Russell Falls. Swamp Gums in this park are second only to the Californian Redwoods as being the tallest trees in the world.
Alpine vegetation around Lake Dobson which was 16 kms further up a gravel road past Russell Falls, located near the snowfields and very picturesque, but cold.
On these trips we passed a few abandoned hop houses and later saw one converted to a house, uniquely interesting.
Lake Pedder
Gordon Dam
Another trip from Hamilton took us via Lake Pedder to the Gordon River dam just past Strathgordon.
Strathgordon Hills
We passed thru many forest reserves on the way and as soon as you get to the World Heritage Area the forests are left behind and the hills mostly only support lower vegetation with a few smaller stands of trees. This area must have been naturally preserved because the timbers were not economically viable to harvest. Protestors are camped on the adjacent forest reserves trying to save the old growth trees from imminent harvesting.
Sandy trying to follow a rough trail thru the ferns at The Styx, Valley of the Giants
Creepy Crawly Walk thru a cool temperate rainforest