Cradle Mountain is, by all accounts, one of the most fabulous tourist destinations in Tasmania. So we head there from Stanley, taking the road less travelled. Not necessarily on purpose. Paul McCartney must’ve travelled this way when he wrote Long and Winding Road. He should add narrow and hilly. This becomes a theme for us. We travel through farmland and also plantations of forestry, both pine and eucalyptus. About half way to Cradle Mountain we wind down a particularly gnarly section to Hellyer Reserve. It seems appropriate to take a break, have lunch in the picnic area beside the river and do, yet another, short bush walk. Again, we could be in New Zealand – the bush is so familiar, full of tree ferns (pongas) and native Beech.
We strike great weather for our three days at Cradle Mountain, which isn’t the highest mountain in Tasmania, but is surely its most iconic, standing above the beautiful Dove Lake. Famous for its remote wilderness and native flora and fauna, there are plenty of walks with varying degrees of difficulty. The 6km hike around the lake is popular, and as we circumnavigate it we see the shape of Cradle Mountain change. At first it looks wide and dense, but the closer we get, the more spiky, needle like shape becomes apparent. We don’t need to hike up there.
As it’s Summer – sort of – there are lots of beautiful flowers, most of which we can’t identify. One that continues to catch our attention is the Waratah, a Santa-red claw shaped flower. that stands out from the other white or pale yellow blossoms.
It’s a surprise to us that there are no koalas or kangaroos on Tasmania. They make up for it in the quantity of Wallabies and Wombats, the latter looking like big, mobile loaves of bread mowing the grass. And yes, Wombat poo is cube shaped – see photographic proof. On a night excursion we are lucky to see several endangered and very cute Eastern Quolls, which sleep in dens during the day and hunt at night. They are the second largest carnivorous marsupial, after the elusive Tasmanian Devil – which we still haven’t seen in the wild.
Because we can’t get enough of winding narrow roads we head to Strahan. Pronounce it any way you like – we try Strawn, Strewen, Straaaaaan, Stra-han, it seems anything goes. The star attraction here is the massive Macquarie Harbour, approximately 315 square kilometres with an average depth of 15 metres. The entrance into the harbour from the Indian Ocean is narrow and known as Hell’s Gate, which tells you something about the conditions rolling in.
In the South West sits Sarah Island, Tasmania’s oldest, and probably most brutal, convict settlement. Set up in 1822 to imprison those who reoffended while serving their first sentence – you know, the one for stealing a loaf of bread or a candlestick – at one time over 500 people were living there. Chain gangs were taken up the Gordon River, which flows into the harbour, to fell Huon Pines which they rafted downstream for milling and ship building – all convict labour. Over 100 ships were built before ultimately the remote location proved too hard to supply and in 1833 the prison was closed.
We go to a local play called The Ship That Never Was which recounts one of the most daring escapes – not surprisingly there were multiple escape attempts. In 1834, ten convicts working on the last ship before closing the island, stole the almost complete ship. Astoundingly they made it to Chile. Four of the men were captured and brought back to stand trial on charges of piracy but their fantastical, and successful, defence was that because the ship wasn’t finished and registered it wasn’t a ship so there was no piracy. They were found guilty of robbery.
You will see on the map primary roads in grey. Our roads, to find our roads we need to zoom in. It gets worse when we leave Strahan. Because we don’t do the sensible thing that everyone else does. More in the next instalment.
