The Lyell Highway winds for 56km through the heart off the World Heritage-listed Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park between Queenstown and Lake St Clair. The park covers 440,000 hectares and is the epitome of magnificent scenery; forested valleys with fast-flowing rivers, deep narrow gorges; button grass plains and mountains carved by glaciers, the most notable being the grey/white, slanting peak of Frenchman’s Cap There are several short walks into the wilderness areas along the route and we make stops at Nelson Falls, Donaghys Lookout and the Franklin River arriving at Lake St Clair late afternoon.
The Nelson Falls are an easy 20-minute walk through the rain forest. What started out as a misty and dismal day has turned into a warm and sunny one by the time we arrive at the start of the walk. The waterfall turns out to be quite spectacular and with plenty of water tumbling over the 85ft drop.
Our second stop is a short 40 minute walk to Donaghys Lookout which affords spectacular 360 degree views of the wilderness mountain tops and the Franklin River and a button grass plain way below from a rocky outlook point.
The Franklin River walk through the temperate rain forest runs, for part of the way, alongside this well-known wilderness river, and the Surprise River. There are numerous kinds of fungi, and mosses and litchens the latter cloaking everything. Towering trees reach skyward, fast-flowing, gurgling rivers and fallen and decaying tree trunks and branches cover the forest floor offering a glimpse into the beauty of this wilderness landscape.
It’s late afternoon by the time we reach Lake St Clair. We haven’t booked any accommodation hoping that we will find something reasonably priced on the edge of the National Park. Fortunately there is camp ground with cabins right on the edge of the lake and we take what is called a ‘dorm’ room but is is in fact what Andy likes to call a bed-in-a-shed. A basic room with shared use of the site amenities. Since I was last here some 25+ years ago a huge visitors centre and cafe have sprung up to cater for bushwalkers making the 5 day trek along the Overland Track which runs between Lake St Clair and Cradle Mountain. A bit of a shame as it rather spoils the isolation of this beautiful lake.
It is a glorious evening, sunny and still. The lake is perfectly flat, not even a ripple disturbs the surface and the silence is only broken by birdsong (and a couple of people sat chatting further round Cynthia Bay. We take a short stroll around the shore line before dinner. It’s been impossible to find anywhere to buy any food since we left Queenstown and there is only a very limited selection of groceries on sale at the visitors centre. We manage to cobble a meal together out of bits and pieces we have with us supplemented by a rehydrated pasta meal.
Afterwards we take a torch and out in search of wildlife – much of which only comes out after dark. Immediately we see a possum. Possum are extremely common here as in New Zealand and more often seen dead on the roadsides; this is the first live one we’ve seen this trip. There are also some wallabies about, but no platypus which are notoriously shy and hard to identify.
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