Category Archives: Australia

Last night we were in the emergency department of Latrobe Hospital getting my arm checked out.  I’ve been getting shooting pains in my upper arm as well as continuous ache and restricted movement for the last five or six days.  It finally got so painful that we we went down to the local community hospital in Latrobe at 3am.  The registration process included such questions such as ‘Are you an indigenous or Torres Strait Islander?’, ‘Is there another name for UK?’ and ‘What’s your mother tongue?’ (asked after confirming I was English).   I didn’t have to have to wait very long to see a doctor who gave me some heavy-duty pain killers and sent me home with instructions to come back in the morning for an X-ray.  So 8.30am saw us back at the hospital.  The X-rays showed nothing (not surprisingly), and the doctor’s diagnosis is muscle strain which most probably happened when we were canoeing about 10 days ago.  No quick cure though, just anti-inflamatories, pain killers and possibly some physio if things don’t improve.  What a pain!

We drive to Launceston is Tasmania’s second city in the afternoon.  It is situated 64 km from the Bass Strait in the wide river valleys where the North and South Esk Rivers meet to become the Tamar River.  On the way we detour down the west side of the meandering Tamar River valley as far as West Head retracing our steps and crossing the curiously named Batman suspension bridge and coming down into Launceston on the eastern side of the river.  This is glorious  countryside taking in wineries, orchards, and farms as well as historic towns, fishing villages and mining settlements.

We’ve come to Launceston primarily to walk the stunning Cataract limestone gorge which is only a few minutes from the city centre.  .  There are numerous walks along and up  the sides of the gorge.  We opt for the easiest;  the 1.6km route along the face of the cliff to Cateract Cliff Grounds where a vertiginous chair lift crosses the gorge a the point where it opens out into the First Basin lake.  We give the chair lift a miss and cross the gorge at Alexander Bridge, an attractive suspension footbridge that was first build in 1904 and subsequently restored after being washed away in the floods of 1929, and walk about 15 minutes further up the gorge along Duck walk towards the hydro dam before turning back.  The gorge is littered with huge boulders and its dark waters are controlled by the hydro dam further up the gorge.  At First Basin there is a large park and reserve as well as a huge outdoor swimming  pool.  Despite warning signs counselling against swimming in the river pool there is a wet-suit clad woman swimming across it.   We finish our walk just as it starts to rain and  since it is late afternoon by this time we decide to forgo any further sight-seeing.  The drive back up the West Tamar Highway provides some stunning views of the river valley despite the rain and poor visibility.

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It’s grey and threatening rain when we set off to Cradle Mountain National Park.  The journey is through lush farm land;  a very different landscape from yesterday’s.  The dead trees have disappeared to be replaced by ones with rich green foliage and  lush farmlands.  On the way we stop to look round Sheffield, a little town in the foothills of the Western Tiers, a spectacular range dominated by Mount Roland which today shrouded in low cloud.  This historic, but rather faded town has come up with a clever marketing ploy to draw in the tourists and reverse its declining economic fortunes – murals.  Now dubbed the ‘Town of Murals’ over 40 murals have been painted on the town’s buildings since 1986, including private houses and retail shops, depicting the history of the area.  Every year, Sheffield hosts a Mural Fest where nine artists engage in a mural paint-off and more murals are added each year. 

This an area of quirky place names such as Lower Crackpot, Nowhere Else and Promised Land.  And quirky people … or at least one – an elderly gentleman sporting a Scottish beret complete with feather walks an alpaca on a lead up and down the main street.  The alpaca sports a donation box around its neck and, judging by the interest generated amongst the visitors. probably earns the old boy a bob or two.

Leaving Sheffield the scenery starts to change as we climb up towards the national park;  becoming much more rugged and dead trees start to re-appear.  The gnarled, ash-white stumps and fallen branches littering the fields create a stark and eerie landscape.  Cradle Valley is the gateway to the spectacular wilderness of Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park.  It is listed by the World Heritage Commission as one of the most precious places on earth and is reknowned for its stunning mountain scenery, glacial lakes, rain forests tarns and unique wildlife.  There are numerous wilderness walks of varying lengths including the 5-day Overland Route from Dove Lake in the north to Lake St Clair in the south.  We choose the much less challenging and considerably shorter two-hour Dove Lake Circuit, which actually takes us three hours as we take our time and detour to see Lilli Lake as well.  The walk is mainly along boardwalks that run, in part, through dense forest.  The lake is set in dramatic scenery;  surrounded by craggy glacial peaks and dominated by the iconic outline of Cradle Mountain, its dark waters stained by the tannin from the surrounding button grass plains and tea trees.    

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Andy rustles up a full English and we have breakfast on the balcony taking in the panoramic views of the estuary, the long sandy beaches on both shores, the bush and mountains beyond. We drive to Latrobe with Helen and Adrian, stopping in Davenport along the way to inspect the statue of Neptune which has been the subject of an on-going controversy for the last four years as the local community have debated its artistic merit, cultural significance and position. In fact it turns out to be particularly unimpressive on all counts..

We take a walk through the small village of Latrobe with its historic streetscape dating back to the 1800s. It could be a Sunday – most of the shops close in the afternoon and there is a rather deserted feel to the main street. There are some attractive older-style houses and shops many with verandahs over the pavement, others with elaborate façades. We spend some time browsing Helen’s favourite shop, Reliquaire. It’s small frontage hides a maze of rooms crammed with a cornucopia of the weird and wonderful as well as the more mundane and ordinary. From puppets, painted dolls, teddies, gollies and whole room devoted to Betty Boop to toys, dressing up clothes, animatronics, ‘the tardis’. electronic games, jewellery, clothes, architectural salvage and English garden furniture and much more besides. It’s a browser’s paradise but we manage to tear ourselves away to meander on to an interesting shop-cum-cafe for scones and cream and another cholesterol-laden iced chocolate or, in Andy’s case, coffee. We decide to give the Australian Axeman’s Hall of Fame, which is not some gruesome memorial to an axe murderer but a museum celebrating famous lumberjacks, a miss.

Jenny and Kevin, long-standing friends of Helen and Adrian, come over for dinner and we have a delicious meal, lots of wine and entertaining conversation. Kevin is a pharmacist and he advises taking vitamin B1 for the prevention of mosquito and other insects bites. Apparently it comes out through the pores and acts as a repellent. We’ll give it a go and see how effective it is when we get to Darwin.

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Helen is visiting her mother in Ulverstone and Adrian is supervising the hanging of new blinds in the house. It’s a gloriously sunny day without a cloud in the sky; perfect for a walk on the beach and to explore the neighbourhood. Shearwater on the tidal Rubicon River estuary. It is a popular holiday village which is seeing a considerable amount of new development and there are plenty of plots for sale. Colloquially known as ‘shacks’ the properties here are anything but, sitting on their private plots many either on the shoreline or with views of it, there is plenty of money invested in week-enders and holiday properties here. This morning is low tide leaving a huge expanse of beach and on closer inspection there are thousands of small red crabs which curl up into small balls as we walk amongst them.

After lunch we take a walk along the estuary foreshore to the sea. The shoreline is lined with one and two storey houses built to capture the views and there are some lovely sandy beaches and secluded coves along this rocky stretch. We walk on through the nature reserve as far as Carbuncle Island, which can be reached across the sands at low tide, but not this afternoon. This is a great place for wild life probably because there is no road beyond this point; we spot two wallabies, several rabbits, and a snake slithering across the path into the undergrowth.

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