2000/02 Australia trip - Mount Field |
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Our sightseeing took us to Mount Field National park, and it took us just a few minutes to see the pademelons, kookaburras, giant ferns and trees and to realize that we wanted to stay there instead, so we never went back to New Norfolk. I guess we bought a few beers for someone!
Pademelons are small kangaroos with long thin tails that just love to eat grass, and at dusk they’re all over the lawns here. Depending on your point of view, they’re either cute little kangaroos or giant hopping rats. When they’re in a hurry they make this fast bomp-bomp-bomp noise through the undergrowth. We walked up to Russell Falls in the evening gloom under the ferns with lots of bodies hopping around us, and then found a camp site for the night.
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Mount Field (18.08) |  |
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Friday January 28th
We were awoken before dawn by an asylum of kookaburras. Once one of them starts laughing the rest go hysterical. Sandie managed to sleep through it so I took an early morning hike up the mountain, along the Tall Trees trail through the swamp gum forest, to Lady Barron Falls. The swamp gums are enormous trees, almost as tall as the giant redwoods, 
but the dense undergrowth makes it hard to see the whole tree. The pademelons were still out in force. 
Sandie and I walked this whole trail again after sunrise and also climbed to the top of Russell Falls to see Horseshoe Falls. The latter are even more beautiful, tucked in amongst ferns below the giant trees.
The road west of Mount Field goes only to the Gordon River dam in the wilderness, and there are no towns or other roads in the southwest of Tasmania. This was tempting, but we also wanted to see the rest of Tasmania and, as usual, there wasn’t enough time for it all.
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