2004/03 Tasmania loop - Lake St Claire
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It was another twisty road from Strahan over the mountains and through Queenstown.  Queenstown was a mining area, and its smelter killed all the vegetation for miles around, so the surrounding scenery looks a bit like our Badlands.  Not a place to linger, and we moved on towards St Clair national park.  We stopped off for a short hike to Nelson Falls.  I think this is the most beautiful waterfall we’ve seen in Australia.  It doesn’t have a lot of water, but it seems to fill the sky as you get to the edge of the forest.

Last time we were at St Clair it was wet and foggy, but this time it was sunny and warm.  Its major feature is Lake St Clair , which is the southern terminus of the Overland Track we’d seen at Cradle Mountain.  Its campground was almost full, but we managed to squeeze in between the trees, and perched on the edge of the lake.  Getting in and out of the camper in the dark was a challenge however, requiring much contortion to get through the branches. 

 

	St Clair birds (1.30)

	St Clair night (3.36)

Later, we took a walk along the lake and the temperature took a dive as the sun went down.  That night we had noisy visits from a wide variety of animals.  At one time we had a pademelon (bottom left)  hissing at a growling possum (top left) and a relatively quiet quoll (right).  This was doubly surprising.  We’d no idea that pademelons could be so aggressive.  Also, quolls are carnivores and they eat possums, but this was a small quoll and a very large possum, so there seemed to be a standoff. 

 

Wednesday March 17th
We’d seen our first platypus here, so I went back to Platypus Bay and the mouth of the Cuvier River an hour before dawn to see if the platypus were still there.  There was one, but it only surfaced for a second and then disappeared up the river.  It was barely light, too early for photographs.  I saw plenty of birds in the next two hours but no more platypus.

	St Clair trees (3.25)

It was a fine day, but somewhere between cool and cold.  We hiked a number of trails under massive gum trees.  The dead trees were even more impressive than the live ones.  The wood is so hard and strong that the trees stay up for decades after they die, stark white and silver skeletons reaching a couple of hundred feet. 

We were back at the river that evening to see if the platypus were working the late shift, but we just got cold, no action.  It was a very cold night with the wind whipping up the lake.  This didn’t bother the quoll or the possums.  They were back, and just as noisy.

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