2004/03 Tasmania loop - Styx and the Southwest |
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Saturday March 20th
Yet again I took an early morning walk looking for platypus, this time in the Tyenna River. A pleasant walk, but no platypus. After breakfast we were heading into the unpopulated wilderness of Southwest national park. Our neighbours at Field had been there the previous day and had had the same wind as us, but bad enough that they didn’t get out of their truck. I guess that’s how the Roaring Forties got their name.
We stopped off on the way at the Styx River, where there’s a protected stand of old growth swamp gums. The trees here are even taller than those in Field, with the highest at about 280 feet, the tallest flowering plants in the world. The coastal redwoods of California are a bit higher, but they are conifers and don’t have flowers.
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Horizontal Falls (3.56) |
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The route there follows old logging roads and crosses the most dilapidated bridge I’ve ever driven across. I think it was only the roots of the plants growing on the deck that were holding it together. The bridge is now only used by people visiting the protected stand, so I think the loggers must be hoping to take out a whole bus-load of greenies.
The stand included the Big Tree and the Bigger Tree. The Big Tree is very old and has shrunk in the last ten years, as it dies back and branches fall off the top, while the Bigger Tree is younger and has grown a little.
The road out into the Southwest was quite good. The scenery was more rugged than beautiful, plains of button grass, with ranges of mountains on every horizon. We had a mixture of rain and sun, about as good as it gets in this area.
It is very hard to get around in this country. There’s plant known as “horizontal scrub”. It grows to about six feet high and then falls over and continues growing. Imagine trying to walk through a forest of that stuff. The park has a few short nature trails like the “Creepy Crawly” but mainly it’s a park for experienced long distance hikers. We eventually came to Lake Pedder, which has been artificially raised by very controversial dams. The conservationists lost the battle against the dams back in the seventies.
We camped at the end of the road, on the Huon River, in a very quiet spot. There is no way to drive to the south west coast, but it’s only a fifty mile walk to the beach from where we were camping. A pademelon came out and browsed on the campsite’s grass while we were making dinner. Like all the kangaroo family, they love European campground grass.
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Southwest (5.06) |  |
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Sunday March 21st
We went up to Scotts Peak Overlook to see most of Lake Pedder. Despite the controversy, 
it’s a magnificent view, with mountains rising straight out of the lake. There are rules limiting how much the power companies can drop its level, so it doesn’t get the ugly bathtub ring that you see in some reservoirs. Even though it’s magnificent, the whole area has a dark and gloomy atmosphere, and you can easily see why nobody wants to live there.
We drove to the other road that goes to the north side of Lake Pedder and also has views of Lake Gordon. It passes through Strathgordon, a village built for the power workers. This road’s nowhere near as scenic. Lake Gordon with its fifty foot bathtub ring is just ugly, with dead trees poking out of the water. We stopped at Ted’s Beach campground for lunch, and found it smelly and vandalized, and were very glad we hadn’t camped there.