Wild Places and Open Spaces

Okay….let me set the stage….

It’s our 2nd last night in Tasmania. We are feeling really lazy…trying to decide if we should eat, sleep or go for a walk. We finally agree that we should telephone a couple that live in Tasmania who we had met on the mainland a month before. So, we leave our humble abode (tent) and drive to the telephone (it was pretty far away…). We got in touch with our new friends and would visit them the next day, on Australia Day.

Across from the telephone booth was the trailhead of a hike that we had talked about doing…we just hadn’t got around to it yet (you see, the past 2 days we were taking a vacation from our vacation of exploring). The hike was to a bird hide (for those of you that don’t know what this is, it’s a shelter (often just a wall with a hole in it) that most often lies in front of a body of water so you can watch birds without them seeing you – like a tree stand for deer…same idea but with no shooting). So, after much discussion, we decided that we should at least walk to the bird hide for some exercise, and check out the bird life. Dusk was nearly upon us, and the bush was alive with pademelons. Nearly every step we took we scared up another, and after a while we were so used to the noises, we figured that every rustle must be a pademelon….

…until that is, when Jim turned to me with a dumbfounded expression and excitedly whispered, “I just saw a tasmanian devil!” I of course thought he was pulling my leg (he has been known to prey on my naivety) so I came up with the most obvious reaction…I hit him and said, “shut up, you did not!” He then proceded to convince me, as he pointed to the bush where he had seen it, then much to my surprise, the little tasmanian devil came trudging back into view! It appeared to be a young one – its fur was beautiful with no obvious scars, and his face looked free of any obvious disease. He was gone in a matter of 10 seconds, onto a search for his next meal, but we had a great look at him. This was an amazing finish to our Tasmanian adventure – many people had told us that we wouldn’t see a devil in the wild, so we had pretty much given up. Yet, by chance, a little devil graced our presence in a park that was known to have been hit hard by the facial tumour disease. We couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. We got no photographs, but the picture and feelings in our minds will never be erased.

Click HERE for some pictures.

The southernmost point one can drive to in Australia is on the south east coast of Tasmania. We couldn’t leave Australia and not go here! On the drive we got a great surprise…

At 11:30am, crossing the road in front of our car was a quick and agile spotted-tail quoll! A quoll is another carnivorous marsupial – this one acts more like a cat and is often referred to as one, although it does not resemble a cat in the least bit. This was an amazing find for 2 reasons: the quoll is nocturnal and very rare to see! 2 quolls exist: the spotted-tail quoll one we saw, and an eastern quoll – the latter being much smaller. About 100m down from that sighting we saw another tiger snake – we have seen a few of these venomous creatures now in our travels.

We checked out Lake Pedder in the south west – apparently once a beautiful, natural lake. But, in 1972 it was flooded for power, so we checked out the Gordon River dam and system there as well. Whenever we see a dam we are amazed by the engineering phenomenom that it is (whether right or wrong). Apparently the Lake Pedder issue was a huge environmental struggle, and we have been told it resulted in the birth of the green party here.

We headed for Mt. Field National Park – one of the oldest (if not the oldest) National Parks in Australia (1916). Inside the park are some of the tallest trees in Australia, a type of eucalyptus. However, the Styx valley, not far from the park, claims to have the tallest hardwood trees in the world. (The largest softwood trees in the world are the giant redwoods we saw in California, and they are larger than these eucalypts.) They truly are giants, and it makes one feel very small walking in their understory. Although we did some great walks in the area during the day (in the rain I might add), our best walk was at night.

At dusk we had a really close-up encounter with a platypus – before this we had only ever seen them at dawn. Then, when it was totally dark all the little night creatures were about – pademelons, brush possums, and a barred bandicoot! This bandicoot was the first ‘barred’ one we had seen – he was pretty darn cute with all his stripes and he didn’t mind us photographing him. Then we went spotlighting in the rainforest. We saw the regular creatures, but we were actually out to find something you don’t use a flashlight for…Glow worms! We came across an old hollowed out tree lying on the ground that was nicely decaying and had tons of moss and lichen in it. Looking into its hollowed depths we were presented with a twinkling light show – like the stars, only not in the sky. Amazing. Glow worms actually aren’t worms; they are a larval form of a mosquito-like fly. After building a horizontal tubular nest of silk and mucus, the larva attach vertical sticky ‘fishing lines’ from it to trap insects that are attracted by their light. Once some food gets stuck, they haul the line up and see what’s for dinner. They produce the light using waste products from metabolism, but it is under nervous control, so loud noises or predators, for example, cause them to turn it off.

After our successful wildlife finds in Mt. Field, we headed to Lake St. Clair National Park. This national park is at the southern end of the famous Cradle Mountain National Park. On the way there we saw our first Tasmanian Devil, dead on the road. We’d find 2 more dead ones on our journey. It was a rainy day upon arrival to the park, so we did short hikes and hoped for decent weather the next day.

Our night walk here proved to be quite successful as well…after much searching and listening, we finally found ringtail possums! They are much smaller and ‘daintier’ looking than brushtail possums (the brushtail possums remind us of our mischevious racoons at home) and they are found most often in the trees, rather than on the ground or low bush where the brushtails are. A great find, but didn’t manage a photo as they were too far away.

Next day, the weather came through for us, and we got a great 19km hike in to Mt. Russell. A good day hike that took us through rainforest, grasslands, eucalypt forest, and up mountains and we saw tiger snakes and echidnas along our way. Back at camp we got cleaned up and tended to our blisters, ate, then we were out again for our night walk. We had nearly given up hope seeing another ringtail, and had headed back to camp, when right near our tent we heard the whine-like noise we have learned is theirs. Flashed the spotlight, and sure enough, there were a couple ringtails – one even decided to pose for us! How lucky!

On our way north west, we came across a hike to Montezuma Falls. That is one of the great things about Tasmania; there are tons of walks to do everywhere – some seemingly in the middle of nowhere – that bring you through some fantastic bush/rainforest or to a spectacular site, just as this falls was. Montezuma falls at 104m, is the tallest waterfall in Tasmania, and it is a beaut – it’s even 3-tiered to boot. There is a skinny (one person wide) suspension bridge over the gorge at it as well, that if we had walked on at the beginning of our trip we probably would have freaked out. But, we have been fortunate to have been at many high places now, and thus only got a slight ‘wobbly knees’ sensation.

On through a town called Stanley, where we had read about a ‘Nut’ being there. The Nut is actually a 152m high volcanic rock formation, that offers amazing views from the top. The walk up it is quite steep, so there is a chairlift that the less energetic can take up for a fee. Us, feeling somewhat less energetic, however, cheap, decided to hike it, and it wasn’t that bad at all. I am sure it would have offered much better views on a clearer day, but we needed the exercise anyways!

We made it to the west coast at Arthur River, before heading to Cradle Mountain National Park. The day was overcast once again, and we decided that if the next day was good, we’d do a full day walk. At this point as well, we had pretty much given up on seeing any Tasmanian devils in the wild, so we decided to pay a ‘sanctuary/wildlife’ organization to show us them at night, feeding. Without getting into a long and drawn out explanation of this place – it seemed to be a legitimate place which is working alongside agencies to help the devils predicament, and to educate people. Anyways, after watching a film and slide presentation, we were introduced to a female devil that we got to touch, then anxiously awaited to see them feed. There were 6 devils outside in the enclosure, and as soon as the carcass was put out for them, they went at it furiously. Ripping and tearing voraciously, with lots of different noises as they all tried to get a chunk. Devils eat every part of a carcass – they have very powerful mandibles that enable them to pulverize bone. So, through all their noises also came the crunching and crushing of bones while they were eating. They are not the vicious animals that they are made out to be – they are simply opportunistic and jump on any food they find. They will kill as well, but do not work in groups – they are solitary animals. When one devil finds a carcass or makes a kill, other devils come by to try to get their own portion. They don’t work together, but they don’t really fight either – they just try to show who’s boss. It was all very educational and interesting, and I hope our money goes to a good cause.

The next day ended up being the clearest skies ever – perfect for viewing the famous Cradle Mountain. Pretty lucky for us, as on average it rains here on 7/10 days, cloudy 8/10 days, and the sun shines all day on only 1 day in 10. Apparently we got that one day in 10! We did a great hike across the face of Cradle Mountain, and managed to see a glimpse of what we think was a copperhead snake. At dusk, the park was absolutely crawling with wombats happily grazing without a care in the world.

After Cradle Mountain, we had pretty much done all that we had come to see in Tasmania, so we headed north towards Devonport where we would catch the ferry to the mainland. We stopped along the way to visit a cave – this one had a river flowing into it and beautiful sparkling crystal formations that we hadn’t seen before. It also had the most numerous, long and intact ‘straw’ formations we have ever seen in a cave. We also got a light show in the cave when all the flashlights were turned off…all along the ceiling above the water were glowworms! Although we were totally underground, we had the feeling we were looking up at twinkling stars in the sky.

We spent the majority of the next day in Devonport getting car stuff done – we bought a set of hubcaps because by this time in our trip we had lost all but one… We also got our car “serviced” – we have figured out this is what they cal a ‘lube, oil and filter’, but with this fancy ‘serviced’ name, they get to charge $120.00. Pretty darn expensive oil changes in Aussie land!

We had 3 more nights to go, so we thought we’d spend 2 at a National Park somewhat near Devonport. The park had beach access as well as forest, and we spent much of our time lazing around, walking on the beach, watching roos, wombats and pademelons, and reading. Did I mention how expensive books are in Australia? A regular paperback novel goes for about $16.00, and anything larger is at least double that! We had even visited a couple of used book stores and found their prices to be outrageous. Finally we found a ‘Vinnies’ (St Vincent de Pauls) with cheap used books, and bought an armful for $5.00, so we are no longer in withdrawal for something to read. Interesting what things are more or less expensive in different places in the world.

On the second night at the park the most amazing thing happened…so amazing that it deserves its own section….read on…..

Driving off the boat we found ourselves in a traffic jam at 7:00 in the morning. We finally found out why - we were going through the agricultural checkpoint where they had dogs sniffing out cars! We opened all our ... [Continue reading this entry]

The ferry ride across the Bass Strait that I had been very worried about, turned out to be a very calm ride. (Don't get me wrong though - if you went on deck, you were almost blown off due to ... [Continue reading this entry]