Tasmania Pure

We've just returned from a wonderful week in wet, cold and windy Tasmania. The first stop was Hobart so I could represent the Department of Education at the 5th National Indigenous Education Conference.

The conference was huge, with over 600 delegates. It opened at the Hobart City Hall last Sunday night. The mood was welcoming and mellow, but the political dialogue and the tensions around Indigenous issues in Australia always give the debate a very serious edge. The photo below shows Jim Everett on the left, a Tasmanian Aboriginal man who MCd the conference. He was later arrested at the weekend, along with his mate Michael Mansell, for demonstrating against some development that placed Aboriginal heritage sites at risk (big front page news in the Hobart newspapers!).

I loved the special insight we were given about Aboriginal culture in Tasmania at the Museum and Gallery. The history of the relationship of Tasmanian Aborigines and the colonisers is a violent and tragic one - and quite politically loaded since the incarceration of the last of the traditional people.

In amongst all the tragedy I loved seeing the fibre exhibition celebrating contemporary Aboriginal craftswomen's interpretation of traditional basket weaving techniques. Along with their beautiful shell necklace making it's more powerful evidence of the resilience of traditional Aboriginal culture and beliefs in Tasmania.

We left Hobart on Wednesday afternoon in our little hired Hyundai Getz for Strahan on Macquarie Harbour on the NW Coast. It was a 5 hour drive, along the gentle, green Derwent Valley north of Hobart, then the slow mountain roads of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and the arid but brilliantly coloured moonscape/landscape around Queenstown, over 30km west of Strahan.

We arrived in time to walk around the inlet to Regatta Point and watch the sun set behind Strahan Village on Wednesday evening.

We climbed the hill in the morning to enjoy breakfast and the view from the deck of View 42o Restaurant on what proved to be our last sunny, warmish morning in Tasmania.

Before heading off to Cradle Mountain we took a peek at Lettes Bay a few minutes South of Strahan. It is obviously a fishing village with rough shelters spread all along the "parkland" at the water's edge. We could imagine fishermen descending on the village at the weekend, starting up their tinnies and taking some pride in their little "squats". It struck me as a kind of Tasmanian blokes' Paradise.

Cradle Mountain National Park was only a three hour drive from Strahan, but a whole world away. We settled into the Cradle Mountain Chateau, enjoying the warmth and comfort as the weather turned cold, wet and windy in the mountains.

We managed to get in a short "Enchanted Walk" on our first afternoon. The vegetation was amazing in this alpine environment. Freakish fungi and algae outgrowths and water gushing and rushing in clean mountain streams everywhere. The picture below shows the clumps of button grass that are the predominant ground cover, in the open away from dense tree cover.

We learnt that this is what a healthy Waratah plant looks like in its natural environment.

We explored the grounds of the "Chateau" and enjoyed watching the bird life and family groups of pademelons making themselves at home in the environment, without any apparent fear of humans.

This pademelon was enjoying his dinner just outside the balcony of our room.

Although our only full day at Cradle Mountain on Friday dawned cool and cloudy we set out with high hopes of seeing the mountain and Dove Lake in its best light. To get there as quickly as possible we took the little transit bus to travel the over 8km to the mountain.

Our 7.7km circuit of Dove Lake allowed us stunning views of the mountain and its mirrored crater lake as the Cradle Mountain ridge gradually emerged from the layers of mist and cloud that had covered its peaks when we arrived.

It was breathtaking to see this landscape and we were absolutely elated by the experience. So elated that we made the decision to continue walking, around Lake Lilli to Ronny Creek, then Snake Hill, back to the Visitor's Centre, over 8 kms walking, mostly along the Cradle Valley, giving us close up encounters with wombats, an echidna, endless button grass, King Billy pines and pandanas - all unique features of this national park.

We celebrated our wonderful day of experiences and our great effort in walking over 16kms with a slap up meal at the Chateau that night, the highlight of which was the unlimited supply of fresh Bruny Island oysters and delicious Tasmanian salmon (cooked whole and served rare the way I like it).

We left Cradle Mountain on Saturday morning in rather wild and stormy weather as we thanked our lucky stars we'd been able to time our visit so well in the previous day and a half. We headed East through isolated little hamlets, bypassing Launceston, stopping for a short while at the very retro Campbell Town before heading North East to the Freycinet National Park, around a four hour drive including stops.

In driving rain, wind and very limited visibility we made the decision not to do any walking in the park, thereby passing up the chance to see Wineglass Bay etc etc. We made do with a rather damp, cold and grim stalk around a small bit of Coles Bay as we tried to discern the The Hazards - the mountain backbone of the Northern part of the Freycinet Peninsula through the rain soaked clouds.

We gave up fairly quickly and drove away from Freycinet around Great Oyster Bay to the seaside village of Swansea where we settled in to our very comfortable beach side cabin (at inner city hotel prices) for the afternoon, watching DVDs and snacking as the steel grey ocean churned and the wind and rain blew horizontally against the windows. The next morning we heard on the news that 83cm of rain had fallen on Swansea overnight. We drove back down to Hobart yesterday morning watching the estuary waters along the coastline spreading rapidly around the highway. It was only 11o in Hobart.

Back in Canberra now, much cooler than when we left but the garden is already drying out and needs a drink.