Once is chance, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern but four times is confirmation…
Everywhere we’ve been and stayed, including Strahan, being our fourth location in Tasmania, has been busy with other travellers. This is great news for Tourism Tasmania, but is a pain in the arse for us as it’s hard to find a nice location which we can enjoy by ourselves. We shouldn’t complain, this is a first world problem and we’ll get through it.
It might look like there’s a large portion of the mid-west that we haven’t covered from the above route map, but there’s simply no roads into those areas. However, we have a plan which we’ll reveal in our next post.
Following some research, we opted for the less risky route in, heading east from Stanley to Burnie, then south, through the ranges, and back past Cradle Mountain, passing through the small mining town of Rosebery, then Zeehan and finally into Strahan.
Pulling into Rosebery for a quick wee stop and explore, we saw there was a small Saturday markets happening, but after quickly exploring the 6 or so stalls, we made a discrete and hasty exit side-left, as many of the yocals were giving off the “Hills have eyes” vibe.
Strahan sits in a north arm of the well protected Macquarie Harbour and is well known as the launching point for the world famous Gordon River Cruise.
Pulling into the Strahan Beach Tourist (caravan) Park, we’d been lucky to secure their last powered site. With five nights/four days here, and unfortunately plenty or rain forecast, we opted to camp in comfort with power.
Trying to plan our stuff around the incoming inclement weather, we spent our first day, being Sunday, exploring north, back up through Zeehan, out to Granville Harbour and then up to Corinna.
But before even leaving the caravan park, I spied what I initially thought was a large Kangaroo Poo, but turned out to be the largest slug I’ve ever seen. It’s an invasive European species, and despite being impressively large, was pretty gross. I took a couple of pics and then moved him on, away from the van to which he was headed.
First stop was Spray Tunnel, just outside of Zeehan. Again choosing the circuitous route, we quickly found ourselves having to 4wd up a heavily rutted goat track, but Sir Gwavin handled it with aplomb and we pulled up for an explore.
The Spray Tunnel is 100m long and was built to allow an ore tram to pass through the mountain for the old Silver mine that operated back in the day. But remoteness and difficult conditions led to the mine being unprofitable and the site, other than the old tunnel, have since been decommissioned.
Walking through the tunnel, we spotted glints of minerals in the walls and what looked like spiders webs in the ceiling, only to learn later after leaving, that the ceiling webs belong to glow worms. We did spot a cool and very large long-legged spider, imagine the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Daddy Longlegs, in a hole in the wall, protecting a large, ball-sack looking egg sac.
From Zeehan, I had hoped to get to St Clair Falls, but the track in got rougher, and the rocks bigger and sharper, so we decided to not push our luck. However, on the way in we came across the following house, perched alongside a chuckling river, complete with babbling waterfalls, overlooking a private little beach to the river mouth and ocean, only 100m away. I was in love and would seriously consider buying the place if it were for sale, but Jules was less enthused due to it’s remoteness.
We then took a quick spin through the small beach shack community of Granville Harbour, before heading up to Corinna.
Corinna sits on the wide Pieman River and to cross you’ve got to pay the Fatman ferry man – it’s truly called the Fatman barge – $30 to get you across. Ferry man paid, it’s a short run across the river to ‘not much’. Despite being very historic, we didn’t see much in the old town to keep us overly interested, however, we did enjoy the Huon Pine river walk, through the lush green rainforest aside the river.
Before heading back home, we continued north, towards Arthur River another 15km or so to the Donaldson River Lookout. Unfortunately, a large, lightning lit bushfire swept through this range in Feb’25 and the landscape is just starting to recover, although it looks like it’ll take decades, if not centuries, to reclaim the area as verdant rainforest again.
Monday 23rd March – it’s so difficult keeping track of what day it is when you’re on holidays… Rain was incoming, but with the morning forecast to be mostly clear, we headed out once again into – literally – the wild west, this time heading east paradoxically. First stop, which was unplanned and random, Hogarth Falls.
As we were heading out of Strahan, towards our destination of Queenstown, I took the circuitous route, as I am want to do, and we ended up passing the People’s Park, not far from the main drag of Strahan. Pulling in, we noted there’s a 40min return forest walk with the Hogarth Waterfall at the end, so off we stomped.
A lovely, very easy walk along Botanical Creek, through the temperate rainforest up to the falls. There were a couple of opportunities to get down to the creek to shoot the verdant green bush and bubbling creek. Jules also spied a small mammal on the path, unfortunately doing it’s best Opossum impersonation by laying on its back with it’s legs in the air – i.e. it was dead, but only very recently dead. With respect we flipped it over to try and identify it as we originally thought it might have been a Pygmy Possum, one of my target animals for this trip, but after a closer look and a photo we now think it is an Antechinus, a small carnivorous marsupial – think big mouse with sharp teeth.
With the drizzle, more like mizzle, starting to fall we drove out to Queenstown, over what is commonly called the “99 bends”, but it felt like 199, or more bends, most of which are at an acute angle of steepness, either pulling up, or rolling down the side of a mountain.
As you arrive in Queenstown it becomes very obvious, very quickly that Queenstown was and is a mining town. The mountainsides are bare and there’s mining infrastructure dotted around the area. Despite this, Queenstown itself had a reasonable vibe going on – it’s definitely not a pretty town, but it didn’t have the same “the hills have eyes” feel that some of the smaller towns we’d passed through had.
Parking up, we quickly wandered up and down the main drag before randomly selecting a cafe for a coffee. On entering said cafe, we were struck by the orange-ness of the joint which included the barrister and owner, who was wearing a hat to shoe orange set of clothing. He even appears on the coffee mugs! But the coffee was good so we excused the colour.
We then took a chance and spent $16 to enter the Queenstown Museum. It turned out to be $16 very well spent as this place was huge, and very informative. Well worth a visit. The lunchtime hangry was starting to set in so we grabbed a couple of very yummie paninis at Queenies Crib in the main drag before heading out to check out Horsetail Fails and the Iron Blow mine lookout.
Jules decided not to do the gut clenching walk alongside the steep mountainside to Horsetail Falls, so I decided to power walk. Unfortunately the faster I walked the 1km the faster the clouds came in and by the time I arrived at the falls lookout, the whole top of the mountain and the view to the falls, was shrouded in white misty fog. Despite this I enjoyed the walk and managed to get a couple of shots.
It was then a short drive to the Iron Blow mine lookout, and again Jules opted to sit this one out as the lookout itself, was cantilevered out over a steep drop.
Following a day off from exploring so I could do some work and Jules some van chores, today we woke up to the alarm, really excited to be going on our long planned Gordon River Cruise.
Inserting superlatives now – OMG, jaw dropping, speechless, stunning, #heart-emjoi, etc.
First up, we lucked it with the weather. With a 2 to 10mm rain forecast, the day dawned cloudy, but no rain and some sunny patches breaking through. Not a breath of wind made our 20min walk down to the harbour, scenic, as we stopped to grab some shots before we’d even made it to the boat.
Then it was on to the Spirit of the Wild boat and up the stairs to our “Premier” (the posh) seats. With comfy leather recliners, carefully pre-angled to provide easy viewing out to the sides, the crew greeted us with brekky and barrister made coffee – already winning!
We then motored south and then west, across the Macquarie Harbour, which incidentally is Australia’s 2nd largest harbour after Victoria’s Port Philip Bay, and is about 6x times larger than Sydney Harbour. The captain enjoyed rubbing that into the NSW visitors onboard.
The water was becalmed and the sun kept trying to force its way through the clouds, often bursting through and splashing god-bolts of light over the mountains in the distance.
Despite its size, the head of the Macquarie Harbour is ridiculously narrow, just 83m at it’s widest point, and the harbour itself, is mostly extremely shallow, often less than a couple of metres. During the trip, the crew provided great narrative explaining the history, both natural, first peoples and colonisation, and one of the great stories was how in 1890, an engineer planned and then at a cost of $100,000 pounds, which was BIG money back then, had a rock wall built along the entrance which acted as a funnel, diverting and speeding up the ebb and flow of water through the heads, naturally dredging and cutter a deeper channel to the southern ocean beyond.
With the barometric, not lunar, tide rushing out, the top of the rock wall is still visible above the low water line.
And slowly the heads come into view, with the two tiny lighthouses atop small islands to guide ships in and out. Luckily the weather and ocean conditions remained good and we were able to pass through the heads, out along the ocean side of the rock wall, before turning and passing back through the heads, towards the salmon and ocean trout farming pens in the relative safety of the harbour.
I’d been out on the fly deck so far, whilst Jules opted to view from the comfort of her recliner, and when I popped in to see her, I discovered she was already drinking her first Tasmanian champagne, compliments of the crew, so of course, I had to grab one for myself.
Passing Sarah Island on our right – we’ll come back to this, we motored down to the mouth of the World Heritage listed and protected Gordon River. At this point, the captain switched motors from the diesels to electric and we silently glided into and up the river towards Heritage Point. Due to the heavy concentration of tannins staining the water dark, the heavily forested sides of the rivers reflected beautiful in the calm waters and we were further treated to wisps of fog hanging over the tree-tops, all the while, the sun was trying to ascertain dominance over the cloud and shine through. This lead to a profusion of conditions. One minute it was dark and heavily clouded, the next lit up in bright sun, only to be swallowed a minute later in drifting fog. Absolute magic! Whilst I’m happy with the following photos, they simply do not do the place justice.
Pulling into Heritage Landing, we did a short boardwalk through the temperate rainforest, admiring the many different species of trees, including the world famous Huon Pines, which are the primary reason that the township of Strahan exists.
It was then back onto the boat for a fantastic lunch, which included poached and smoke salmon from the farms we’d passed, complimented with more Tassie wines.
Whilst eating lunch we noted the fog suddenly, and I mean very suddenly, within a minute had descended and made the place feel like an 80’s disco club with its fog lamps working over time – but no 80’s synth music or flashing lights here mate..
By the time I’d grabbed the camera, it was starting to lift and another 60seconds later it had pretty much dissipated back to whence it came. To prove it, the following photo’s are essentially of the same scene, taken with two minutes of each other.
We then reversed thrusters and silently motored back down the river towards the harbour, passing the other cruise operator in the process. A few more wines and some desert and we pulled up to land on Sarah Island which was used to hold repeat offenders in the early 1800’s. Shannon, a Strahan local gave a fantastic performance based explanation of the history of the island as we followed the walk past the many historic sites.
Then it was back to the boat for our final run back to port, whilst partaking in even more tassie wine and cakes.
Just up from the wharf sits the Morrison’s Huon Pine Sawmill which we explored on our walk back to camp, sniffing up the glorious scent of the rough sawn Huon Pine.
Thursday the 26th of March marks our last day in Strahan and we’re off towards Hobart today, although we’re going to take a couple days to get there.
After a night of steady rain, the Strahan Caravan Park was pretty sodden and boggy, but we managed to get things packed up without too much mud, wetness or drama happening. Passing back through Queenstown, the surrounding mountains were much clearer today and the Horsetail Falls was very visible from the road. The falls had also significantly increased in water volume from my visit the other day, and were now fairly heaving down the 50m drop. We didn’t stop though as Jules still had no desire to do the board walk, or goat track as she called it, precariously nailed into the side of the mountain.
Passing through, over and around, but never through, the mountains we came upon the Nelson Falls walk, so pulled over for a gander and to stretch our legs. A lovely 20minute walk along the Nelson River in heavy temperate rain forest, with a couple of opportunities to view beautiful river-scapes, before the main falls presented itself in all its glory.
After the mandatory loo stop upon returning from the falls, we re-boarded Sir Gwavin and eventually pulled up for the night at Guelph Basin, on First Bay, approximately 10kms south of the Lyell Hwy and Derwent Bridge. A rocky, but reasonable track in we are the only people here, camped alongside the lake, watching the rain showers pass over the distant ranges as they crossed the lake to reach us.
With the van all set up, we indulged in some cheese and bickies for lunch, with a double-dram of rum to wash it down and warm up our insides as it’s bloody cold here. The temp inside the van had dropped to 13C so we put on the diesel heater and it was soon toasty. However, upon mentioning our use of the diesel heater to my bro in-law, as the heater is an in joke, he texted back and exclaimed “Diesel heater!! May be cheaper burning gold mate“. He’s probably right as diesel is now around $3.15/l and seems only to be on the rise.
Leaving our lakeside campsite it was a brisk 3C so with red noses and chilly hands we did a quick pack-up, put Sir Gwavin into 4wd and pulled Goldy back out the 10km track, taking a couple of pics along the way. Just up the road is the small townsite Derwent Bridge and as we pulled into the Wombat Cafe to grab a coffee we noted two very sleek, fast and likely VERY expensive McLaren sports cars parked out front. I grabbed a quick pic and then we noted more sports cars grabbing fuel. It turns out these guys are car enthusiasts, obviously with some good coin behind them, from Victoria and came over for a drive. I’m not sure how they fared on some of the bouncy and rutted Tassie roads as the cars certainly didn’t have much clearance!
Leaving the Wombat Cafe we came across the entrance to The Wall which I’d seen on google, had heard it was pretty good, but didn’t know much more than that. As we had time to kill, we pulled in, passed over our $22/person entry fee and were instantly blown away as we passed into the large room, filled with stunningly beautiful sculptured Huon Pine timber and fine art pencil drawings that looked like photographs. Greg Duncan is the wood sculptor and his work is astonishing. Lisa Falk is the pencil artist and her drawings are equally amazing and both Jules and I agreed The Wall was another ‘highlight’ of our trip so far, well worth the entrance fee. Understandably they don’t allow any photography of the exhibit so you’ll just have to go check it out.
Next stop Hobart.