27 October 2013 - Lake St Clair Lodge, Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania

I woke at some point of the night to hear waves being heavily dumped on the shore, and yet there was no wind; at least, the tree tops had ceased their wind cries. Later when we woke again, the sun was shining and the sea was calm. This all boded well for our day’s journey although it would have been nice to have had better weather during our two weeks or so in the Hobart area.

We would have been away earlier but the lock on the hitch jammed up and no amount of fiddling with the key or dousing with CRC provided remedy. Eventually the hacksaw came out, the old padlock divided and disposed of and once hitched, a spare in place. We travel with spares of so much, not only the extra cans of peas and pens, batteries and baked beans.

Our route back to Hobart was north along the shoreline, turning north east at Kingston rather than back over the Channel Highway. Foolishly I thought this might be a less challenging road than the steep four lane highway. How wrong I was; the road twisted and turned, up and down along the coastal cliffs frequented by lycra clad Sunday cyclists, with little opportunity for pulling over to let more urgent travellers through.

But the effort was worth it, at least for me who did not need to concentrate so much on the road directly in front of the wheels; the road winds its way along through the suburbs of Taroona and Sandy Bay, where houses sit perched on the hillsides with views to die for, out over the lowest reaches of the River Derwent. As we closed in on the centre of Hobart, we passed between old character buildings and both agreed that Hobart, now thrice visited, was indeed a very beautiful city, although if one were to live here, one would need to have good insulation and good heating.

We found our way back to the Officeworks shop to do some more printing. Parking with the caravan in tow was easier than it would have been a weekday but still problematic; Chris stayed in the vehicle while I attended to business. And then we were off, out along the Brooker Highway, past now familiar landmarks of the Botanic Gardens, the Showgrounds where the show people were packing up after the annual Show, past MONA and our Hobart camping ground, and up the river all the way to New Norfolk, where we filled with fuel and bought fresh bread, before retiring to a lovely little recreational reserve beside the river for lunch.

Near here, I noted a quaint old pub on the main road, the Bush Inn established in 1815 and boasting itself to be “the oldest continually licenced pub in Australia”. Later I read that Hobart has the oldest continuously running pub, the Hope & Anchor established in 1807. So who is right here? Should we simply disregard all these claims, many of which I have repeated here in this blog?

From here on it was new ground, for me anyway, and for Chris, the opposite direction to that travelled forty years or so. The road to Queenstown from New Norfolk is just over two hundred kilometres, no distance at all, but it cuts through one of the most rugged sections of the State and is mostly a very slow trip. Often we crawled up hills in second gear doing not much more than twenty kilometres an hour, letting the little traffic through whenever possible. As we passed through the grazing land, the roadside hawthorns were abloom in their wedding white splendour, even more so than when we had travelled into the wilderness area a week or so ago.

Soon after New Norfolk, the valley opens out wide and supports a surprising amount of sheep farming. This should have been expected because I saw that Hamilton has a “Sheep Centre” tourist attraction where one can see all there is about farming sheep. Coals-to-Newcastle for me, but if they can make money from such activities, why not indeed? I had expected Hamilton to be about the size of New Norfolk, although was pre-warned that it hadn’t changed much since the mid-19^th century. The road descends down a wide valley to a small settlement of very old brick and stone buildings, nearly all converted into café craft operations; you wonder how they can survive all competing with one another and with scant traffic passing through.

As regards the sheep farming, I read this evening that the Tasmanian population density goes like this: 7.1 people and 49.6 per square kilometre so really the Aussie should stop making those rude jokes about New Zealand and direct their course jokes to their own southern State. Fair enough?

Soon we passed through the settlement of Ouse, situated on the Ouse River no less, the village proving to be more substantial than Hamilton, although the name on the map was in far smaller type. This place is a service centre for the locals rather than a hopeful service refreshment centre for the travellers. The farm land gave way to forest, State Forest, plantations of pine and eucalypt. To our right the Derwent River flowed, passing through several manmade lakes, part of hydro schemes; Meadowbank Lake dammed by the Meadowbank Dam, the Cluny Lagoon by the Cluny Dam, Lake Repulse by the Repulse Dam, Lake Catagunya by the Cluny Dam, and so on.

I had emailed the Lake St Claire Lodge last night to ask about their tariffs and site vacancies, because once one came this far, there was little nearby either forward or back, especially if one had a mind to enjoy the Lake St Claire National Park. By lunch today there was a response, in poor English, stating their tariff, $30 for a powered site, and that they did not take bookings; it was first in, first served. But we still prevaricated about staying, the options being to stay forty seven kilometres back at Tarraleah or even about twelve kilometres back again at Wayatinah. We discussed the pros and cons of the options, and I left the decision to Chris, because it was he after all who was suffering, or not, the stress and strain of driving. Soon we had gone past the turnoff to the Wayintinah Lagoon, Option A off the table.

We started to climb steeply, the old girl pulling well today, and then arrived on a high ridge and found ourselves following a wide water filled canal. Soon the water entered a series of huge round pipes and we continued along the ridge, following the pipeline until we arrived at Tarraleah.

This is part of an amazing hydro scheme which starts up in Lake St Clair where we were headed. From this lake, the Derwent River is led through a complex system of flumes, weirs, dams, canals, penstocks and power stations, beginning at the rivers source in the south east corner of the lake.

During the 1930s, the Hydro Electric Commission constructed a weir to raise the lake level by three metres, flooding the nearby Frankland Beaches and killing trees fringing the steep western shore. A pumping station was built to draw down the levels by six metres, although it has rarely been used. The station, with its inter-war art deco-style pump house, had cultural and architectural value, and has just in the last week or so had consent to be renovated into exclusive tourist accommodation. This surely will be fodder for Kevin McCloud or the likes?

The development was commissioned in 1938 and supports six downstream power stations. Hydro power is supposed to be the cream of renewable energy, efficient and economical, however try telling that t the Tasmanian consumers who apparently pay more for their power than mainlanders. We have heard much of that hue and cry since arriving here and I am sure it has been going on for some time. Perhaps this is a reason why one should not bother to live in Hobart after all?

Tarraleah

We stopped at a lookout from where we could see the power station far below us adjacent to the Nive River, and realised that we too had to descend to that level before climbing back up the other side. Close to the lookout was the most delightful hotel type building, landscaped and immaculate. I do wonder who comes to stay here? Perhaps the rich and famous where no one will know them and they can spent a week with their head buried in a book and forget about the world?

Beyond this complex is a caravan park; however we were not drawn to stay here either, so returned to the Lyell Highway and descended the steep gorge, crossed the fast flowing river and wound our way up again on the other side. From here the road climbed more subtly and soon we were crossing marshy plains, gold with mountain button grass, and beyond, the snow covered mountains. The scenery was truly spectacular.

At Derwent River we passed a roadhouse, crossed the bridge over the much diminished Derwent, for here at Lake St Claire is its genesis. We turned north into the National Park, travelling the five kilometres through the lovely forest and arrived at the Lodge.

“Lodge” is a very strange word; in New Zealand there is the Huka Lodge and several other top class accommodation places that use the word in their name. But “lodge” is also used to describe a tramper’s bunkroom, a scout camp or the like. And it is this confusion that has most likely caused the furore of those who comment on Trip Advisor about the Lodge here. This was originally part of the National Park and set up more for the trampers who do the world famous Overland Trek rather than the well-heeled yuppies who prefer to be pampered and pumped full of caviar and champagne. I suspect the detractors expected this Lodge to be more like the latter? It is not. While there has been enormous investment on the site since Chris was here, and the very simple buildings are relatively new, this is a bush camp. And as such, we were well satisfied with the location if not the price, until we hitched up to the water.

The water pressure is so poor that it cannot even climb the distance to our water tanks, and so we are using our own water on board, of which we have more than adequate, however that is not the point. And we are paying $30 for the privilege! So I shall join the grumpy ones on Trip Advisor and add my complaints with theirs, but not before we have explained the problem to the lovely Asian family who run the place and tell them why we are only going to stay the one night even though we indicated we would be here for two.

Strange to say, they must be only too aware of the complaints and are trying hard to accommodate in all senses of the word. When we said we wanted to stay and pay for two nights, they said, “Go check out the sites first and then come back and pay”.

“No”, we said, “we are staying”, and so we paid for one, because still they would not take our money for two nights. They must have suspected we too would be like all the other ungracious moaning round-eyes who have come through.

Swampy edges of Lake St Clair

After setting up, and remaining hitched up, no mean feat in this park of smallish sites, we walked over to the Park’s Visitors Centre and wandered about reading all the information and displays on offer. It is an excellent centre and manned by a Japanese girl, which all added to the strangeness of the place. Chris explained that he had walked The Track back at the end of 1971 or the beginning of 1972, the first through after the Footscray group became lost and one of their party perished. Did she know when that was? No, anyway, did she have the Hut Logbooks here?

They are apparently in the Tasmanian Archives, a building which I had seen and remarked on this morning as we had driven through Hobart. I noticed it because it seemed to be a structure of simple corrugated iron, a material one would not normally consider appropriate for housing important state archives. Perhaps I was mistaken as regards the iron? It was a strange coincidence anyway.

A propos of the sheep referred to earlier, I leaned in the Park Centre that foxes in Tasmania manage to kill up to 30% of lambs, promising to devastate the farming industry if something is not done about them. These cute little brushy tailed critters, so loved and tolerated in England are not so here in Tasmania, or for that matter, anywhere in Australia, where it is estimated that nationwide they kill up to 10% of lambs. The loss to farmers is estimated at $40 million every year; now whether that is in Tasmania or the whole of Australia, I am not sure, but it is one hang of a big claim. How do they come up with those figures?

Of the mountains and the National Park here, I learned that it was an escaped convict who  was one of the first Europeans to cross this wild country in 1828, when he came up the Gordon and Franklin by Huon pine log canoe, then across the mountains to Wylds Crag west of the Derwent Valley. Within the next decade surveyors and explorers followed and in 1835, Surveyor-General George Frankland visited and named Lake St Clair, climber Mt Olympus and named some of the nearby peaks. From the summit, Frankland admired the lake’s “beautiful bays and golden beaches”. It was obviously in summertime because beaches are the last thing one thinks of looking at the lake with snow about.

Across the lake to the mountains

However it was not until this last century that anyone did anything about capitalising on that beauty, when in the 1920s, a mountaineer and photographer presented a series of public lectures supporting a campaign for a national park at Cradle Mountain. In 1930, work was begun by volunteers on the development of the Overland Track, and as they say, the rest is history.

I learned too that Lake St Clair, sitting at 737 metres ASL is the deepest freshwater lake in Australia, at 167 metres. Should we believe this?

We wandered down to the viewing platform in front of the centre and looked across the lake to the snow covered mountains above the giant swamp gums and myrtles or beeches. What a perfect picture! Last night the temperature got down to 1 degree, tonight it is forecasted to be -1.

Back at camp I dug out our pyjamas and Chris covered the door vent in cardboard; the last thing we want is snowy drafts through the vents! Chris had thought that tomorrow we should walk to the end of Lake St Clair, thus undertaking some of The Track ourselves, but we learned the distance is seventeen kilometres one way. There is the ferry which conveys walkers to that shorter staring point, but the ferry fare is hideously expensive. We will probably just walk for a couple of hours up the lake and then turn back, satisfied to have done that much.

There are pademelons about us here in the forest, but the betongs and other amazing little critters are shy. Perhaps we will see platypus in the lake tomorrow, perhaps we shall see a pair of the endangered Swift Parrots; there are apparently only 1,500 pairs left.