13 November 2013 - Big4 Ulverstone Holiday Park, Ulverstone, Tasmania

We did venture out of the camp yesterday afternoon soon after I closed down the computer; Chris and I found that we could exit the park via a security gate directly out onto the beachfront park. The park runs along the foreshore for at least a kilometre, offering a children’s playground, a skate park, long sealed walking paths, patches of eucalypt recovering from galah damage bearing signs warning park users to keep their distance in case more of the canopy, weakened by the avian vandalism, should fall. Signs and brightly painted dinosaurs and the like give the parklands a fifties kitsch and made us smile. Had there been a mass of sun-seekers and beachgoers filling the spaces, all would have looked more normal. However rain was threatening and there were few risking a wetting. It was refreshing to pass a group of youths lying about close to the skate-park, chatting among themselves, and not an f-word to be heard. What a delight!

As we left the sea shore and followed the river bank, we were confused by all the Royal Australian Navy History inscribed on the footpaths, in the shelters and in all sorts of odd places. Research has not turned up any explanation for this, however we have not taken advantage of the museum here in town, nor are likely to before we depart, so must remain in ignorance.

Ulverstone had a population of 6,343 in the last census, however this probably includes all those other settlements within its municipality; Penguin, Turners Beach, Leith, Gawler and Forth. It is therefore a significant settlement and deserving of the larger font on the map.

The town, situated at the mouth of the Lewen River, was settled in 1848 by Europeans, but access was limited and real development did not take off until 1890 when the railway was constructed. Ulverstone was once a popular sawmill operating town, but today lives off potato farming and tourism, the latter driven by the swimming beaches close by and its proximity to Devonport, the ferry terminal city.

We returned to the camp along the streets, passing properties well maintained and decorated by equally immaculate flower gardens. While November brings Tasmania wet and wild weather, it also brings an abundance of flowers, a real bonus for us.

Rain fell all night and the wind blew, gusting to over 80 kph at about 3 am, 6.6 mm filling the rain gauges, although the temperatures never fell below 11 degrees. None of this boded well for the plans I had for the day. We set off optimistically, first to Devonport where we found mail from our bank waiting for us at this local branch; a relief after problems elsewhere around the country. Mail on the move is not an easy matter. Next we popped into the local Toyota dealer for parts. Ah, I think I have omitted to tell the next instalment of the on-going story of the rattle.

You may recall that we had a bracket replaced on our exhaust, a remedy which was supposed to silence the irritation. But it did not. Chris took the vehicle to the Toyota service agent in Burnie on that wet day which I spent baking and doing other domestic chores. There he was told by an expert that there was nothing to worry about although it was possible there was a small rattle in the muffler, however no immediate attention was required.

And so we travelled west, and west again, and rattle, rattle went the landcruiser. We tried to shut it out but it continued to bothered us. I had suggested to Chris it sounded like a loose mud flap on the front left hand side, although I do have a hearing problem when it comes to identifying direction of sound. I poked at all the mud flaps and the linings I could access through the mud, and found nothing.

Chris washed the landcruiser before we left Stanley and found that the front left hand wheel arch lining was missing a couple of screws. Eureka! Am I a diagnostic expert, or what! He fashioned some screws and nuts from bits he had to hand, but was not confident of their durability, hence the call to Toyota today, where we purchased the correct parts, at a price! But really, why did all the mechanics miss this? The good news is that the rattle is now completely fixed and we now travel as sane people do. A relief, for sure!

We were also keen to find a replacement for the towel rail in the caravan; the suction cups have had enough after nearly three years and keep giving up on their grip. We had called into a Home Hardware in Burnie, to find the business closing down and stocks to a minimum, offering no replacement. It was intriguing to find the same happening to the Home Hardware store in Devonport; we wondered what was happening. Heading back along the Bass Highway, we came upon a new shopping centre which included a brand new mega Mitre 10; we decided that this shop must have managed squeeze out all competition. We were unable to find a suitable rail here either, but did find that the planners of this shop and those who planned the roads in and out of the complex were idiots. Chris was more upset about this than I, and this together with the rain, now looking like it was set in for the day, did not make for happy families.

However there had been some earlier gaps in the rain, and I was optimistic there would be more; I insisted we carry on with our Plan A and so we headed south into the hills through Don, Forth and Kindred, through patchy farming, rain mist and rising hills. We continued on through Sprent where there is a sizeable school, and then on through marginal land, blackberry and bracken spreading over the hills and a number of horse agistment setups, this apparently the only moneymaking venture for the area. Nietta, with just a lone telephone box and a long abandoned building that was possibly once a store, sits at an elevation of 404 metres ASL and at the edge of the forest. Our destination, the Leven Canyon, lies about ten kilometres to the south west of this has-been spot, While there is evidence of recently milled plantation forest, Forestry Tasmania did agree in 2004 to leave the immediate area unlogged henceforth.

Interestingly the canyon has been a place to escape from the drudgery of life ever since the early 1900s. Some travelled by horse and dray from Ulverstone and in later years by train on the old Nietta railway line. The more adventurous scrambled down to the canyon floor to swim and fish. In the 1920s, some walked for four hours up Black Bluff to ski. Today, apart from the walk we took, there is a longer walk along the canyon floor, one I am sure is more attractive in better weather conditions.

Leven canyon from Cruikshanks Lookout

Despite the historical recreational use of the area, local conservation groups had to galvanise themselves into action back in the 1970s when the Tasmania Hydro-Electric Commission saw the potential here for a hydro dam. When I hear of greenies kicking up a fuss about the damming of rivers for hydro, I tend generally to consider them as the “baddies” in the piece, but then when you see the “saved” areas, such as this canyon, one really does have to applaud their efforts. And as I have referred to several times since we commenced our exploration of this state, the “nature versus progress” debate has been repeated many times in Tasmania, where tension between preserving wild places and using them for economic advancement has been keenly felt, more than in other Australian States. And perhaps in the end, that is what is holding the state economically back.

Here the dam obviously did not go ahead. Twenty five years of lobbying by local groups ended in 2001, when this area was officially declared a reserve by the State Government.

Down many steps at the Leven Canyon Reserve

Despite all these efforts, the Leven Canyon is a less visited tourist destination that most marked on the map. The river, beside which the town of Ulverstone sits, runs through a 300 metre deep, twelve kilometre long canyon, the limestone cliffs carved through the Loongana Range. From the well-appointed picnic area, one can take the forty five minute steep circuit walk out to the Cruikshanks Lookout two hundred and seventy five metres above the river, then down six hundred and ninety seven steps and along to another lookout, before returning up a fern filled gully to the car park. Today the stag-horn ferns and the pungas on which they grow, all dripped with rain and showed as the glossiest of green in the otherwise dark forest. But most of all I was both delighted and relieved to see the fabulous views from the lookouts across to Black Bluff, the canyon itself and the surrounding areas; relieved after the long drive up in such appalling weather conditions and the walk through the incessant rain.

We returned to Ulverstone by a more direct route, through Preston, North Motton and Gawler, a more appealing drive and through land well farmed, a patchwork of crops and lush grazing land, healthy cows and scarpering Tasmanian fowls, these latter creatures reminding us of the South Island Weka.

Back at Ulverstone we shopped at the Coles supermarket then returned home to the cessation of the rain. Isn’t that typical!

From here I can see half a dozen rabbits cavorting about the grass down from our site; they are the in-house caravan park lawnmowers, the second we have seen here in Tasmania, and the umpteenth here in Australia. For a country ravaged by the ravenous appetites of feral rabbits, it is indeed amazing that they are welcomed anywhere.

We will move on again tomorrow to spend the last few days exploring the Western Tiers. The imminent finality of our Tasmanian tour was confirmed today when we telephoned the caravan park in Melbourne for accommodation on our return to the mainland.