11 November 2013 - Stanley Cabin & Tourist Park, Stanley, Tasmania

It did rain, heavily, and very early but ceased by the time we crawled out of bed. Alas we seem to have been sitting up far too late watching the box of late; perhaps making up for the times when we had no television reception and when I was reduced to thrashing my husband at Scrabble several nights in a row. Such excitement!

Picnic spot at Black River

This morning, buoyed by the better than expected weather, we headed off, once again with the eski packed, picked up the newspaper and a loaf of bread at twice the price I normally pay from the one local general store, and headed directly south to the settlement of Forest, bigger than we expected with its 686 residents, and on to South Forest which did met expectations; a has-been rural settlement now little but an intersection and a spot on a map. 

Black River Ford

Here we turned east onto a gravel road with the intention of cutting through to the official road to the Dip Forest Reserve, and soon found ourselves winding our way down through a narrowing road, with massive ferns reaching across to each other and little space for us to pass. We arrived at a picnic spot by the Black River, deep and dark under the towering trees, the only way on, a concrete ford across the fast flowing river. The flood marker showed that the river was only up by 200cm, but the force of the river was quite a deterrent, given that there was another option: to retrace our route and travel by the more conventional route. Had there been someone else about, we probably would have been braver, but I did not fancy having to leave an upended flooded vehicle in the river to go search for help; I suspected it would be a very long time before anyone else came this way. Now you may be muttering words like “whimps” or “pussies” as you read this but I suggest there are some who are tired of pulling foolish tourists out of disastrous situations, and they will be applauding.

We returned to Forest, then took another minor road through to the main road, headed a little further east and turned up the sealed road marked ”Dip Falls” which is what we should have done in the first place, but then we would not have seen the great swathes of lovely dairy land reaching south of the coastline.

Grazing country passed through

The road south to the Dip Forest Reserve is mostly sealed and passes through pockets of farmland and plantations of eucalypt, still being milled because we almost collided with a logging truck coming around a corner. The twenty six kilometre trip in is well worth the effort; we were delighted with the falls. The Dip River plunges over a very even cliff edge, down to another level and then over a series of upended organ pipes or a tessellated pavement arrangement. We walked down to the base of the falls, really the only place where one can see how these differ from any other marvellous cascade they have been dragged to see. Of course the overnight rain had proved a bonus after all, not only to the farmers, but to all waterfall sightseers.

Another kilometre up the road is a small walkway through to The Big Tree, a 400 year old Browntop Stringybark notable for its girth rather than its height. While it stands a modest 62 metres high while many typically reach the lofty heights of between 45 and 90 metres, this very warty deformed specimen is a grand 16 metres around its base which is quite special here in Australia.

Dip River Falls

We parked back by the falls after walking up river a little to see the remains of an old boiler, evidence of the mill and three dwellings that were once here in the forest. Milling commenced in the area in the 1880s however this reserve was put aside for recreation and conservation by Forestry Tasmania about twenty years ago. Here the picnic tables and the shelter structures are dark and unappealing in the tall forest; perhaps in the middle of a very hot summer one might be inclined to make use of them, but today we ate in the landcruiser as is our wont.

The Big Tree

It was here at this reserve we learned that chainsaws were not used in Tasmania until after the 19602; that surprised us somewhat. Prior to that,  the age-old methods using axes and cross-cut saws were used.

We learned too that it was mainly during the 1920s that large parts of Circular Head’s forests were being cut for timber. Then a network of rail lines carried eucalypt and blackwood logs from remote sawmills such as that here, to ports at Stanley and Smithton.

Rather than drive back to the main road by the same route, we elected to again take a minor road, this one labelled a “track” which did concern us a little, especially since the map showed three river crossings; we just hoped they were bridged. So we set off eastwards through plantations at varying stages of development; some still very young, some ready for harvest and some recently ripped and stripped. Fortunately we came upon no more logging trucks, found all rivers bridged and emerged onto a small sealed road which in turn took us back to the Bass Highway. Here we turned west, soon reaching the Rocky Cape roadhouse, which sits at the western entrance of the Rocky Cape National Park.

This National Park is a pay-park like many here in Tasmania, so we were glad to have our pass ready to be stuck on the windscreen, but I do have to say that I would have felt rather short changed had we forked out a day’s fee of $24 to do what we did this afternoon. 

The park covering an area of 30.64 square kilometres is rugged, scrubby and coastal. It is primarily an area where flora and fauna can flourish without human intervention, or more importantly, not fall victim to development for holiday homes, which is what it nearly did back in the 1960s. It took a long and bitter campaign to save the land from subdivision. Before being secured as a national park in 1967, the hills were bulldozed to provide gravel to make the concrete jetty at Port Latta, that where the hematite pellets are exported.

The wildflowers alongside the few roads were spectacular today; the white flowering tea-tree, Christmas Bell, boronias, to name but a few. We drove up to the lighthouse, erected relatively recently in 1968 and looked down upon the amazing colours of the rocks below us, many covered by red lichen and not unlike the wonderful colourful rocks of Bicheno. To the west, The Nut stood against the horizon, although beyond we had a glimpse of the far off Three Hummock Island. Back to the east we could clearly see Table Cape and here we learned the non-geological origins of these rocky forms, including the one we were standing upon. 

Lighthouse at Rocky Cape

Once upon a time, three teenage children were left by their parents to babysit their younger siblings, and became distracted. The wee ones wandered down to the beach where they drowned. Punishment came not in the form of salt, as their crime was no sexual perversion; instead they were turned into stone. This is indeed a cautionary tale for all teenagers given responsibilities; the moral of the story being that if you do not wish your children to become rocks, leave them playing with their Xboxes if they cannot be trusted with tasks. 


We took advantage of the two walks on offer from this end of the park, that to the North Cave winding along through coastal heath toward a great gash in the cliffs that was once an aboriginal shelter, and another to South Cave above Burgess Cove, the cave also once a shelter. Neither of these walks were very demanding, however coupled with the other earlier short walks of the day, we had made some effort to get the blood pumping.

Rocky Cape National Park

The North Cave is quite impressive, or at least from some distance; the great cleft in a perpendicular mass of rock, its entrance fifty feet high, as was reported by the surveyor, Hellyer, when he came through in those first years of European exploration. 

Here to I read a turn of phrase in relationship to the long term occupation of Aborigines of Australia before the European invasion that I thought worth recording:

• The actual number of years is irrelevant, it is the continuity that counts, and that
• The length of time Aboriginal people have lived here is so enormous that ice ages have come and gone and sea levels have risen and fallen, during their occupation.

From here it was only thirty or so kilometres back to Stanley, back along the highway travelled two days ago. The rain had continued to hold off, for that we were thankful indeed. Chris gave the caravan and landcruiser a wash in the absence of prohibition. We will head back along the Bass Highway tomorrow toward Devonport where mail is waiting for us, although when we actually get there is currently anyone’s guess.

A puzzle in the middle of the Typhoon Haiyan; Philippine’s death toll of just three overnight swelled to 10,000. That is both baffling and horrifying. What tragedy there is in the world!