17 November 2013 - Deloraine Apex Caravan Park, Deloraine, Tasmania

I do understand that we will still be in Tasmania late in the afternoon tomorrow, but today has been our last complete day, and when I post the next instalment, we will be back in Victoria, and Tasmania will be but a wonderful memory, to be re-lived when I read this or look through my many hundreds of photos. When we do leave tomorrow, we will be satisfied that we have given this State our best shot although I would suggest people travelling as we are, to spend three to four months here rather than the paltry seven and a bit weeks we have. That is assuming they enjoy the same activities as us. And for those who are planning to travel only Tasmania, I would suggest a motorhome is more practical than a caravan. Had we travelled that way and the weather not been so inclement, we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of camping ground fees. Tasmania does offer much in the way of free or low cost camping for those who travel fully self-contained.

But back to our day; we drove 150 kilometres today, from one natural wonder to another and enjoyed every moment. We set off directly west, through the quaint hamlet of Chudleigh and Mole Creek, where one can stop and buy silk roses, or jars of honey, fresh salmon or ginseng, or pause to enjoy a latte and perhaps a muffin or whatever they have to compliment your caffeine fix. We simply slowed down as we passed through to remark on the charming surrounds, but turned north just before Mole Creek to do the Alum Cliff Walk. This turned out to be quite different to what we expected, but nonetheless wonderful.

Alum Cliff Gorge

A short forty minute walk from the car park took us to a forest lookout perched high above the Mersey River, as it flows through the Alum Cliff Gorge. The scene was not unlike those enjoyed over the Leven Canyon in the rain nearly a week ago. The vista was a little less spectacular here today, but the weather so much better, so over all, one had to give them equal marks. Both views are quite breath-taking but not as much as that which was still to come.

En route to the lookout, sits yet another of the many sculptures or “installations” which form the Great Western Tiers Sculpture Trail. This like so many others we have encountered is of dubious talent (in our limited opinion) and no doubt paid for by the working Tasmanian by way of their taxes. I suppose it beats paying out a special arts dole that some jurisdictions do; I know that New Zealand had such a crazy scheme going on for a while.

The Alum Cliff Reserve is a significant place for the local aborigines, the Pallittoore band, the place known as Tulampanga, and a special place to harvest the ochre here in the Gog Range. Ochre is important in the body-painting business and so much more sensible that tattoos; it washes off. We leaned over the barricades high over the canyon and spotted several areas from where ochre might have been harvested, but decided the warnings of respecting the sacredness of the ochre gathering spots was a little unnecessary; who would want to risk their lives clambering down to poach this?

Our next destination was the Mole Creek Karst National Park, which offers primarily the opportunity to enter the Mole Creek caves; the Marakoopa Cave and the King Solomon Cave, for a fee of course. These underground caves offer the opportunity to view sparkling crystals, reflection pools, stalactites and stalagmites, and so much more. We decided we would not bother but did hope to enjoy the walks in the park.Alas there is but one walk near the Marakoopa Cave, a delightful ten minute wander up a fern filled gully and back again.

This we did and were back near the lovely picnic area well before midday; we decided to have an early lunch. Here in the Mole Creek Karst National Park, we came upon two snakes, mine a black tiger snake of less than a metre long with a girth equivalent to my husband’s fattest finger, and Chris’s sighting, one of more than a metre with a girth equivalent to the thinnest part of my wrist. I am sure this gives you an accurate sense of the size of these serpents. Tasmania has just three snakes, if my memory serves me correctly, and all are venomous. I was pleased that they both were more intent on leaving the scene rather than bothering us.

The Mole Creek Karst National Park is yet another pay park, and I would caution anyone who wanted to visit this park, but not the caves, not to fork out $24 for a day visit. You would be disappointed. However for us, with our two month pass, we were pleased we called; this simply added to the accumulating wonders and memories of Tasmania’s National Parks. 

We continued on west, and had we continued on and on, might have arrived at the turn off to Cradle Mountain, thus completing a circuit of travel, however that was not our intention today. About six kilometres from the turn off to the King Solomon Mine, which we did not visit, we turned south east onto a gravel road and drove up a wide roughly corrugated gravel road to the star lookout of our travel, Devil’s Gullet.

Devil's Gullet

The car park is in the middle of an alpine swamp and the short walking track to the lookout up from this to the lookout is across boardwalks and a well-manicured path, to arrive at a well barricaded lookout platform overhanging a sheer cliff face with the most stunning views one can possible imagine. Two hundred and twenty metres below is the Fisher River, and beyond are views of Mount Ossa, Tasmania’s highest mountain at 1617 metres, thirty five kilometres from here as the crow flies, now familiar Cradle Mountain and other amazing alpine features across the huge chasm of the Fisher River canyon. Apparently on a windy day, this is an awesome experience however I was pleased that there was no such wind today; I preferred the peace to linger and enjoy every wonderful part of the landscape before my eyes.

Here I learned something that answered a question I had since examining the map closely with a focus on the Central Plateau. It struck me that there must be perhaps one thousand lakes here in Tasmania, an astounding concept. Today I read that the plateau was glaciated at least five or six times over the last two million years, the last ice age reaching its peak on the plateau about 20,000 years ago (since aboriginal people have resided her in Australia). This, the ice age, is evident from the plateau’s gentle undulating landscape and more than 4,000 lakes lie on its surface. These lakes range in size from tiny pools to large bodies of water over four kilometres in length. And this does not take into account all the lakes in Tasmania that lie outside the Central Plateau. My estimate of 1,000 was way too short.

Back at the car park where Plan A of the day’s schedule was complete, we debated whether we should continue on up the road to Lake MacKenzie where the road ended. Neither of us knew anything about this lake and on the face of it, there was no reason to carry on. Like all such debates between Chris and I, we settled on compromise; we would continue until the road deteriorated further and then, if we thought fit, turn back. In fact, very soon after, the road improved. It seemed to now be under the jurisdiction of Hydro Tasmania and the whole scene gained a sense of curiosity. Suddenly a wide canal appeared on our left hand side, with intermittent foot bridges, and then this all gave way to a shoulder high concrete aqueduct which went on and on, until finally we reached Lake MacKenzie where the mystery, in some part, was solved.

The lake is part of yet another hydro scheme, created by damming of the Fisher River in 1972. It does not cease to amaze us how much hydro-electricity infrastructure a state with just half a million inhabitants needs. Or is this simply planning for population growth over the next two hundred years! We decided that it was more likely all to do with job creation, not unlike the installation of woolly-woofta artworks around the place, and this is of course all very controversial. Is it better to pay for superfluous industry or to hand out to idle hands? My first response is yes, but when I see the fruits of the effort, I do wonder.

And while wearing my Grumpy Old Person hat, let me record another instance of waste and cock-eyed thinking. A couple of days ago I heard a report on the local television channel about the sale of several tourist accommodation complexes, most of which were familiar after our travels here, to an outfit whose identity eluded me for a day or two, to another who was intent upon divesting themselves of mediocre investments and choosing instead to develop a top-notch resort at Port Arthur for super rich tourists, with Asians particularly in mind. On the face of it, a clever business move.

The next day the report was documented in The Australian, so I was able to intelligently pass the news on to my husband and so we were well armed to debate the pros and cons of the whole affair. Because you see, the buyer of these superfluous properties is the RACT, the Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania. Now, we are members of the New Zealand Automobile Association and the RACQ (the Queensland equivalent of the Tasmanian association) and none of the reasons we joined were related to becoming part of a property gathering investor. In fact the RACT website tells us that the club was established in 1923 to represent the interests of Tasmanian motorists.

I would suggest that no one joins these associations with investment in mind. So what is the Tasmanian club doing buying up these accommodation complexes for? Chris and I decided after some discussion that the CEO and others of similar administrative ilk are probably paid according to the profit or asset base of the club, and so the bigger the gross income, no doubt irrespective of the profit, and the bigger the property holding, no doubt irrespective of the debt involved to set it up, the bigger the personal income to those who hold the reins. And will the club members reap any benefits? Yes, probably they will be able to claim a 10% discount on the tariff, as you might with your Seniors Card or any loyalty membership. This is in fact a major rort.

So much for my gripe; back to Lake MacKenzie.

Since 1970 most of the water from the Fisher River has been diverted from the valley into a hydro-electric power scheme and the power station of the same name is the second station on the Mersey-Forth scheme. The station was commissioned on 1973 and is driven by not only the diverted waters from the river but also water run-off from the plateau and by water pumped from Yeates Creek and Parsons Falls, neither of these two appeared on our radar today. Water flows to the station via a six and a half kilometre flume, that we saw today, a siphon which takes down and up across an alpine marsh, the canal and then a 5.2 kilometre long vertical shaft tunnel and surface penstock all which take the water from the plateau we drove across down into the canyon. The main secret of the system is the gravity flow created by the serious elevation variations, a drop of 650 metres from this elevation of 977 metres ASL.

We drove up to the dam and were amazed at the length of the dam, none of the statistics I have been able to learn. Chris reckoned, as we walked across to the outlet that it must be about a kilometre long, although was not very high. Again you would have to wonder why the expense.

This proved a bonus to our planned tour for the day, and so we were pretty satisfied, except for the fact that the short walks had all proved to be shorter than advertised. We headed back to Deloraine, but stopped off a little to the east of Chudleigh, where we had seen a small sign pointing to the Lobster Falls. I had missed these in my planning, however checking the literature we had to hand, I saw that there was a walk of two hours return, a fact I soon forgot when Chris asked me several minutes after we had set off.

In fact, I forgot also that I had been thinking about my thirst ten minutes before, but we took nothing with us but my camera as we set off. The track passes through regenerated forest of banksias, eucalypts, gorse and bracken, really quite unattractive although the birdsong was lovely. The track climbs over a hill and then descends, narrowing down a ledge along the cliffs high above the river, and finally dropping down steeply to a wide pool at the foot of the lower cascade. I have to confess that the latter part of this explanation was gleaned from the internet on our return because we had no description at all and took it all as it came. We arrived at a point above what it would seem now to have only been the upper cascade, an impressive sight far below us and it was at that point Chris suggested we should turn back. We had been only walking for half an hour and it took us a little more to retrace our steps. Actually “retrace” is a misnomer, because we lost the track but did find our way in the correct general direction and finally meet up with the correct track. The track is poorly marked and not really maintained at all; we spent much of our time climbing over and under fallen trees, and the track around the part of the falls we did reach, was really made for mountain goats, not middle aged tourists. However the plus of the whole affair was that I felt we did have an adequate dose of exercise for the day.

Back home we enjoyed a cup of coffee, hot showers and a sit-down, well deserved after an excellent day, our last complete day on the Apple Isle.