Bart Bear's Blog

 

 Ships leaving Hobart and heading east around the south coast of Tasmania pass the most spectacular cliffs that I have ever seen. They are made of massive vertical basalt columns that look like drainpipes. At the place where ships can head east around the end of the Tasman Peninsula is Tasman Island. This is a small island, just over a square Kilometer in area, but it is up to 300 metres high. The keepers of the lighthouse there were some of the most isolated people in Australia. The lighthouse was made from cast iron in England. It came to Tasmania as a prefabricated kit and the bits had to be hauled up those steep cliffs in rare periods of calm weather and reassembled. It is the highest (above sea level) active lighthouse in Australia. Keepers lived on the island from 1906 to 1977 when the light was fully automated. Today the keepers' cottages are falling into disrepair. The old supply gear of flying fox and tramway is in ruin, although you can still see the tracks on Google Earth. The only access is by helicopter. The best view of the site is from a cruise ship or one of the boat tours from Hobart or Port Arthur.

 

The day before we left Hobart to fly back home boats began arriving for the Wooden Boat Festival. This is a 4 day festival celebrating Australia's rich maritime heritage and is usually the biggest exhibition of wooden boats of all sizes in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, we only saw the very first arrivals. Constitution dock had the usual metal boats moved out and wooden ones began moving in. Here's are some of them. I think that the white steam yacht looks like it was built just for small bears to own; the current owner didn't agree. The dock was slowly filling with sailboats ranging from small sailing canoes to fairly large ships. The car parks were filling with beautifully built small craft, some still under construction. From the top floor of our hotel, right across the road from the docks, I could watch boats coming up the Derwent estuary right into the docks, so a lot of my last afternoon in Hobart was spent at the window there. If the Oldies take me back to Tassie I will try to get them to stay while the festival is on. I love boats.

 

 One of the longest drives we did in Tasmania was from Hobart across to Strahan on the west coast. The road passes through some spectacular wild scenery, but none more spectacular than the drop down into Queenstown. The town is in a valley on the western slope of Mt Owen and since the early 1880s it has been a mining town. The area around Mt Owen and Mt Lyell was one of the most mineral-rich areas of Australia. The first mining was for gold, then copper became the main export. A railway was built between Queenstown and Strahan to carry the metals to ships at Macquarie Harbour. The railway still operates as a tourist railway, but we didn't have time to do that trip. The last 15 Km of the road into Queenstown takes you from open forest and rocky hills into a narrow, winding pass between the bare, eroded remains of old mines, mullock heaps and hills that have been stripped back to bare rock and discoloured by fumes from the old smelters. All of the original forest was felled and used to fire the smelters, so any soil has long since been washed away. Today the smelters are no longer operational and mineral concentrates from the mines are shipped to India for final processing. Vegetation is starting to grow again on the hillsides, but the spectacle of these stark multi-coloured hills is something that this small bear will remember for a long time. It is a bit like I imagine the Moon's surface might look. I will also remember just how carefully Mum drove down this bit of road. Queenstown is much smaller than it was in the heyday of the mining boom but, given the unexplored area of Tassie wilderness, there is always a chance of new workable mineral deposits being discovered nearby and maybe the town will boom again.

 

 

Our Macquarie Harbour cruise included a visit to Sarah Island. This was the site of one of the worst penal settlements in Australia. It only operated from 1822 to 1833 and was intended to hold the worst convicts and those that had escaped from other convict settlements. Although any convict escapee would have to first cross the cold water of the harbour and then battle through the dense rain forest and its snakes and insects (see my post below), around 20 of them did escape. Most were recaptured or died in the attempt. The most notorious one was Alexander Pearce. In September 1822 he escaped with 7 others, and survived by killing and eating the others before he was caught again. He escaped again the next year, this time with a young convict; again Pearce survived by killing and eating him. On 19 July 1824 he was hanged in Hobart for his crimes. Another group of convicts escaped in a ship they were building in the government shipyard and sailed across the Pacific to Chile. When the penal station closed, the convicts were transferred to Port Arthur (see earlier posts). Today the island is part of the heritage area. The only remains of the penal colony are ruins, some in roped-off enclosures with explanatory signs and many just slowly eroding away in the jungle.

 

Apologies for the break in postings, the Oldies have both been sick and I have had to be Nurse Bart for the past week or so. Anyhow, back to our Tasmania photos. One of the places that is a "must see" is the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. This is one of the wildest places left in the world and is World Heritage listed. The original explorers of the area came upriver from Macquarie Harbour and into the rainforest looking for timber suitable for shipbuilding. They found it in the majestic Huon Pine. Some of these trees are over 3,000 years old and over 20 metres tall. The early logging, bushfires and later flooding of the rivers for hydro-electric dams severely reduced the number of big trees, but since the area was made heritage in the 1980s new trees are coming back. Our cruise from Strahan took us up the Gordon river to Heritage Landing where a boardwalk lets visitors see into the dense forest. Keen walkers can also start their treks into the national park here. Many of our cruise passengers got off the boat, went a short way into the woods and returned very quickly; the flies here are huge and love the taste of human flesh. If you intend to walk through the area, take plenty of insect repellent and cover as much of you as possible. Fortunately, small bears aren't bothered by big flies so Dad and I took lots of photos of the boggy ground, the ferns and mosses and the occasional Huon Pine sticking up through the low scrub. This forest includes some of the most ancient plants on Earth, surviving from the time of Gondwana. It is definitely worth a visit (provided you prepare for the bitey flies).