Where African Savannah meets Scottish Highlands
The 300 km drive from Hobart on Tasmania's east coast to Strahan (pronounce Strawn) on the west, takes you through a bewildering variety of landscapes and climates: from the broad hopfields just a few kilometres outside Hobart, through the amazingly tall swamp gums around the Mt Field National Park, across African savannah-like yellow plains with low, scraggy scrub-bush confusingly set against bare hills lifted straight from the Scottish Highlands (mist, rain, wind and cold included), then down through the stark bareness created by mines around the tiny town of Queenstown (pop. 1,755 in 2016), which, according to Wikipedia and confirmed by our own experience yesterday, “is one of the wetest locations in Tasmania” with mild summers and “very cloudy, getting only 29 days of clear skies annually”! The occasional settlements we drove through don't look prosperous. The clapper-board bungalows with their corrugated-iron roofs strung out along either side of the wide road are frequently unkempt, very much like their counterparts in the Far West of the United States: set-up during the gold rush these places somehow just limp along, surviving. Eventually you pop out into Strahan and think “ah! Back to civilisation!” We arrived as the night fell, fingers crossed that we'd still find somewhere to eat and were delighted to discover that our hotel, Risby Cove, had a very welcoming restaurant which serves extremely decent food.
We stopped at Mt Field National Park to see the Russell Falls, which featured on Austalia's first stamp, and the “tall trees”, the Eucalyptus regnans, commonly known as swamp gum, the world's tallest flowering plant (well, actually, it doesn't produce flowers but cones). Some of the specimens here reach over 90m. Whereas the short walk from the visitor centre to the Russell Falls was shared with a fair number of others, mostly from China it would seem, these tourists didn't venture further, so the longer walk we took through the tall trees we enjoyed almost entirely on our own. Not only are the trees tall, but so are the ferns, so we spent much of the time craning upwards feeling a little as though we'd magically been shrunk. And the sun came out for a few brief moments!
Our next scheduled stop was to see Lake St. Clair. That was underwhelming. Obviously the weather didn't help because it was grey and misty and we couldn't see the view but from the photos I've seen I think that anyone who's seen the lochs of Scotland or the beautiful lakes of northern Italy might not be terribly impressed.
This is not a car-trip to be undertaken with children (or adults) who suffer from car sickness as most of the time the narrow road bends and winds through mountains. We were amused at the 100kph top speed signs: nobody in their right mind would drive down these roads at that speed. I don't think our speedometer ever went over 90, not only because of the crooked road and uneven road surface but because there are so many dead wallabies and other beasties squashed on the road that we didn't want to add to the death count.
Next stop: a mountain eco retreat in north-west Tasmania.
