Monday 9th January 2017 - A day on the coast Today was allegedly a rest day after yesterday's big hike, and we certainly had a change of pace, but still did quite a lot of walking, albeit I was wearing sandals and not hiking boots! We drove the 41 kms up and over the mountains to Strahan (pronounced Strawn) on the Macquarie Harbour, which is a huge area with many inlets, including the one we hiked to yesterday. Although it is written up as a huge tourist resort, we found like most places in Tasmania it is quite small and quaint. There did appear to be a lot of accommodation everywhere, and there were a few restaurants, but the chief activities seemed to be boat cruises or train rides. The latter is the other end of the railway operation in Queenstown, and we timed it for the 9 am steam train headed departure for Dubbil Barril, and not only did John capture the engine being turned on the roundabout (aka turntable! JR), but we also chased it for a few miles along a gravel road, so this was a good start to the day.
We parked up and had a coffee before exploring the waterfront along the 7 km Strahan Historic Foreshore Walkway along the old tramway route. Halfway round we passed the People's Park, which is a Botanic garden, cum rainforest. We walked the 2 km through the forest to the Hogarth Falls, which in themselves were not spectacular, but the walk in the heart of the town was lovely, and there were interpretive boards which were helpful. The highlight was seeing a Wallaby and her baby (already out of the pouch), and a lowlight were the mosquitoes which were not put off by the citronella! We continued along past a small fishing harbour all the way to Regatta Point, where the railway station for the railway now is. Back we walked to the centre for a sandwich before heading off in the car to see more of the coast. We drove along dirt roads to Macquarie Heads, known as Hell's Gates (convicts bound for Sarah Island in the harbour labelled it thus). We were surprised to see pine growing out here as we have not in general been in any pine forests, just eucalyptus. Back we drove and out to Ocean Beach, which is a long sandy beach with crashing waves from the Southern Ocean. We next headed up the highway towards Zeehan, along a very straight stretch of road ( this is quite unusual) after fourteen kilometres we came to the Henty
Dunes which are up to 30m high. This is nothing like the Dunes in Namibia I experienced in 2015, but they were still quite difficult to climb, and fun to descend. Time to drive all the way back to Strahan, and then up over the very winding road back to Queenstown - this is not a route you would want to commute along each day. There is very little traffic anywhere, but going the other way many classic cars mainly Aston Martins, well spread out but of course of interest - there must be some sort of a rally going on. Tuesday 10th January 2017 - Ghost towns and the Wild West We headed off on a new road this morning for about 50 kms to Rosebery. We barely saw a car in either direction, and no road kill. This could mean few animals in this old mining area, or more likely few cars. We turned off for Williamsford and Montezuma Falls, and again were heading into mining and railway archaeological areas. The hike started about 6 kms down the road and was along the route of the historic North East Dundas Tramway which served a large community based at Williamsford for the Hercules Mine which was mainly a tin mine. It operated from 1890 to 1914,
and once the ore was processed it was sent to Germany. The tramway went from here all the way to Zeehan around the mountain. The part you can walk on today is a 9.4 kms return to one of the highest waterfalls in Tasmania. They are only 104m high, but were pretty impressive by the time we got there. Because the trail followed the trackbed, the gradient was very gentle all the way, and it was through pretty rainforest. The trees however were not eucalyptus! The main one was a very tall myrtle, and the others were Eucryphia which is called leatherwood here and was on full flower - glorious white colour, something called Blackwood and sassafras, another one I do not know. In the last hundred years the trees have regrown after extensive cutting for fuel and timber in the boom years.
There was a metal suspension bridge overlooking the waterfall, and surprisingly quit a few people up there. We discovered that quite a few had come on a 4WD road to just by the falls which was quite a surprise. However we did realise that people are attracts by waterfalls, so we should have expected to see people there.
Back at the car we drove just up the gravel track and found a place for our picnic just by the old lower incline for the Hercules, so John was very pleased. We drove next to Zeehan, which is amazingly dubbed Silver City. The silver bit is fair enough as there is still mining in the area for various ores, but city it is not. It is the first real ghost town we have encountered, and was just as one would have imagined the Wild West to be. It could not even support a petrol pump attendant, so it was a cashcard only pump. The two shops we saw were charity shops, the one little cafe was bursting with tourists and locals, and the skate park was full of children on their scooters.
The big attraction however was the West Coast Heritage Centre. This was an excellent indoor and open air museum with a great deal of local history and photographs which gave us a lot of information about the old tramways and mines we had been close to in the last few days. There was a Masonic Lodge, explaining the history of the Masons* and trying to explain the symbolism and some of the myths surrounding it, there was the historic Gaiety Theatre which is just as it was used, a Pioneer Women's Gallery, and lots of mining machinery. Included were four steam locomotives and an underground mine simulation, as well as blacksmith workshops and much more. *The commentary included this interesting statement: the Masons are not a secret society, they are a society that has secrets. The secrets are necessary because a Mason needs to be able to keep a secret and because Masons need to be able to identify other Masons through shared secrets. I think Stephanie was sold but there was no mention of any female Masons... As it was our last day in the area we felt this brought together a lot of our experiences in the West of Tasmania. Tomorrow we move on to the central north and to Deloraine.
We have uploaded more photos to our Flickr albums. Tasmania Tasmania 2 You can see all the extra photos we couldn't fit into the blogs there. Stephanie & John