5/1/2008 - West Coast Wandering

Last weekend, I was keen to take the family bush for a couple of days.  I had general agreement, except one very influential family member insisted there needed to be a motel involved, not tents!  I therefore chose a west coast loop to maximise the wilderness exposure during the trip and minimise the amount of driving through rural and urban terrain.

From our home on the north west coast, we headed inland through scenic farmland around Ridgley and on through the Surrey Hills tree farms south of Hampshire.  Upon ariving at the 'Fingerpost' (Waratah turn-off), a thought occurred to me that the landscapes of the rural and tree farm areas are dominated by human intrusions with little pockets of wilderness remaining in the gullies.  For the next 300 km of our trip, the landscape would be dominated by wilderness with little pockets of human intrusion.

As we passed the Fossey, Que and Hatfield Rivers and climbed over the Bulgoback, the scenery featured extensive button grass plains where wildflowers were in full bloom.  These were interspersed with magnificent patches of myrtle rainforest.  On the descent into Tullah, the rainforest dominates to the point where you are almost driving through a dense green tunnel as a turn-off to the Reece Dam is passed.

We chose Queenstown as our overnight stop and the Anthony Road provides a magnificently scenic shortcut high over the flanks of Mount Murchison and the Tyndals before descending to rejoin the highway near the Yolande River.  This high level road was constructed to service the Henty Anthony Power Scheme which along with the King Scheme was built with Franklin Dam compensation money.  The northern end of the Anthony Road provides the best (and almost only) roadside views of Mt Ossa, Tassie's highest peak.  Ironically, there are no easy places to pull over to appreciate the view of the Pelion, Eldon and Tyndall Ranges and the only lookout with interpretive signs offers views over the artificially created Lake Plimsol and its associated dam.

The view from our motel to the road up the 'Gormy Hill' on the flanks of Mt Lyell.

After tea in Queenie, we headed out of town to the south where we crossed the mighty (but not flowing due to the power station being switched off) King River and climbed through the Newall Creek Rainforest to a point high on the northern ridges of Mt Jukes.  From here we enjoyed magnificent views east to Frenchmans Cap and Clytemnestra and west to where the sun was setting over the wide expanses of the Southern Ocean (or southern Indian Ocean depending upon which geography text book you read).

Any more driving on this day would definitely have resulted in mutiny so we headed back to our motel.  However, people without such constrains can continue to follow this 'no through road' along the southern reaches of Lake Burbury and over the divide to where a lovely day walk follows the old North Mt Lyell railway formation to the south-eastern corner of Macquarie Harbour at Pillinger.  It is also possible to follow the road all the way to the Franklin River at Mt McCall.  I understand a fairly hefty 4WD is required and that the track is used by some rafting companies to offer a shortened Franklin River trip.  However, the rafting companies staking out the higher moral ground refuse to use the track as some believe all such 4WD tracks in the World Heritage Area should be closed.  Another feature south of Lake Burbury is the Darwin Crater where a meteorite ploughed into the earth leaving a depression about 2km wide and showering the surrounding mountains with molten rock in the form of  'Darwin glass'.

Now, back to our trip...

The next morning, we headed east over the 'Gormy Hill' and had a look at the Iron Blow and the (almost) ghost towns of Gormanstone and Linda.  Once we crossed Lake Burbury, the nature walk to Nelson Falls was our next stop.

Nelsons Falls

From here, we continued east, bypassing the Donaghys Hill walk (another potential mutiny trigger) to a point just west of the Frenchmans Cap track where an old highway depot gives a great view of the cap through a gap in the Franklin Hills (without having to climb Donaghys Hill).

Frenchmans Cap from the Lyell Highway

Our family has a connection with this area as my grand-father-in-law was the first to cut a track to the Jane River goldfields in the 1930s.  He worked for some time as a 'packer' (human pack-horse) on the Jane where he would have carried supplies 40km in to the isolated settlement before there was any vehicular access.

After lunch beside the Franklin River we had a quick jaunt along the nature trail to see the Franklin's confluence with the Surprise River.  Back in the car again, we drove through more rainforest on the flanks of Mt Arrowsmith to a great spot beside Mt King William I where we paused to take advantage of our final opportunity to look back at Frenchmans Cap.

Back on the nature trails at Lake St Clair this time, my troops just survived the stroll to Watersmeet and back to the Cynthia Bay visitors centre via Fergies Paddock and the lake shore.  After briefly passing through (relatively) high altitude grazing country around the Nive River, we embarked on the last wilderness leg of our trip, driving over the central plateau via the Marlborough and Highland Lake Roads.  These 2 roads used to be called highways but the government reclassified them to escape their maintenance obligations.

With the Highland Lakes Road over 1050 metres above sea level along this section, parts of it resemble a moonscape where hardy shrubs struggle to reach more than knee high due to the pruning effect of wind and snow on these exposed plains.  A final plunge which lost most of this altitude returned us to the mountain-backed rural landscapes around Golden Valley and Deloraine ready for the short remainder of our drive back home.

P.S. The youngest member of our party slept from Burnie to Queenstown and we did not want to disturb him which is why we did not stop to take photos on that leg.  From Queenstown on, I found that keeping the children's interest alive and pressing on toward snack stops, etc. was a higher priority than pausing for photography.  Hence I do not have many snaps from this trip.