Winterbrook Falls and Black Bluff

A perfect blue-sky autumn day (Tassie perfect - as in not cloudy or raining but still freezing cold...) inspired us to take a trip back to Winterbrook Falls and complete the hike we never quite started a couple of weeks ago (after driving most of the way, finding the last bit of road closed, walking a kilometre into the trailhead and then discovering that we didn't have enough daylight to walk the track itself...)

The walk-in to the falls is along an old tramway through proper Tasmanian rainforest (giant trees. lush green and everything covered with a million different kinds of moss). There were remnants of the tramway still to be seen (with a bit of imagination in some places) as well as a profusion of colourful toadstools and fungi necessitating lots of camera stops.

The track eventually left the tramway and climbed steeply beside a (very audible but pretty much invisible) rushing creek until finally breaking out of the rainforest to a vista of the falls themselves plummeting down off the bluff.

Ten minutes more of walking had us back in the forest and to the foot of the falls. 

I'm pretty sure this look means "I want to go that way" ie back to the car...

This was where I realized that after lugging my tripod the whole way, I had neglected to bring the bit that actually attaches it to the camera. So much for those long-exposure rainforest creek shots…

So Ryan saves the day by proving that a rock can do just as good a job as any fancy-pants tripod.

Having seen how tantalizingly close the bluff appeared to be, we decided to take the optional side-track to the top of Black Bluff. This was steeeep (I am sensing a theme with Tassie walks...). The trail took us up through the “Eye of the Needle” – a narrow gap between a couple of massive boulders (marked by a helpful sign reading “Behold – the Eye of the Needle), and onto the plateau itself. 

Once up on the bluff, we started to see patches of snow and then actually managed to be briefly snowed on by a passing cloud that left blue skies in its wake. 

This is Ryan being snowed on (or snowed at to be more precise). Let the record show that he actually appears to be enjoying himself.

This is the snow on its way off the other side of the bluff

We battled up the final climb in howling wind to briefly stop at the ice-covered trig and snap a couple of shots of the amazing view before hurrying back down again.

We headed back on the slightly longer Maxwell’s track, which was a lot more well-defined and a lot less steep than the tramway track (eventually becoming something that was almost recognizable as a fire trail). This ended in a couple of km’s of actual firetrail and a bit of a slog back to the car.

All up, almost 16km of walking and 1300m of climbing. 

Tassie take two

Well – so much for chronicling our Tassie adventures…

We have managed to travel around a bit and see some stuff, just lacking the motivation/time/feeling in my fingers (cold joke) to update the blog. So let me rectify that by giving you a brief(ish) summary of some of the places we've been.

Ben Lomond

Our number one tip for Ben Lomond is not to waste the $24 park entry fee driving to the top on a day when the peak is in cloud. Not only will you completely fail to see any of the spectacular scenery, you may also be woefully unprepared for the miserable conditions and will have to listen to your husband bitterly complain about his frostbitten ears after you make him go walking anyway so as to not totally waste your money. Just saying…  

Same goes for Cradle Mountain. I'm pretty sure it's in this photo??

Quamby Bluff

So blue-sky days mean visiting high places - and we took advantage of the nice weather on this day by finding a random peak to climb close to home. 

Quamby Bluff turned out to be a pretty cool (albeit steep) walk with lots of varied terrain from open forest and farmland to dense rainforest to boulder-hopping up scree slopes to the low scrub of the bluff itself.

(Ryan is actually on the track in both these shots...)

The views from the top more than made up for the effort. 

And then, to top it off, we encountered this little fella on the way back down who was quite content to snuffle for ants just a metre or so away from where we were standing.

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Gunn’s Plains Cave and Leven Canyon

This trip was built on a vague plan to string together visits to a couple of interesting-sounding places picked at random off the map. Gunn's Plains Cave is a bit further afield than the more popular Mole Creek Caves and was surprisingly good (once we overcame our initial doubt about finding the place apparently deserted)(the guide was down in the cave with a group at the time). We got our own personal tour (complete with an hour's worth of Dad jokes)(although I do approve of comparing the shawl formations to streaky bacon)(mmmm...bacon). The formations were abundant and spectacular and we would definitely recommend this tour.

We followed the cave tour by a visit to nearby Leven Canyon. A short walk out to a couple of viewing platforms yielded some good views up and down the canyon. 

We also did another walk into the canyon floor which culminated at “Devil’s Elbow” which (we think) marked the junction of couple of rivers into the canyon. This walk took in a short section of the 5-day “Penguin to Cradle” hiking trail and was pretty steep and rough.

(I know this doesn't look that bad, but everything AFTER the bridge was steep and rough...)

Woolmer’s Estate

The forecast for the day was cloud and rain, so we settled on an indoor-ish visit to a historic property near Longford. Although the weather forecast didn't prove entirely accurate (see the blue skies in the pictures below) the tour was actually pretty interesting. There were an abundance of outbuildings to look through, complete with a lot of their original equipment (including an impressive double-storey shearing shed). We forked out a bit extra for a guided tour of the homestead itself, and I would definitely recommend it. The house was crammed full of its original furniture and was a fascinating (albeit slightly creepy) look at how (wealthy) people lived in the early 1900’s.