March 19, 2024 • 56 mins
Episode 15 of the ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Offroad Adventures and Mapping Podcast.
Join us for an exciting episode of the ExplorOz Podcast, where we delve into our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast. This episode picks up from where we left off Ep 14 after leaving Stumpys Bay in Mt William National Park and heading south down the East Coast of Tasmania exploring Deep Creek, Eddystone Point, Ansons Bay, and onto St Helens and the magnificent Bay of Fires area where we describe all the campsites and their various features and highlights, plus walks, places to swim and other activities including mountain biking the St Helens Bay of Fires trail and Flagstaff Hill MTB area including the Loila Tier. We then describe our journey as we headed inland towards Pyengana to Pub in the Paddock and then in search of magnificent rainforest trails to epic waterfalls including St Columba, Halls Falls, Methinna Falls and sensational free camps and forestry tracks including Evercreech, Tower Hill, and then back to the coast via St Marys to Lagoons Beach.
Tune in as we share a comprehensive summary of our experiences, focusing on uncovering the best natural wonders accessible to travellers by vehicle.
Discover our insights into free and low-cost camping spots, alongside recommendations for day hikes, 4WD tracks, rainforests, pubs, wineries and beaches.
Sit back, relax, and embark on a virtual journey through Tasmania with us.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, hi folks, and welcome to another episode of
the Explorers podcast.
Today we're being brought toyou from the edge of Lake Petta
in southwest Tasmania, up in theright next to the World
Heritage Listed National Parksin southwest Tasmania.
What's it called again?
Pure wilderness, purewilderness.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is actually Edgar Dam campground that we're
at at the moment Absolutelymagic day we're having today.
Look at us, we're actually int-shirts.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, for those that are watching.
Obviously these are meant to bepodcasts and we're hoping that
you'll be listening to these.
They're not really designed forvideo and for visual
stimulation because,realistically, those that are
watching are really watching us.
Now, that could be exciting orit could be boring, I don't
particularly know but these arepodcasts and so we employ you to
just sit back and listen to theinsightful words that we're
(00:55):
going to bring you about all thelocations and trials and
tribulations of our next fiveweeks that we've done in
Tasmania.
It's been a while since we didthe last one.
Actually, it's been five weekssince we recorded one of these,
so we're a bit behind, butthey've only just been released,
so you'll be catching up withus on the go, but it has been
quite a few weeks and we've donequite a lot of stuff since we
(01:17):
last spoke to you.
Where did we start, michelle?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, over the last five weeks we have managed to
complete the east coast ofTasmania and it took a lot
longer than we thought and wehave also managed to get down to
the south west national park,where we are now, but that's a
really large part of Tasmania.
If you look at the map, you'llknow that.
So we have done the mostsouthern point of Tasmania,
(01:44):
we've been down to the southCape and we have made our way
all the way across into thecentral part of the south west.
Like Peta.
We have quickly summarised wehave done a lot of wineries, we
have done a lot of rain forests.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
We've done a few wineries We've just read about
to run out of wine.
We've been drinking so muchwine from the wineries.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Well, we'll go back and talk about the really good
wineries that we have seen in aminute, because we have actually
been to quite a number.
Rain forests down through theeast coast are absolutely
magnificent.
We've done some supping on afew rivers.
We've done a huge amount ofhiking, because that was one of
the big ticket things for usthat we wanted to achieve on our
Tasmania trip.
Although we aren't set up to domulti-day hikes, what we have
(02:31):
concentrated on is some reallyepic day hikes.
There's 60 great short walks Isthat what they call them?
60 great short walks ofTasmania?
So you can look this up it's afantastic concept that they've
got here and there's signseverywhere for them and they
range from fairly short hikes ofonly a couple of kilometres to
(02:53):
a waterfall or whatever and back, which is easily accessible for
most people, to some prettyserious longer hikes.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But only in the one day range.
They're not a multi-day thing.
They're all designed to be whatthey call 60 great.
I think it's short walks or 60great walks 60 great short walks
.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So guys look that up, because if you just planned
your trip around Tasmania basedon those walks, you would
absolutely see the best ofTasmania, in our opinion, if
you're a nature lover.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And a walker and a walker, yep.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We have also.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Mind you, a lot of those walks actually also have
disabled access and somedisabled facilities at certain
locations.
Not all of them.
Some of them certainly do, andsome of them probably have a few
more facilities for less ablepeople.
So elderly or hand rails andthere's some things over some of
the more complicated bit, butdon't get me wrong, some of them
they're fairly well graded here.
(03:46):
One of the things that'sinteresting about the walk
series there's not many thatdiscuss how many kilometres it
is, they're more about how manyhours it is yeah.
And it's quite interestingbecause they're almost dead on
for our walking speed and that'ssomewhere between four and five
kilometres an hour hikingthrough these sorts of areas.
So it's a bit variable but wehave done a lot of them, a lot
(04:07):
shorter Hearts Mountain, forinstance.
I think it was gazetted orposted as five hours.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
We did it in two and a bit Nearly three Heart
Mountain.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So some of them are a bit hit and miss, but some of
them are pretty dead on andthey're all rated in that way.
But they're also all graded.
So if you're not sure how thegrading system works, have a
look it up.
Grade one is nothing.
Grade two is prettystraightforward.
Then you go to three, which hasgot some a little bit more
complexity.
Grade four is where youactually got a climb.
(04:37):
You know gravel and climb andstuff.
And grade five is when it getsa bit more extreme.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So and we've been picking most of the grade four
hikes because that suits us andthere's some epic destinations.
So included in those greatshort hikes are places like Cape
Royal and Cape Howe.
And Cape Howe is just one ofthe capes on the popular three
capes multi-day overnight hikeand you can do Cape Howe from a
(05:04):
base camp in a national park asjust an out and back day hike of
about four hours and I'm goingto tell you in a minute some of
our favorite hikes.
But that's way up there andthat one's really good.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So last we spoke to you, we were at Stumpy's Bay, at
Stumpy's Toucanck ground, andwe had a great time up there.
That was you know what were wetwo weeks into our Tassie
Ventures then and realistically,we'd only covered the top
corner.
We'd hardly traveled very farat all.
Now we've added a few morethousand kilometers into the
trip and a lot more walks and alot more destinations.
(05:37):
So some of the highlights thatwe had, you know, after we've
left Stumpy's, you know DeepCreek, edison Point, anson Bay,
policeman's Point these are justa few locations around that
area.
For those people that arelooking things up, deep Creek
had a good camping area andthings like that.
One of the things that we'vebeen doing, obviously, while
(05:59):
we're going to all these places,is we're updating the data on
the places information withinthe Exploros Traveler app.
So you'll find all of theseareas that are right down the
east coast and down thesouthwest and all that now are
really well covered in all thePOS have all been updated.
Everything's been updated aswe've been going through.
So I'm mentioning some of thosenames.
(06:19):
If you're interested inthinking about coming to
Tasmania and want to go to anyof these places, then I employ
you to look them up on theExploros Traveler app and you'll
see more information and morephotos that we've taken while
we've been here.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
While we're on that point, we should probably just
mention that whilst we're doingall these updates, we're also
seeing a lot of other publicupdates coming through from
other app users, which is reallyawesome to see.
We really want to encouragepeople to use those facilities a
lot more.
Adding a photo is really easy.
You can do it off your phonewhile you're offline.
You just click the button inthe place that shows you add a
(06:54):
photo and whether the photo issomething you're going to take
through the camera or whetheryou're actually going to pick
one from the gallery of picturesyou've already taken.
It's as simple as that and thatcan be done offline, and then
that just auto syncs through toevery other app user.
So public contributions likethat are a huge, big part of the
ongoing update philosophy ofthe Traveler app.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And while we do talk about that, one of the things
that's been interesting is thatwe've noticed, or in the last
few weeks or months or since welast podcasted, we've done quite
a number of updates to the app,most recently in the last few
days, and that was all abouttrying to put these update
activities closer to theforefront.
So putting the ratings andreview system right on the
(07:42):
information page when you firstopen the place and making the
add photo button and all thosethings stand out a little bit
more.
We hope you find that easierand and you know we do welcome
all that public content thatcomes in it's all validated in
the background after you put itin, but feel free to put it all
in and you know if it's notright it'll get changed.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid
of being using it.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
If you completely stuff it up, someone will come
along and fix it up behind you.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
There's a few little elves in the background.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So you know that's all big part of it and that's
all part of the work, and wemight do another podcast about
working on the road and whatit's been like since we've left
it.
But for now you know, back into,back into travelling down the
East Coast of Taz, you know, andone of the few things we also
run into, you know we get to.
We went out to the Bay of Fires.
You know and everyone wouldknow.
Or, if you don't know, bay ofFires is one of the big tourism
(08:34):
areas on the East Coast.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, both the tourists but also the locals.
Yeah, I know what you're comingto.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
The Hobartians the Hobartians, if that's what we
call them, or the Taswegians, orwhatever you like to call them,
or whatever you like to callyourselves if you are a
Tasmanian person they all loveto go to the Bay of Fires on the
East Coast.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And who wouldn't?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Any time the weather's good or and any time
there's a public holiday.
So we just happen to hit a fewpublic holidays right at the
times when we pulled into theseplaces and, oh my goodness, I've
never seen so many people insome of these campsites they
were wall to wall, jammed inlike sardines.
Totally not for us.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
But yeah, one lock away or out, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Okay, if you're used to that kind of thing and you
can, you can, you can sidle upto the next caravan and put your
awning out and just touch thecaravan next to you and just jam
yourselves in there.
That's all well and good.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Camping with friends.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Camping with friends.
That all works out quite well.
It was exceptionally busy andthat dictated some of the places
we stayed and how we movedaround a little bit.
Certainly over a few days thereseems to have been a lot of
public holidays at this time ofyear, yeah, with different
things all over the country, butwe seem to have picked up a few
as we pulled into the most busyplaces in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So look, that is a real warning to travellers.
And look where.
Obviously we're not fromTasmania and it happens for
everyone you travel into.
You really got to stay on topof these public holidays because
I know what the public holidaydates are in WA and they're
different to what they are overEast.
And then there's a special onein Tasmania we didn't know of
and we were actually in Bay ofFires when there was a special
(10:10):
public holiday only for Hobart.
And I didn't think about itaffecting.
I did look at where it was.
I didn't think about itaffecting where we were because,
although it wasn't a publicholiday up there, obviously the
people from Hobart on the publicholiday were travelling to this
perfect area.
So you know part of your travelplan is obviously these Bay of
(10:33):
Fires.
Why it's so popular?
Because obviously it's gorgeouscoast.
But there's got another bigfeature going for, which is what
attracts people.
It's a massive area all the waydown the coast with hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds offree campsites where you can
stay up to 28 days.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
There would be sites.
There's hundreds of sitesspread out across about 10
different camps and locations,but spread also across about 20
kilometres.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So we did have to actually document every single
one of them, look at everysingle one of them, and we went
in while it was all busy andthen we went back a few days
later when it was all quiet.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
And it was still busy .
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And I think it will still be busy basically the
whole year round.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I will certainly be busy all summer.
It's one of those locationswhere everyone's kind of goes
for the summer is all that Bayof Fires area and the camps and
the locations in that area arethings like Seaton's Cove, Loop
Reef, Sloup Lagoon.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Swim Cart Lagoon.
Well, swim Cart Beach, I meanGenerate Beach.
There's where we stayed, cosy.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Corner.
And where did we stay?
We stayed at Dora Point.
Funny story Dora.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Point.
So look, we ended up only beingable to camp at either Humberg
Nature.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Reserve.
Well, humberg Nature Reserve iswhere Dora Point is.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, well, the Malting.
Bay Lagoon Perfect campingthere, but I really did want
that beach scene for our basecamp, so we pushed on and went
to Dora Point where you've gotgorgeous, clear, calm swimming
water, crystal clear, beautifulrocks, the orange lichen, all of
that and the sand.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Well, actually interesting, before we even got
to Humberg and Dora, we couldn'tget into any of those.
We went and did some suppliesand we stayed at Dioners Beach,
which was further south of thewhole Bay of Fires area.
So we did that the first day toget over the public holiday, to
then come back to even going toDora Point.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But my point was.
So we end up at Dora Point,where it's almost the only place
that we could get to, and allof a sudden David looks at the
place update that he was aboutto do and there was a photo in
there that he recognised.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It was me.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And it was him 20 years ago and he was with One of
our children, one of ourchildren, who, at the time, was
four years old.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Swimming in the exact spot at Dora Point.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Here we were wanting to fill in the gaps of our trip
20 years ago, and I think thesame thing had happened to us
last time is that that was theonly place that we could get a?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
decent spot.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And look, since we've been in this area, I've since
heard that this is the thingwhen it is really crowded and
busy at all those really superpopular Bay of Fires camps, for
some reason the Dora Point onetends to have a bit more
availability, and there is areason for it.
It's not just straight off theroad, you don't just pull in and
pull out, you've actually gotabout six k's, at least Six or
(13:25):
seven k's of gravel, of gravellyhard steep.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
There's a steep in and a steep hill.
There's potholes but it's allnothing, really all easy and big
vans and things do go in there.
It's a decent hill to pull upto get in there and a decent
hill when you get over the top.
But driving over hills,tasmania, you've got to get used
to it.
Especially if you want to gointo the forests and stuff.
(13:48):
It's healing.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, yeah.
So look, dora Point.
Yeah, we ended up there again,so that was a bit of deja vu,
but honestly, this time we didit quite differently, but it was
absolutely beautiful.
There is a hike there which wespent the whole day walking 16
kms, no, 12 km and you can walkall the way around the coastline
To Skeleton Bay yeah, toSkeleton Bay, and the whole way.
(14:13):
You've got the water on oneside and you've got beautiful
forest on the other side andit's just sort of gentle incline
up and down.
It's an easy path, spectacularviews the entire way and ever
changing terrain.
There are little car parks, soif you're not into the 12 km
return hike, you can still driveout of the Dora Point
(14:34):
campground.
And go into each of those andjust do small little hikes of a
few hundred metres, but you missall the good bits.
So we had a look at all thoseoptions and so, if you're up for
a bit of a walk, it's a reallybeautiful walk and we got to
have a sneaky little, perfect,isolated swim in the water in a
rock pool on our own.
Yes, the water is cold, butagain, that's one of the things
(14:57):
you have to get used to in theBay of Five the water is clear
and it is so inviting, so youjust have to suck it up and do
it.
We actually spent six daysbased in the Bay of Fives area,
so that's just a bit of a guideon how long you might need if
you want to be in that area.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It's really easy.
The only difference about thebiking there was that in that
area, yeah, so that's what I'mabout to talk about yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So it's really easy to base camp at one of these
camps and drive into St Helens,and in St Helens you do have one
of the only IGAs and decentcamps.
There's two IGAs, so it stopsshots that you'll find.
So far we haven't seen anybetter shopping.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So long the system.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh, of course Lonseston had shops Since we
left Lonseston and that wasquite a while ago.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
All the way to St Helens.
There wasn't really much, yeah,and lots of little stuff.
You know little side shops, youknow your little groceries
connected to things there wassome grocery shops connected to
coffee shops and things likethat, but really to find solid
supplies, chemists and a wholerange of food stuff and fresh
(16:10):
food and all that sort of stuffis quite complicated.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And lots of really good set up for campers.
They know that people needwater.
Out on the main road betweenthere's a water filling station
dump points and all that at StHelens.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It's all very well set up.
Yeah, so you can pull into StHelens with your water tanks dry
and there's a drive up set ofwater taps.
There's actually two setsthere's ones at the dump point
and there's ones at the specialdesignated one at the north end
of town.
So they're all marked on themap, all on the travel system as
well, yep.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And there's a couple of things to do even around St
Helens and just a little bitsouth of St Helens.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
We found a nice walk, we did the mountain biking.
So a couple of days of mountainbiking at Flagstaff, we did.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Absolutely Well, if we're going to talk mountain
biking, yeah, mountain biking,yeah.
So Flagstaff Hill Mountain BikeArea is a park where they do
have a shuttle service and youcan self ride on the easy green
trails and if you're able to doa little bit of uphill you can
also get up onto some of theblue trails.
So we did that just to sort ofget our eye in and then we got
(17:14):
onto the shuttle and we actuallygot a private shuttle because
it wasn't very busy We'd alreadymissed all the busy time of
year and the driver that worksfor Vertigo Vertigo he was.
He just hangs out there and wewere able to chat to him.
He was a great guy.
He had a bit of fun.
We did a private uplift, acouple of runs for him.
So we went right up to LowellLa Tea and we did a downhill
(17:37):
black rated ride called SendHelens, which if you've ridden
at Derby we wouldn't rate itblack, you'd still rate it blue.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You'd rate it black if you do all the jumps that are
on it.
But it has bailouts all the waydown, which made it quite nice.
So from a black, from a blackdiamond perspective, it was,
there was two choices.
There was, it was almost green.
But it was probably more blueand and obviously the black if
you do all the jumps.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And I managed to actually have a crash that day
pretty bad and I nearly wentdown the mountain and I grabbed
a tree and hugged it instead andI've actually torn all the
inside of my arm.
It was pretty nasty, but I keptriding.
And why did I fall?
I was having a bit ofmechanicals that day and I was
in a rush and I sort of ignoredit.
Anyway, we fixed it and I wentup the hill and we did another
(18:27):
run, which was an old salty dog,I think.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So if you're in those names won't mean much to you
unless you're going to do somemountain biking, but they were
probably the two standout runsthat we did from there and also
at the same time.
We then, while we were, whilewe were dealing with the shuttle
we organised, we thought, ohwell, let's go and do the the
Bay of Fires Blue Blue Tier, bayof Fires first 13 ride the
(18:53):
following day, which was goingto shuttle us out out a fair bit
further out of St Helens and upto Lola Tier no, not Lola Tier.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Blue Tier Blue.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Tier.
Wow, there's so many tiers.
There was almost tiers BlueTier and the Bay of Fires, first
13,.
It's 13 kilometres from the top.
You go from the top for thefirst 13 k's, which is
supposedly the most spectacular.
The most spectacular is meantto be from kilometre 7 to
kilometre 13, I think, or 6 to13, one of those, and we did
(19:24):
that.
We did a thing called first 13plus, which was the first 13,.
So from the top to the 13kilometre marker and then we got
a shuttle from there back up tothe 6 or 7 kilometre marker, I
can't remember exactly which one7.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
And we did the last 5 to 6 kilometres again, because
that's the section, becausethat's the best bit.
Yeah, that was the best.
And honestly, oh my God, therain forest.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And the view.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
The burns were just perfect.
In comparison to what we'reriding like at Derby.
I think we're a little bit morenervy there, but at this place
you could just let go and fangaround the burns and we just had
a lot more fun.
Well, we'd also bought.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Oh, we're just going to say that too, because of
Michelle's pre-hugging and mehaving a snack and we were
getting a bit cut up and we weregetting a bit grumpy about that
.
Then we went to the shop tobook the Bay of Fires ride.
We spent a bucketload of moneybuying more mountain biking knee
, elbow guards and various bitsand pieces to make sure that we
(20:26):
didn't bump ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So when we did do the Bay of Fires 13, we had all
this extra confidence and allthis extra coverings on and we
didn't fall.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And we didn't fall actually.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well, that's good.
Buy the protective gear and youdon't hurt yourself.
It's that same Murphy's law,isn't it?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And it's not there yet, but it'll be there soon On
our YouTube channel.
You'll be able to see ourexploits are coming down those
hills, once we get a chance toget it off.
We've been fighting for weeksand weeks, but we haven't had a
chance yet to get that footageoff the GoPro.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
We're not the world's best at all of this footage in
GoPro-ing and mountain bikingwith the GoPro and all this
footage capturing.
Look, you get more footage thanyou can possibly edit and deal
with while you're trying to havea holiday and work as well.
So it's taken a little bit oftime, guys.
Sorry, but it will come.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
I'm sure there's better footage out there, if you
just look at it on YouTube orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
If you want to see it done properly, watch somebody
else's.
Yeah, if you want to see itdone by everyone who's you'd buy
Joe Averick?
Then watch our video.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
You can have a laugh at me.
We've already shared my littletree hugging.
I think it's available on oursocials.
So yeah, as David said at thebeginning of this podcast, a
podcast is filmed for audio, sothat's why, if you're watching
this on YouTube, it's only onYouTube, because you're meant to
just be doing the houseworkwhile you're listening to the
(21:41):
audio rather than sitting hereand looking at us and that's why
we haven't got all these likeclips coming in of all the
things we're talking about.
I know in the comments a fewpeople have sort of been
expecting that.
That's not what a podcast isabout.
It's not designed for thevisual.
So if you're after the visual,have a look at the other
playlists on our YouTube, whereyou'll find tons of other
(22:02):
content.
It's just that the podcastplaylist is the talking bit.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And our Instagram and Facebook followings as well,
you can obviously find a lotmore content of the activities
and actions happening in there.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
That's where we predominantly post our
highlights of our trip as we gothrough Instagram and Facebook.
So when we find really goodfree camps, we want to share
with you all great hikes or justsome funny behind the scenes
stuff that's going on, orbreakages, and we'll get to all
that, because we've had a littlebit of all of that In the
podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
we really just want to summarize what's going on and
for those that are listening,we hope you pick up some tips
about places to go and thingsthat might have interested you
as we talked about them.
So the Bay of Fires we did afew mountain bikes and then we
said about doing all the hikesthat were in the area and there
was a few lovely little shorthikes around the area there.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
St Helens Point yeah, beautiful beaches there on the
other side.
I had no idea More than just theBay of Fires.
Make sure you don't miss doingthat, because that's really
spectacular Beautiful, longbeaches white, long, sandy
beaches, and you can look out tothe islands that go all the way
out.
You can see all the way down tothe hazards area of Frasianay,
(23:15):
and that was our nextdestination and this has been
bugging me so 20 years ago weonly got to see a tiny slice of
Frasianay, again with a baby ina four-year-old, and we never
got to do the hikes and we werejust so concerned about being
able to get there because it'sjust been really, really busy
and we don't want to plan aheadand we don't want to book.
I had been trying and trying toring the national parks, so you
(23:38):
have to ring or email to get abooking.
I actually that was one of theonly places the Frasianay
National Park, the campground atRichardson's Beach, which is
where you need to book if youwant to go with a trailer,
whether it's a camper, van or acaravan.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh look, so if you've got a tent, right there,
Remember, oh my God it's a loteasier.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
If you're just a rooftop tent or a little tent,
you can get sites there quiteeasily.
In fact there's a gorgeous campat Honeymoon Bay at Frasianay
which people just jag quitequickly.
It's not as hard to book, butif you're someone towing a
caravan or a camper trailer,like us, it's impossible.
I've been trying to book sinceearly December when we booked
(24:18):
our passage over on the Spiritof Tasmania and I still wasn't
able to get one.
So one of the things that hasbecome apparent and a lot of
people may not be aware theFrasianay National Park section
called Friendly's Beaches had adevastating fire in September
last year and they have had toshut that whole side of the
(24:41):
National Park or close off.
You can't go driving there andall those good free camps in the
National Park are inaccessible.
So that's just put a lot ofvisitation load on the Coles Bay
Frasianay National Parkcampground area that's left.
So the alternative and they'reposting it everywhere is the
River and Rocks, which is a fewkilometres further back out of
(25:03):
town, but it's close enough thatit's convenient to use as a
base camp.
We managed to get in therequite early one day, around
about midday, and jagged a spot.
If you look at various reviewsall over the internet, some
people complain about it.
We got a great camp and weloved the aspect of just being
able to walk down at sunset areally beautiful spot for sunset
(25:25):
.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
On the right river or bay or whatever it was in there
.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Well, the river, obviously, because it was river
and rocks, and it was exactlyRiver and Rocks.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
If you look on our socials, there's a gorgeous
picture I got at sunset on Riverand Rocks, which is what's on
the campground.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So that was pretty good and it gave us access to
Wineglass Bay and all thosegreat walks that are available
at Fratinae and all of thebeaches, obviously, that are
along the foreshore there.
What was the town called there?
Coles Bay.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Oh God, has it changed?
It always was a bit touristy Tome.
It reminded me back in the dayof places like Byron Bay.
And it's done exactly like that.
It just sort of booms and allof a sudden all the yuppie shops
and all the fancy food.
I mean it's still a lot smallerscale, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh yeah, it's a pretty small scale, but there's
three or four coffee shops.
There's a couple of shops.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
The Fish and Chirp and the Fancy Pizza and the Ice
Cream Parlor, and the Ice CreamShop and things like Air Peter
Shop.
But again not very much in theway of groceries, so you do need
to have come with a fewsupplies.
There were some groceries, butlimited.
Oh yeah, that's right, we didget a fair bit of fresh.
There was a supermarket there.
We were able to get a fair bitof stuff at the supermarket.
Oh, I got a phone call fromSeattle coming.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But it wasn't there.
It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You know cold or worse words, but we used to do
commercial large business in theEast yeah yeah, yeah, love them
all, hate them.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
So you know we had a great time.
We did spend six days in thatbay I would say Dumbo Files, in
the Franchiner area it was about.
We spent three nights at Riverand Rocks Camp doing those epic
hikes One of the best, obviouslythe Wineglass Bay lookout and
we went down to Wineglass BayBeach.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, a lot of people struggle with the hike up to
the Wineglass Bay lookout andyes, it's a lot of steps, but
really after a kilometre you'reat the first lookout, which they
don't even document very welluntil you get there and it's
gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
And that's the Coals Bay lookout.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
So for someone that's bitten off more than they can
chew, take the first onekilometre and you get to the
lookout over Coals Bay.
So the idea is, you go on alittle bit further and you get
over the hump, over the saddle,and you look at the other side
and you can look down atWineglass Bay on the other side
from the lookout of WineglassBay.
(27:40):
Then you'll read the signtelling you there's a thousand
steps down, which of whichyou've got to do a thousand
steps back up to actually godown on the beach at the bottom
of Wineglass Bay.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
And let's you do the eight hour return, or around the
edge of it, and so, look,that's up to the individual
whether you want to do that ornot.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Absolutely, we were going down and it wasn't hard at
all.
The steps were actually reallynicely graded, yeah a bit better
than some others.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Some of them are hard , some steps where they're
offset, funny distances andfunny heights.
They're built in the middle ofnowhere some of these things, so
who cares?
It's pretty good just to have astep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But let me just say here the next hike that we did,
had 4,223 steps, and that's CapeHouse.
So think carefully, use the1,000 steps as your test whether
you can do it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
But so yeah, fratinae was.
Oh, it was spectacular.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Beautiful mountains of the hazards and your
beautiful water.
It was a lot warmer in thewater than I had expected and I
think conditions this summer inTasmania have been very
favourable, and they've still,over the last few weeks since
we've left there, have beenposting heat wave in that area.
So climate change is a realthing.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I think we missed a whole section, didn't we, when
we did the St Columbia and RalphFalls and all of that part of
the journey.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Oh, okay, so look between the Bay of Fires and
Fratinae.
I mean, there you two drawcards.
We did do a bit of an inlandexcursion.
We went inland to get away fromthe beach.
We should talk about it.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
We went inland to get away from the beach for a few
days because one of the thingswe had heard was that there was
no one camping out when you getaway from the beaches, certainly
on the long weekend.
So we made a bit of a left turn, right turn situation and we
had it inland for a couple ofdays to see what we could see.
And we went in through an areacalled Pye and Ganna and down
(29:38):
that way we found some lovelywalks, halls Falls Halls Falls
was particularly good.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, it is absolutely remarkable, it was really short.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
It was only like a 3 or 4K complete in and out the
whole thing.
It wasn't very complicated.
There was a few steps andstairs and stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's the type of place you go to spend half the
day and just immersing yourselfin waterfalls there were
absolute cascades coming downand you could put your body
right up against the rock andlet the cascade fall off you.
These aren't massive falls.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
They're just smaller falls, about the person height
and they fall down and it goesdown to some more rocks and
falls down.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
That one's actually dog friendly too.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
There was a man made dam wall across a bit, and that
was quite nice as well.
So yeah, halls Falls and theGrom River.
We hacked a bit of a track.
Now we followed a bit of pinktape.
As you do the magic pink tapewhen you're hiking in Tasmania
seems to uncover a lot of thingsthat you may not see if you
don't follow the pink tape.
We followed the pink tape a bitfurther along up the Grom River
(30:41):
and found some more magicalspots along the way that you
could stop and have a great timeall that day.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
We had expected to do a day of driving and just pop
in and tick that scene there,just tick that waterfall and
tick that waterfall.
Halls Falls you really couldspend your entire day at if
you're into water, it was prettycool.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So we did that particular Halls Falls and then
we went and stayed at a placecalled Pub in the Paddock.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That had been recommended to us by our friend
and literally it is a pub in thepaddock, in the middle of a
farm in the middle of almostnowhere except that there was a
rec centre on the other side.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It also had free camping, but the pub also had
free camping right outside ifyou wanted to stay.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
We thought I will just stay there there was an RV
park across the road which hasfacilities and Pub in the
Paddock.
Once the pub's shut overnight,you can't get into the toilets.
There's no facilities, so it'sa toss up where you want to go.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So if you want the facilities, you can walk.
A lot of people did walk infrom the rec centre to the pub
and had their fill and then walkback over to the rec centre.
There was showers, paid showersand toilets.
There was only two, two showersand, I think, only a couple of
toilets.
There wasn't big.
There was quite a lot of peoplestaying there.
We decided to stay at the pubat the Paddock and we had a few
(31:57):
good drinks there and had chatswith a lot of motorbikers and we
learnt a lot more about what itis to use motorbikes.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Motorbike touring and adventure bike touring.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So that was important for us, One from a personal
interest point of view, but weall know that we already know
that we've got a reasonablefollowing of adventure bike
riders that use our app andstuff.
So getting more feedback fromthem while we were drinking and
I'm sure we got, as they gotlonger and the pub shut and we
were still drinking with themout in the balcony.
We were learning, all sorts ofextra stories about things about
(32:29):
adventure, bike riding that wemay or may not need to ever know
again, but it was a wonderfulplace.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
One of the things that I took away from the
conversation with the guys wasthat for them, it's all about
the road.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
They want to go.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Oh my God, they go so fast.
Most of them, I don't know.
Don't listen, policemen.
I'm not naming any names, butsome of these guys are riding
these bikes for 230Ks an hour,not in Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
No, they were telling us that from somewhere on the
mainland.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's my takeaway.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
They do like the roads and they were on a
specific tour and they justfinished this specific tour and
it's been six or seven days andthere are tours and tour groups
and they come down and they doall these spectacular roads
because, as I was saying before,they're steep and they're windy
and you get used to thinking,oh, 60km, you can do that in
half an hour, 40 minutes over onthe mainland, it can take you
(33:25):
an hour and a half to do thathere, because it's so damn steep
going up and so damn steepgoing down and everywhere you go
there's a 90 degree corner thatyou can't see.
That's unsigned.
So driving around in some ofthe areas around here is pretty
interesting.
So the bike riders they comedown and they love it and we
found out a lot more about bikeriding from those guys at the
pubs in the paddock.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Also the fact that these particular guys on this
tour they weren't into camping.
They don't do anything whenthey.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
No, they stay at pubs .
Speaker 2 (33:54):
They stay at pubs.
They ride all day.
Quite a lot of them may havehad past injuries, whatever, so
hiking's not their thing.
They're purely here to ride.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
They do a couple hundred a day on the bike A
couple hundred a day on the bikethrough all these roads and
hills and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It would be quite a big difference in time.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And so the next day, which was probably one of our
better days well, one of themany awesome days- it's a
standout.
It's a standout day, the day wedid St Columbia, st.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Columba.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
St Columba.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
So we were the first people there, because if you do
stay at Poinganna at the RV orPub in the Paddock.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You're close.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
You're really close, and I think we got there at 9.30
, so it wasn't as if we we'renot early birds, we're not early
birds.
It's so cold here in themorning it takes a while for the
sun to warm everything up andlook most people do the same
thing.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
So, anyway.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
So we cruise on and we were the first hikers there
and it was magic.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It was.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It was the fairy tale rainforest walk, the falls
yourself.
Yeah, they're okay, but for methe standout was actually the
walk, the little tricklingbrooks and moss covered rocks,
and it was just spectacularenvironment to walk through.
So that was a real standout.
And if you only see one, do onewaterfall hike in Tasmania.
(35:14):
I mean I have done all the westcoasts and we've done all those
ones before as well and Ihaven't done every waterfall,
but I, at the moment I'm callingit oh really.
St Colombo is my favorite hikingwaterfall hike in Tasmania so
far.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And it's only short.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Again, it was like a kilometer and a bit easier to
get out.
So it was easy and and accesswas reasonable.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It is steep in and that, like you, go down a
reasonable hill.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
But it's a bit of a ramp.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, you could almost you disable or you could
almost wheelchair in, but it'dbe a bit of a push to get you
out again.
But it was, it was kind of anice and easy walk down and and
it was well worth it.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
The views, as Michelle said, were very
spectacular, but it seems to bea bit of a typical circuit for
people to go from Halls Fallsthrough to Pinegana, on to St
Colombo and then on to the nextone which we went to, which was
Ralph Falls.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, I don't know if it's that popular to go to
Ralph Falls because you've gotto do that.
We came down from St Colomboand there's a little hairpin
turn it's alright, if you'recoming, if you're coming towards
St Colombo Falls, but if you'recoming from St Colombo Falls
back to Pinegana and you've gotto make this little hairpin
corner.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
There's no way you do it in the caravan.
The way we turned it we nearlyrolled the trailer.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I wouldn't suggest that, if you've got a decent
caravan, that you even do it.
The hill on the other side itwas pretty freaking steep.
It wasn't the most simple drivecoming through there.
There is a sign we did the.
We did this left hand turn.
It took me to do a back andforth to get around it.
It was a hairpin and you knowwithin about you get.
(36:42):
You get on the thing and youstart driving down the road and
it says ah, road dot suitablefor touring trailers and campers
and caravans and blah blah blahand we thought, oh my goodness,
we're already here.
We're kind of committed.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
We thought that was a historic road, wasn't it?
It wasn't something, yeah.
And we looked on the map and itwas a Ralph Falls road and it
Ralph Falls road.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
It wasn't called that .
Speaker 2 (37:02):
No, it was just a road, but it had a sign that
said Ralph.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Falls and it and it and it was and it was a bit
steep and it was pretty loose.
It was okay, we got through.
We got to the top of that andsort of had to use our maps a
bit because it wasn't very wellsigned postage.
You could sort of follow themain tire tracks that were
moving around to get you.
There was a few four-wayintersections and three-way
intersections where it was notcompletely obvious which way to
(37:27):
go.
Glad we had the maps.
Anyway, we hit Ralph Falls andCaches Gorge Ralph Falls.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
They're quite underwhelming themselves.
It's a very that the the appeal.
Obviously, at different timesof year you see a full a water.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
More water.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
It needed more water to be spectacular.
It's a long vertical drop andwhere the lookout is is it's a
long distance view, so you'renot up close to the water like
with the other ones.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
You can stand over the top and you can't see
anything, but it's basically apencil of water.
It's apparently one of thelongest falls.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Longest single falls in Tasmania, but you can't see
the bottom, it just kind ofdisappears and all we could see
was like a pencil with stream ofwater.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
So most people just go into the car park and see the
sign and go in the direction ofRalph Falls.
But what we had done, we did acircuit, we went out the other
way, first to Caches Gorge, andthen walked all the way around,
and it was a really lovely walk.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
It was nice.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
So that was sort of the type of place you go more
for the walk than enjoying thewaterfall, whereas St Colombo,
oh, I suppose they're both thesame.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't get confusing there,
oh, okay.
But it was better waterfalls,so you know, we were still
fairly early, early ish in theday.
I don't even think we'd hitlunch time.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
No, we hadn't because we had lunch at the next place.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Well, we went out and we drove through the forest and
, as I say, when I drive throughthe forest it's like up and
down and over dal and around andaround and over and up and down
, and it's quite challenging andit's a very enjoyable driving.
That's the sort of thing I liketo do Tasmania.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, it's a driver's paradise, it is a driver's and
rider's paradise.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
I can see why the bikies like it as well.
We go on roads that they mightnot like so much, but you, some
of them, go flat out, even onthe rough stuff as well.
So we went to Ringo Roma orRingo, rumour, is the next town
that we went through and gotsome local berries and produce
out of the fridges on theroadside.
You know, people have theselittle grocery markets and they
sell their wares and you pull upin this little tin shed and you
(39:25):
open the tin shed inside like acouple of fridges, and you open
the fridges and there's little,put your two bucks in the thing
and grab some local stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
The garlic we got from there is fabulous.
It's that little small, tightpurple head garlic.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
And again another thing that we also do is almost
everywhere there's lots ofblackberries on the side of the
road and we pick those and eatthem there.
I mean, blackberries areeverywhere here at this time of
year and you can just driveanywhere almost and get a feel
of blackberries even not so muchhere in the wilderness areas,
because it hasn't been, so thecars aren't driving past and
carrying the berries and bitsand pieces around, but certainly
(39:58):
all over the roads almosteverywhere else.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
There are noxious weed for the locals, but anyway,
the berries are perfect andthey're good eating.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Then we went up to a little town called Ledgerwood
and Ledgerwood has some famous,are they famous?
Infamous?
They're a listed historic site.
It's a World War 3, world War 1Memorial Carve trees.
Now, apparently the story goesthat in this town of Ledgerwood,
was it 16 people.
(40:27):
It went to World War 1, or somenumber of people went to World
War 1.
They were all killed in all thevarious battles, and so what
was done in the town was theyplanted these number of trees,
one for each person that hadfallen in this park in the town.
Now, obviously, you know, 100years later those or 80 or 90
(40:49):
years later, those trees becamemassive and they became a bit of
a problem with limbs fallingand other bits and pieces.
So they employed an artist, atree sculpting artist.
Which is how do you do that?
But you should see what they'vecreated.
They basically cut those treesdown and made them into
perpetual statues, or basicallylast forever.
(41:10):
They keep painting them andthey think they do look after it
quite well, wonderful statues,always carved trees, quite.
You know good stories aroundthem.
Well worth a look.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
The carving that's been done, apparently with a
chainsaw.
You must have had some smallerbits as well, but the carving,
so you've kept the base and thetrunk of the tree intact and
taken the limbs off, but keptjust enough of the limbs where
he's done very fine detail workand you can see making seats and
people sitting on the seats.
(41:41):
Yeah, forms of human beingsdressed in their soldier outfits
, holding rifles lying downalong the limb, or local, or the
wives back at home that type ofthing, so it was quite telling.
There is also a little shedthere, open by the volunteers,
(42:01):
with a few souvenirs and touristinformation, and it's all set
up at a free camp with a restarea in the heritage railway
that remains there, in abeautiful park land, and there's
some other little memorialsaround town, so it's a lovely
little spot to explore, and so,if you can combine that on a bit
of a loop, like we did withyour waterfall day, Well, the
(42:23):
silly thing that we had done isthat we've been about two weeks,
two or three weeks before thatbefore we'd even got into Derby
for the mountain biking.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
if you'd listened to the previous podcast, you would
know when we did that Ledgerwoodwas around about eight
kilometers down the road fromwhere we were about three and a
half weeks ago, but we cameabout in a totally different way
so you could see how fast wewere traveling.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
we almost touched the line that we'd done three or
four weeks ago on the way to dothat, but we knew we were going
to get back in that area againand we almost went back to Derby
once we got here to Ledgerwoodto do more mountain biking
because we were almost recoveredfrom all our injuries, we
thought we might as well giveyou a go at that.
But we keep feeling like we'rerushing against time, and so it
was around about this time thatwe realized hey, I don't think
(43:05):
we're going to make it to thespirit of Tasmania ferry on the
six-week booking that we've got,so guess what we did?
We extended our trip by anotherthree weeks and so we're still
here.
So that's why we're still hereand going at a snail's pace.
So now we're up to nine weeksin Tasmania and actually talking
to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
We are going at a snail's pace in the podcast too,
because it's probably we'veprobably been going for a while,
even though what time westarted.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Well, some of these things we're talking about are
highlights.
So get your pens out, writedown some of these highlights
for your trip plan, or if you'vegot a good memory remember.
No, the idea is you're meant topull out the Explorers Traveler
app.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Look the place up and put them into a folder and you
put it in a folder.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Like you tag your favorites and then you can write
little notes.
The new system that we've got.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So follow along with your Explorers, traveler, follow
along.
After leaving Ledgerwood, wewere obviously looking for our
next camp and we'd heard areference or been given a
referral to go to a place calledEvercreech, evercreech Forest,
and we thought, okay, well, wefound that on the map and it was
a reasonable way from where wehad to go and we went to past
(44:11):
Mount Victoria and Mount Alberton the way and they were two
treks that you could do hikes.
They look pretty steep, theylook pretty hard, they were a
bit beyond our cave nearly forthe time of day in the afternoon
that we were there.
No, no, they had a.
There was a little board at one.
I think Mount Victoria looked abit more official than Mount
Albert.
It had a little walkway and anentranceway thing and a boot
(44:34):
washer thing I think it hadthere.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Severe hazard area yeah, but it was always saying
severe hazards and you know itlooked.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It looked pretty hard .
We decided we weren't going todo that, we were going to target
the Evercreech Forest and gladwe did because, wow, we got down
there and we did that walk outin the afternoon we did the full
Evercreech.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Forest.
Evercreech Forest Reserve isthe most beautiful place to stay
.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So now we've just ruled it for everybody, because
everyone's going to go.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
There was no one there.
They have two hikes so there'sa nice circuit hike that you go
over the bridge, go through therainforest.
It's magic the first five steps.
You stop in wonder and awe andjust look up at these enormous
beautiful canopy of rainforeststhat you're in and just go wow.
And then, if you keep goingalong, you come to a really
(45:19):
gorgeous waterfall where you canactually get your hands and
your feet in the waterfall.
So that's lovely, it's atrickle.
And then you climb all the wayup the bloody mox in that one up
to the top of that waterfallyeah you were having a good time
.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Always trying to find the top of the waterfall.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
You actually promise you were going to sit there and
do a podcast.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And that was too many weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
We did stay the night there and there was, oh my God,
the amount of wildlife thatcomes out at night time.
We got out the headlights andwent spotlighting because there
was noises in the dark.
Animals everywhere and theyscreech and they growl and they
carry on.
So, yep, we've heard Tasmaniandevils.
We see their eyes at night andtons of wallabies at night time
(46:03):
growling as they run throughyour camp at you.
So I had one actually rushingat me.
That was scary and I squealed.
You remember that.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
And it actually is a really beautiful day use area
and if you had a, if you feelcamping intense, the area set
aside for the tent camping ismagic, so stone built fireplaces
right by the river.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Except that, you can't use fires in any of these
places anymore.
There seems to be some new fireroaring through certainly this
area and certainly in summerit's certainly the whole East
Coast all national parks and alot of places are signed as no
fire.
We're in one tonight, we're inone here where we can have fire,
but just on the other side ofthe lake.
(46:45):
Here we weren't able to havefire, so you can pick your spots
you know, but every every thisnational park or world heritage
listed, other than some spotswithin World Heritage listed,
like this one, you could seem tohave fire.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
There's no rule.
There is a rule of nationalpark.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
There's a rule that's a national park and you can't
have fire and we don't knowwhether that restriction is
going to come out in winter ornot.
I suspect it's going to comeout in winter.
They are signed to the screwedon, but they're pretty
permanently looking science.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But this camps not run by national parks.
It's actually run by hydro test, so the rules are a bit
different rules are a bitdifferent.
Yeah, you really got to look atthe info and look at the sign
and just do what you're told.
Do what you're told.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
So that's the Evercreech we also did the next
day.
We did the night's walk, thefour nights, or four white
nights, the white nights walk atEvercreech, the white gum trees
, and it's a it's the fourtallest gum trees in the
Southern Hemisphere or is in theworld or something that are in
there.
Was it the world, or theSouthern Hemisphere, or Tasmania
?
One of the two?
(47:45):
I can't really recall, but theywere bloody tall.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
There was a claim to some fame.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
And whilst whilst whilst you're doing the walk in
there and you're getting thisgreat inspiration of how tall
these things are they don'tactually like have a market to
tell you which to four are thepath does tend to go, walks past
and has sort of surroundingsaround two of them, and you look
up and you go, oh yeah, that'spretty tall.
But you can't really get agauge of how tall it is until
you do the full circuit, walkand go up the hill and you see
(48:11):
from the halfway up the mountainthat these things are so
massive.
They are really tall trees.
So that whole Evercreechwonderful spot.
After we left that we went toAthena Falls, which is kind of
there's kind of a loop that wecould do.
That Athena Falls was veryinteresting.
Nice walk in to the first falland you're not 100% sure what's
(48:32):
going on.
You kind of get there and yousee this lovely fall and then
you see that infamous pink tapegoing up the side of something.
I saw the pink tape and Icouldn't resist always wanting
to ascend a waterfall, so Idragged Michelle up to the first
plateau.
So you get to the firstwaterfall, first plateau, and
that was quite lovely and then Imanaged to convince Michelle to
(48:52):
come up to the next plateau andthe next set of waterfalls,
which was even more spectacularand lovely because you're kind
of halfway up and you can seebelow and you can see at the top
.
And I could still see the pinktape drawing my attention up the
hill further and further andfurther, and I actually went up
through three or four differentfull platforms.
It was way beyond me.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
The amount of scree.
It was loose rubble at anincline.
That was just insane.
I was not trusting myself to beable to do that.
So Michelle stayed down and Iwent up and I took photos and
added all these differentmarkers.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
So in the theme of falls there's like an upper and
middle and a lower section offalls and photos and stuff in
there.
Look, I had a good time.
It's lovely to go up and see,go, sort of go not beyond as
such.
There was pink tape somewhere.
I've been there before.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I had the app and the app shows you where the
waterfall was.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
And there was even some wire strung between two
parts where you had to sort ofskirt around a fairly dubious
rocky section.
So it was easier, nicer to graba hold of a piece of wire as
you walked around that.
So someone had set that up andit was lovely.
And going up to the top of thatand seeing four levels of
waterfall coming down, I quiteenjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
It was quite, quite, quite nice, so we spent a long
time there.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
We spent a fair bit of time there, but it was lovely
, yeah, it was nice.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You know you can just again.
All these waterfall areas inthis part of the world of
Tasmania was all warm.
You could sit your feet in thewater, have a swim, spend hours
there.
It was all very pleasant.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Look, I think we were going to cover the whole trip
that we've done since Stumpy'sBay to where we are today, but I
think we've probably come towhere we might want to end our
first review, because we've justdone Mathena Falls.
Oh, we'll finish that day.
So at the end of that day wewent into this little town
called Mathena and it doesn'tsay very much, and we'd read
(50:47):
reviews that the RV camp hadclosed, but there was no signs
that it closed and there wassomeone already camping and
there was people camping in theRV campsite.
Magnificent facilities, yeah,like coin-operated showers,
coin-operated showers and thewhole works, but something on
one of the websites had said itwas closed and it had been
boarded and you'd get arrested,sort of think, if you went there
.
We couldn't see any sign.
That was only the day before wegot there.
(51:08):
And we got there and it lookedlovely and that sounded like a
whole load of hogwash.
Maybe they just didn't wantthat particular person to stay
there.
So Mathena is a little town andI'd noticed this thing called
Tower Hill and we'd read somereviews about people staying in
(51:29):
Mathena to do the Tower HillDrive.
So we thought, oh well, let'sgo and have a look at Tower Hill
Drive.
It was getting a bit late inthe afternoon, it wasn't early
morning by this stage, it waskind of after lunch, but we
thought we'd go and have a lookup at Tower Hill and we drove up
the side of this hill we hadthe camper in Tower, of course,
because we were moving betweentowns and we saw the Tower Hill
(51:51):
Road turn off and it said youknow, steep, steep, steep ascent
, be sure, be sure.
We were already on a steep steepand we were already on a almost
steep enough and the turnoffsaid steep, steep.
We headed up there a little bitand I could just see how steep
it was going to get and Ithought I'm going to need to
drop the, the trailer off, thecamper off, if we want to
(52:13):
continue to do this.
So we aborted the.
We aborted Tower Hill for awant of running out of time.
We still had steep steepbecause the rest of that Tower
Hill Road all the way over toFingal was pretty damn steep.
It was up and down and overDale, but still a lovely drive.
If you're into forest driving,like I am, it was great.
We then went.
(52:34):
We then, you know, popped outof all of that at a little town
called Fingal and we were kindof at a crossroads as to where
we were going to camp.
It was almost sunset, we thoughtwe'd camp at Fingal but we
thought, oh you know T'Navi campand there was a few people
there and it was tiny.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
It was a lovely town with lots of beautiful historic
people being there.
You could have looked.
So we just did a lap of themain, took some photos.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
We did a lap of the main took some pictures up there
to the places, did all that andfound the dump points and did
all that work that we have to doeach day.
And then we drove onto StMary's and St Mary's is a
reasonably big town, just downthe road from St Helen's, you
know, and it had a decent IGA.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
And it had an IGA and a server and a few things you
know and a massive RV park and amassive RV park and
infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Which we drove into, and it had showers, coin showers
, and it had everything.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
But it's not our sort of plan.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
It's just so, not us.
It was almost dark then andthis storm was coming and it was
starting to rain as we were atSt Mary's and Michelle said look
, let's go back out to the coastto Big Lagoon Camp.
It's only 15 K's or somethingfrom St Mary's or something.
But what she didn't realise, orwhat we didn't realise, it was
(53:45):
15 K's of turny worny, narrow,tight, hard.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
It was extremely steep, it was bitumen still.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Bitumen.
This was bitumen.
It was hard driving.
It was tough driving because itwas getting dark and it was
raining, and so we made thatdrive as tough as it was from St
Mary's and we got down to.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Lagoon Beach and full of people, so I was in trouble.
We drove round and round andround and all the perfect spots
were gone, but we foundourselves a pretty good little
spot.
We found a decent spot and inthe morning a lot of people left
and we stayed a couple of daysand we stayed in the same spot
that we found because wecouldn't be bothered moving,
because it was good enough.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
It was as good as most of the others.
So, look, I think, based ontiming, it's probably a good
time to end this particularpodcast.
We've done how many days it hastaken us to do all that?
We've just talked because wetalked about five weeks since we
did the last one.
We did that was six days atthere, three days of operation.
We haven't even hit TasmanPeninsula and South West Cape
yet.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
So tune in for the next podcast, for part two of
this part of Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Part two of the Eastern, south, south and East
coasts from Lagoon Beach.
We'll catch up with you nexttime.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Okay, tuning guys.
Okay, hi folks, and welcome to another episode of
the Explorers podcast.
Today we're being brought toyou from the edge of Lake Petta
in southwest Tasmania, up in theright next to the World
Heritage Listed National Parksin southwest Tasmania.
What's it called again?
Pure wilderness, purewilderness.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is actually Edgar Dam campground that we're
at at the moment Absolutelymagic day we're having today.
Look at us, we're actually int-shirts.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, for those that are watching.
Obviously these are meant to bepodcasts and we're hoping that
you'll be listening to these.
They're not really designed forvideo and for visual
stimulation because,realistically, those that are
watching are really watching us.
Now, that could be exciting orit could be boring, I don't
particularly know but these arepodcasts and so we employ you to
just sit back and listen to theinsightful words that we're
(00:55):
going to bring you about all thelocations and trials and
tribulations of our next fiveweeks that we've done in
Tasmania.
It's been a while since we didthe last one.
Actually, it's been five weekssince we recorded one of these,
so we're a bit behind, butthey've only just been released,
so you'll be catching up withus on the go, but it has been
quite a few weeks and we've donequite a lot of stuff since we
(01:17):
last spoke to you.
Where did we start, michelle?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, over the last five weeks we have managed to
complete the east coast ofTasmania and it took a lot
longer than we thought and wehave also managed to get down to
the south west national park,where we are now, but that's a
really large part of Tasmania.
If you look at the map, you'llknow that.
So we have done the mostsouthern point of Tasmania,
(01:44):
we've been down to the southCape and we have made our way
all the way across into thecentral part of the south west.
Like Peta.
We have quickly summarised wehave done a lot of wineries, we
have done a lot of rain forests.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
We've done a few wineries We've just read about
to run out of wine.
We've been drinking so muchwine from the wineries.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Well, we'll go back and talk about the really good
wineries that we have seen in aminute, because we have actually
been to quite a number.
Rain forests down through theeast coast are absolutely
magnificent.
We've done some supping on afew rivers.
We've done a huge amount ofhiking, because that was one of
the big ticket things for usthat we wanted to achieve on our
Tasmania trip.
Although we aren't set up to domulti-day hikes, what we have
(02:31):
concentrated on is some reallyepic day hikes.
There's 60 great short walks Isthat what they call them?
60 great short walks ofTasmania?
So you can look this up it's afantastic concept that they've
got here and there's signseverywhere for them and they
range from fairly short hikes ofonly a couple of kilometres to
(02:53):
a waterfall or whatever and back, which is easily accessible for
most people, to some prettyserious longer hikes.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But only in the one day range.
They're not a multi-day thing.
They're all designed to be whatthey call 60 great.
I think it's short walks or 60great walks 60 great short walks
.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So guys look that up, because if you just planned
your trip around Tasmania basedon those walks, you would
absolutely see the best ofTasmania, in our opinion, if
you're a nature lover.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And a walker and a walker, yep.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We have also.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Mind you, a lot of those walks actually also have
disabled access and somedisabled facilities at certain
locations.
Not all of them.
Some of them certainly do, andsome of them probably have a few
more facilities for less ablepeople.
So elderly or hand rails andthere's some things over some of
the more complicated bit, butdon't get me wrong, some of them
they're fairly well graded here.
(03:46):
One of the things that'sinteresting about the walk
series there's not many thatdiscuss how many kilometres it
is, they're more about how manyhours it is yeah.
And it's quite interestingbecause they're almost dead on
for our walking speed and that'ssomewhere between four and five
kilometres an hour hikingthrough these sorts of areas.
So it's a bit variable but wehave done a lot of them, a lot
(04:07):
shorter Hearts Mountain, forinstance.
I think it was gazetted orposted as five hours.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
We did it in two and a bit Nearly three Heart
Mountain.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So some of them are a bit hit and miss, but some of
them are pretty dead on andthey're all rated in that way.
But they're also all graded.
So if you're not sure how thegrading system works, have a
look it up.
Grade one is nothing.
Grade two is prettystraightforward.
Then you go to three, which hasgot some a little bit more
complexity.
Grade four is where youactually got a climb.
(04:37):
You know gravel and climb andstuff.
And grade five is when it getsa bit more extreme.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So and we've been picking most of the grade four
hikes because that suits us andthere's some epic destinations.
So included in those greatshort hikes are places like Cape
Royal and Cape Howe.
And Cape Howe is just one ofthe capes on the popular three
capes multi-day overnight hikeand you can do Cape Howe from a
(05:04):
base camp in a national park asjust an out and back day hike of
about four hours and I'm goingto tell you in a minute some of
our favorite hikes.
But that's way up there andthat one's really good.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So last we spoke to you, we were at Stumpy's Bay, at
Stumpy's Toucanck ground, andwe had a great time up there.
That was you know what were wetwo weeks into our Tassie
Ventures then and realistically,we'd only covered the top
corner.
We'd hardly traveled very farat all.
Now we've added a few morethousand kilometers into the
trip and a lot more walks and alot more destinations.
(05:37):
So some of the highlights thatwe had, you know, after we've
left Stumpy's, you know DeepCreek, edison Point, anson Bay,
policeman's Point these are justa few locations around that
area.
For those people that arelooking things up, deep Creek
had a good camping area andthings like that.
One of the things that we'vebeen doing, obviously, while
(05:59):
we're going to all these places,is we're updating the data on
the places information withinthe Exploros Traveler app.
So you'll find all of theseareas that are right down the
east coast and down thesouthwest and all that now are
really well covered in all thePOS have all been updated.
Everything's been updated aswe've been going through.
So I'm mentioning some of thosenames.
(06:19):
If you're interested inthinking about coming to
Tasmania and want to go to anyof these places, then I employ
you to look them up on theExploros Traveler app and you'll
see more information and morephotos that we've taken while
we've been here.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
While we're on that point, we should probably just
mention that whilst we're doingall these updates, we're also
seeing a lot of other publicupdates coming through from
other app users, which is reallyawesome to see.
We really want to encouragepeople to use those facilities a
lot more.
Adding a photo is really easy.
You can do it off your phonewhile you're offline.
You just click the button inthe place that shows you add a
(06:54):
photo and whether the photo issomething you're going to take
through the camera or whetheryou're actually going to pick
one from the gallery of picturesyou've already taken.
It's as simple as that and thatcan be done offline, and then
that just auto syncs through toevery other app user.
So public contributions likethat are a huge, big part of the
ongoing update philosophy ofthe Traveler app.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And while we do talk about that, one of the things
that's been interesting is thatwe've noticed, or in the last
few weeks or months or since welast podcasted, we've done quite
a number of updates to the app,most recently in the last few
days, and that was all abouttrying to put these update
activities closer to theforefront.
So putting the ratings andreview system right on the
(07:42):
information page when you firstopen the place and making the
add photo button and all thosethings stand out a little bit
more.
We hope you find that easierand and you know we do welcome
all that public content thatcomes in it's all validated in
the background after you put itin, but feel free to put it all
in and you know if it's notright it'll get changed.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid
of being using it.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
If you completely stuff it up, someone will come
along and fix it up behind you.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
There's a few little elves in the background.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So you know that's all big part of it and that's
all part of the work, and wemight do another podcast about
working on the road and whatit's been like since we've left
it.
But for now you know, back into,back into travelling down the
East Coast of Taz, you know, andone of the few things we also
run into, you know we get to.
We went out to the Bay of Fires.
You know and everyone wouldknow.
Or, if you don't know, bay ofFires is one of the big tourism
(08:34):
areas on the East Coast.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, both the tourists but also the locals.
Yeah, I know what you're comingto.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
The Hobartians the Hobartians, if that's what we
call them, or the Taswegians, orwhatever you like to call them,
or whatever you like to callyourselves if you are a
Tasmanian person they all loveto go to the Bay of Fires on the
East Coast.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And who wouldn't?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Any time the weather's good or and any time
there's a public holiday.
So we just happen to hit a fewpublic holidays right at the
times when we pulled into theseplaces and, oh my goodness, I've
never seen so many people insome of these campsites they
were wall to wall, jammed inlike sardines.
Totally not for us.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
But yeah, one lock away or out, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Okay, if you're used to that kind of thing and you
can, you can, you can sidle upto the next caravan and put your
awning out and just touch thecaravan next to you and just jam
yourselves in there.
That's all well and good.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Camping with friends.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Camping with friends.
That all works out quite well.
It was exceptionally busy andthat dictated some of the places
we stayed and how we movedaround a little bit.
Certainly over a few days thereseems to have been a lot of
public holidays at this time ofyear, yeah, with different
things all over the country, butwe seem to have picked up a few
as we pulled into the most busyplaces in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So look, that is a real warning to travellers.
And look where.
Obviously we're not fromTasmania and it happens for
everyone you travel into.
You really got to stay on topof these public holidays because
I know what the public holidaydates are in WA and they're
different to what they are overEast.
And then there's a special onein Tasmania we didn't know of
and we were actually in Bay ofFires when there was a special
(10:10):
public holiday only for Hobart.
And I didn't think about itaffecting.
I did look at where it was.
I didn't think about itaffecting where we were because,
although it wasn't a publicholiday up there, obviously the
people from Hobart on the publicholiday were travelling to this
perfect area.
So you know part of your travelplan is obviously these Bay of
(10:33):
Fires.
Why it's so popular?
Because obviously it's gorgeouscoast.
But there's got another bigfeature going for, which is what
attracts people.
It's a massive area all the waydown the coast with hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds offree campsites where you can
stay up to 28 days.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
There would be sites.
There's hundreds of sitesspread out across about 10
different camps and locations,but spread also across about 20
kilometres.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So we did have to actually document every single
one of them, look at everysingle one of them, and we went
in while it was all busy andthen we went back a few days
later when it was all quiet.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
And it was still busy .
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And I think it will still be busy basically the
whole year round.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I will certainly be busy all summer.
It's one of those locationswhere everyone's kind of goes
for the summer is all that Bayof Fires area and the camps and
the locations in that area arethings like Seaton's Cove, Loop
Reef, Sloup Lagoon.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Swim Cart Lagoon.
Well, swim Cart Beach, I meanGenerate Beach.
There's where we stayed, cosy.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Corner.
And where did we stay?
We stayed at Dora Point.
Funny story Dora.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Point.
So look, we ended up only beingable to camp at either Humberg
Nature.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Reserve.
Well, humberg Nature Reserve iswhere Dora Point is.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, well, the Malting.
Bay Lagoon Perfect campingthere, but I really did want
that beach scene for our basecamp, so we pushed on and went
to Dora Point where you've gotgorgeous, clear, calm swimming
water, crystal clear, beautifulrocks, the orange lichen, all of
that and the sand.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Well, actually interesting, before we even got
to Humberg and Dora, we couldn'tget into any of those.
We went and did some suppliesand we stayed at Dioners Beach,
which was further south of thewhole Bay of Fires area.
So we did that the first day toget over the public holiday, to
then come back to even going toDora Point.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But my point was.
So we end up at Dora Point,where it's almost the only place
that we could get to, and allof a sudden David looks at the
place update that he was aboutto do and there was a photo in
there that he recognised.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It was me.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And it was him 20 years ago and he was with One of
our children, one of ourchildren, who, at the time, was
four years old.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Swimming in the exact spot at Dora Point.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Here we were wanting to fill in the gaps of our trip
20 years ago, and I think thesame thing had happened to us
last time is that that was theonly place that we could get a?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
decent spot.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And look, since we've been in this area, I've since
heard that this is the thingwhen it is really crowded and
busy at all those really superpopular Bay of Fires camps, for
some reason the Dora Point onetends to have a bit more
availability, and there is areason for it.
It's not just straight off theroad, you don't just pull in and
pull out, you've actually gotabout six k's, at least Six or
(13:25):
seven k's of gravel, of gravellyhard steep.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
There's a steep in and a steep hill.
There's potholes but it's allnothing, really all easy and big
vans and things do go in there.
It's a decent hill to pull upto get in there and a decent
hill when you get over the top.
But driving over hills,tasmania, you've got to get used
to it.
Especially if you want to gointo the forests and stuff.
(13:48):
It's healing.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, yeah.
So look, dora Point.
Yeah, we ended up there again,so that was a bit of deja vu,
but honestly, this time we didit quite differently, but it was
absolutely beautiful.
There is a hike there which wespent the whole day walking 16
kms, no, 12 km and you can walkall the way around the coastline
To Skeleton Bay yeah, toSkeleton Bay, and the whole way.
(14:13):
You've got the water on oneside and you've got beautiful
forest on the other side andit's just sort of gentle incline
up and down.
It's an easy path, spectacularviews the entire way and ever
changing terrain.
There are little car parks, soif you're not into the 12 km
return hike, you can still driveout of the Dora Point
(14:34):
campground.
And go into each of those andjust do small little hikes of a
few hundred metres, but you missall the good bits.
So we had a look at all thoseoptions and so, if you're up for
a bit of a walk, it's a reallybeautiful walk and we got to
have a sneaky little, perfect,isolated swim in the water in a
rock pool on our own.
Yes, the water is cold, butagain, that's one of the things
(14:57):
you have to get used to in theBay of Five the water is clear
and it is so inviting, so youjust have to suck it up and do
it.
We actually spent six daysbased in the Bay of Fives area,
so that's just a bit of a guideon how long you might need if
you want to be in that area.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It's really easy.
The only difference about thebiking there was that in that
area, yeah, so that's what I'mabout to talk about yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So it's really easy to base camp at one of these
camps and drive into St Helens,and in St Helens you do have one
of the only IGAs and decentcamps.
There's two IGAs, so it stopsshots that you'll find.
So far we haven't seen anybetter shopping.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So long the system.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh, of course Lonseston had shops Since we
left Lonseston and that wasquite a while ago.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
All the way to St Helens.
There wasn't really much, yeah,and lots of little stuff.
You know little side shops, youknow your little groceries
connected to things there wassome grocery shops connected to
coffee shops and things likethat, but really to find solid
supplies, chemists and a wholerange of food stuff and fresh
(16:10):
food and all that sort of stuffis quite complicated.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And lots of really good set up for campers.
They know that people needwater.
Out on the main road betweenthere's a water filling station
dump points and all that at StHelens.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It's all very well set up.
Yeah, so you can pull into StHelens with your water tanks dry
and there's a drive up set ofwater taps.
There's actually two setsthere's ones at the dump point
and there's ones at the specialdesignated one at the north end
of town.
So they're all marked on themap, all on the travel system as
well, yep.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And there's a couple of things to do even around St
Helens and just a little bitsouth of St Helens.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
We found a nice walk, we did the mountain biking.
So a couple of days of mountainbiking at Flagstaff, we did.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Absolutely Well, if we're going to talk mountain
biking, yeah, mountain biking,yeah.
So Flagstaff Hill Mountain BikeArea is a park where they do
have a shuttle service and youcan self ride on the easy green
trails and if you're able to doa little bit of uphill you can
also get up onto some of theblue trails.
So we did that just to sort ofget our eye in and then we got
(17:14):
onto the shuttle and we actuallygot a private shuttle because
it wasn't very busy We'd alreadymissed all the busy time of
year and the driver that worksfor Vertigo Vertigo he was.
He just hangs out there and wewere able to chat to him.
He was a great guy.
He had a bit of fun.
We did a private uplift, acouple of runs for him.
So we went right up to LowellLa Tea and we did a downhill
(17:37):
black rated ride called SendHelens, which if you've ridden
at Derby we wouldn't rate itblack, you'd still rate it blue.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You'd rate it black if you do all the jumps that are
on it.
But it has bailouts all the waydown, which made it quite nice.
So from a black, from a blackdiamond perspective, it was,
there was two choices.
There was, it was almost green.
But it was probably more blueand and obviously the black if
you do all the jumps.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And I managed to actually have a crash that day
pretty bad and I nearly wentdown the mountain and I grabbed
a tree and hugged it instead andI've actually torn all the
inside of my arm.
It was pretty nasty, but I keptriding.
And why did I fall?
I was having a bit ofmechanicals that day and I was
in a rush and I sort of ignoredit.
Anyway, we fixed it and I wentup the hill and we did another
(18:27):
run, which was an old salty dog,I think.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So if you're in those names won't mean much to you
unless you're going to do somemountain biking, but they were
probably the two standout runsthat we did from there and also
at the same time.
We then, while we were, whilewe were dealing with the shuttle
we organised, we thought, ohwell, let's go and do the the
Bay of Fires Blue Blue Tier, bayof Fires first 13 ride the
(18:53):
following day, which was goingto shuttle us out out a fair bit
further out of St Helens and upto Lola Tier no, not Lola Tier.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Blue Tier Blue.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Tier.
Wow, there's so many tiers.
There was almost tiers BlueTier and the Bay of Fires, first
13,.
It's 13 kilometres from the top.
You go from the top for thefirst 13 k's, which is
supposedly the most spectacular.
The most spectacular is meantto be from kilometre 7 to
kilometre 13, I think, or 6 to13, one of those, and we did
(19:24):
that.
We did a thing called first 13plus, which was the first 13,.
So from the top to the 13kilometre marker and then we got
a shuttle from there back up tothe 6 or 7 kilometre marker, I
can't remember exactly which one7.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
And we did the last 5 to 6 kilometres again, because
that's the section, becausethat's the best bit.
Yeah, that was the best.
And honestly, oh my God, therain forest.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And the view.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
The burns were just perfect.
In comparison to what we'reriding like at Derby.
I think we're a little bit morenervy there, but at this place
you could just let go and fangaround the burns and we just had
a lot more fun.
Well, we'd also bought.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Oh, we're just going to say that too, because of
Michelle's pre-hugging and mehaving a snack and we were
getting a bit cut up and we weregetting a bit grumpy about that
.
Then we went to the shop tobook the Bay of Fires ride.
We spent a bucketload of moneybuying more mountain biking knee
, elbow guards and various bitsand pieces to make sure that we
(20:26):
didn't bump ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So when we did do the Bay of Fires 13, we had all
this extra confidence and allthis extra coverings on and we
didn't fall.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And we didn't fall actually.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well, that's good.
Buy the protective gear and youdon't hurt yourself.
It's that same Murphy's law,isn't it?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And it's not there yet, but it'll be there soon On
our YouTube channel.
You'll be able to see ourexploits are coming down those
hills, once we get a chance toget it off.
We've been fighting for weeksand weeks, but we haven't had a
chance yet to get that footageoff the GoPro.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
We're not the world's best at all of this footage in
GoPro-ing and mountain bikingwith the GoPro and all this
footage capturing.
Look, you get more footage thanyou can possibly edit and deal
with while you're trying to havea holiday and work as well.
So it's taken a little bit oftime, guys.
Sorry, but it will come.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
I'm sure there's better footage out there, if you
just look at it on YouTube orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
If you want to see it done properly, watch somebody
else's.
Yeah, if you want to see itdone by everyone who's you'd buy
Joe Averick?
Then watch our video.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
You can have a laugh at me.
We've already shared my littletree hugging.
I think it's available on oursocials.
So yeah, as David said at thebeginning of this podcast, a
podcast is filmed for audio, sothat's why, if you're watching
this on YouTube, it's only onYouTube, because you're meant to
just be doing the houseworkwhile you're listening to the
(21:41):
audio rather than sitting hereand looking at us and that's why
we haven't got all these likeclips coming in of all the
things we're talking about.
I know in the comments a fewpeople have sort of been
expecting that.
That's not what a podcast isabout.
It's not designed for thevisual.
So if you're after the visual,have a look at the other
playlists on our YouTube, whereyou'll find tons of other
(22:02):
content.
It's just that the podcastplaylist is the talking bit.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And our Instagram and Facebook followings as well,
you can obviously find a lotmore content of the activities
and actions happening in there.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
That's where we predominantly post our
highlights of our trip as we gothrough Instagram and Facebook.
So when we find really goodfree camps, we want to share
with you all great hikes or justsome funny behind the scenes
stuff that's going on, orbreakages, and we'll get to all
that, because we've had a littlebit of all of that In the
podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
we really just want to summarize what's going on and
for those that are listening,we hope you pick up some tips
about places to go and thingsthat might have interested you
as we talked about them.
So the Bay of Fires we did afew mountain bikes and then we
said about doing all the hikesthat were in the area and there
was a few lovely little shorthikes around the area there.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
St Helens Point yeah, beautiful beaches there on the
other side.
I had no idea More than just theBay of Fires.
Make sure you don't miss doingthat, because that's really
spectacular Beautiful, longbeaches white, long, sandy
beaches, and you can look out tothe islands that go all the way
out.
You can see all the way down tothe hazards area of Frasianay,
(23:15):
and that was our nextdestination and this has been
bugging me so 20 years ago weonly got to see a tiny slice of
Frasianay, again with a baby ina four-year-old, and we never
got to do the hikes and we werejust so concerned about being
able to get there because it'sjust been really, really busy
and we don't want to plan aheadand we don't want to book.
I had been trying and trying toring the national parks, so you
(23:38):
have to ring or email to get abooking.
I actually that was one of theonly places the Frasianay
National Park, the campground atRichardson's Beach, which is
where you need to book if youwant to go with a trailer,
whether it's a camper, van or acaravan.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh look, so if you've got a tent, right there,
Remember, oh my God it's a loteasier.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
If you're just a rooftop tent or a little tent,
you can get sites there quiteeasily.
In fact there's a gorgeous campat Honeymoon Bay at Frasianay
which people just jag quitequickly.
It's not as hard to book, butif you're someone towing a
caravan or a camper trailer,like us, it's impossible.
I've been trying to book sinceearly December when we booked
(24:18):
our passage over on the Spiritof Tasmania and I still wasn't
able to get one.
So one of the things that hasbecome apparent and a lot of
people may not be aware theFrasianay National Park section
called Friendly's Beaches had adevastating fire in September
last year and they have had toshut that whole side of the
(24:41):
National Park or close off.
You can't go driving there andall those good free camps in the
National Park are inaccessible.
So that's just put a lot ofvisitation load on the Coles Bay
Frasianay National Parkcampground area that's left.
So the alternative and they'reposting it everywhere is the
River and Rocks, which is a fewkilometres further back out of
(25:03):
town, but it's close enough thatit's convenient to use as a
base camp.
We managed to get in therequite early one day, around
about midday, and jagged a spot.
If you look at various reviewsall over the internet, some
people complain about it.
We got a great camp and weloved the aspect of just being
able to walk down at sunset areally beautiful spot for sunset
(25:25):
.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
On the right river or bay or whatever it was in there
.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Well, the river, obviously, because it was river
and rocks, and it was exactlyRiver and Rocks.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
If you look on our socials, there's a gorgeous
picture I got at sunset on Riverand Rocks, which is what's on
the campground.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So that was pretty good and it gave us access to
Wineglass Bay and all thosegreat walks that are available
at Fratinae and all of thebeaches, obviously, that are
along the foreshore there.
What was the town called there?
Coles Bay.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Oh God, has it changed?
It always was a bit touristy Tome.
It reminded me back in the dayof places like Byron Bay.
And it's done exactly like that.
It just sort of booms and allof a sudden all the yuppie shops
and all the fancy food.
I mean it's still a lot smallerscale, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh yeah, it's a pretty small scale, but there's
three or four coffee shops.
There's a couple of shops.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
The Fish and Chirp and the Fancy Pizza and the Ice
Cream Parlor, and the Ice CreamShop and things like Air Peter
Shop.
But again not very much in theway of groceries, so you do need
to have come with a fewsupplies.
There were some groceries, butlimited.
Oh yeah, that's right, we didget a fair bit of fresh.
There was a supermarket there.
We were able to get a fair bitof stuff at the supermarket.
Oh, I got a phone call fromSeattle coming.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But it wasn't there.
It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You know cold or worse words, but we used to do
commercial large business in theEast yeah yeah, yeah, love them
all, hate them.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
So you know we had a great time.
We did spend six days in thatbay I would say Dumbo Files, in
the Franchiner area it was about.
We spent three nights at Riverand Rocks Camp doing those epic
hikes One of the best, obviouslythe Wineglass Bay lookout and
we went down to Wineglass BayBeach.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, a lot of people struggle with the hike up to
the Wineglass Bay lookout andyes, it's a lot of steps, but
really after a kilometre you'reat the first lookout, which they
don't even document very welluntil you get there and it's
gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
And that's the Coals Bay lookout.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
So for someone that's bitten off more than they can
chew, take the first onekilometre and you get to the
lookout over Coals Bay.
So the idea is, you go on alittle bit further and you get
over the hump, over the saddle,and you look at the other side
and you can look down atWineglass Bay on the other side
from the lookout of WineglassBay.
(27:40):
Then you'll read the signtelling you there's a thousand
steps down, which of whichyou've got to do a thousand
steps back up to actually godown on the beach at the bottom
of Wineglass Bay.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
And let's you do the eight hour return, or around the
edge of it, and so, look,that's up to the individual
whether you want to do that ornot.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Absolutely, we were going down and it wasn't hard at
all.
The steps were actually reallynicely graded, yeah a bit better
than some others.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Some of them are hard , some steps where they're
offset, funny distances andfunny heights.
They're built in the middle ofnowhere some of these things, so
who cares?
It's pretty good just to have astep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But let me just say here the next hike that we did,
had 4,223 steps, and that's CapeHouse.
So think carefully, use the1,000 steps as your test whether
you can do it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
But so yeah, fratinae was.
Oh, it was spectacular.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Beautiful mountains of the hazards and your
beautiful water.
It was a lot warmer in thewater than I had expected and I
think conditions this summer inTasmania have been very
favourable, and they've still,over the last few weeks since
we've left there, have beenposting heat wave in that area.
So climate change is a realthing.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I think we missed a whole section, didn't we, when
we did the St Columbia and RalphFalls and all of that part of
the journey.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Oh, okay, so look between the Bay of Fires and
Fratinae.
I mean, there you two drawcards.
We did do a bit of an inlandexcursion.
We went inland to get away fromthe beach.
We should talk about it.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
We went inland to get away from the beach for a few
days because one of the thingswe had heard was that there was
no one camping out when you getaway from the beaches, certainly
on the long weekend.
So we made a bit of a left turn, right turn situation and we
had it inland for a couple ofdays to see what we could see.
And we went in through an areacalled Pye and Ganna and down
(29:38):
that way we found some lovelywalks, halls Falls Halls Falls
was particularly good.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, it is absolutely remarkable, it was really short.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
It was only like a 3 or 4K complete in and out the
whole thing.
It wasn't very complicated.
There was a few steps andstairs and stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's the type of place you go to spend half the
day and just immersing yourselfin waterfalls there were
absolute cascades coming downand you could put your body
right up against the rock andlet the cascade fall off you.
These aren't massive falls.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
They're just smaller falls, about the person height
and they fall down and it goesdown to some more rocks and
falls down.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
That one's actually dog friendly too.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
There was a man made dam wall across a bit, and that
was quite nice as well.
So yeah, halls Falls and theGrom River.
We hacked a bit of a track.
Now we followed a bit of pinktape.
As you do the magic pink tapewhen you're hiking in Tasmania
seems to uncover a lot of thingsthat you may not see if you
don't follow the pink tape.
We followed the pink tape a bitfurther along up the Grom River
(30:41):
and found some more magicalspots along the way that you
could stop and have a great timeall that day.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
We had expected to do a day of driving and just pop
in and tick that scene there,just tick that waterfall and
tick that waterfall.
Halls Falls you really couldspend your entire day at if
you're into water, it was prettycool.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So we did that particular Halls Falls and then
we went and stayed at a placecalled Pub in the Paddock.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That had been recommended to us by our friend
and literally it is a pub in thepaddock, in the middle of a
farm in the middle of almostnowhere except that there was a
rec centre on the other side.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It also had free camping, but the pub also had
free camping right outside ifyou wanted to stay.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
We thought I will just stay there there was an RV
park across the road which hasfacilities and Pub in the
Paddock.
Once the pub's shut overnight,you can't get into the toilets.
There's no facilities, so it'sa toss up where you want to go.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So if you want the facilities, you can walk.
A lot of people did walk infrom the rec centre to the pub
and had their fill and then walkback over to the rec centre.
There was showers, paid showersand toilets.
There was only two, two showersand, I think, only a couple of
toilets.
There wasn't big.
There was quite a lot of peoplestaying there.
We decided to stay at the pubat the Paddock and we had a few
(31:57):
good drinks there and had chatswith a lot of motorbikers and we
learnt a lot more about what itis to use motorbikes.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Motorbike touring and adventure bike touring.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So that was important for us, One from a personal
interest point of view, but weall know that we already know
that we've got a reasonablefollowing of adventure bike
riders that use our app andstuff.
So getting more feedback fromthem while we were drinking and
I'm sure we got, as they gotlonger and the pub shut and we
were still drinking with themout in the balcony.
We were learning, all sorts ofextra stories about things about
(32:29):
adventure, bike riding that wemay or may not need to ever know
again, but it was a wonderfulplace.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
One of the things that I took away from the
conversation with the guys wasthat for them, it's all about
the road.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
They want to go.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Oh my God, they go so fast.
Most of them, I don't know.
Don't listen, policemen.
I'm not naming any names, butsome of these guys are riding
these bikes for 230Ks an hour,not in Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
No, they were telling us that from somewhere on the
mainland.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's my takeaway.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
They do like the roads and they were on a
specific tour and they justfinished this specific tour and
it's been six or seven days andthere are tours and tour groups
and they come down and they doall these spectacular roads
because, as I was saying before,they're steep and they're windy
and you get used to thinking,oh, 60km, you can do that in
half an hour, 40 minutes over onthe mainland, it can take you
(33:25):
an hour and a half to do thathere, because it's so damn steep
going up and so damn steepgoing down and everywhere you go
there's a 90 degree corner thatyou can't see.
That's unsigned.
So driving around in some ofthe areas around here is pretty
interesting.
So the bike riders they comedown and they love it and we
found out a lot more about bikeriding from those guys at the
pubs in the paddock.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Also the fact that these particular guys on this
tour they weren't into camping.
They don't do anything whenthey.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
No, they stay at pubs .
Speaker 2 (33:54):
They stay at pubs.
They ride all day.
Quite a lot of them may havehad past injuries, whatever, so
hiking's not their thing.
They're purely here to ride.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
They do a couple hundred a day on the bike A
couple hundred a day on the bikethrough all these roads and
hills and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It would be quite a big difference in time.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And so the next day, which was probably one of our
better days well, one of themany awesome days- it's a
standout.
It's a standout day, the day wedid St Columbia, st.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Columba.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
St Columba.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
So we were the first people there, because if you do
stay at Poinganna at the RV orPub in the Paddock.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You're close.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
You're really close, and I think we got there at 9.30
, so it wasn't as if we we'renot early birds, we're not early
birds.
It's so cold here in themorning it takes a while for the
sun to warm everything up andlook most people do the same
thing.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
So, anyway.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
So we cruise on and we were the first hikers there
and it was magic.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It was.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It was the fairy tale rainforest walk, the falls
yourself.
Yeah, they're okay, but for methe standout was actually the
walk, the little tricklingbrooks and moss covered rocks,
and it was just spectacularenvironment to walk through.
So that was a real standout.
And if you only see one, do onewaterfall hike in Tasmania.
(35:14):
I mean I have done all the westcoasts and we've done all those
ones before as well and Ihaven't done every waterfall,
but I, at the moment I'm callingit oh really.
St Colombo is my favorite hikingwaterfall hike in Tasmania so
far.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And it's only short.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Again, it was like a kilometer and a bit easier to
get out.
So it was easy and and accesswas reasonable.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It is steep in and that, like you, go down a
reasonable hill.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
But it's a bit of a ramp.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, you could almost you disable or you could
almost wheelchair in, but it'dbe a bit of a push to get you
out again.
But it was, it was kind of anice and easy walk down and and
it was well worth it.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
The views, as Michelle said, were very
spectacular, but it seems to bea bit of a typical circuit for
people to go from Halls Fallsthrough to Pinegana, on to St
Colombo and then on to the nextone which we went to, which was
Ralph Falls.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, I don't know if it's that popular to go to
Ralph Falls because you've gotto do that.
We came down from St Colomboand there's a little hairpin
turn it's alright, if you'recoming, if you're coming towards
St Colombo Falls, but if you'recoming from St Colombo Falls
back to Pinegana and you've gotto make this little hairpin
corner.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
There's no way you do it in the caravan.
The way we turned it we nearlyrolled the trailer.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I wouldn't suggest that, if you've got a decent
caravan, that you even do it.
The hill on the other side itwas pretty freaking steep.
It wasn't the most simple drivecoming through there.
There is a sign we did the.
We did this left hand turn.
It took me to do a back andforth to get around it.
It was a hairpin and you knowwithin about you get.
(36:42):
You get on the thing and youstart driving down the road and
it says ah, road dot suitablefor touring trailers and campers
and caravans and blah blah blahand we thought, oh my goodness,
we're already here.
We're kind of committed.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
We thought that was a historic road, wasn't it?
It wasn't something, yeah.
And we looked on the map and itwas a Ralph Falls road and it
Ralph Falls road.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
It wasn't called that .
Speaker 2 (37:02):
No, it was just a road, but it had a sign that
said Ralph.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Falls and it and it and it was and it was a bit
steep and it was pretty loose.
It was okay, we got through.
We got to the top of that andsort of had to use our maps a
bit because it wasn't very wellsigned postage.
You could sort of follow themain tire tracks that were
moving around to get you.
There was a few four-wayintersections and three-way
intersections where it was notcompletely obvious which way to
(37:27):
go.
Glad we had the maps.
Anyway, we hit Ralph Falls andCaches Gorge Ralph Falls.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
They're quite underwhelming themselves.
It's a very that the the appeal.
Obviously, at different timesof year you see a full a water.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
More water.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
It needed more water to be spectacular.
It's a long vertical drop andwhere the lookout is is it's a
long distance view, so you'renot up close to the water like
with the other ones.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
You can stand over the top and you can't see
anything, but it's basically apencil of water.
It's apparently one of thelongest falls.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Longest single falls in Tasmania, but you can't see
the bottom, it just kind ofdisappears and all we could see
was like a pencil with stream ofwater.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
So most people just go into the car park and see the
sign and go in the direction ofRalph Falls.
But what we had done, we did acircuit, we went out the other
way, first to Caches Gorge, andthen walked all the way around,
and it was a really lovely walk.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
It was nice.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
So that was sort of the type of place you go more
for the walk than enjoying thewaterfall, whereas St Colombo,
oh, I suppose they're both thesame.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't get confusing there,
oh, okay.
But it was better waterfalls,so you know, we were still
fairly early, early ish in theday.
I don't even think we'd hitlunch time.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
No, we hadn't because we had lunch at the next place.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Well, we went out and we drove through the forest and
, as I say, when I drive throughthe forest it's like up and
down and over dal and around andaround and over and up and down
, and it's quite challenging andit's a very enjoyable driving.
That's the sort of thing I liketo do Tasmania.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, it's a driver's paradise, it is a driver's and
rider's paradise.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
I can see why the bikies like it as well.
We go on roads that they mightnot like so much, but you, some
of them, go flat out, even onthe rough stuff as well.
So we went to Ringo Roma orRingo, rumour, is the next town
that we went through and gotsome local berries and produce
out of the fridges on theroadside.
You know, people have theselittle grocery markets and they
sell their wares and you pull upin this little tin shed and you
(39:25):
open the tin shed inside like acouple of fridges, and you open
the fridges and there's little,put your two bucks in the thing
and grab some local stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
The garlic we got from there is fabulous.
It's that little small, tightpurple head garlic.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
And again another thing that we also do is almost
everywhere there's lots ofblackberries on the side of the
road and we pick those and eatthem there.
I mean, blackberries areeverywhere here at this time of
year and you can just driveanywhere almost and get a feel
of blackberries even not so muchhere in the wilderness areas,
because it hasn't been, so thecars aren't driving past and
carrying the berries and bitsand pieces around, but certainly
(39:58):
all over the roads almosteverywhere else.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
There are noxious weed for the locals, but anyway,
the berries are perfect andthey're good eating.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Then we went up to a little town called Ledgerwood
and Ledgerwood has some famous,are they famous?
Infamous?
They're a listed historic site.
It's a World War 3, world War 1Memorial Carve trees.
Now, apparently the story goesthat in this town of Ledgerwood,
was it 16 people.
(40:27):
It went to World War 1, or somenumber of people went to World
War 1.
They were all killed in all thevarious battles, and so what
was done in the town was theyplanted these number of trees,
one for each person that hadfallen in this park in the town.
Now, obviously, you know, 100years later those or 80 or 90
(40:49):
years later, those trees becamemassive and they became a bit of
a problem with limbs fallingand other bits and pieces.
So they employed an artist, atree sculpting artist.
Which is how do you do that?
But you should see what they'vecreated.
They basically cut those treesdown and made them into
perpetual statues, or basicallylast forever.
(41:10):
They keep painting them andthey think they do look after it
quite well, wonderful statues,always carved trees, quite.
You know good stories aroundthem.
Well worth a look.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
The carving that's been done, apparently with a
chainsaw.
You must have had some smallerbits as well, but the carving,
so you've kept the base and thetrunk of the tree intact and
taken the limbs off, but keptjust enough of the limbs where
he's done very fine detail workand you can see making seats and
people sitting on the seats.
(41:41):
Yeah, forms of human beingsdressed in their soldier outfits
, holding rifles lying downalong the limb, or local, or the
wives back at home that type ofthing, so it was quite telling.
There is also a little shedthere, open by the volunteers,
(42:01):
with a few souvenirs and touristinformation, and it's all set
up at a free camp with a restarea in the heritage railway
that remains there, in abeautiful park land, and there's
some other little memorialsaround town, so it's a lovely
little spot to explore, and so,if you can combine that on a bit
of a loop, like we did withyour waterfall day, Well, the
(42:23):
silly thing that we had done isthat we've been about two weeks,
two or three weeks before thatbefore we'd even got into Derby
for the mountain biking.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
if you'd listened to the previous podcast, you would
know when we did that Ledgerwoodwas around about eight
kilometers down the road fromwhere we were about three and a
half weeks ago, but we cameabout in a totally different way
so you could see how fast wewere traveling.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
we almost touched the line that we'd done three or
four weeks ago on the way to dothat, but we knew we were going
to get back in that area againand we almost went back to Derby
once we got here to Ledgerwoodto do more mountain biking
because we were almost recoveredfrom all our injuries, we
thought we might as well giveyou a go at that.
But we keep feeling like we'rerushing against time, and so it
was around about this time thatwe realized hey, I don't think
(43:05):
we're going to make it to thespirit of Tasmania ferry on the
six-week booking that we've got,so guess what we did?
We extended our trip by anotherthree weeks and so we're still
here.
So that's why we're still hereand going at a snail's pace.
So now we're up to nine weeksin Tasmania and actually talking
to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
We are going at a snail's pace in the podcast too,
because it's probably we'veprobably been going for a while,
even though what time westarted.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Well, some of these things we're talking about are
highlights.
So get your pens out, writedown some of these highlights
for your trip plan, or if you'vegot a good memory remember.
No, the idea is you're meant topull out the Explorers Traveler
app.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Look the place up and put them into a folder and you
put it in a folder.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Like you tag your favorites and then you can write
little notes.
The new system that we've got.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So follow along with your Explorers, traveler, follow
along.
After leaving Ledgerwood, wewere obviously looking for our
next camp and we'd heard areference or been given a
referral to go to a place calledEvercreech, evercreech Forest,
and we thought, okay, well, wefound that on the map and it was
a reasonable way from where wehad to go and we went to past
(44:11):
Mount Victoria and Mount Alberton the way and they were two
treks that you could do hikes.
They look pretty steep, theylook pretty hard, they were a
bit beyond our cave nearly forthe time of day in the afternoon
that we were there.
No, no, they had a.
There was a little board at one.
I think Mount Victoria looked abit more official than Mount
Albert.
It had a little walkway and anentranceway thing and a boot
(44:34):
washer thing I think it hadthere.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Severe hazard area yeah, but it was always saying
severe hazards and you know itlooked.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It looked pretty hard .
We decided we weren't going todo that, we were going to target
the Evercreech Forest and gladwe did because, wow, we got down
there and we did that walk outin the afternoon we did the full
Evercreech.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Forest.
Evercreech Forest Reserve isthe most beautiful place to stay
.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So now we've just ruled it for everybody, because
everyone's going to go.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
There was no one there.
They have two hikes so there'sa nice circuit hike that you go
over the bridge, go through therainforest.
It's magic the first five steps.
You stop in wonder and awe andjust look up at these enormous
beautiful canopy of rainforeststhat you're in and just go wow.
And then, if you keep goingalong, you come to a really
(45:19):
gorgeous waterfall where you canactually get your hands and
your feet in the waterfall.
So that's lovely, it's atrickle.
And then you climb all the wayup the bloody mox in that one up
to the top of that waterfallyeah you were having a good time
.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Always trying to find the top of the waterfall.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
You actually promise you were going to sit there and
do a podcast.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And that was too many weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
We did stay the night there and there was, oh my God,
the amount of wildlife thatcomes out at night time.
We got out the headlights andwent spotlighting because there
was noises in the dark.
Animals everywhere and theyscreech and they growl and they
carry on.
So, yep, we've heard Tasmaniandevils.
We see their eyes at night andtons of wallabies at night time
(46:03):
growling as they run throughyour camp at you.
So I had one actually rushingat me.
That was scary and I squealed.
You remember that.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
And it actually is a really beautiful day use area
and if you had a, if you feelcamping intense, the area set
aside for the tent camping ismagic, so stone built fireplaces
right by the river.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Except that, you can't use fires in any of these
places anymore.
There seems to be some new fireroaring through certainly this
area and certainly in summerit's certainly the whole East
Coast all national parks and alot of places are signed as no
fire.
We're in one tonight, we're inone here where we can have fire,
but just on the other side ofthe lake.
(46:45):
Here we weren't able to havefire, so you can pick your spots
you know, but every every thisnational park or world heritage
listed, other than some spotswithin World Heritage listed,
like this one, you could seem tohave fire.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
There's no rule.
There is a rule of nationalpark.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
There's a rule that's a national park and you can't
have fire and we don't knowwhether that restriction is
going to come out in winter ornot.
I suspect it's going to comeout in winter.
They are signed to the screwedon, but they're pretty
permanently looking science.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But this camps not run by national parks.
It's actually run by hydro test, so the rules are a bit
different rules are a bitdifferent.
Yeah, you really got to look atthe info and look at the sign
and just do what you're told.
Do what you're told.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
So that's the Evercreech we also did the next
day.
We did the night's walk, thefour nights, or four white
nights, the white nights walk atEvercreech, the white gum trees
, and it's a it's the fourtallest gum trees in the
Southern Hemisphere or is in theworld or something that are in
there.
Was it the world, or theSouthern Hemisphere, or Tasmania
?
One of the two?
(47:45):
I can't really recall, but theywere bloody tall.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
There was a claim to some fame.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
And whilst whilst whilst you're doing the walk in
there and you're getting thisgreat inspiration of how tall
these things are they don'tactually like have a market to
tell you which to four are thepath does tend to go, walks past
and has sort of surroundingsaround two of them, and you look
up and you go, oh yeah, that'spretty tall.
But you can't really get agauge of how tall it is until
you do the full circuit, walkand go up the hill and you see
(48:11):
from the halfway up the mountainthat these things are so
massive.
They are really tall trees.
So that whole Evercreechwonderful spot.
After we left that we went toAthena Falls, which is kind of
there's kind of a loop that wecould do.
That Athena Falls was veryinteresting.
Nice walk in to the first falland you're not 100% sure what's
(48:32):
going on.
You kind of get there and yousee this lovely fall and then
you see that infamous pink tapegoing up the side of something.
I saw the pink tape and Icouldn't resist always wanting
to ascend a waterfall, so Idragged Michelle up to the first
plateau.
So you get to the firstwaterfall, first plateau, and
that was quite lovely and then Imanaged to convince Michelle to
(48:52):
come up to the next plateau andthe next set of waterfalls,
which was even more spectacularand lovely because you're kind
of halfway up and you can seebelow and you can see at the top
.
And I could still see the pinktape drawing my attention up the
hill further and further andfurther, and I actually went up
through three or four differentfull platforms.
It was way beyond me.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
The amount of scree.
It was loose rubble at anincline.
That was just insane.
I was not trusting myself to beable to do that.
So Michelle stayed down and Iwent up and I took photos and
added all these differentmarkers.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
So in the theme of falls there's like an upper and
middle and a lower section offalls and photos and stuff in
there.
Look, I had a good time.
It's lovely to go up and see,go, sort of go not beyond as
such.
There was pink tape somewhere.
I've been there before.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I had the app and the app shows you where the
waterfall was.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
And there was even some wire strung between two
parts where you had to sort ofskirt around a fairly dubious
rocky section.
So it was easier, nicer to graba hold of a piece of wire as
you walked around that.
So someone had set that up andit was lovely.
And going up to the top of thatand seeing four levels of
waterfall coming down, I quiteenjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
It was quite, quite, quite nice, so we spent a long
time there.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
We spent a fair bit of time there, but it was lovely
, yeah, it was nice.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You know you can just again.
All these waterfall areas inthis part of the world of
Tasmania was all warm.
You could sit your feet in thewater, have a swim, spend hours
there.
It was all very pleasant.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Look, I think we were going to cover the whole trip
that we've done since Stumpy'sBay to where we are today, but I
think we've probably come towhere we might want to end our
first review, because we've justdone Mathena Falls.
Oh, we'll finish that day.
So at the end of that day wewent into this little town
called Mathena and it doesn'tsay very much, and we'd read
(50:47):
reviews that the RV camp hadclosed, but there was no signs
that it closed and there wassomeone already camping and
there was people camping in theRV campsite.
Magnificent facilities, yeah,like coin-operated showers,
coin-operated showers and thewhole works, but something on
one of the websites had said itwas closed and it had been
boarded and you'd get arrested,sort of think, if you went there
.
We couldn't see any sign.
That was only the day before wegot there.
(51:08):
And we got there and it lookedlovely and that sounded like a
whole load of hogwash.
Maybe they just didn't wantthat particular person to stay
there.
So Mathena is a little town andI'd noticed this thing called
Tower Hill and we'd read somereviews about people staying in
(51:29):
Mathena to do the Tower HillDrive.
So we thought, oh well, let'sgo and have a look at Tower Hill
Drive.
It was getting a bit late inthe afternoon, it wasn't early
morning by this stage, it waskind of after lunch, but we
thought we'd go and have a lookup at Tower Hill and we drove up
the side of this hill we hadthe camper in Tower, of course,
because we were moving betweentowns and we saw the Tower Hill
(51:51):
Road turn off and it said youknow, steep, steep, steep ascent
, be sure, be sure.
We were already on a steep steepand we were already on a almost
steep enough and the turnoffsaid steep, steep.
We headed up there a little bitand I could just see how steep
it was going to get and Ithought I'm going to need to
drop the, the trailer off, thecamper off, if we want to
(52:13):
continue to do this.
So we aborted the.
We aborted Tower Hill for awant of running out of time.
We still had steep steepbecause the rest of that Tower
Hill Road all the way over toFingal was pretty damn steep.
It was up and down and overDale, but still a lovely drive.
If you're into forest driving,like I am, it was great.
We then went.
(52:34):
We then, you know, popped outof all of that at a little town
called Fingal and we were kindof at a crossroads as to where
we were going to camp.
It was almost sunset, we thoughtwe'd camp at Fingal but we
thought, oh you know T'Navi campand there was a few people
there and it was tiny.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
It was a lovely town with lots of beautiful historic
people being there.
You could have looked.
So we just did a lap of themain, took some photos.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
We did a lap of the main took some pictures up there
to the places, did all that andfound the dump points and did
all that work that we have to doeach day.
And then we drove onto StMary's and St Mary's is a
reasonably big town, just downthe road from St Helen's, you
know, and it had a decent IGA.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
And it had an IGA and a server and a few things you
know and a massive RV park and amassive RV park and
infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Which we drove into, and it had showers, coin showers
, and it had everything.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
But it's not our sort of plan.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
It's just so, not us.
It was almost dark then andthis storm was coming and it was
starting to rain as we were atSt Mary's and Michelle said look
, let's go back out to the coastto Big Lagoon Camp.
It's only 15 K's or somethingfrom St Mary's or something.
But what she didn't realise, orwhat we didn't realise, it was
(53:45):
15 K's of turny worny, narrow,tight, hard.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
It was extremely steep, it was bitumen still.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Bitumen.
This was bitumen.
It was hard driving.
It was tough driving because itwas getting dark and it was
raining, and so we made thatdrive as tough as it was from St
Mary's and we got down to.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Lagoon Beach and full of people, so I was in trouble.
We drove round and round andround and all the perfect spots
were gone, but we foundourselves a pretty good little
spot.
We found a decent spot and inthe morning a lot of people left
and we stayed a couple of daysand we stayed in the same spot
that we found because wecouldn't be bothered moving,
because it was good enough.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
It was as good as most of the others.
So, look, I think, based ontiming, it's probably a good
time to end this particularpodcast.
We've done how many days it hastaken us to do all that?
We've just talked because wetalked about five weeks since we
did the last one.
We did that was six days atthere, three days of operation.
We haven't even hit TasmanPeninsula and South West Cape
yet.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
So tune in for the next podcast, for part two of
this part of Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Part two of the Eastern, south, south and East
coasts from Lagoon Beach.
We'll catch up with you nexttime.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Okay, tuning guys.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.