Tasmania Part 3 of 4: East Coast to South Cape Bay

Join us for Episode 16 of the ExplorOz Podcast,  where we delve into part 3 of our 4 part series documenting our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast. 

We start this episode where we left off in Ep 15 at Lagoons Beach just north of Bicheno and continue south along the coast including Freycinet National Park, Maria Island, and then the Tasman Peninsula including many wineries, epic hikes including Cape Raoul, Cape Hauy, and a day at Port Arthur. Listen in to our adventure as we reached the "end of the road" at Cockle Bay - the gateway to the South West National Park where we hiked to South Cape Bay the most southerly point of Tasmania (and therefore Australia). Pick up some tips on finding hidden gems in the area such as the Mystery Cave and how we found it compared to the mainstream experience at Hastings Caves (Newdegate Cave). In this episode we also cover the next part of our journey cutting an exciting 4WD path through remote forestry tracks for an alternative way to reach the Tarkine Forest, our hike to Hartz Peak and driving onwards to eventually Lake Peddar where there are 2 excellent free camps in the National Park.

We've spent five weeks meticulously exploring and documenting every detail and updating these places to ensure the latest ExplorOz content accessible to all users of our ExplorOz Traveller app so sit back and listen to our trip summary and hopefully feel inspired to add a few places to your next trip plan. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello All right folks .
Well, welcome back, here we areagain.
Another episode in our podcastseries for your audio
entertainment, for your audioentertainment and less visual
stimulation, because this is apodcast after all.
Okay, so when last we werespeaking to you, we were coming

(00:22):
down the East Coast and we'djust done Bay of Fires and we'd
touched on Frey Chesnay and thenwe touched on going on a little
inner loop around Mathena Fallsand St Columba Falls and places
like that Evercreech,evercreech and some wonderful
spots Doing our rainforest thing.
That was fantastic, and we justgot to Lagoon Beach in the rain

(00:44):
and found a reasonable spot thatwe managed to stay at for a few
days.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, but we should let people know about Lagoon
Beach.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Let them know.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
It's another one of those 28 day free camp areas and
it's got facilities, toilets.
There was a ranger on site whenwe were there.
He was super friendly andhelpful and the reason it's
called Lagoon Beach is there isa lagoon and there is a beach.
It's a massive, big pumpingswell there out on the beach and

(01:14):
the weather was not great whenwe were there.
In fact, the ranger was askingus what our plans were and a lot
of people were moving ongetting out of the area because
the weather forecast was prettyscary.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
And we woke up one day and heard that um we woke up
like the second or third day ofbeing there and that we we had
been rained on lightly,reasonably, it was rain.
Uh, it didn't bucket down on us, but it did rain and it was wet
and up the road.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, up the road had had 200 millimeters of rain and
the river had flooded that we'dbeen driving through the not
through, but the upper and thecampsite the campsite that we'd
photographed and had made a bigsong and dance about on the
internet.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Um, a couple of days before where the person had been
camped, I was.
We were a bit concerned thatthat was probably going to be
underwater.
We heard that so much water hadcome down all the local rivers
and stuff that it wasparticularly dangerous.
We were only some 30 kilometres, 30 or 40 kilometres south of
this spot, so we were lucky tododge that bullet.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
The message here for both us and then we'd like to
pass on to other travellers iswhen you're in Tasmania, it
really pays to watch the weatherreports, because Tasmania can
change in an instant andparticularly your safety when
you're at a camp and if you'reseeking remote camps and all.
Obviously you don't want to getcaught with rising river levels
and other such issues that comewith changing weather.

(02:38):
So there is a website calledTasAlerts that I've now got on
my phone.
It's not an app, it's just awebsite.
So TAS Alerts.
So make sure that you keep thatone handy and have a look at
what's coming.
It's fire and storm and, ofcourse, your BOM.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Your BOM app and make sure, because the weather
forecast was it's all justcommon sense, but sometimes you
just forget when you'retravelling.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, I certainly do.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I think about more about the destinations and what
we're doing, and well, you alsodon't know where you are in
relative terms to some of thethings, some of the terminology
that you might hear on abroadcast about the weather.
You, you don't necessarily knowthat you're only 10 minutes or
20 minutes away from some placethat you've never heard of
before?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
um so yeah, don't take it lightly, don't?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
take it lightly.
Keep your eye on those sorts ofthings.
It's really important, and welearned that lesson there, and
we were lucky we only got alittle bit of rain.
Otherwise, if it had rained likethat where we were, it would
have been very very messy, andthat was at Lagoon Beach, which
was just down the road from StMary's and from there, while

(03:43):
we're at Lagoon Beach and if youdon't know where it is, it's
just under a place calledScamander and it's just east of
St Mary's, and so we did a daytour around Upper Scamander and
we did some four-wheel drivingup there to find there's a few
camps, a few camps listed up onthe river, and in fact the one
where the flooding had happened,that we thought the guy was in

(04:04):
trouble was.
Skamander Forest and so whilewe're doing that day trip.
It was actually the day beforethe rain happened, so it was
interesting that we were only inthere the day before and it and
it had basically come backtotally different place the next
day that was the day that weended up making a bit of a
diversion.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
We we did some really cool four-wheel drive tracks
that day.
So if you're looking for a bitof fun in your four-wheel drive
as a day trip out of that area.
So take the track to UpperScamander and then you go into
the State Forest and there'smassive steep four-wheel drive
tracks and we poked around a lotof them and we had the app with
us, so we had a bit ofconfidence as to what track was

(04:43):
leading to what.
we made a bit of a boo-boo at afive point intersection and we
went down something oh yes, Iremember that we you thought
you're going to have to reversethe whole way out and there was
a day trip, so no, you wouldn'tdo it, towing no way, um.
But we got ourselves out ofthat and then we didn't have to
reverse out.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
We were able to drive out, but it didn't.
It didn't.
We're able to drive through,but yeah, I wasn't too keen if I
had to come up backwards,that's for sure and then to get
down to that scamander um forestum camp the way we'd been going
through the state forest.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
We ended up on a big descent down trout road which
you know um, if you're a goodfour-wheel driver it's not that
hard, but it was enough that Igot out the camera, got the
angles, tried to get a bit ofaction.
So a bit of fun.
If you haven't done a lot offour-wheel driving and you're on
the coast and want to go andhave a bit of a play, go up

(05:40):
there with a mate and have a bitof fun skyline tear.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
We was just a was slightly off trout road.
That was a bit earlier.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
We did this no skyline tears off eastern creek
road on the way out of theskernander.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's right and I only know that because I've got
my notes well, I'm reading yournotes and I thought they were
out of order.
If I must, be honest.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
No, no, so that was coming to you know anyway.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
So, um, skyline tear was just something we found
again another, just a littlefour-wheel drive excursion.
We saw a thing called SkylineTier on the map and thought, oh
well, it's on the map, there's aroad up there, how bad can it
be?
It was pretty tight.
It was pretty tough.
It was a good bit of four-wheeldriving.
If you're not confident aboutdoing that sort of thing on your
own, maybe not If you've gotwinches and stuff in case you

(06:27):
need it, because it was quitesoft stones and some large
boulders that you had to sort ofcrawl over and around.
It was a bit of fun.
We didn't need to use anyrecovery gear or anything, but
it was a bit of fun to go and do.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
And at the top there is a trig survey point.
Yeah, a trig thing so there isa photo of that on the place.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
If you have a look on Explorals Traveller you can
find the place for Skyline Tierand have a look at the Scamander
Forest Camp and if you have alook at our tracking map, which
is still public, you'll be ableto actually work out exactly
where it is, because the linethat we drove is still published
on our tracking map.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
From our entire trip.
So, on Exploralscom, go to thetracking page, go into the
member public tracking listingand you should see us in the
recent updates.
We should be one of the recentupdates because we're always
moving It'll be ExplorOS, davidand Michelle, I think and click
on that and you'll be able tosee everywhere we've been since

(07:19):
we left Perth.
So that's a fair bit ofinformation and you can zoom in
right into everywhere we've been.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Now look this tracking, Dave.
We must make sure that weexplain that the tools that
we're using are exactly the sametools that you can use.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
They're provided for in the Explorers Traveler app,
the tracking service is amembership extension, but what
you're seeing, that we're doing,you can do.
In fact, you can embed thetracking on your own website if
you have your own website oryour own blog and have the map
updating on your own website.

(07:55):
It's all part of the servicesthat are offered as part of our
tracking solution.
So have a look at our trackingand, as I say, you'll be able to
zoom in to that skyline tierarea just east of Scamander and
you'll be able to see exactlywhere we went, and you'd be able
to then use the Traveller appand add those as little
favourites and put them in afolder called Tasmania Things to

(08:15):
do in Tasmania, if that enticesyou and gives you something
that you think you would like todo, that you think you would
like to do Yep, and that area isjust north of the Frachene area
, which obviously is a verypopular part of Tasmania that
people come here to do.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Frachene is one of the most visited parts of the
Tasmanian island.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
If you want the Frachene information, however,
listen to our previous one,because we did it slightly out
of order.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, yep, we spoke about that in the previous
podcast, so you can have alisten to that.
For our trip, we spent only twonights in the Frey-Chenet area
and we camped at the River andRocks, which is mentioned in the
previous podcast, butFrey-Chenet is spectacular, so
if you've got an extra couple ofdays, try and fit that in.

(09:01):
There are some free campsaround.
Have a listen to the previouspodcast, to this one, for more
detail, because we have talkedabout it there probably about
halfway, three quarters of theway through that podcast.
If you need to skip yeah um,after all of this, after all of
those little journeys andventures um most people tend to
continue heading south down theeast coast, as we did, and so.

(09:24):
So that's what we did and yougo through, you know Swansea and
all of that.
We ended up starting to findall these gorgeous wineries oh
yeah, devil's Corner.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
They just appeared out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
And there's signs literally left, right, centre,
and you can't possibly visit allof them, so I'll tell you the
ones that we've been to and thatwe enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
So, God, I didn't write down the one that we went
to.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Mel's Kitchen is part of Springdale.
Beautiful wine tasting.
Springdale, springwood,springdale, that's the one.
I might be wrong, but I thoughtit was Springdale.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Okay, well, we'll research that later and we'll
put it in the comments Devil'sCorner.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Devil's Corner is the first one you come to when you
pull out of Frasier Night.
Now Devil's Corner is a muststop.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
It has a big lookout and it's got all sorts of
restaurants and facilities andbeaches, but it has spectacular
views right out over themountains.
Definitely worth stopping.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, so I should have entered Devil's Corner
first.
Devil's Corner.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Springdale.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Wooddale.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Not sure I can't go and check the bottles because
they've been consumed already.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
What's the one that we just drank last night,
craigie Now.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Craigie.
Now that's only open on theweekends.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
So there's a whole myriad of little wineries in
there, and we had a.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
We had a particularly delightful day of Michelle
tasted wines and I didn't.
Yeah, we had a lovely lunchthere at Mel's Kitchen, uh.
So if you're in that area andyou and you find that place,
yeah, craigie now also has a bigum.
Craigie now had a functioncenter as well a big marquee
thing, um.
So you know there's.
There was a number of lovelylittle wineries in that area as
we were heading towards Trebana,so we were heading further

(11:15):
south towards the TasmanPeninsula.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
So we've mentioned a few things that have been on the
bucket list and why we've beengoing to a few of these places,
and the reason that one wouldhead towards Triobana is or for
us anyway was to be able to geton the Maria Island cruise.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Maria Island.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Maria Island, Maria Island.
So we were corrected.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Very early on, when we arrived in Tasmania.
Well, we were corrected one way, and then we've been corrected
the other way, and then we'vebeen told it's either way, but
the locals all call it Maria.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, yeah, when you the other way, and then we've
been told it's either way, butthe locals all call it mariah,
yep, yep.
When you do the tour, they tellyou that it's actually maria.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
It is actually maria, oh my god, who knows call it
whatever you want, everyonecalls it mariah, so it is mariah
, and they even the touroperators call it mariah, so
it's mariah island I'm sure ifyou look it up you will see all
the reviews.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
You'll also freak out about the price of it that I
can absolutely unequivocallytell you it is a highly
recommended um cruise to do.
There's two ways of visitingmariah island.
You can take yourself over onthe main um ferry ferry and then
be on the island to do what youlike.
So there's no cars allowed onthe island, um, so you can walk

(12:24):
around there.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
There's a couple of good hikes absolutely you can
take your bikes out there aswell you can camp out there in a
tent type of thing um, but it'snot a car ferry.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
So it's a passenger ferry, so you can go out there
for the day or you can um go outfor a couple of nights, do
whatever you like.
So it is a national park, sothere is a national parks office
where you can buy a parks passbefore boarding the ferry and
lots of information there aboutthe hikes and what to see and do
.
So Maria Island has history asbeing a penitentiary convict

(12:53):
settlement.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Then a concrete production facility.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, and then there's some really great
history and it's a good place tosee because there's a lot of
buildings there both ruins, butalso a lot have been restored
and quite worth visiting and thewildlife, the wildlife,
literally.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
If you haven't seen, if you haven't seen a wombat and
you want to see a wild wombat,you're guaranteed, I will
guarantee, I will guarantee thatyou will see a wombat on mariah
island.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Check out our socials , go back a little bit and you
will see a wombat on Moriah.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Island.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Check out our socials , go back a little bit and you
will see the most magnificentmother wombat waddling around
with her little baby.
That I captured on my phonewhile we were just walking
around there.
But we were seeing probably 30wombats before this point, but
this mother and baby walkedbeside us with us, right towards
us.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
It was just easy to get photos the wildlife there on
the island has no real naturalpredators, so the wombats and
stuff.
There's even an overpopulationproblem, which is why there's so
many of them and they walkaround during the day.
They're actually been walkingaround in the day so much that
their fur coats are sun bleached, yeah that's right, I kid you
not, they are sun bleachedwombats.

(14:05):
They're almost white wombats,yeah, from the sun.
So very, um, very unusual.
But the predatorial mix andthings over there is totally
different.
So, um, a great place.
We that was basically the ferrytrip and that's doing what was
the little, what was the littletown called?
That's in there darlingtondarlington.
Darlington is the place wherethe ferry goes and that's where

(14:25):
all the history and all thatstuff is, and all the
information panels and the, theruins and the wreckages and that
sort of stuff.
Our trip to mariah island wason the um mariah island express.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Oh, I know what do they call it mariah island tours
, cruise east coast cruises, andthe reason we chose to do it as
the cruise is that whatappealed to me was being able to
see the coastline and get intothe sea caves, and that's what
that tour offers.
But it also gives you two hourson the island.
So, from my assessment, thatwas going to be the way we

(14:59):
wanted to do Maria Island, mariaIsland, and we would highly
recommend it.
It was a lot of fun, reallyprofessional, a really
comfortable boat.
No one got seasick.
Oh, there was a little kittythat.
He got a bit queasy there for acouple of hours.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, little kids do that, you know, go up the front
while it's bouncing around, andthen they go a bit cross.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
But this boat has an upper deck and you can choose to
sit on the upper deck or youcan choose to sit inside the
boat and it has windows toprotect you if it's a rough day.
Actually, I need to go back alittle bit.
It was meant to be what we'dbeen trying to get on this
cruise and we keep being toldthere was no bookings.
It was fully booked out, andthen I got a phone call I'd

(15:40):
asked to be put on acancellation list and I got a
phone call the night before.
We just set up camp.
It was five o'clock and theysaid, there's really rough
weather booked tomorrow, sowe've got some cancellations,
would you like?
to would you like to go on arough day, you're not selling it
full price.
Well, on that note, they say ifyou choose and you turn up on

(16:01):
the day and you've paid, andthen you change your mind and
you don't step on board the boat, you get a full refund.
They're quite happy to do that.
They don't want you to bedisappointed.
And literally we got on theboat and he reminded us the
weather forecast.
Not perfect, guys, I'm reallysorry, and it was a bit gray.
We had our spray coats.
What do you call them?
Spray jackets?

Speaker 1 (16:20):
um, anyway the whole, the whole boat trip around in
the sea caves and they give youthe clothing if you need it.
So it's more spray jackets andmore clothing and they looked
after us with morning tea andfood and lunch and dinner or not
dinner but food and lunch thetour around the whole outside
into the sea caves.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
As Michelle was saying, spectacular stuff
because the weather changed, ofcourse, as it does.
We got on the boat and within10 minutes, it was magic weather
After lunch.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
10 minutes after lunch.
It was magic.
It was pretty sketchy for someof it Moving around from morning
tea to afternoon tea in theswell and the chop down south
wasn't great, but the rest of itwas perfect.
It was really a nice day.
There were really goodoperators.
Was it $280 a person orsomething Worth it?
You $280 a person?

(17:06):
Or something worth it, just doit.
You can probably get a discountcode and get it cheaper and do
whatever.
Add that to your trip.
But add that to your trip, plantribana and, uh, that that
particular trip, um, you knowit's an all-day thing, so
there's a lot of accommodationin tribana except that we'd set
up camp before the.
We'd set up camp before thephone call at five o'clock and
we're about 20 k's away that'sall right at a little bush camp

(17:27):
out, a place called samuel'srealm, and samuel's a guy with
his own private property and hejust is happy to let you camp
there so it's marked onexplorals, traveler.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
um, he's a really good guy.
We had a bit of a bit of aconnection with him, had a bit
of a chinwag.
He's a bit of a chinwag, he's abit of a talker.
So I think everyone that's beenthere would know that he's a
bit of a talker.
He'll have a good time.
But yeah, it's a magnificentplace up there.
I know a lot of people, whenthey're in the area, want to
camp at Mayfield right on thebeach, but I tell you what we
checked it out it was crammedfull.
I've never.

(18:08):
It's always crammed full, andso that's why we didn't camp
there, even though there was oneparticular spot we could have.
We went up the hill not veryfar away into Sam's realm and
he's way up high on a mountainthat overlooks the whole ocean
and we had it all to ourselves.
We stayed there for two nightscompletely alone.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, other than Sam in his house With the view of
the ocean Other than Sam in hishouse on the other side of the
paddock a bit further away.
But yeah, no, it was awonderful spot.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
He left us at home, yep.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
It was a wonderful spot and look so after we did
the Moriah Island trip, whichwas fantastic, and we then went
back to Sam's that night we camein and we did our usual work
running around town.
There was also an iga there, soyou'll hear about all the shops
you know, because they're fewand far between decent shops.

(18:52):
So be prepared for that ifyou're coming here, that there's
not a shop in every town wehave two fridges on board and
they're almost both empty rightnow.
Yeah, one in the car and one inthe camper.
Yeah, um.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
So if you've got a full-size fridge in your caravan
or whatever, fill it when youcan Fill it.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
When you can, because you may not be able to fill it
down the road, you just don'tknow.
And so we did our usual work inthere and we decided that we
were heading down the TasmanPeninsula from there to go to
places you know.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
So there's a couple of really good hikes Port Arthur
and things like that.
We wanted to go to Port Arthurand Port Arthur on Tasman
Peninsula yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Port Arthur was on Michelle's bucket list and look,
we didn't a couple of the walksin there.
We'd spoken to just watch yourwatch.
It's shining into the cameralens.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh, is that why that's?

Speaker 1 (19:36):
why I keep moving your hand.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Didn't know.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Sorry for those that are watching and not a flash of
white light in your face, it'sbecause Michelle's watch faces
she reflecting the Sun into thecamera lens.
That's what you get forshooting live in the wildlife.
Yeah, that's exactly right, inthe sunshine in Tasmania and
it's probably about I don't know, it's probably only about 13
degrees, but we're out here andit feels quite pleasant.
So, look, we went down to theTasman Peninsula and there's a
couple of camping options inthere and we'd been trying to
stay at Fortescue Bay, which iswhere the Cape Howe walks are,

(20:13):
and we wanted to do that becauseit was also close to Port
Arthur, which was on Michelle'sbucket list.
And while we were ringing theranger every other day, michelle
kept ringing and ringing, andringing and they never sort of
answered and we didn't getcallbacks because it was
obviously we would thendisappear out of service and we
wouldn't have and you can onlybook it by phone and you can
only book by phone.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
There's no online booking and you do need to book
and you have to book.
There is no lob camper trailerit is so busy, you can lob in a
tent yeah, you can lob in a tent, but you can't lob in anything
else.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
So we've been trying to make this booking and we
still hadn't really got itsorted.
And it was actually as we drovepast this thing called eagle
hawk nest neck, which is thebeginning of the whole tasman
peninsula, that we got a phonecall back from the ranger, and
michelle then was able to sortout a bit of a plan, and so we
decided to do two nights atlimes bay, and limes bay gave us

(21:05):
great access to two prettyspectacular things, one we
didn't even actually knowexisted until we got there no,
the ranger told us over thephone yeah, the coal mine
historic site is at Lime Bay andthe coal mine historic site is
a very similar in capacity toPort Arthur.
It's basically another Port, aslightly smaller scale Port

(21:29):
Arthur, but it had all the samesort of infrastructure and it
was a penal coal mine andthere's a lot of historic ruins
and things to walk around inthere.
We spent a good half a day inthere touring that while we were
there, and so that was reallyworth it and a completely less
commercial operation than whatyou'll get Totally free entry.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Totally free entry.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
No visitor centre, just really, really good
interpretive signage and it wason one of those 60 Great
Tasmanian Walks the walk, trekthrough there.
And you know it had all thesignage.
It had all the information thatyou needed.
I think we ended up spendingaround about three hours.
Four hours there and walked thewhole lot and we had a good

(22:13):
time.
It was it's spectacular, it's ona beautiful stretch of water
and we didn't even we didn'teven really know it existed and
it was all part of that whole,uh, port arthur penal system.
Um, at the time, and it was the, it was the coal mine that
supported a lot of theoperations in Tasmania and they
sent some of the worst repeatoffenders from.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Port Arthur to this particular settlement.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, the worst place went there because it was.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
And there's some great stories you'll read.
We won't go into detail untilyou.
We won't go into detail.
They're on the signs.
Go and have a look at that one.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Go and have a look for yourself at Coal Mine
Historic Site, just near.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Lion Bay.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
And so, while we're also at Lion Bay, we were given
the opportunity to do the CapeRowell Track.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
R-A-O-U-L Cape.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Rowell Trail Track.
Wow, wow, how can you summarisethat track?

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Jaw-dropping landforms by the sea, the
pillars of granite rock justrising up out of the ocean?
They weren't granite oh, arethey dollarite.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Righto, there we go.
So this is something you've gotto learn when you come to
Tasmania.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Geology.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
What type of rock is that?

Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's usually all dollarite in Tasmania.
If you need to know what it is,you know from the moment you
make the first climb from thecar park.
It was about a 16-kilometreround trip and, look, we were
pretty exhausted.
It was actually a warm day thatday.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
It was about 30 degrees that day.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
We don't actually know why we felt so exhausted,
but both Michelle and I wereabsolutely smashed after we did
that walk, and we'd been walkinga fair bit.
We both felt exactly the same,so it wasn't something funny,
unless we'd eaten something ordrunk something weird or
whatever.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
It was a few kilometres longer than it was
posted and we started out prettyfast on the hike.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, I let Michelle go first and she decides she has
to go quick because she's a bitof a trail junkie, has to get
out there fast.
But you know, from the momentyou make the first climb to the
top of the hill, about two totwo and a half k's into the walk
you come up to the view of thisfantastic plateau that takes
you out to cape row and fromthen on the views are just

(24:12):
jaw-dropping amazing, amazingunbelievable.
Take your camera, do the walk,get exhausted, have a great day.
There's two lookouts at the endand there's a few other
lookouts perched along the way.
There is a track log there.
We haven't talked about thetrack logs for a little bit.
All of the trekking that we'vebeen doing, every walk that
we've done that's of significantnature, has all been recorded.

(24:34):
The track logs have all beenpublished.
They're all visible in thetrack log system on explorer
also.
Go to the destinations menu,select track logs, scroll down
there and go and put in any ofthe names of these places Cape
Rowell or, you know, cape Howeor Wineglass Bay or any of those
or just zoom into thatparticular area in Tasmania and

(24:54):
you should be able to pick upall of those tracks.
The other thing might be to doa search on Tasmanian 60 great
short walks.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
I'm sure if they're not all indexed correctly now,
they will be as we finish themall up so the purpose of looking
at the track logs for thosehikes is so you can see all the
stats, how many kilometres, howmuch time it takes the elevation
, the elevation.
So all those statistics for thehikes are recorded.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
And our hikes that I'm recording are all broken
down by the kilometre, so it's aone kilometre per section.
So as you're looking in thesection explorer, you can see
the really detailed onekilometres worth of elevation
profile and one kilometres worthof, you know, the slope and
terrain and the information andobviously our walking pace for

(25:37):
each of those Ks.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
And broken down into moving time and total.
Elapsed time and moving timetotal time and elapsed time.
Because I take a lot of photos.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, we do stop a bit for photos.
So there's heaps of statisticsthat you can gain from the track
log system.
So the.
Cape Row track.
Wow, I still say wow.
Two lookouts at the end theCape lookout and Seal lookout.
There is a population of sealsthat lives on the Cape.
And they're so noisy and they'rea fair way away from you and
you can hear the big bulltelling everyone what's going on

(26:06):
down the bottom there, and youcan see them at a great distance
down the bottom.
So take some binoculars, ifyou've got them, or a high
powered lens on your camera andyou'll be able to see them down
the bottom.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
We were really lucky to actually see a yacht sailing
around the Cape while we werethere, so in our photos we've
got a beautiful yacht up withthese white sails.
But then I later found out, aswe spent more time on the Tasman
Peninsula, that there's a tourcompany called Pinnacott Tours
and you can actually book tourswith them which will actually
take you all the way around someof those spectacular capes and

(26:42):
waterways.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
We haven't done any of that, but there's certainly
options.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
I've met people that have been talking about doing
them, though.
So you know we've spoken aboutmaria island cruise, um.
So if you're not going to dothat one, maybe put your money
into one of these petticoattours similar sort of boat, the
yellow boat, I think they callit.
Um, yeah, I've got a friendthat did it for her 60th
birthday.
That lives in tasmania.
They're right up there withbucket list things to do in

(27:07):
Tasmania.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
So after a couple of days at Lone Bay and doing Cape
Row and the coal mine historicsite, we wanted to get ourselves
closer to Port Arthur andobviously Michelle had been able
to squeeze our way into theFortescue Bay campsite and we
had what is apparently thesecond best campsite in the
place.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Number 42.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Number 42 camp it.
It was huge.
We could have fit two massivecaravans in there and four cars.
I'd reckon it was a huge site.
Um, we just popped ourselvesinto one little area where we
could try and get the most sun,where we could try and get some
level of starlink reception.
One of the things that we'veobviously trying to do with work
and everything else is we'retrying to keep connected.
Um, I think I was evenpublishing updates to the app

(27:48):
down there or something, but,you know, trying to find a place
where you can get throughwithout the trees and also get
some solar power to keep yourbatteries charged, unlike here
where we are and we've gotcopious amounts of solar power
we've got smart now in tasmania.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
We no longer pick sheltered camps, we now pick
sunny camps.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yep, don't go near the shade, go near the sun
Totally different than whenyou're high up on the mainland
and up in the northern areas.
So from Fortescue Bay, veryclose to Port Arthur, one of the
first things that we wanted todo was the Cape Power Walk and

(28:24):
we tried to do the Cape PowerWalk a couple of times.
The first time we went to dothe Cape Howe Walk a couple of
times.
The first time we went to dothe Cape Howe Walk, in the
morning we were all packed up,ready to rock and roll and there
was a problem with the website.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
I got a message from someone and the message I read
to David and he said oh, that isso significant we have to
abandon this hike.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Thankfully, we're only 700 metres into it.
We were we're only about 700meters into it when the message
came through and we had toabandon the hike and go back and
and then struggle for starlinkand it was a bit of a shame,
because that was the perfecthiking day.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
The weather was really good and there was a
storm coming.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
We knew there was a storm coming the next day and or
the day after that that daythere was bad weather coming and
there was bad weather comingand we were very concerned that
we, we were going to struggle.
Anyway, we came back to the campand it took me several hours I
think it wasn't till like fouro'clock in the afternoon, um
that I poked my head out frombehind the computer screen and
said I've got it working again.

(29:21):
Um that we, that we were ableto head out on the walk, and so
we decided to go then, and therewe, we ended up leaving the
campsite at about 4 30.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
but the ranger had.
I'd asked the ranger what's thebest time when we first came it
was a four-hour posted and hesaid people go out there for
sunset.
Yeah, it was a four-hour postedthing.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
So we figured that, you know, if we leave at four
and the sun's setting over herestill was like 7, 50 or eight
o'clock, you know, um, becauseof the daylight saving time that
we're still trying to get usedto, um, you know we had, we
still had enough time.
We figured we'd get out andback and it'd still be
relatively light and we put ahead torch in in case it got a
bit dark, in case we had to dosome walking on the path.

(30:03):
oh yes, got to be diligent andwe walked out to Cape Howe and
another wow.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, but we got there so quick, it was only an
hour and a half or something.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Oh no, it was a bit longer than that.
But, if you have a look at thetrack logs you can confirm how
long it was going to take.
And if I looked at the tracklog I could confirm how long it
was going to take.
But we don't have all day dayto talk about that.
So the cape how walk definitelyone of tasmania's 60 great
short walks, thoroughlyrecommend that hell of a lot
easier than cape roll cape railwas harder, uh, but cape, how

(30:34):
was?
Easier specky, I don't knowcape rail is more specky.
I think cape rail is more specky, but at the end they're both
spectacular and both absolutelymust do's if you're in the area.
The best part about doing itthat way was you know, you do
part of the three capes trek butyou don't do cape pillar and
and a couple and one of theothers.

(30:55):
You will get on the three capesuh journey, but the three capes
journey is a fully booked.
You know, if you're going to dothe three capes trek I thought
you said 750 for the for thethree capes walk because you get
a boat thing and the and allthe accommodation bays of the
huts and stuff are all provided.
I thought you said 750 anywaywe're not doing the three case

(31:17):
walk.
Um, we did cape out and we justsnuck it in before the storm.
Uh, we just stuck it in beforethe wind came.
And that night, oh my goodness,did the wind come.
Uh, was it there was.
That night we had two nights.
We had two horrible nights.
Um, uh, we actually had tochange campsites, uh, that night
, to move to a different site,because we um, we could only get

(31:38):
two nights at one and twonights at another, and we'd only
originally booked for twonights, thinking that would be
enough, and we ended up stayingfor four.
But so the storm came in and therain is coming and they closed
all the walk tracks and they'dput everything up as total fire
ban.
Uh, they'd actually come andtaped off all the walks and and
they'd effectively shut thewhole place down.
And we we were moving sites.

(31:59):
So we actually packed up thecamper that morning when the
storm was coming and we moved itinto the site we were going to.
When we left it packed up whilewe went off and did Port Arthur
and the other cave and a fewother bits and pieces that were
a remarkable cave and a blowholeand Port Arthur, which we
decided to do that day when thestorms were apparently there and

(32:21):
during the day it seemed quitenice.
You know, Port Arthur was good.
We didn't really struggle withthe weather too much.
We got rained on when we wereat the blow holes and caves
first thing in the morning.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
It was only sprinkle.
But it was only sprinkle, itwasn't anything.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
It was it was a little bit windy.
And then we did Port Arthur.
It was a little bit windy butwe got patches of sun and we had
a lovely time in Port Arthurand Port boat trip and the and
the whole historical thing.
But they say you can spend oneto two days there.
I think in essence we did.
We did all that we would wantto do, all that we would want to

(32:52):
do in half a day.
So if you allocate yourselfhalf a day and that could be
that might be three hours, itmight be five hours, anywhere in
that range is going to give youa really good.
If you, if you can, are happyto walk around and you don't
need to read every interpretivesign because wow, there's a lot
of interpretive signs.
There is signage and signage andstories and signage and storage
and signage all over the placeand it's fantastic and you can

(33:14):
read all that great stuff Ifyou're sort of a Joe Average and
you're just having a look at itall and wanting to, you know,
investigate like we were half aday, perfect.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
What is it?
24, 25, a person or something alot more than that.
It's 40 something I was 48 aperson.
Yeah, I think we spent 1996 sixdollars for the two of us.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, yeah yeah, so a little bit more expensive than
the historic coal mine historicsite.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
But totally different because what you get at Port
Arthur is all the restoredbuildings, whereas at the coal
mine it's ruins.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, and you also can get as you move around.
You could also pick up theguided talks, and we managed to
pick up a couple of those as wewalked around.
Oh, yeah, many free guidedwalks, and there's free guided
walks and talks and some greatstories and information that you
can glean.
Another great place, portArthur, as a place to visit.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Obviously there's also the memorial for the fact
that I insisted we had to gothere.
I know you weren't keen.
You kept saying, well, I've gotto go.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
I really wanted to go you wanted to go, so that's why
we went.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
I'm glad to hear that you liked it it was okay.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
What am I going to say?
I hated it.
No, I didn't hate it, it was.
It was a worthy.
It was a worthy half a day ofthings to see and do and you
know, we had a good time walkingaround and checking out all the
stuff that was in there.
Um, you know, along with theremarkable cave, which I did
quite like, and the blowholethat we did in the morning, they
were quite good.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
So that was just a simple little thing.
You just walk down one flightof steps from the car park and
jaw-dropping gorgeous bit ofnatural landform it's one of the
sea caves again.
So when we'd been on the MarooIsland cruise and we'd gone into
a sea cave, we started to nowrealise that Tasmania's
coastline is littered with thesesea caves.
So even on that TasmanPeninsula, as you leave and go

(34:56):
through the Eagle Hawk Neck, youget up to places called
Tasman's Arch and what's theother landforms there.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Devil's Kitchen, patterson's God.
No.
What's the other landformsthere?
Devil's Kitchen, patterson'sGod.
No, is it?
What's the?

Speaker 2 (35:12):
whole Patterson's Arch.
Patterson's Arch is another one.
Yeah, so they're all sea cavesas well, and so there's good
signage that explains all thosethings and, honestly, every
single one of them is worthgoing to.
So you need a bit of time.
How much time, dave, I've gotwritten here.
Tasman Peninsula we spent sixdays and we spread that across
two different campsites, aswe've already said.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
There was actually more, because we did two nights
at Lime Bay, four nights atFortescue Bay and we did one
night in the state forest justat Eagle Halt Net.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh, as we left.
Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So we kind of toured ourselves pretty hard and ran
out of time.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, seven nights then, and so we basically spent
seven nights in there and we saweverything, did the big hikes,
did Port Arthur, did all thatstuff.
So hopefully that helps youwith understanding how much time
that you might want to allocateto that area.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
And after that the next destination was going to be
Hobart, and so we started onour journey.
After that free camp that I wasmentioning, in the state forest
that we found it was prettymuch right at Eagle Hawk Neck,
we were making the decision tohead further south and we
weren't really sure how far wewere going to get.
So we headed out.

(36:19):
We knew we needed to stock upon groceries, we knew we needed
to empty the toilet, fill thewater tanks and do all those
sorts of maintenance tasks, andwe were basically heading
towards Hobart.
And what was that town that wecame into, where we did all?
that Sowell S-O-W-E-L-L, so Idon't know how to pronounce it
Sowell yeah, and we managed tofind a Coles and a Woolworths
and a dump point and a waterstation and we were able to

(36:49):
restock a $500 Coles plus $100of Woolworths or something that
managed to load our fridges andthings up again.
And that wasn't even at thegrog shop and we had been at all
the wineries.
I thought we'd had enough.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
And today is our last day.
So when David says we wereheading towards Hobart, it was
sort of in that direction.
We hadn't made up our minds wewere heading towards Hobart.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, were we going to stay just on the south it's
snug or were we going to?
Were we going to go to Bruny?
Were we going to do something?
We didn't really have a planand we, we were able to pick up
all our bits and pieces at umSol and we had one more task to
do and that was to picksomething up at Bunnings.
So we, we plotted in the, weplotted in the app and said
where's the nearest Bunnings?
And we found that and we headedtowards the Bunnings.

(37:29):
And then we were kind of whattime was that?
It was not too late in the day,it was midday.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Oh, it was school.
No, this was.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Oh, it was school.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
It was just finishing or something.
Was it really that late?
Yeah, 2.30, 3 o'clock.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah right, and so we decided fairly quickly that
we'd just drive through Hobartto start with and we'd start
heading towards the south coast,towards the South Cape, and we
didn't really know how far untilwe started.
We basically started driving,we drove straight through the
middle of Hobart at the start oflike the 3 or 4 o'clock peak

(38:04):
hour.
The roads were prettyimpressive.
They're like five lanes wide,going in one direction.
I couldn't you know.
It was quite impressive.
There was cars everywhere,there was people everywhere.
It was busy.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
We had the camper trailer on the block was really
small.
It was only about I don't knowtwo kilometres of traffic.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Oh yeah, there was only two kilometres of town, and
then, as we, continued south itjust disappeared into
nothingness again.
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
They must have just turned right and we turned left.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
It was gone, it was gone, and so that day we drove
all the way to Cockle Creek,basically all the way to the end
we did.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
But, to be fair, we stopped at all the free camps
along the way, checking them allout, and they were already
getting busy.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
And so that's why we didn't stop.
Most of those were RV.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
The Franklin all the way down the river.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Jeeveston, all three of them, they were mainly all RV
overnight stops again whicharen't really our bag.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
We've decided they're not.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
But they're okay.
You know, if you've got to pulla day and you want to be near a
town, that's the way to do it.
Yep, we decided to keep goingand we.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
We got to Cockle Creek at like 7 o'clock at night
.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah, 7 o'clock at night, we had about 45 minutes
of sunshine to go.
We decided to go the whole hogand drive all the way into
Cockle Creek, all the way toBolton's Campground, which is
the one in the National Park.
We'd driven past five or sixcampsites in that area on the
way down.
There is plenty of campsitesdown there, big Five or six Big
open areas.

(39:26):
They've all got a beach,they've all got different,
they've all got toilets andthey've all got different levels
basic pits, but they've all gotdifferent levels of access to
various things.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
So all of them allow dogs until you get over the
Cockle Creek, because that'swhere the National.
Park campground is, and thereis one more final campground in
the National Park.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
And that's Boltons, and so, arriving at seven
o'clock, we don't have a dog.
So we we decided we'd go intoboltons and drove through and
had a look at the whole thingand it was jockeys and again it
looked a bit average.
Is that, is that rule?
Is it rude to call it when wedrove?

Speaker 2 (40:02):
through.
The thing was you could not seea view as you're driving
through and you've got camperson the left side of the road and
the right side of the road andwe were realizing they can't see
anything from their campsite.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
You can't see the water.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Whereas all the camps you've just driven past in the
conservation area, the freecamps, every single one of them
is opposite the water and ashort walk over to the water.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
And just at the time that we were driving through,
for some strange reason the windwas blowing and you know, there
was dust swirls and sand swirlsand oh, it lost its appeal
fairly quickly.
And, ken, because it waschockers, very haphazard sort of
camps up and down, Nothing wasall that flat.
If you've been there and you'vehad a great experience.

(40:47):
Perfect and there's nothingwrong with the place.
Great, if you manage to snagthe best spot and you've had a
great time, then you've had agood time On the whole.
I think some of those earliercamps we actually stayed at
Finn's Beach Camp.
If you look that up, you'll seeour tracking lines going in and
out of there for the next fiveor six days.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
It's the second one coming from the north, heading
down, so there's a few others aswell.
There's a few others ahead andthere's a few others behind.
They're all marked on the appPhotos and info, photos and info
in all of them.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
We stayed at Finn's.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
You were able to see the water and we used it as our
base camp base camp and westayed there for five nights and
we did all the hikes that wewanted to do.
Yeah, went out to fisher'spoint one day and we also, of
course, we did the south capebay trip yeah, which is 16k 16k

(41:39):
round trip.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yep, and we went out to one of the uh when we were at
south cape bay.
We went to one of the overnightcamps for the uh south coast,
for the south cape track, southcoast track.
Yeah, we went to one of thecamps, camps for the South Coast
Track.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
South Coast Track yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
We went to one of the campsites and had a look at
that and that was fantastic.
It's just at the end of thebeach.
When you do the South Cape BayWalk, that was a lovely walk
boardwalk, most of it, fairly,reasonably easy.
There was a bit of rocky bitsat the beginning.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
You think it's going to be worse than it is when you
start it gets better um and itwas hard on the feet because
there's a lot of roots and yousort of have a lot of roots and
lots of rolling over, so you'rebest off doing that.
Hike the south cape bay.
Hike with hiking boots if youcan, rather than sneakers.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Don't take your thongs we see people doing
things in thongs, but anyway,anyway, thankfully no thongs
that day.
No thongs that day.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
But it is a bit of a long hike for a lot of people,
but it is really worth it if youget a good bit of weather, like
the day that we went there.
There was no wind and it wasmagic and I even went for a swim
in the water.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
David and I.
We just took all the boots off.
We got wet in the SouthernOcean.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
We were also lucky that it was low tide and so all
the little rocks off the beachcreate natural rock pools.
So when you come at the top ofthe hike to the coast, I thought
we were going to come out atbeach level.
In fact, the whole walk is notat all what I expected and I'd
done a bit of research on it,but it was not at all what I
expected.
It blew my mind.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
So we highly recommend it.
Add that there's a track logfor that also in the system.
You can look that up at umsouth south cape bay south cape
bay and uh, and it's all aroundthe cockle creek area.
So, as I said, there was five orsix camps there.
We did those.
While we were in that area.
We um, as michelle said, weused our Finns camping site as
our base location.

(43:29):
From there we did a few greatcaves.
We went, we went, we did adrive one day from that campsite
and we did a thing calledMystery Creek Cave.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Now this isn't signed .
This is not signed, so you needto look at our app for it.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
You kind of need to find this one when else places.
Mystery Creek Cave.
It was a great walk.
It was about two and a bit k'sin.
And then you go actually into acave and you are allowed in
there.
There is signage that shows youwhere you can and can't go.
It's a pitch black.
Take your headlight, torchinside the cave.
Inside the cave, stalactites,stalagmites, glow worms there's

(44:09):
running water through the thingall the time.
That goes into what's calledmystery creek, because no one
knows where the creek goes.
It goes into a cave and nevercomes out again.
Um, fantastic, easy.
A fairly a fairlystraightforward, easy walk.
It was a bit wet, a bit muddyand there's a lot of underfoot
to get out there, a lot of treesfalling.
It was beautiful.
It was beautiful Rainforest.
Again, it was a great walk.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
There's a little bit of relics of an old mine.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Oh yeah, the old mine that's down there.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, so you can poke around in there.
There's some rail tracks ofwhat they used to get their coal
out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
So that was a great little find If you're into that
kind of quirky thing.
And it's free, rather than theHastings Caves, rather than the
Hastings Caves, which is just upthe road, which we went and did
straight after that caveexperience Totally different
cave experiences.
One, we had to light it and itwasn't as polished and as

(45:04):
professionally set up as theHastings Caves.
But the Hastings Cave isn'tactually Hastings Cave, is it?
What cave was it called?
It was called.
I'm testing you now.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, I know it.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Drum, drum.
No, it's not actually calledHastings Cave that you're
actually going into.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Nudigate Cave.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Nudigate is the cave.
You go to Nudigate Cave, youget a 45-minute tour.
That was the $24 one that I wasthinking was something like $24
.
$24 a person.
We'd just done the free cave.
We'd then just gone into thiscave.
I think the guide, the personthat took us down that was quite
good.
She gave us good stories andtold us all sorts of things

(45:46):
about the history of the cavesand how the cave became, and how
Tasmania had moved from Japan,and how many millions of years
ago.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
The information was good and it was presented well.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
The cave's well set up.
As they say, it's one of thebest infrastructure caves in the
Southern Hemisphere.
It has concrete walkways andconcrete staircases.
They've had operas and musicalconcerts and all sorts of things
down in this particular cave.
You can get married in it.
Apparently you can book it out.
For what?
No longer they say since covidthat has has been oh I thought

(46:16):
they said it was like 250 anhour and you can have it for as
long as you want something likethat anyway.
So, um, it's, it's a really nice.
It's actually paved the.
The ground that you walk oninside the cave has been paved
Square, paving Square, pavingall through it.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
But it doesn't compare with the likes of
Janolan Caves or some of thecaves we've been to in Western
Australia.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
No, except that it has.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Good landfills, except that it seems to have a
more historical longevity.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
It seems to be older, and so it has some interesting
formations that you won'tnecessarily see at some other
places.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, that's fair comment.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
It is significantly old and it was worth it.
So it was still worth it.
So we did those two caves thatday.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
And included in the entry fee.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
Oh, the thermal pool, yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
The thermal pool is not what I thought.
I thought it might be natural,but no.
But when you read the signs yourealise the water pool.
Yeah, the thermal pool is notwhat I thought.
I thought it might be natural,but no.
But when you read the signs yourealise the water actually is
natural.
It is thermal spring water.
It used to bubble up throughrocks at the base of a natural
pool that they have had to useinfrastructure to combat the
bacteria.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
They basically made a swimming pool and they pumped
the water in and they pumped thewater out.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Here's a traveller tip made a swimming pool.
They basically made a swimmingpool and they pumped the water
in and they pumped the water out.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Here's a traveller tip.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
They have a really good shower system with soap and
hot water.
So we had our afternoon afterall our hiking hot shower.
We're allowed to have a hotshower.
We went and used their shower.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
So there's showers and toilets, flush toilets and
showers.
You can't say it was a freeshower because you've had to pay
your $24 to do your model.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
It was a really good shower.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
The pool itself 21 degrees.
It's not overly hot, it wasokay.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
The shower was better .
The shower was hotter.
That was a hot night.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
But the pool was quite good and there was a
little 1K walk that you can goaround and see where the water
bubbles out and see where thetwo streams join One's hot and
one's cold.
Put your hand in and have a bitof a play down there.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Just watch your timings, because that does close
at 4pm.
If you're in the pools, youactually are asked to leave at 4
o'clock and they lock it all.
It's all locked overnight.
There's no camping in that areaat all, so they recommend that
you do camp back down at CockleCreek or back at Hobart.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah, and so we were down at Cockle Creek and so that
worked out quite well.
So you know, we did our sixdays there.
We did some other bits andpieces.
I can't remember some of theother things.
We went to stand-uppaddleboarding and some other
stuff around there.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Oh, we had one lovely day of 33 degrees or something,
so we allowed ourselves anabsolute beach day.
And if you go down to where thebridge is around Cockle Creek,
and it was low tide, it was abit too low tide for us to suck,
so we went looking for it.
But the crabs come up, andthey're those blue and red ones.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
They're little, teeny , weeny ones, and there's
millions of them.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
And they know when you're coming and they all move
as a swarm away from you.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, the whole ground moves, so you can film
these things and they basically,as you start walking towards
them, they disappear into holesand run away.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
So the kids would love looking at that and that's
a perfect little place for kidsto splash around Really safe.
Under that bridge.
There was lots of families,boogie boards and little pop-ups
and of course it was a longweekend.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Another long weekend.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
We also had a quick look at the cemetery there that
we almost discounted, butthere's actually some very good
information on the signboard andwhat you start to do when you
go to these cemeteries is youread the family names and all
the history of the area thentakes on the names of those
pioneering families.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Yeah, so you can see why the mountains are called or
the rivers called this and whythe rivers called this and why
that's called that.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeah, I enjoy understanding that, making that
link between the family historyand the early pioneers and the
places you're visiting.
So, yeah, go to the um cemetery.
It's only like a couple ofhundred meters walk, not even,
yeah, tiny little walk and thenwe and so we'd kind of done the
south cape area.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
You know, we were kind of done and and we'd had an
extra day with that warm daythat we decided to have a beach
day.
We got the stand up paddleboardout and had a bit of a play and
you know it was.
It was just a nice day to takeit easy.
We don't do them very often.
We're always bloody working.
So then, from there, the planwas to come to Lake Pedder, and

(50:32):
that's where we are now bringingyou these podcasts.
We spent two days.
The first two days we spent atTed's Beach, which is on the
north western side, nearStrathgordon, and Strathgordon
is really just a village, aresort village for the
wilderness, whatever it wascalled.
It was basically built thewhole village, and it is an
accommodation village, but thewhole village was built as a

(50:55):
working town for the creation ofthe dam projects.
It's a nice little place.
So, ted's Beach, we camped onthe beach, we had the camper and
the car set up.
We were probably only threemetres away from the water.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
You know lovely spot, the water's White sandy pebbly,
it's a white pebble.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
It's not sand, it's a pebbly beach and the tannin
waters and stuff.
And the water does seem to bereasonably warm.
We even had a swim this morning.
The water is warmer than youmay expect, considering what the
air temperature is down here,and I wonder if that's the
tannins bringing the heat.
I don't know, but it'sreasonably.
It's reasonably warm.

(51:36):
We went stand up paddleboardingthere.
We also went and had a look atall the gordon dam.
So the gordon dam and thegordon power station and and
that's all.
If you're into that kind of um,engineering stuff, uh, I, I
don't mind that kind ofengineering stuff.
So I kind of got off on how itall works and impressed about
how the the waterfall generationsystem works and that the

(52:00):
actual power station's 183meters under the lake and all
that kind of stuff.
If you're into that sort ofthing, there's some really good
signage and some goodinformation boards and things to
go and do all of that and you,of course, you can walk out on
the damn wall, which involves ahair-raising descent down a
metal stairway.
It's hair-raising people won'tdo it's hair-raising if you
don't like looking through theground and seeing down below you

(52:22):
as you walk down the stairs.
Michelle's one of those, butshe did it might have had to
hold her about everything.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Might have had to hold her hand a little bit and
coax her down, but she made itit was awesome to see the Golden
River at the bottom snakingthrough from this amazing wall
it's huge.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
It's huge but it's not huge.
It's massively tall, but it'snot very big width.
Wise in schemes of dams.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
But it's narrow at the top and wider at the base,
and the information sign willexplain what all that's about,
with its double curvature.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Oh the thickness of the wall.
Not the size it goes down likea thing, but the thickness of
the wall.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Where you walk is only three metres wide and at
the base it is.
It's 18 metres wide.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, but it's double skinned and yeah, it's all
fancy smancy.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
As you said, it's all engineering An engineering
masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
So if you're into engineering and you have a look
at that and the power station,they are really good.
It's all tarred roads to comeall the way out to the Gordon
Dam.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
So we are encountering quite a significant
number of tourists out here.
There's day trippers, butthere's also people just in
camper vans that are staying onenight.
Um.
So ted's beach, um, a couple ofpeople would come in the
afternoon, not very busy, nomore than three or four on the
beach, and some days it wasthree or four.

(53:41):
Up at the back where it's flat,you can camp up, um on solid
ground up behind the toiletblock up there in the bush, if
you don't want to go down ontothe beach area and there's,
there's an other camping areas60km away where we've come now
to the Edgar Dam.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Edgar Dam is.
It's on the eastern edge ofLake Petta and you know we're
basically at the end of theroads in these areas.
As far as you can go, thisparticular around Edgar Dam and
the Huon camp that we're at here, the start of the Huon River is
up here.
This, this particular area, isextreme hiking central.

(54:18):
If you are into extreme hiking,hard hiking, long, multi-day
yes, hard hiking you come here.
So everyone that's here, a lotof the people that are here, are
pretty hard climbers.
You can see there's some prettyextreme stuff that goes on here
.
One of the smaller walks is,you know, from 400 metres up to

(54:39):
about 1,100 or 1,200 metres insix kilometres and that takes a
day, five, seven hours to get upthere or something, and five to
seven hours to come back.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
There's also photo boards at the information.
There's photos explaining thedifficulty and what to expect
and they're obviously beingTasmania and we're in the
southwest national park talkingabout how the weather can change
in an instant.
Even in summer.
They can have snow and sleethere and really strong winds up
on the higher peaks.
There was a photo at the PortDavie information track hut and
it showed a person and theinformation explaining expect

(55:15):
this and the guy was walkingthrough waist-deep mud, yep.
And that's not for us?

Speaker 1 (55:21):
No, that's not for us , but that would be.
They're all basically multi-day.
Almost everything from here isa multi-day, but with that said,
I would still recommend someonecome, purely just for the
driving experience.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Oh yeah, the sightseeing of the surrounding
landscape.
These mountain ranges it lookslike you're in Scotland.
They're really ragged, theprofile is beautiful and you've
got dots of white on top of thegrey rock and it changes.
We came through on the day.
It was overcast and a bit oflow cloud blocking some of the

(55:54):
peaks, and the photos I tookthat day were spectacular.
Today, absolutely perfect clearblue skies.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
There's not even a puff of wind and the water.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
There's not a cloud.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
The water looks like a mirror.
We're going to probably have topoke our heads over a bit later
on, when the sun's in the rightspot because if there's still
no wind on the water, the we'regoing to get these awesome
reflections in the water we areindeed all right, so we might
wind it up so that's going to be, that's going to be, that's
going to be this afternoon'sthing.
And look, we've got all to here.
And yeah, we didn't even talkabout the wheel nearly falling

(56:24):
off the land cruiser at medinaon our way here.
You know we had, as you dodriving along, I must admit, for
the last couple of days I'vethought to myself gee, there's
something wrong with the car.
And as we were driving betweenthe Cockle Creek Finns camp and

(56:44):
we were coming up here, we didcamp a couple of nights on the
way to get to here.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
We didn't make it in one go, yeah, and we should just
mention that we didn't go backthe main way.
The auto route will take you.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
All the routers wanted to take you along the
main roads and we decided we'dtry and pack our way through as
close to the wilderness aspossible and we managed to make
the auto route go there byadding a few places in between
Southward Road to Huon River,and we did Bushy Park.
What is it?

Speaker 2 (57:11):
west of the way we didn't get up to and then gordon
river road.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
so yeah, and so we did.
We we managed to get the autorouter by careful placement of a
few waypoints along the waythat we wanted to come to come,
the way that we did come theauto router did it once.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
I put enough places in and it was it was spectacular
.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
It was basically one of the bigger uh dash lines on
the map.
If you're looking at the side,the width of those dash lines,
it was a more major road.
I think it's classified as atertiary road.
Um, and wow, how, how, what awonderful drive it was.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
But as we're crossing all the way along the sides of
the road and huge big treeswinding dirt roads.
I just had the gopro out thewhole time, so look out on the
instagram and facebook for a bitof that coming, and hopefully a
little bit will be on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
I mean in that, in that driving section, though, we
also did the Hearts Range yeah,I realized which we didn't
actually talk about.
Um, we we mentioned it a fewtimes, but we didn't actually
talk much about it.
So, as we've been coming fromum South Cape to Lake Petta, we
we stopped at Hearts Range anddid the Hearts Range trek Hearts
Peak, hearts Peak.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Yep, which is a significant hike as well.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
A significant hike, Another one of the 60 great
short walk hikes.
The number of hours was what?
Four, three, three and a bitthree to four hours.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Really challenging for some people.
We saw a lot of people attemptit that did not make it.
There was a lot that did noteven make it to the pass, and
then from the pass there's afinal kilometer to get you up to
the actual peak itself, andthat's where conditions start
changing and it's all um very,very rocky it was great for, but
it wasn't impossible yeah,people who are carrying poles.

(58:47):
I should have just dropped themand leave the poles behind for
that one.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
You don't need, they're a hindrance.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, you don't need them on that one because it's a
rock scramble.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
It's a rock scramble.
The worst parts of it it's aboardwalk and then it's a rock
scramble.
And a rock scramble it's notjust a scrambly rock, it's
actually pulling yourself up therocks, sometimes with your
hands, and you know it wasn'tthe most simple.
Some people had difficulty withthat.

(59:15):
It does get cold up there.
We, it was particularly blowythat day, um, and it was quite
cool, uh.
But again, another awesome trek.
You must.
Another awesome hike, you mustdo that.
We'd also been hit at the sametime with another computer
problem, uh, while we were doingthat, yeah, just as we set out
to do that whole day, that'sright.
Um, and we'd had a bush camp,uh, just on the way into hearts

(59:38):
range, which you will also findon the traveler app if you have
a look.
Uh, down hearts, hearts onehearts one.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
It's one of the one of the one of the spurs from the
state forestry areas.
So that's how you find goodlittle free camps.
By the way, don't telleverybody, you didn't hear that.
You didn't hear that, youdidn't hear that.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
But we camped just in there and we made it in fairly
early for the hike.
But yeah, we had this massivecomputer problem going on and so
we did the hike anyway, becauseI'd already broken one hike to
go and fix.
I had some facilities in place.
That wasn't going to make it sothat the whole system was

(01:00:16):
playing up, but it wassignificantly bad.
We still managed to do the hikeand then that night we needed
to find somewhere to camp wherewe'd have clear visibility of
the sky so that we, so that Icould be sure that I could get a
few hours of starling withoutwas hilarious without without
any.
Yeah, and this is on our wayhere to Lake Petta.
We didn't even so, we kind ofmissed it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
So the mission to find this free camp had one
criteria only, and that was tobe able to get the Starlink to
work, because we needed that fora solid, strong internet
connection that wasn't going todrop out.
So what the problem is with theStarlink is that if there's a
lot of trees around, it justdrops out.
When the earth, earth moves,you lose contact with the
satellite that you're lockedinto, and then it's got to

(01:00:58):
reacquire the next one, and soyou get dropouts, and david
could not have that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
So we needed clear, open sky yes, so the satellite,
so we so we did our usual to thetop of the hill, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
So he tells me, just find me a hill.
And I go.
How do I find a hill?
And I hadn't actually thoughtabout how you can use
topographic maps to actuallyfind high points, and so that
was even a little learninglesson for me from David.
So he, he showed me how, where,if there's a, all your contour
lines, obviously with thenumbers getting higher and

(01:01:27):
higher, but when you find acircle in the center, that's
your high point.
So I then went looking for reddash lines, meaning unsealed
roads, going up to one of theseround points.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Yeah, and that's exactly what we found and so we
found wow, we found a stateforest road that went up.
There was there was two ways upone past a power line which
looked a bit steep for me topull the camper, and another way
around.
So we went the other way aroundand and we and we just ducked
around the front of this thingand and we found this plateau
and I think it was the it'sgoing to be the log loading

(01:01:59):
plateau.
So this particular area had twothings going for it it had
short trees because they'd onlyjust been planted, like six
months ago.
This place had just been cutdown, so this was a particular
piece of forestry that had justbeen cut it, it had been
finished with and they'd justreplanted, and the plants were,
oh, I don't know, maybe twometres tall, but there was a lot

(01:02:20):
of them, and we managed to pullup the car on the camper onto
probably where they loaded thelogs onto the truck.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
And it was all blue metal, gravel, a piece of
infrastructure that had beenmade and it had logs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
It had logs extending it out to make the road wide
enough for their big trucks topark on it, and so we thought,
oh damn it, we'll just parkright here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
And wow, what a spectacular view we had the
vista Over the All the way backto Hearts Peak and the Tarhoon
Forest Reserve, and all of thatrange was just our view.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Yeah, and it was fantastic.
The only thing that we'd failedon was that the north-west,
north-north-west wind that cameup that night at a reasonable
pace blew straight at us and itwas quite windy, but that was a
little thing.
But we went all the way back tothere because as we crossed the
Huon River I could hear the carand the Huon River was just
down the road from where thiscamp was and as we crossed the

(01:03:10):
Huon River on the bridge, Icould hear this noise in the
front wheel and it sounded likeit was going it sounded really
strange and we didn't reallyknow what it was.
And I got out and had a look andchecked everything and turned
the wheels and looked behind,checked the brake wheel nuts
were all done up, checkedeverything seemed to be done.
But I just didn't check the carwheel nuts for some stupid

(01:03:32):
reason and I don't know why.
I don't know, I have no ideawhy I didn't do that.
But we persisted to drive and Ithought it had got better and
we kept driving and we don't.
We must've driven another, Idon't know 80 Ks, something of
hard like turny, worny, horribleroads, gravel, not horrible,
lovely roads, lovely driving.

(01:03:52):
And we were just coming into alittle town called Medina, which
is on the way out here On TardRoad, on a Tard Road and the
steering wheel started wobblingenough that I noticed it like
wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble,wobble.
I said, michelle, I've got topull over really quick the
steering wheel's wobbling.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Look at this look at this, but there was nowhere to
go, it was just nothing on theroadside.
It was gullies on the side.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Just at the top of this next hill, there was a
driveway.
It was on the other side of theroad and I just decided to pull
into there as he pulled intothere and pulled up to a stop,
got out and had a look and, sureenough, one wheel nut was
missing.
The other four wheel nuts werelike a centimetre undone.

(01:04:35):
All of them were unwound on thepassenger side front wheel which
is where we'd heard the noisewhich is where we'd heard the
noise, which is why I don'tunderstand why I don't, why I
didn't look at the damn thing ahundred percent, but I, I, yeah,
anyway I hadn't.
Um.
So we pulled into this drivewayand what had obviously happened
is we had one wheel nut thatwas holding the whole lot
together.
And as we turned the the wheelto get into this driveway, and

(01:04:55):
what had obviously happened iswe had one wheel nut that was
holding the whole lot together,and as we turned the wheel to
get into this guy's driveway,that wheel nut snapped the wheel
stud.
So I said to Michelle oh, we'velost a nut.
Michelle says no, there, it isover there at the corner where
we turned into this guy'sdriveway, it had actually broken
off just behind the car justthe camper where we pulled in um

(01:05:16):
to this driveway where weproceeded to do the remaining
four wheel nuts up um and beforedriving into the wilderness
before driving into thewilderness.
So we're still in here with fourwheel nuts.
I do have a stud somewhere intheir pack up, but I just I'm
gonna wait till I get tosomewhere where I can actually
do it with a bit of confidenceand and I actually would like to
replace all five wheel studsnow because they're going to be

(01:05:39):
damaged of having driven somedistance with the wheel loose
and I don't want to run the riskof them going anytime soon so.
I want to replace all five wheelstuds when we next can get to a
place where I can buy them.
So, with all that being said,on the south end of Lake, the
eastern side of Lake Pedder,with the sun actually starting
to disappear down the trees,we're now not in the sun as much

(01:06:01):
as we were a second ago and Ican already feel it starting to
get cool.
We'll be getting the fire going, which is over there.
Those that are watching thiscan see a little bit.
Potentially over there, we'llget the fire going soon.
We might go down and take thosephotos that we said we'd get
with the windless reflectionphotos.
So we hope this has been alittle bit more informative, a

(01:06:22):
bit more of the journey, and welook forward to catching up with
you on our next podcast.
From here we're heading up toCradle Mountain Eventually, and
a couple of weeks we'll be backon the boat.
So you know we'll catch up withyou more down the track, See
you.