May 10, 2024 • 58 mins
Step into the final episode of our 4-part Tasmanian journey, recorded amid our sunny 2024 summer expedition. If you've been following along, you'll know we landed in Tasmania back in January, embarking on a dual work/holiday escapade. Our trusty 200 series Landcruiser and Ultimate offroad camper trailer have been our faithful companions as we crisscrossed the apple isle, gathering insights for the ExplorOz Traveller app.
Our podcast isn't just about our exploits; it's a treasure trove for fellow travelers. Tune in for recommended destinations, ideal camping spots, duration suggestions, and a peek into our road life as we map and update for ExplorOz. If you're tuning in sequentially, start from Ep 14 for the full journey.
This episode resumes near Lake Pedder in South West National Park, weaving through our trails, highs, lows, and the essence of Tasmanian exploration: hikes, free camps, national parks, waterfalls, rainforests, lakes, beaches, caves, 4WD tracks, mountain bike parks, state forests, distilleries, historic sites, power stations, wasp encounters, berry-picking, challenging terrains, weather swings, holiday planning tips, StarLink navigation, and the routine adventures of road life—battery woes, extending your Tassie stay, securing your Parks Pass, and ferry reservations aboard the Spirit of Tasmania.
We traverse South West National Park, the Needles, Maydena, Mount Field, River Derwent, Ouse, Victoria Valley, Waddamana, Great Lakes, Penstock Lagoon, Miena, Highland Lakes Road, Projection Bluff, Central Highlands, the Great Western Tiers, Liffey Falls, Deloraine, Oura Oura, Mount Roland, Mole Creek, Lake Parangana, Honeycomb Caves, Railton, Sheffield, the Wild Mersey MTB trails, Borradaile Plains, Moina, Cethana, Cradle Valley, and the hikes on Cradle Mountain, Dove Lake, Horse Track, Overland Track, and everything in between before eventually heading north via Waratah, Burnie, Penguin and then into Devonport to board the ferry back to the mainland.
So, fasten your seatbelt, savor a Tasmanian single malt, and journey with us through the thrill, mishaps, and pure bliss of exploring Tasmania.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, so it's been a while since we last recorded a
podcast and a lot of things havehappened since then.
But just to backtrack where ourlast podcast ended off, we were
at Lake Edgar in Tasmania, inthe Southwest National Park.
So we have actually spent intotal 12 weeks touring around
(00:22):
Tasmania, so in this episodewe're going to try and fill in
the final section of theTasmanian trip.
So from Lake Edgar, which we'vealready mentioned in the
previous podcast so if you wantto learn about that one, jump
back an episode From here youhave to actually double back on
your drive.
(00:42):
So there were some things thatwe'd seen along the way and we'd
earmarked as places that wewanted to stop at.
Um, we'd been givenrecommendations, as you do, from
other travelers, aboutworthwhile places to stop, so we
didn't get very far out of lakeedgar on our first day pulling
out of there basically, that'snot getting very far on a day of
traveling.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That always seems to happen.
We went, we went with one planand, as usually and it always
happens I decided I had to climbup this thing called the
Needles and that was a greatlittle climb.
So if you're going out that waypast Medina or into that sort
of area, it's not a simple one.
It's a bit steep.
It was a bit of fun.
It took me I don't know an houror an hour and a half.
(01:21):
Um, it's a basically straight upand there's some wonderful
views up there.
So we we did that.
We also did another thingcalled what was that?
The little teeny, weeny walks.
Is that the creepy crawly walk?
And something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Can I just mention one of the reasons that we
wanted to climb that needles umand you, if you've been there,
you'll know this and if you'reabout to go there, prepare
yourselves.
The views here of these amazingsteep, rugged, scottish looking
um craigy cliffs is reallyspectacular.
(01:53):
And there's the hikes there arereally that are posted are too
hard, they're so long and likewe're really into our hiking but
we just weren't set up formulti-day hikes and they're
really long and they're justhard to do casually.
But this needles thing lookedlike we could just pull over by
the side of the road, scrambleup the hills about a kilometer
up to the top.
So we thought, yay, let's dothat.
And the view from the top isreally fun.
(02:14):
If you're really into yourphotography, stand at the top
there and look down.
You get this beautiful windingroad and there was groups of
motorcyclists fanging along.
So snaking along on this narrowroad through the beautiful
craggy views was great.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So on a good day it's just a good spot to enjoy the
scenery before you head out ofthat area and that's about the
last of the views there yeah,that's about the last of things
to do in that kind of yeah, whatwould you call the area central
, central inland?
I don't know what they actuallycall that area.
I I know central plateau, Idon't know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So for us, we had also gone past Medina.
Now, anyone that's intomountain biking will probably
already know that Medina hasearned its place on the map of
Tasmania because it has quite aworld-renowned mountain biking
downhill bike park.
And our bad luck is that it wasa competition weekend so it was
(03:07):
really crowded, but we stillreally wanted to go.
Unfortunately we just missedthe season, so it's not.
At that time it was no longerthe summer, so it wasn't open
every day and you could only.
It was only open friday tomonday, yep, and we came through
, like on the sunday or or other, so I went in and I was
overwhelmed, to be honest.
(03:27):
There was a smorgasbord, as ifyou're at a ski lift area
working out what costs what, andI couldn't get out of there
other than spending $70 to get alift pass, and we weren't
really sure that it was the sortof mountain biking that we
wanted to do.
I think we got a bit spoilt atDerby, which is all rainforest
and everything.
Medina is pretty hardcore.
(03:49):
Everyone was in their fancyhelmets, downhill helmets.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I was just going, I'm going to die.
I've had enough falls.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It looked like it was going to hurt if we went to
Medina.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We're too old maybe, and we're still on our
pedal-powered bikes, not e-bikes, and I don't know we were
getting to this point with thebiking that.
There was a few other spotsthat we thought we'd do Railton
and Sheffield.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
We did mark some others yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Look, we spent a really good time having a look
at it and just drove on.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And just after we left Medina, we end up at
Mountfield National Park.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, now Mountfield National Park is really popular
and it was a place that we'dbeen recommended by others that
said, oh my God, it's the bestwaterfalls we've ever been to.
Highly recommend we got there.
It was so busy.
This is not a peaceful nationalpark.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It was a Sunday.
Yeah, it was a long weekend aswell.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's probably school holidays Every weekend in.
Yeah, it was a long weekend aswell.
It was probably school holidaysand all that.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Every weekend in Tasmania seems to be a long
weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
At the end of summer it is.
Yeah, Look, we managed to beable to whiz around and do all
the waterfalls on the circuithike just using the Visitor Day
car park, and we got throughthat quite quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
We were a little bit deflated.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
The caravan park was full.
If it wasn't, we probably wouldhave stayed.
We were getting a bit tiredwe'd had a big day.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
The camping area, probably the caravan park, yeah,
I think it's run by caretakers.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
whatever the hiking, the trails, lovely rainforest
and all but no different toanywhere else we'd already been.
We've seen a lot of beautifulwaterfalls and rainforests.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It was very well formed and had disabled
facilities and disabled access,which is obviously something
important if you need that kindof stuff, so it was very tourist
friendly.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, it was more mainstream and, given that most
people weren't in hiking shoes,they were wearing white sneakers
and white jumpers and they'rebest clothes and they were able
to stay on a form path and therewere some steps and all of that
.
That wasn't challenging at allfor anyone that's done the sort
of hikes that we've been doing,but certainly it's a more
(05:55):
user-friendly way to get intothe rainforest for those that
are less inclined to do some ofthe type of hikes that we've
mentioned before on our channelthat we do.
So we chose not to stay Again.
Again, we moved on and we had anumber of campsites as
potentials and a bit of a routemapped out, because we needed to
start heading north and theneventually a little bit inland
(06:17):
further to eventually get tocradle valley, which we decided
was going to be the end point ofour trip, and we'd make a final
dash to get onto the ferry atthe end.
So basically, from there toCradle Valley, we had another
couple of weeks and we were justsort of following our nose and
stopping at what we wanted tostop at.
A couple of highlights we loveda free camp, bethune.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Bethune Park Camp Area On the River Derwent.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
We found a lot of berries that you could free pick
by the side of the road, thegood old Tasmanian produce that
you can pick a blackberry overthe fence, gorge yourself on
fresh food Did a bit of that.
Wineries up in that area arefabulous.
In fact.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We found a distillery and that had David's name all
over it, and although it, wasnine o'clock or 10 o'clock in
the morning 10 o'clock in themorning and you lobbed past and
the sign said open.
So what better opportunity to goand drink gin and whiskey than
10 o'clock in the morning on aMonday?
Yeah, it was.
The place we're talking aboutis Lorraine Estate.
Fantastic, the owner there, theguy he was running the place
(07:21):
and he was the owner.
He was running the place and hewas the owner.
He was very accommodating.
He opened up the wholedistillery and he showed us
around all the barrelling areasand the kegs and he went through
the whole process and, being agin distiller myself, I make gin
at home.
He gave me the I'd alwayswanted to do whiskies and he
gave me the whole process and heshowed me all the machinery
they use and how it all worksand it was really fantastic.
(07:42):
And they had I don't know fiveor six whiskeys and five or six
gins and we tried them all at 10o'clock in the morning, 11
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I didn't think I could manage it, but once we
started it was easy enough.
Except it wasn't so much easierleaving and driving away we got
the personalised servicebecause we were his first
customers, but literally wewould have had a personalised
tour that went at least an hour.
Oh, it was an hour and a half,I think, before we actually left
, but we did spend a fair bit ofmoney.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, we spent a fortune.
We bought some whiskey, webought some gin One of the
things about touring around andbuying and going to wineries and
distilleries and your winecollection and all that sort of
stuff I always keep saying toeverybody you know, I don't just
go to a winery to hear a story,and it's the story that sells
(08:30):
the product.
And you know, when you for megoing into a winery and going
into this laurenia state andspeaking to the owner there and
having this great tour and acompletely ad hoc thing that all
came about, it was really easyto spend five or six hundred
dollars because it was just sucha good, a good time, was good
value and, um, I've still gotthe whiskey.
I've got to actually open thatone.
I haven't cracked my head onthat one yet.
But I think we drank all thegins before we left Tasmania.
(08:52):
That was about three bottles,but anyway, we digress.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Gordon, you're making it sound like we drink too much
.
Well, we're Alcos.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, it sounds like it, but basically after La
Rennie or any, we went to thefirst town we'd been to because
we were running out of groceriesand things as well was Ouse
O-U-S-E is the name of the town.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh well, it's very exciting.
They had a sign that called myname I-G-A.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I-G-A.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Come in, michelle.
I know that sounds reallyboring, but we really were
having such an unplanned tripthat we never knew how long we
were going to stay somewhere andhow many supplies would last.
Um, and we like and we preferto eat fresh fruit and
vegetables predominantly, andthere's only so long that can
last.
So, you know, we were gettingto the bottom of the the fridge
(09:37):
and, um, of course we've got tinfood and I can make bread and
all of that, but that's theemergency stuff, yeah, so really
, um, going to the igas just tosort of top up on the niceties
yeah and oh, we got a gas bottlerefill there.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That was exciting too , because we needed some fuel
and there was all sorts of.
There was all sorts of things.
We were able to do it had been,it had been, it had been
probably weeks since we'dactually found an iga.
So, um, you know, even, evenbecause we'd been out at the
Lake Petra and stuff, you knowwe'd been there for quite a
number of days, there was noshops out there and you know
(10:13):
we'd been down south before thatthere wasn't many shops down
there either.
So we basically cut this path oftrying to cut across, you know,
from the bottom corner toCradle Valley in a sort of a
straight line and we werebasically taking every off-road
road and everything that wecould do to sort of do that at a
diagonal.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And we had a few misadventures Nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Oh, a few roads that you get up to.
You drive a couple of Ks andthen you get a no-through road
or a fence or something.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
But it's worth exploring and that's all the fun
of it, and that's what we do,and it's all part of the mapping
updates.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
They're all part of the map updates, so it's
important for us.
You know, we see a road andwe'll have a go and we'll get
halfway along and there might bea fence that says this is
permanently closed or closed.
Well, all of a sudden, we havea mapping update, and so that's
part of our job and that's whatwe do it for to go, so you don't
have to have misadventures intrying to drag a heavy trailer
up this monstrous hill Now.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I'm not sure if Wondermarfa Wondermar what is it
called Wondermatter?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Oh, is that what it's called, wondermatter the?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
power station.
I'm not sure if it was a hottip we'd been given or we saw it
on our map.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think we just lobbed at it, but we just turned
up Wondermanner.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Wondermanna, okay, and it's just at the bottom of
the Great Lakes, really, andthat you need to allocate a
couple of hours, for If you'reone of these people, that is
passionate about old engineeringand mechanics A mechanic junkie
and engineering and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
if you get off on all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You'll love it.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It was fantastic you know they've got.
It was basically a fullyfunctioning nine turbine power
station up until not so long ago, and you know so they've made
it a full museum now.
So they've got all the originalturbine generators and all the
bits and pieces are all stillall in there, and what they've
done is they've like cut openall the chassis of things so you
(11:59):
can actually look inside howall these things work.
We had a good time All free.
There was no charge.
Yeah, I was just about I'mlooking at the place.
It was a free open daily freefor self-guided tours.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Now, having said that it's self-guided, you usually
do get an introduction by thecaretaker there, the the on-site
guy, who will give you a bit ofa summary of the history, which
you can sense the passionthat's run by volunteers.
It's an amazing building, so itis quite a nice spot and they
do have picnic grounds outsideand a coffee van and things like
that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
If you're in the area , and that's well worth doing.
There are close camps.
The camps that we actually madefor ourselves that night, which
is just how this whole powerstation worked was.
It comes from the Great Lakes.
They pipe some water to anothersmall lagoon, which was called
Penstock Lagoon, and then andPenstocks if you know about this
(12:54):
power generation technology,Penstocks are the tubes that run
.
They run down the sides of themountain where the water is
coming down under pressure intothe turbines at the bottom, and
so this penstock lagoon is justup the hill from the power
station, funnily enough, and itwas fantastic.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, there's about five free designated campsites
um.
Some have toilets pit toiletsbut they're very clean and all
new.
And then all fire.
You can fire there, but thelagoon itself um is well used by
locals um fly fishing um andthey're out there in their
waders but you can have a boatthere.
We've got stand-up paddleboards um.
We found a little bit trickyfrom the camp that we chose to
(13:37):
stay at um to get to the water'sedge.
It was a bit marshy and a bitboggy.
So we just sat back and enjoyedthe view.
Black swans everywhere um.
We had more wallabies coming upto the campfire.
Do you remember we had service?
I had, oh no, the only reasonwe had service was starling
starling.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Okay, I remember the phone call.
You've got to remember.
We have starling, we haveservice wherever we go.
So there's no service, noservice.
I don't think oh no, we have 3gon our PLI symbols for that
place, so maybe there wasservice.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Well, 3g must have been a bit patchy 3G, 4G.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You know we've got the symbol on our campsite, so
it must have had some level ofservice.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
So this area is just south of Miena, the Great Lakes,
and then driving up throughMiena, we're getting into the
Central Highlands, and for us,we are on a mission to check out
another hot tip we've beengiven Apparently, the Liffey
Falls is a fabulous waterfall,so we thought we'd go and look
at that.
On the way in, the mostsignificant natural landform is
(14:37):
this rocky bluff calledProjection Bluff.
It looked magnificent.
There is a hike to it, but theweather started to turn for us,
um, and so we ended up in aweather pattern for the next
week and a half.
Where our plans for all thehiking in this incredible area
of the central highlands, whereit was a hiker's paradise, um,
(15:01):
we, we had a few complicationsbecause some of these hikes
would have been a little bitdangerous In the wet and the
sleet and it was starting to getcold.
We did go to Liffey Falls justbefore the rain started and we
could have walked on a perfectday.
But waterfall and coming rain.
We thought, well, why don't wewait for the rain to make
(15:21):
perfect waterfalls?
And that was a good decision.
So we walked after a massivedownpour but we did.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
The day that it was raining we did a road tour, so
we did we did a bit of a drivearound um and and had a bit of a
look around.
Did we get as far as mole creekand stuff that day?
I don't think we did.
We did it.
We did basically a few loopsaround um, some of the roads in
there, um, we went to deloraineand oh yeah, so from this part
of Tasmania everything's fairlyaccessible and you're getting
(15:49):
into the central north area.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Deloraine is a major shopping point yeah and for us
again, we still hadn't gotenough supplies, so we needed to
head into Deloraine to spendmore time waiting out the
weather.
So we ended up in Deloraine I,I think, in the next stage of
our final stage of our tasmaniantrip.
I think we went four times orsomething like that anyway it
(16:11):
had a big woolies and oh, weneeded to get prescriptions
filled and you know you can doall of that and there's quirky
cafes.
It's actually a lot bigger andmore fun.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, deloray was quite a quite a nice little,
quite a nice little town had anorganic oh it, oh it actually
had a Woolworths.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
We actually had a shop there.
We went there a couple of timesthat was a shop.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That's why we went there four times.
It had a shop.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, liffey Falls.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Liffey Falls Fantastic Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
There's two places that you can access the hike.
You either drive up the hilland park in the Dagus Car Park
or you drive down to the bottomof the falls and a much longer
walk to come up, but a beautifulrainforest walk where the
(16:56):
campground is it's actually downat the bottom.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's not actually near the top there, so the
campsite is down the river a bit.
I think it was 3km, wasn't it 2or 3km?
I've got the file here.
We did 10km of hiking that day,so it must have been a
reasonable walk.
I'm just looking at we did 10.4case, but we did a fair bit
because not only did we walk upthe track to the falls, we went
(17:19):
to all of the lookouts.
We then went to the car park.
We went to the other end of itand walked around where there's
a big tree and some toilets andother stuff.
That's at the actual carparking at upper liffey falls or
the Liffey Falls mainentranceway.
But that whole hike and thewhole place, it was really
wonderful.
Obviously, we'd come in justafter the rain and the water was
(17:41):
pumping and the waterfalls wereflowing.
Yeah, it was a very spectacularplace.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
We stayed there what?
Three months or something, Ithink, in the end, by the time
that was all said and done.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
But you got stung by a wasp or a hornet or something.
Oh my god, yeah, to put apicture in your mind.
You know you walk around withshorts on right um, you walk
around with shorts on, so I wasjust walking around and there
was a.
When we arrived, there was likethere was.
There was obviously somethingon the ground or something had
happened.
There was thousands of thesebee-type wasps.
I think they were a wasp.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
We picked this great campsite.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But I said to Dave oh , no, there's bees on the ground
, or?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
whatever it is, I go.
I don't think this is where wewant to camp.
And you discounted it, sayingno, it'll be fine, it'll be fine
, they'll go away.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I shouldn't have discounted it, I was getting
something out of the car and oneof those little buggers flew up
the gap in my shorts, up my leg, you know, up my pants, and I
kind of didn't realise it wasthere, and then I just bent my
legs which has obviouslysquished my pants against my leg
, and the little guy decidedthat that was enough to throw in
(18:48):
the sting.
Oh, that was brutal, brutalthat took about four days for
that one.
That was really.
That was a beauty.
It hurt.
It hurt like a bee.
I thought it was a bee for awhile and then it just, it just
didn't go away for a long time.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
They didn't go until the rain showers had gone
through, yeah, um, until theweather had completely changed.
So it was quite humid when wegot there originally.
And lot of camps.
It's quite popular and mostpeople just come one night, two
nights.
This is the lower liffey fallscamping reserve so if you're in
tasmania you see these littlewaspy bees and stuff they
strongly urge you to try not toget stung, yeah look, the main
(19:27):
thing to make people aware of ifyou are going to that place and
you're towing a caravan, evenour camper trailer the winding
road in the most direct roaddown from Deloraine down to
there past the junction, it'spretty sketchy.
So we decided we'd check outthe tourist drive and it's all
flat.
(19:47):
So the long way around fromDeloraine via liffey, and if you
do that you'll go past ura ura,which is where um bob brown,
the former um senator for thegreens party, um he has set up,
so it's now set up with the wellit's where he used to live and
it's now set up as a museum.
(20:08):
I think it's got the lovely homeand now it's his museum and now
it's a museum, so that's agreat place.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And, yeah, that little sneaky drive around it's
on.
Is that on Bogan Road?
I think I've got it on the maphere, I think it was something
like that.
So you come in on a slightlydifferent road and it's much
flatter and it was a lot easier.
So you wouldn't really take abig van to this place.
It's still fairly steep andthat, but you a lot easier to
get in.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
um yeah, um.
So it's bush heritage australiaum yeah and they, they manage
it.
And we happen to be there when,um the caretaker was just
walking around and we had awonderful chat with him.
If we'd realised it was there,I was thrilled because I'd seen
(20:58):
the movie that had come out onlyend of last year with Bob Brown
, the Tasmanian one thatfeatures the little cottage
there.
So if you'd seen that movie aswell I think it's called Giants,
I think it's called Giants,something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, the road is Gulf Road.
Yeah, it's a goodants.
I think it's called Giants,something like that.
Yeah, the road is Golf Road.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, it's a good spot to go and allocate a little
bit of time to go and have alook, because you've got to go
on a bit of a hike and have alook around, yeah, so we had a
bit of a hiccup when we leftthere.
It wasn't long past there andwe got a phone call from one of
our kids saying that he had justwritten off his brother's car.
So our two sons have beenliving in our house while we've
(21:34):
been away on this trip.
They've had the responsibilityof keeping the fort, and this
was not the phone call that youwant to have, because of course
I thought he was injured.
The first thing that came out ofhis mouth he was in the car.
He just had the accident.
And look, long story short, I'mnot going to bore you with the
details, but it really haschanged our trip and I wanted to
(21:58):
go home and so we're sitting bythe side of the road I'm crying
.
Dave is going.
What do I do?
Unhappy passenger here and wehad unfinished business with
Tasmania because we still hadn'tgot to Cradle Valley and we
hadn't been there.
The 20 years ago we tried toget to cradle valley.
So we're really torn.
But he found me a spot on aplane and he could get us on the
(22:21):
ferry in two days time and theshock had passed.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
We we worked out the logistics and the requirements
and it wasn't as critical as we.
I mean, it is critical, it wascritical, it is critical, it has
been critical.
It still is kind of critical,yeah, but it wasn't something
that we were going to be able tofix in five minutes, so we
decided to put that one on theside burner.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Stay calm and carry on.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
So after Liffey and that kind of area and dropping
into Deloraine and having a lookaround there, we basically
housed ourselves at Mole CreekCastle National Park.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, so Mole Creek is very easily accessible from
Deloraine and we got to thisspot on a hot tip from a friend
and it's a spot where there'shoneycomb caves.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, so you can go.
You can go sort of free cavingon your own in there.
Um, they were quite.
That was a good bit of fun.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
It wasn't super spectacular or anything
wonderful, but lots of cavesgoes for a long way if you've
got your headlamp, you've got totake headlamps and you can go
in quite a long way.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Some people say they've gone in for kilometres.
But I wasn't that keen.
I didn't need to get down on myhands and knees and go crawling
through a little teeny weecrack in a cave to go into
another hole.
To go into another hole.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But just past the cave entrance, which has the
information signboard, andthere's this wonderful grassy
area with these magnificentviews to the mountains, and it's
a free camp.
Yeah, free camp.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And we went oh wow, well, it's actually a national
park camp, but it was free.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, okay, that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
It is in the national park and it is free and what's
the limit?
I don't remember.
Well, I don't remember seeing asign there about the limit,
about how long the campsitelimit is.
You probably a sign there aboutthe limit, um, about how long
the campsite limit is?
You probably have it in thedescription, uh but it doesn't
say okay.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But I want to tell you a little story about when we
get there.
So we get there and it's um,middle of the day, beautiful
time of day, beautiful weatherand everything, and we set up
and it took us a little whilebecause it's not the flattest
and fussing around we were.
We didn't want to.
There was no, not many otherpeople there, so we didn't want
to block it off because it'sbeautiful grass.
So we tried to allocate a spotthat worked for us, that would
(24:36):
work for others and we knewwe're going to use it as a bit
of a base camp.
Anyway.
We go off for a hike thinkingwe've set it up perfect.
We come back and we've beenparked in.
There is and not.
Have we just been parked in bythis caravan?
They have strung up theirwashing all the way around,
encroaching into our camp.
(24:57):
View of the beautiful landscape.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
A 180-degree clothesline that must have gone
about 25 metres, 30 metres long,all their underwear and their
jeans and their sheets and allof that, and they were
travelling in convoy.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The other caravan had set up in the appropriate spot
that to anyone that's got commonsense, that was the obvious
spot to go.
I just don't know why this guyset up where he did, because he
actually had angled his carhooked to his caravan in such a
way that we could not leave ifwe wanted to.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We couldn't hook up our car, we couldn't hook up our
camper trailer.
Not only could we not hook upour car, he was in front of the
drawbar.
Yeah, not only could we nothook up our car, it was
basically like he was sitting inhis chair in our storage box at
the front of our camper andevery moment they moved we just
oh, we could just hear it andsee it.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
They were basically right on talking, all right so
because we're not used tostaying in caravan parks and
we're in this open area, it justfelt a little bit too close and
it was obvious there was a lotof space around us.
Um, so you've got to remember,we just had this shocking,
emotional phone call and we were, our emotions were a little bit
where are you going with this?
Well, you then had an angryargument with the guy with his
(26:09):
caravan no, I didn him know.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I didn't appreciate his laundry or the proximity to
his campsite, and one of us wasgoing to go.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
It was not going to stay.
So it was either we were goingto go or he was going to go, and
thankfully they packed up andthey left.
So we probably have a badreputation if he told his
friends.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Sorry about that, but it was just not a friendly way
there was plenty of things goingon for us, which is beside the
point, but there's a thingcalled common courtesy and
decency, and if you're going topush the line.
When I broached it with him, hejumped down my throat, so it
(26:47):
was obvious, he was verydefensive.
He knew he was encroaching buthe thought, oh yeah, it would be
perfect, but it wasn't soAnyway, past that we spent four
days there or something and wetoured basically the whole area.
We did Deloraine again.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We did a drive to.
We did a few days' time trip toMole Creek oh we also did the
big trip, the actual little townlocation of Mole Creek.
We also did.
We had a look at Wild Merseyfor some mountain biking, which
we thought we were gonna doafter we'd finished Cradle
Mountain and we did, yeah, a bigtrip.
The second last morning or onemorning we woke up and we went
(27:24):
to.
Oh, I knew I had a batteryproblem.
There was a slight problem withthe car, the car batteries.
I'd had a one of the terminals.
The car's got two starterbatteries and one of the
terminals on one of thebatteries had gone all coppery
like um, it was actually likecopper sulfate had built up on
(27:44):
the whole connectors.
On the whole.
The whole connector was greenand and like loaded with
crystals all over it what'shappened here?
obviously what I found was thatthe battery terminal, um, where
the battery terminal goes intothe battery, it actually cracked
a little bit around the edge sothat the the acid and the
fluids inside the battery wasleaking out, going up the
(28:05):
terminal onto the contacts andcorroding all the copper and
stuff.
And I'd known that for a fewdays.
So I knew the batteries weregetting a bit.
It was going to get a bitsuspicious.
But we went out to go for a daytour and we went out to go on
this day tour because I knew Ineeded to do the batteries.
But we go to start the car andit goes and it just didn't do
(28:26):
anything.
So we were going to change thebatteries.
That wasn't the problem.
It's just that we had to jumpstart our car and we used our
little itech world um three,js80 or whatever it is, and it's
actually able to start this car.
We may have learned um when,when it needs to, which is
(28:47):
perfect.
I bought it for that uh and itand it did its job well.
So that was a a good thing tolearn.
Obviously we've got lots ofbatteries and we can have a bit
of a discussion about thebattery management and all that
sort of stuff.
Um, but the two star batterieswhen one goes, the other one
will go.
They're connected in paralleland that's just battery
technology.
If you lose one, you lose themboth.
(29:07):
So they both had to go.
So I tripped to bernie.
Uh no, we were going to go tobernie, but it was too far.
Oh yeah, we went.
We went on a bit of a road tour.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
We need to go for a long drive to charge up the
batteries okay, that's what.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That was the plan.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Actually, it was a long drive, it was a long drive
to charge the batteries and youwanted to go to a Bunnings.
So I looked on Google and Ifound there was a Bunnings at
Devonport and there was aBunnings at Burnie and there's
no need to go to Devonport.
We've been there and we've gotto go back there at the end.
So, okay, we haven't been toBurnie this trip.
So I plotted him out a260-kilometre round trip for the
(29:47):
day to charge the batteries,and halfway through that trip
we'd be at the Bunnings and onthe way we thought we'd do our
usual work, which is updatingplaces and verifying what exists
.
We did so many of these that wegot so exhausted and so tired
and it was nearly four o'clockwhen the shop was going to start
that we made a change.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It was actually super cheap because we had to go and
buy the batteries.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Oh super cheap, was it?
It was actually super cheapbecause we had to go and buy the
batteries.
Oh super cheap, was it?
I'm sorry, not funnys.
It was super cheap to buy thebatteries.
Yes, super cheap.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But you know, yeah, we did this trip and we're
trying to get out there and westarted working again, and then
blom, blom, blom and we've gone.
Oh, let's go left instead ofright.
Oh, look down here, there's agreat thing.
Oh, so all of a sudden, I'mlooking at my watch and going,
gee love, it's 3 o'clock orsomething and we've still got to
(30:32):
get.
Not only have we got to get toSlipachook, we've got to get
there, we've got to be able tobuy the batteries, we've got to
install it, we've got to do allthis freaking around, and I
looked at the website and itsaid that the one at Burnie was
going to shut at 4.30 and theone in Devonport was going to be
five or six or something, so wedecided to quickly change our
plans.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
So we changed our plan and got to Devonport.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
And we got there at about 4.20 or something and
bought the batteries andeverything.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So we were in the car park there and it's one of
these mega super centres thathas everything.
It had Anaconda it goes.
Do you want new shoes?
It had BCF Anaconda.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
It had everything it had super cheap, it had car
yards, it had all sorts of shops, some shops we'd never even
seen before Brands and thingslike that.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
So you actually replaced the batteries, the two
charging cranking batteriesunder the bonnet of the 200
Series Land Cruiser that we haveout of a trolley in the car
park.
And I'm in the car park and I'mprobably looking filthy, dirty,
hiking boots and grubby and I'mmaking lunch out of the back of
the car, making a wrap andspreading the avocado and
putting the lettuce on everyonewho lives in devonport.
(31:37):
You know everyday shoppers.
They're looking at us a bitweird.
What are you doing?
desperate anyway we did what wehad to do solve the problem and
then we hightailed it all theway back to our camp down the
highway from Devonport.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, back to Mole Creek.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah, back through Mole Creek.
Yeah, so we were exhausted.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, we were pretty exhausted that day.
That ended up being a biggerday than it should have been,
but oh well, that's what happenswhen you do these kind of
things.
So, whilst we'd been in thatarea, you know that Mole Creek,
so we did Dellerone a few times.
When did we go and do thatmountain biking at Wild Mersey?
When did we actually do that?
Was that part of that?
Or did we end up doing that aspart of that because we decided
(32:22):
to go and do that mountainbiking day, so we went up to
Sheffield, wasn't?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
it Yep, wasn't that?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
where we went.
Yeah, so we went up toSheffield and had a look at some
mountain biking at a placecalled Wild Mersey.
It's a network of MTB trails,yeah and it links with Browton
and Sheffield and a few townstogether it was a lot easier
than what we've done at theother places, but it was still
challenging, yeah except thatthey didn't have.
They didn't have shuttles, soyou had to ride yourself up the
(32:49):
hill.
You know that always makes it alittle bit harder when you're
on a pedal bike.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Oh, that's right, I've briefly forgotten the pain.
That actually was quite a harduphill, yeah, and I had a decent
stack that day that actuallyaffected my knee and still was
giving me a bit of grief, so itwasn't that easy actually it
wasn't that easy, but it was abit of fun, and we so the
highlight for me of thatmountain biking ride was to get
the views of Mount Roland Nowwhat I was talking about earlier
, this whole central highlandswith some fabulous hikes.
(33:16):
This Mount Roland is a veryvisual feature of that whole
area.
It is absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It'll be on the postcards and it'll be on the
tourism brochures.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Our weather had not been that great and I really,
really wanted to do the hikingthere, but you know what?
We actually didn't do it, so Iwas glad we got halfway up a
mountain that looked across toit, at least on our bikes.
It's an area that we'll comeback to and do some more hiking.
Do you know the one thing wedidn't tell our listeners in
this podcast that we did do atMountfield National Park?
This is important.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
We extended our.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
National Parks Pass.
So here's a hot tip when youcome to Tasmania, you can buy
your Parks Pass on the ferry andthey have a thing called a
holiday pass and it gives youtwo months.
So we originally thought wewere going to be six weeks in
Tasmania, so we thought we'd buythe holiday pass because that
would give us enough.
As it turned out, if you'vebeen listening to our previous
(34:14):
podcast, you'll realise that wehave extended our trip in
Tasmania and it meant that weweren't actually going to have
that National Parks Pass valid.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
When we wanted to do it for Cradle Mountain, which
was Easter yeah and CradleValley is obviously such a
hotspot tourist point.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It is not the kind of place you want to be without
your parks pass, in fact, it'simpossible.
You can't, you can't be therewithout your parks pass so I
didn't want it to expire becausethen we'd have to buy something
again full price.
But I went into the nationalparks office at mountfield and
said while it was still valid wehad a few days left.
Can, can we extend it?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
So listen to this For $5.
Well, it was $86 or $87 orsomething to buy the four-week
one, and $96 or $5 or somethingto buy the annual one, and
$120-something to buy a two-yearone, and so we only had to pay
the difference between thefour-week one and the annual one
and, yeah, it ended up costingabout $5 or $6 to go from a.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So we now have an annual pass.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, so we've got to go back from our date of
purchase.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
So we are going to be able to go back to Tasmania,
hopefully, if the stars alignwith the rest of life as it does
, to get us back in Tasmaniaagain for the start of the 24
summer season the 24, 25 summerseason.
So stay tuned for that because,yeah, we missed some things in
Tassie, as you do, it's amassive place.
There's so much to do.
(35:40):
Our time was not enough.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And our movement, our decision to move on, was to
make sure that we couldundertake the rest of the trip
and go up the east coast and bein the weather at the right time
and not too cold, yeah.
And to take the rest of thetrip and go up the east coast
and be in the weather at theright time and not too cold,
yeah, and not have to.
You know, we didn't want tohave to scoot through victoria
or new south wales to get out ofit being too cold.
So that's why we sort of hadfixed that leaving at easter,
yeah okay, so let's talk aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So at this point we decided okay, the reality is,
we've got easter either intasmania or in Victoria.
And we had made that decisionwhen we did the booking that
Tasmania would be quieter inEaster than Victoria, just based
on population.
But we had left Cradle Mountaintill the last, which was
(36:23):
probably the most touristy partof Tasmania for Easter, so we
thought maybe this isn't such agood thing.
How about we book it out andactually stay in Cradle Valley
at the Discovery Parks CaravanPark there?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, we had no idea we could even get a booking.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, I know Over.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Easter we were going yeah, it was like Monday or
something and Easter's Thursdayand we ring them up and say, can
we get a booking for fournights of Easter?
And they went.
Yeah sure, four nights ofEaster.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
and they went yeah, sure yeah, and it's because it's
so highly priced and probablypeople don't book it up.
But honestly it was worth everypenny.
Let's not jump to that just yet, because we had booked it right
.
But then our next part is wewent from Mole Creek.
We ended up down at LakeParangana and we loved it so
(37:10):
much there that we actuallyforfeited the beginning of our
Easter booking over at CradleValley, because Lake.
Parangana was so good.
So around the Lake Paranganaarea the road ends as you head
further south into the.
What's the big national parkdown there?
(37:30):
Walls of Jerusalem, Walls ofJerusalem, Walls of Jerusalem.
But we did want to drive allthe way down in case we could
see the views.
The drive there you can'treally see the mountains as well
as I thought we might, so it'sa long drive.
Don't do it for the views Onlygo if you are going to do the
hikes.
Lake Parangatta.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Lake Parangatta.
We got the supps out we LakeParangatta.
Lake Parangatta we got thesupps out, we stayed there for a
few days the weather wasperfect, there was no breeze, it
was sunny each day, there wasno rain.
You know, it was ideal and thecamping location and the way
that the campsites were sort ofset up well separated fires
(38:11):
allowed All the good stuff thatcampers should be.
It was almost what you wouldcall a perfect place to camp.
It was ideal, so it hadeverything for us.
And, yeah, as Michelle said,instead of going on the Friday
to Cradle Valley.
We said, ah stuff it we'll stayat Lake Parangana.
We'll just forfeit the $60 or$70 or $80 or $90 or whatever it
(38:33):
costs us per night at CradleValley, just because this place
is so good.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Well, really, four nights is too long in Cradle.
Valley and I didn't know thatfully until I started to do a
bit more research and then Irealized, wow, we're going to be
able to do one big hike and doeverything we really need to do
in that one, and then you want aday either side, so I really
only needed the three.
So I justified it that way andsince we already had the perfect
(38:59):
camp, okay, it didn't end upbeing a free camp if you factor
that in and then we got to do anice four-wheel drive circuit
well, not circuit through routeinstead of doubling back and
getting on the windy um bitumenroads um, we went to borodale
road.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, it's up in the hills.
So basically, from lakeparangana we went a bit further
south and there's a road thatsort of hacks its way up into
the hills and it was a bit steepand hilly.
It was fantastic because wewere driving up there and it was
cloudy.
It was a foggy, misty morning,beautiful we couldn't actually
see very far in front of the caras we're driving up this hill
(39:40):
and all of a sudden you justcome to sort of the top and the
fog's gone and the fog's belowyou and you're driving up there
and you can see all the fog inthe valley all around Lake
Parangatta.
It was really spectacular.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I actually just published on social media the
photos of that drive and did awhole story about that drive so
that's already available on oursocial media, on both Instagram
and Facebook.
You can see the photos thatwe're talking about with the
mist and a description of thefour-wheel drive route that we
took, and really to get fromLake Parangatta to Cradle Valley
was only 75 kilometres.
(40:11):
The slow way that we went,four-wheel drive.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
We also did Caffina Dam and a few other.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
We did work on the way as we did, so we took a
whole day doing it.
We also cut out going back onthe main road, which was all the
twisty twisty twisty that we'dalready done on the battery
driving day, and so this roadwhere we did over the top of the
hill it basically was able totake us out to the bridge that
went across the river without ushaving to do all this
complicated twisty driving.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, near Kithana and Moina.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
So then, really in our summary of our time in
Tasmania, we've brought you upto for us, cradle Valley, which
was a real highlight.
I can't express how much.
It is the most magnificent,most beautiful place visually to
see and even if you're not ahiker, you really come.
(41:03):
Let's break it down.
You can get on a shuttle fromthe car park where there's a
visitor centre, or driveyourself to the ranger station
and jump on a shuttle.
You need a National Parks passof some sort to be able to get
on the shuttle and you pay $15,you get a three-day pass.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Three consecutive day pass, depending which pass
you've got.
Oh okay, all right.
Well, this is how it works forus.
There's a bit of technicality.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Anyway, this is how it works for us.
There's a bit of technicality.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Anyway, this shuttle is a hop-on, hop-off.
There's basically it runs allday.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
There's four stations and the two major ones where
the hiking trailheads are isDove Lake and Ronnie Creek, and
on our first day there wethought we'd check out and just
do a day trip on the bus.
Let's go on a tour on the bus.
So we weren't in our hikinggear, we weren't planning to
walk.
It was actually really hot whereit was hot hot hotter than our
(41:53):
clothing yeah, it was 30something yeah, yeah, but the
sky was blue, there was no wind,so we went to dove lake um off
the shuttle and it just enjoyedbeing a tourist as non-hikers
with all, with all the othertourists, with all the others.
But everyone was politeeverything was pleasant.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
It was busy, though.
We got our tourist photos.
It was Easter, as we say,middle of Easter.
It was busy.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
But we planned our day's hike by going into the
visitor centre, talking to theranger there, sorting it all out
, got ourselves a plan of whatwe wanted to do, got our nice
photo view and of course theweather changed and we woke up
on our hiking day a little bitovercast, but we'd already seen
the weather.
(42:34):
Do this and look Tasmania, you,you take everything that comes
at you and don't make a plan ofwhat it's like first thing in
the morning, because you, youcan get four seasons in one day
well, not as bad as that, butbut the day before had similar
weather patterns, just that weweren't there in the morning.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
So I kind of had half a clue that hopefully most of
this cloud would blow away.
And by the time we got aroundon our walk and started walking,
I mean, there was no rain, itwas nothing like that, it was
just patchy cloud which you knowwas probably affecting the
photographer here more than theactual location.
But by the time we'd done halfa day's walking, it was
perfectly clear.
(43:10):
And another wonderful, perfectday, yep, which everyone who
lives there and works there wastelling us was absolutely
unbelievable.
They say they only have is it20 or 30 days a year where it's
not raining at Cradle Mountain,if you didn't know that, and we
had three in a row.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Three in a row.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
yeah, that were perfect, perfect weather for
hiking, perfect weather forsightseeing and taking photos
and doing stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
So our big hike that we did the following day, which?
Speaker 2 (43:40):
wasn't that big.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
We took the shuttle to Ronnie Creek and it doesn't
have a toilet.
Like, oh, I need to go to thetoilet.
So we got back on the shuttleto Ronnie Creek and it doesn't
have a toilet.
They go, I need to go to thetoilet.
So we got back on the shuttle,went to Dove Lake shuttle point,
went to the toilet there, backon the shuttle, back to Ronnie
Creek.
So we had a bit of a late startto the day, but that's all
right.
So it was only about 9.30, 10o'clock and we did a 10K hike.
(44:02):
So we headed out from RonnieCreek on the Overland Track
which then picks onto the horsetrack, and then we went out to
Crater Peak and at this pointyou are looking over a beautiful
crater.
Then you can look out over toMarion's Lookout, which a lot of
people hike from there toMarion's.
(44:23):
That's the actual OverlanderTrack, yeah, so the horse track
takes you around a different way, but we were able to look back
over Cradle Lake and Marion'slookout and Dove Lake, so it was
spectacular views From thatpeak, from Cradle Peak.
You look behind you and you seeCradle Mountain.
Now we're at this peak and itwas all grey.
There's clouds hanging over thetop of cradle mountain and then
(44:51):
suddenly I don't know whathappens a bird squawks and the
clouds dissipated and it waspicture perfect.
So out comes all the cameragear and the gopro and then from
there hiking towards um kitchenhut.
It's boardwalk and I have takenmy most favorite pictures of
our whole tasmania trip and I'vepublished these as well and
you'll see them the boardwalksnaking its way to kitchen hut,
(45:14):
with most magnificent view ofcradle mountain in the distance
and the intersection of all thehikers that have been on the
alternative path, um, the moremainstream one from marion's
lookout.
It intersects with us at kitchenhut and everyone was at kitchen
hut.
Everyone uses that as like amorning tea stop, lunch stop,
whatever.
(45:34):
It was very, very busy there.
And then from there you've gotto make your decision as to
whether you're going to do thesummit up to cradle mountain or
not.
Um, otherwise you do what'scalled the face track.
If you do the face track, whichis what we decided to do, it's
quite a long excursion.
You're going all the way backtowards the is it west, east,
(45:58):
east, sorry?
And you come to Hanson's Peakand you're at the top looking
down at Dove Lake and you getanother whole big extension of
the hike and the face itself isthe face of Cradle Mountain.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
So when you look at Cradle Mountain on a view it
looks like it's quite wide, abig sort of it's wider at the
base, wider at the base, thesmaller at the top.
So it's like a mountain butit's quite a wide thing.
And the face track takes youacross, basically where a
transition in the slope, it'sslopes and then it goes straight
(46:32):
up.
So you basically walk under thebit where there's still terrain
and looking up at the cliffface that goes up to the top of
the mountain.
It was really spectacular.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
It was a very narrow track.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
It wasn't the most easy walk in that, but it was.
There weren't many people on it.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
There was a very narrow track.
It wasn't the most easy walk inthat, but it was.
There weren't many people on itthere was a few, but not too
many, whereas scrambling up tothe top of Cradle Mountain
whilst we're both physicallycapable and I really thought
that we would do it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, that Wild Mersey mountain biking issue
that I'd mentioned earlier, thatI'd hurt my knee, had already
happened.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, and David had a knee brace.
I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I wasn't particularly comfortable uh 100 to add
another two hour extremescramble, rock climb thing into
our journey for the day.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
So and we probably did make the right decision,
because we came across anothercouple that had done it and then
started the face track and theywere crying.
They were bailing out theycouldn't complete the face track
, having done the summit, andshe said it was too much I've
I've bitten off too much than Ican do, and that's a shame,
because then she had to godownhill and bail out of the
(47:38):
track.
There is um a section where youcan bail out off the face track
and it's called will wilkestrack and when you do that you
come straight down to Dove Lakeand you level quite quickly.
But for us we were able tocontinue on and we got to the
Ranger Hut Emergency Shelter andthe Lake Rodway and Lake
(47:59):
Hanson's Track and Hanson's Peakwas spectacular because we were
able to actually look all theway back out to those um to not
mate rowland, whatever it wasback at the western walls of
jerusalem and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
So you get, we got.
We got views all the way towalls of jerusalem and and and
quite quite a long way, and areally panoramic spot.
In fact, I've just opened upthe hansen's peak place in the
traveler app and there's a fewphotos in there, so have a look
at the photos.
We've loaded all the photos, orwe've loaded some of the photos
, into the places system so youcan see some of the things that
(48:32):
we're talking about and some ofthe spectacular views that we
were afforded when we were there.
It was really a nice place.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
And so this hike, doing this circuit, we were able
to end at dove lake and, ofcourse, get on the shuttle
within a few minutes.
The shuttle comes along, butthey run on a continuous circuit
based on demand.
Um, it's really really well runplace.
That whole place understandshow to deal with a volume of
people.
So, if you can consider, we arehappy and we have been there
(49:02):
over easter um, that's sayingsomething because we'll complain
about too many crowds and rah,rah, rah and look, we really
enjoyed ourselves and we spent alot of nightly fee at the
Discovery Parks.
But again, that place wasreally well done, good
facilities.
I got good laundry done, so wewere able to leave Tasmania with
(49:22):
everything washed and dried andclean At there.
We were able to use power andwater hooked in directly into
the camper trailer so we didn'thave power issues and water
issues.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Um, we were happy, happy campers and you know and
you think about these poorpeople that we were just talking
about.
You know having to bail out awalk and stuff.
You don't want to have to havethat kind of thing in your head
when you come to a lovely place.
You know he wasn't able tofinish the thing or he wasn't
able to do this so so making ita little bit, making it a little
bit easier.
It wasn't easy, it was still asolid days hiking, uh well, I
(49:53):
can't remember the kilometers, Idon't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
It was only about 10 or so, but it was.
Look.
That's strenuous for mostpeople, I'm sure, and there's a
lot of ascent in thatparticularly.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
There's a lot of up and down and lots of lots of,
lots of um, hammering the kneesup and down as you go up and
down the hills and stuff likethat, which wasn't great when
you've got a slight knee problem.
But oh, you know, cradlemountain, cradle valley, that
kind of area we'll be back.
I suspect that we'll probablytry and book in the overland
track for that return journeythat we might try and do oh,
coming into season 24, 25.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I've got the facts on all this because, to make sure
that we're prepared for that,these were some things I did not
know.
So when we first planned tocome to Tasmania if you've been
listening to the earlier podcastwe thought Well, it was only a
last-minute thing, yeah.
Yeah, we thought we wouldn't beable to get a booking because
our whole plan of travellingaround Australia is all out of
(50:43):
sync with the right time of yearand the right place and all
that.
So it's been a bit of ahodgepodge put it together plan.
So we didn't have advancedbooking for coming for Tasmania.
We booked it in December and wearrived in January, and I've
mentioned this before in anearlier podcast.
That is possible if yourvehicle manages under 2.1 high
(51:04):
and under 10 metres long.
So with our camper trailer wefit in that metric.
So if if you can fit into that,you you can get bookings, um,
and you can adjust your bookingsonce you've got one um.
But what I couldn't do was bookthe overland track at cradle
valley.
So how that works is there's asummer peak hiking season which
starts on the 1st of October.
(51:24):
Yep, 1st of October through to31st of May is your summer
hiking season.
Now there's a booking period tobook your hiking for that whole
period every day of that.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
If you're doing the full overland track.
This is talking about not justany little day trips around.
Yeah, the five, six dayovernight, the overland track,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
The booking period opens in early july and on the
day, within hours that they openthe booking period, every
single day of the booking periodis booked out for hiking.
The reason for this is they capthe number of hikers for
independent hiking.
They'll only allow 34 hikersper day to start.
So you book your hike as yourstarting day.
(52:07):
You don't have to nominate howmany days and where you're going
to stop.
They don't care about that.
So you can.
The shortest distance of theoverland track is 65 kilometers,
but most people will extendthat distance by doing a few
side trips out and back.
There's one of them.
Um is is another 15 kilometers.
So you know some people will beout there for nine days, not
(52:29):
just the shortest thing, fivedays.
That doesn't matter.
In your booking it's it's yourstart date.
That matters and because they'recapping that, you really have
to make sure that you know whatyou're doing and you're booking
in advance.
So if we are going to do it forthis season, we have to be
online and making that bookingon the 1st of July or the
opening.
They haven't announced theexact day of the opening.
(52:51):
It's early July For the winterhiking season.
That booking period opened onthe 1st of May, which has just
happened, and you still havecaps.
But because it's prone to snow,rain, sleets, blizzard, the
whole lot, there's less people.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
You really have to be very experienced to cope with
that.
You can get a booking for thewinter hiking period.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
We have friends that hiked it in winter, but there's
no way I'm doing that Anyway.
And when we left Cradle Valley,we woke up in the morning
packed up and drove straight toDerwent.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
We drove to Burnie because we drove the long way.
We had a whole day we didn'thave to be on the boat till 7.30
at night or 8 o'clock at night,9 o'clock at night, or
something 9.30 it was, so wespent the day touring around.
So we finally got to Burnie,after not doing it the first
time.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Oh yeah, Burnie and Penguin and all of those places,
yeah, and Top of Creek and allthose things along the coast and
we had a decent day.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
We checked out a few campsites and a few locations
around the area.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
We had more time than what we needed to do with.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Very, very.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
It was a bit leisurely yeah, and, and we got
to.
We ended up going back to theshops, at the same shops again.
We did.
You wanted to buy more hikingboots or shoes or something.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Oh yeah, my hiking sandals, my hiking uh steva
sandals and crap themselves whohad to buy some new sandals.
And then, yeah, then back overto davenport and join the queue
to jump on the boat and you know, the boat trip well getting.
I don't even know where I'mtrying to go right now.
That was kind of the end of.
(54:35):
TAS.
You know, and we had such agreat time in Tasmania and, as
you've been hearing us talkingabout now, you know we're
already planning to possibly getthere so that we can save our
$100 National Parks Pass.
So we're already planning topossibly get there so that we
can save our $100 National ParksPass, so we don't have to buy
another one you know what agreat excuse is to say I've
still got a National Parks Passand I have to go and spend a few
(54:56):
grand on the ferry to go back.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, but look, the reason we've put so much time
into the last three podcaststhat we've prepared on Tasmania
is that we've really been verypassionate about the experience
there, as we hope we've inspiredyou Highly recommend planning a
trip to Tassie.
But the number one takeawayfrom all of this is you cannot
(55:23):
book enough time there.
There is so much to do that isso good.
So please, please, please.
Nine weeks that we started withis barely enough.
We have circumnavigatedTasmania before in three weeks
and gone all the way around thewhole thing and knew that we had
to come back and do this longertrip.
Now we've done this longer trip.
It's still not enough and we'regoing to go back and do more.
I might be preaching to theconverted.
(55:45):
Any of you that have alreadyvisited Tasmania know this.
But if you have never been toTasmania, take it from those
that are telling you now Go aslong as you can.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Go three months, go four months and, of course, all
the data for your great journeyand adventure has all been
updated within the ExplorosTraveller app.
That's what we do each day andthat's what we've spent our
entire daytimes doing while wewere in Tasmania.
So there's a great wealth ofnew photos and the tracks and
track log updates.
There's a whole myriad ofcontent updates that Michelle's
(56:20):
been putting through onto thewhole system.
So if you're planning to orthinking of going to Tasmania,
nothing better than the ExplorosTraveler app.
You can see all these greatphotos and all these great
destinations that we went to.
You can have a look at ourtrack log, which is available in
the track log system so you cansee exactly where we went if
that floats your boat and andknow all the locations and the
(56:42):
names.
Fantastic place, highlyrecommended Tassie.
If you haven't been there, yougot to go.
Okay, so it's been a while since we last recorded a
podcast and a lot of things havehappened since then.
But just to backtrack where ourlast podcast ended off, we were
at Lake Edgar in Tasmania, inthe Southwest National Park.
So we have actually spent intotal 12 weeks touring around
(00:22):
Tasmania, so in this episodewe're going to try and fill in
the final section of theTasmanian trip.
So from Lake Edgar, which we'vealready mentioned in the
previous podcast so if you wantto learn about that one, jump
back an episode From here youhave to actually double back on
your drive.
(00:42):
So there were some things thatwe'd seen along the way and we'd
earmarked as places that wewanted to stop at.
Um, we'd been givenrecommendations, as you do, from
other travelers, aboutworthwhile places to stop, so we
didn't get very far out of lakeedgar on our first day pulling
out of there basically, that'snot getting very far on a day of
traveling.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That always seems to happen.
We went, we went with one planand, as usually and it always
happens I decided I had to climbup this thing called the
Needles and that was a greatlittle climb.
So if you're going out that waypast Medina or into that sort
of area, it's not a simple one.
It's a bit steep.
It was a bit of fun.
It took me I don't know an houror an hour and a half.
(01:21):
Um, it's a basically straight upand there's some wonderful
views up there.
So we we did that.
We also did another thingcalled what was that?
The little teeny, weeny walks.
Is that the creepy crawly walk?
And something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Can I just mention one of the reasons that we
wanted to climb that needles umand you, if you've been there,
you'll know this and if you'reabout to go there, prepare
yourselves.
The views here of these amazingsteep, rugged, scottish looking
um craigy cliffs is reallyspectacular.
(01:53):
And there's the hikes there arereally that are posted are too
hard, they're so long and likewe're really into our hiking but
we just weren't set up formulti-day hikes and they're
really long and they're justhard to do casually.
But this needles thing lookedlike we could just pull over by
the side of the road, scrambleup the hills about a kilometer
up to the top.
So we thought, yay, let's dothat.
And the view from the top isreally fun.
(02:14):
If you're really into yourphotography, stand at the top
there and look down.
You get this beautiful windingroad and there was groups of
motorcyclists fanging along.
So snaking along on this narrowroad through the beautiful
craggy views was great.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So on a good day it's just a good spot to enjoy the
scenery before you head out ofthat area and that's about the
last of the views there yeah,that's about the last of things
to do in that kind of yeah, whatwould you call the area central
, central inland?
I don't know what they actuallycall that area.
I I know central plateau, Idon't know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So for us, we had also gone past Medina.
Now, anyone that's intomountain biking will probably
already know that Medina hasearned its place on the map of
Tasmania because it has quite aworld-renowned mountain biking
downhill bike park.
And our bad luck is that it wasa competition weekend so it was
(03:07):
really crowded, but we stillreally wanted to go.
Unfortunately we just missedthe season, so it's not.
At that time it was no longerthe summer, so it wasn't open
every day and you could only.
It was only open friday tomonday, yep, and we came through
, like on the sunday or or other, so I went in and I was
overwhelmed, to be honest.
(03:27):
There was a smorgasbord, as ifyou're at a ski lift area
working out what costs what, andI couldn't get out of there
other than spending $70 to get alift pass, and we weren't
really sure that it was the sortof mountain biking that we
wanted to do.
I think we got a bit spoilt atDerby, which is all rainforest
and everything.
Medina is pretty hardcore.
(03:49):
Everyone was in their fancyhelmets, downhill helmets.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I was just going, I'm going to die.
I've had enough falls.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It looked like it was going to hurt if we went to
Medina.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We're too old maybe, and we're still on our
pedal-powered bikes, not e-bikes, and I don't know we were
getting to this point with thebiking that.
There was a few other spotsthat we thought we'd do Railton
and Sheffield.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
We did mark some others yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Look, we spent a really good time having a look
at it and just drove on.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And just after we left Medina, we end up at
Mountfield National Park.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, now Mountfield National Park is really popular
and it was a place that we'dbeen recommended by others that
said, oh my God, it's the bestwaterfalls we've ever been to.
Highly recommend we got there.
It was so busy.
This is not a peaceful nationalpark.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It was a Sunday.
Yeah, it was a long weekend aswell.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's probably school holidays Every weekend in.
Yeah, it was a long weekend aswell.
It was probably school holidaysand all that.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Every weekend in Tasmania seems to be a long
weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
At the end of summer it is.
Yeah, Look, we managed to beable to whiz around and do all
the waterfalls on the circuithike just using the Visitor Day
car park, and we got throughthat quite quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
We were a little bit deflated.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
The caravan park was full.
If it wasn't, we probably wouldhave stayed.
We were getting a bit tiredwe'd had a big day.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
The camping area, probably the caravan park, yeah,
I think it's run by caretakers.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
whatever the hiking, the trails, lovely rainforest
and all but no different toanywhere else we'd already been.
We've seen a lot of beautifulwaterfalls and rainforests.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It was very well formed and had disabled
facilities and disabled access,which is obviously something
important if you need that kindof stuff, so it was very tourist
friendly.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, it was more mainstream and, given that most
people weren't in hiking shoes,they were wearing white sneakers
and white jumpers and they'rebest clothes and they were able
to stay on a form path and therewere some steps and all of that
.
That wasn't challenging at allfor anyone that's done the sort
of hikes that we've been doing,but certainly it's a more
(05:55):
user-friendly way to get intothe rainforest for those that
are less inclined to do some ofthe type of hikes that we've
mentioned before on our channelthat we do.
So we chose not to stay Again.
Again, we moved on and we had anumber of campsites as
potentials and a bit of a routemapped out, because we needed to
start heading north and theneventually a little bit inland
(06:17):
further to eventually get tocradle valley, which we decided
was going to be the end point ofour trip, and we'd make a final
dash to get onto the ferry atthe end.
So basically, from there toCradle Valley, we had another
couple of weeks and we were justsort of following our nose and
stopping at what we wanted tostop at.
A couple of highlights we loveda free camp, bethune.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Bethune Park Camp Area On the River Derwent.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
We found a lot of berries that you could free pick
by the side of the road, thegood old Tasmanian produce that
you can pick a blackberry overthe fence, gorge yourself on
fresh food Did a bit of that.
Wineries up in that area arefabulous.
In fact.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We found a distillery and that had David's name all
over it, and although it, wasnine o'clock or 10 o'clock in
the morning 10 o'clock in themorning and you lobbed past and
the sign said open.
So what better opportunity to goand drink gin and whiskey than
10 o'clock in the morning on aMonday?
Yeah, it was.
The place we're talking aboutis Lorraine Estate.
Fantastic, the owner there, theguy he was running the place
(07:21):
and he was the owner.
He was running the place and hewas the owner.
He was very accommodating.
He opened up the wholedistillery and he showed us
around all the barrelling areasand the kegs and he went through
the whole process and, being agin distiller myself, I make gin
at home.
He gave me the I'd alwayswanted to do whiskies and he
gave me the whole process and heshowed me all the machinery
they use and how it all worksand it was really fantastic.
(07:42):
And they had I don't know fiveor six whiskeys and five or six
gins and we tried them all at 10o'clock in the morning, 11
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I didn't think I could manage it, but once we
started it was easy enough.
Except it wasn't so much easierleaving and driving away we got
the personalised servicebecause we were his first
customers, but literally wewould have had a personalised
tour that went at least an hour.
Oh, it was an hour and a half,I think, before we actually left
, but we did spend a fair bit ofmoney.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, we spent a fortune.
We bought some whiskey, webought some gin One of the
things about touring around andbuying and going to wineries and
distilleries and your winecollection and all that sort of
stuff I always keep saying toeverybody you know, I don't just
go to a winery to hear a story,and it's the story that sells
(08:30):
the product.
And you know, when you for megoing into a winery and going
into this laurenia state andspeaking to the owner there and
having this great tour and acompletely ad hoc thing that all
came about, it was really easyto spend five or six hundred
dollars because it was just sucha good, a good time, was good
value and, um, I've still gotthe whiskey.
I've got to actually open thatone.
I haven't cracked my head onthat one yet.
But I think we drank all thegins before we left Tasmania.
(08:52):
That was about three bottles,but anyway, we digress.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Gordon, you're making it sound like we drink too much
.
Well, we're Alcos.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, it sounds like it, but basically after La
Rennie or any, we went to thefirst town we'd been to because
we were running out of groceriesand things as well was Ouse
O-U-S-E is the name of the town.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh well, it's very exciting.
They had a sign that called myname I-G-A.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I-G-A.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Come in, michelle.
I know that sounds reallyboring, but we really were
having such an unplanned tripthat we never knew how long we
were going to stay somewhere andhow many supplies would last.
Um, and we like and we preferto eat fresh fruit and
vegetables predominantly, andthere's only so long that can
last.
So, you know, we were gettingto the bottom of the the fridge
(09:37):
and, um, of course we've got tinfood and I can make bread and
all of that, but that's theemergency stuff, yeah, so really
, um, going to the igas just tosort of top up on the niceties
yeah and oh, we got a gas bottlerefill there.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That was exciting too , because we needed some fuel
and there was all sorts of.
There was all sorts of things.
We were able to do it had been,it had been, it had been
probably weeks since we'dactually found an iga.
So, um, you know, even, evenbecause we'd been out at the
Lake Petra and stuff, you knowwe'd been there for quite a
number of days, there was noshops out there and you know
(10:13):
we'd been down south before thatthere wasn't many shops down
there either.
So we basically cut this path oftrying to cut across, you know,
from the bottom corner toCradle Valley in a sort of a
straight line and we werebasically taking every off-road
road and everything that wecould do to sort of do that at a
diagonal.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And we had a few misadventures Nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Oh, a few roads that you get up to.
You drive a couple of Ks andthen you get a no-through road
or a fence or something.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
But it's worth exploring and that's all the fun
of it, and that's what we do,and it's all part of the mapping
updates.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
They're all part of the map updates, so it's
important for us.
You know, we see a road andwe'll have a go and we'll get
halfway along and there might bea fence that says this is
permanently closed or closed.
Well, all of a sudden, we havea mapping update, and so that's
part of our job and that's whatwe do it for to go, so you don't
have to have misadventures intrying to drag a heavy trailer
up this monstrous hill Now.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I'm not sure if Wondermarfa Wondermar what is it
called Wondermatter?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Oh, is that what it's called, wondermatter the?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
power station.
I'm not sure if it was a hottip we'd been given or we saw it
on our map.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think we just lobbed at it, but we just turned
up Wondermanner.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Wondermanna, okay, and it's just at the bottom of
the Great Lakes, really, andthat you need to allocate a
couple of hours, for If you'reone of these people, that is
passionate about old engineeringand mechanics A mechanic junkie
and engineering and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
if you get off on all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You'll love it.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It was fantastic you know they've got.
It was basically a fullyfunctioning nine turbine power
station up until not so long ago, and you know so they've made
it a full museum now.
So they've got all the originalturbine generators and all the
bits and pieces are all stillall in there, and what they've
done is they've like cut openall the chassis of things so you
(11:59):
can actually look inside howall these things work.
We had a good time All free.
There was no charge.
Yeah, I was just about I'mlooking at the place.
It was a free open daily freefor self-guided tours.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Now, having said that it's self-guided, you usually
do get an introduction by thecaretaker there, the the on-site
guy, who will give you a bit ofa summary of the history, which
you can sense the passionthat's run by volunteers.
It's an amazing building, so itis quite a nice spot and they
do have picnic grounds outsideand a coffee van and things like
that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
If you're in the area , and that's well worth doing.
There are close camps.
The camps that we actually madefor ourselves that night, which
is just how this whole powerstation worked was.
It comes from the Great Lakes.
They pipe some water to anothersmall lagoon, which was called
Penstock Lagoon, and then andPenstocks if you know about this
(12:54):
power generation technology,Penstocks are the tubes that run
.
They run down the sides of themountain where the water is
coming down under pressure intothe turbines at the bottom, and
so this penstock lagoon is justup the hill from the power
station, funnily enough, and itwas fantastic.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, there's about five free designated campsites
um.
Some have toilets pit toiletsbut they're very clean and all
new.
And then all fire.
You can fire there, but thelagoon itself um is well used by
locals um fly fishing um andthey're out there in their
waders but you can have a boatthere.
We've got stand-up paddleboards um.
We found a little bit trickyfrom the camp that we chose to
(13:37):
stay at um to get to the water'sedge.
It was a bit marshy and a bitboggy.
So we just sat back and enjoyedthe view.
Black swans everywhere um.
We had more wallabies coming upto the campfire.
Do you remember we had service?
I had, oh no, the only reasonwe had service was starling
starling.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Okay, I remember the phone call.
You've got to remember.
We have starling, we haveservice wherever we go.
So there's no service, noservice.
I don't think oh no, we have 3gon our PLI symbols for that
place, so maybe there wasservice.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Well, 3g must have been a bit patchy 3G, 4G.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You know we've got the symbol on our campsite, so
it must have had some level ofservice.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
So this area is just south of Miena, the Great Lakes,
and then driving up throughMiena, we're getting into the
Central Highlands, and for us,we are on a mission to check out
another hot tip we've beengiven Apparently, the Liffey
Falls is a fabulous waterfall,so we thought we'd go and look
at that.
On the way in, the mostsignificant natural landform is
(14:37):
this rocky bluff calledProjection Bluff.
It looked magnificent.
There is a hike to it, but theweather started to turn for us,
um, and so we ended up in aweather pattern for the next
week and a half.
Where our plans for all thehiking in this incredible area
of the central highlands, whereit was a hiker's paradise, um,
(15:01):
we, we had a few complicationsbecause some of these hikes
would have been a little bitdangerous In the wet and the
sleet and it was starting to getcold.
We did go to Liffey Falls justbefore the rain started and we
could have walked on a perfectday.
But waterfall and coming rain.
We thought, well, why don't wewait for the rain to make
(15:21):
perfect waterfalls?
And that was a good decision.
So we walked after a massivedownpour but we did.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
The day that it was raining we did a road tour, so
we did we did a bit of a drivearound um and and had a bit of a
look around.
Did we get as far as mole creekand stuff that day?
I don't think we did.
We did it.
We did basically a few loopsaround um, some of the roads in
there, um, we went to deloraineand oh yeah, so from this part
of Tasmania everything's fairlyaccessible and you're getting
(15:49):
into the central north area.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Deloraine is a major shopping point yeah and for us
again, we still hadn't gotenough supplies, so we needed to
head into Deloraine to spendmore time waiting out the
weather.
So we ended up in Deloraine I,I think, in the next stage of
our final stage of our tasmaniantrip.
I think we went four times orsomething like that anyway it
(16:11):
had a big woolies and oh, weneeded to get prescriptions
filled and you know you can doall of that and there's quirky
cafes.
It's actually a lot bigger andmore fun.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, deloray was quite a quite a nice little,
quite a nice little town had anorganic oh it, oh it actually
had a Woolworths.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
We actually had a shop there.
We went there a couple of timesthat was a shop.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That's why we went there four times.
It had a shop.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, liffey Falls.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Liffey Falls Fantastic Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
There's two places that you can access the hike.
You either drive up the hilland park in the Dagus Car Park
or you drive down to the bottomof the falls and a much longer
walk to come up, but a beautifulrainforest walk where the
(16:56):
campground is it's actually downat the bottom.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's not actually near the top there, so the
campsite is down the river a bit.
I think it was 3km, wasn't it 2or 3km?
I've got the file here.
We did 10km of hiking that day,so it must have been a
reasonable walk.
I'm just looking at we did 10.4case, but we did a fair bit
because not only did we walk upthe track to the falls, we went
(17:19):
to all of the lookouts.
We then went to the car park.
We went to the other end of itand walked around where there's
a big tree and some toilets andother stuff.
That's at the actual carparking at upper liffey falls or
the Liffey Falls mainentranceway.
But that whole hike and thewhole place, it was really
wonderful.
Obviously, we'd come in justafter the rain and the water was
(17:41):
pumping and the waterfalls wereflowing.
Yeah, it was a very spectacularplace.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
We stayed there what?
Three months or something, Ithink, in the end, by the time
that was all said and done.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
But you got stung by a wasp or a hornet or something.
Oh my god, yeah, to put apicture in your mind.
You know you walk around withshorts on right um, you walk
around with shorts on, so I wasjust walking around and there
was a.
When we arrived, there was likethere was.
There was obviously somethingon the ground or something had
happened.
There was thousands of thesebee-type wasps.
I think they were a wasp.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
We picked this great campsite.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But I said to Dave oh , no, there's bees on the ground
, or?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
whatever it is, I go.
I don't think this is where wewant to camp.
And you discounted it, sayingno, it'll be fine, it'll be fine
, they'll go away.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I shouldn't have discounted it, I was getting
something out of the car and oneof those little buggers flew up
the gap in my shorts, up my leg, you know, up my pants, and I
kind of didn't realise it wasthere, and then I just bent my
legs which has obviouslysquished my pants against my leg
, and the little guy decidedthat that was enough to throw in
(18:48):
the sting.
Oh, that was brutal, brutalthat took about four days for
that one.
That was really.
That was a beauty.
It hurt.
It hurt like a bee.
I thought it was a bee for awhile and then it just, it just
didn't go away for a long time.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
They didn't go until the rain showers had gone
through, yeah, um, until theweather had completely changed.
So it was quite humid when wegot there originally.
And lot of camps.
It's quite popular and mostpeople just come one night, two
nights.
This is the lower liffey fallscamping reserve so if you're in
tasmania you see these littlewaspy bees and stuff they
strongly urge you to try not toget stung, yeah look, the main
(19:27):
thing to make people aware of ifyou are going to that place and
you're towing a caravan, evenour camper trailer the winding
road in the most direct roaddown from Deloraine down to
there past the junction, it'spretty sketchy.
So we decided we'd check outthe tourist drive and it's all
flat.
(19:47):
So the long way around fromDeloraine via liffey, and if you
do that you'll go past ura ura,which is where um bob brown,
the former um senator for thegreens party, um he has set up,
so it's now set up with the wellit's where he used to live and
it's now set up as a museum.
(20:08):
I think it's got the lovely homeand now it's his museum and now
it's a museum, so that's agreat place.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And, yeah, that little sneaky drive around it's
on.
Is that on Bogan Road?
I think I've got it on the maphere, I think it was something
like that.
So you come in on a slightlydifferent road and it's much
flatter and it was a lot easier.
So you wouldn't really take abig van to this place.
It's still fairly steep andthat, but you a lot easier to
get in.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
um yeah, um.
So it's bush heritage australiaum yeah and they, they manage
it.
And we happen to be there when,um the caretaker was just
walking around and we had awonderful chat with him.
If we'd realised it was there,I was thrilled because I'd seen
(20:58):
the movie that had come out onlyend of last year with Bob Brown
, the Tasmanian one thatfeatures the little cottage
there.
So if you'd seen that movie aswell I think it's called Giants,
I think it's called Giants,something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, the road is Gulf Road.
Yeah, it's a goodants.
I think it's called Giants,something like that.
Yeah, the road is Golf Road.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, it's a good spot to go and allocate a little
bit of time to go and have alook, because you've got to go
on a bit of a hike and have alook around, yeah, so we had a
bit of a hiccup when we leftthere.
It wasn't long past there andwe got a phone call from one of
our kids saying that he had justwritten off his brother's car.
So our two sons have beenliving in our house while we've
(21:34):
been away on this trip.
They've had the responsibilityof keeping the fort, and this
was not the phone call that youwant to have, because of course
I thought he was injured.
The first thing that came out ofhis mouth he was in the car.
He just had the accident.
And look, long story short, I'mnot going to bore you with the
details, but it really haschanged our trip and I wanted to
(21:58):
go home and so we're sitting bythe side of the road I'm crying
.
Dave is going.
What do I do?
Unhappy passenger here and wehad unfinished business with
Tasmania because we still hadn'tgot to Cradle Valley and we
hadn't been there.
The 20 years ago we tried toget to cradle valley.
So we're really torn.
But he found me a spot on aplane and he could get us on the
(22:21):
ferry in two days time and theshock had passed.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
We we worked out the logistics and the requirements
and it wasn't as critical as we.
I mean, it is critical, it wascritical, it is critical, it has
been critical.
It still is kind of critical,yeah, but it wasn't something
that we were going to be able tofix in five minutes, so we
decided to put that one on theside burner.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Stay calm and carry on.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
So after Liffey and that kind of area and dropping
into Deloraine and having a lookaround there, we basically
housed ourselves at Mole CreekCastle National Park.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, so Mole Creek is very easily accessible from
Deloraine and we got to thisspot on a hot tip from a friend
and it's a spot where there'shoneycomb caves.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, so you can go.
You can go sort of free cavingon your own in there.
Um, they were quite.
That was a good bit of fun.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
It wasn't super spectacular or anything
wonderful, but lots of cavesgoes for a long way if you've
got your headlamp, you've got totake headlamps and you can go
in quite a long way.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Some people say they've gone in for kilometres.
But I wasn't that keen.
I didn't need to get down on myhands and knees and go crawling
through a little teeny weecrack in a cave to go into
another hole.
To go into another hole.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But just past the cave entrance, which has the
information signboard, andthere's this wonderful grassy
area with these magnificentviews to the mountains, and it's
a free camp.
Yeah, free camp.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And we went oh wow, well, it's actually a national
park camp, but it was free.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, okay, that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
It is in the national park and it is free and what's
the limit?
I don't remember.
Well, I don't remember seeing asign there about the limit,
about how long the campsitelimit is.
You probably a sign there aboutthe limit, um, about how long
the campsite limit is?
You probably have it in thedescription, uh but it doesn't
say okay.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But I want to tell you a little story about when we
get there.
So we get there and it's um,middle of the day, beautiful
time of day, beautiful weatherand everything, and we set up
and it took us a little whilebecause it's not the flattest
and fussing around we were.
We didn't want to.
There was no, not many otherpeople there, so we didn't want
to block it off because it'sbeautiful grass.
So we tried to allocate a spotthat worked for us, that would
(24:36):
work for others and we knewwe're going to use it as a bit
of a base camp.
Anyway.
We go off for a hike thinkingwe've set it up perfect.
We come back and we've beenparked in.
There is and not.
Have we just been parked in bythis caravan?
They have strung up theirwashing all the way around,
encroaching into our camp.
(24:57):
View of the beautiful landscape.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
A 180-degree clothesline that must have gone
about 25 metres, 30 metres long,all their underwear and their
jeans and their sheets and allof that, and they were
travelling in convoy.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The other caravan had set up in the appropriate spot
that to anyone that's got commonsense, that was the obvious
spot to go.
I just don't know why this guyset up where he did, because he
actually had angled his carhooked to his caravan in such a
way that we could not leave ifwe wanted to.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We couldn't hook up our car, we couldn't hook up our
camper trailer.
Not only could we not hook upour car, he was in front of the
drawbar.
Yeah, not only could we nothook up our car, it was
basically like he was sitting inhis chair in our storage box at
the front of our camper andevery moment they moved we just
oh, we could just hear it andsee it.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
They were basically right on talking, all right so
because we're not used tostaying in caravan parks and
we're in this open area, it justfelt a little bit too close and
it was obvious there was a lotof space around us.
Um, so you've got to remember,we just had this shocking,
emotional phone call and we were, our emotions were a little bit
where are you going with this?
Well, you then had an angryargument with the guy with his
(26:09):
caravan no, I didn him know.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I didn't appreciate his laundry or the proximity to
his campsite, and one of us wasgoing to go.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
It was not going to stay.
So it was either we were goingto go or he was going to go, and
thankfully they packed up andthey left.
So we probably have a badreputation if he told his
friends.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Sorry about that, but it was just not a friendly way
there was plenty of things goingon for us, which is beside the
point, but there's a thingcalled common courtesy and
decency, and if you're going topush the line.
When I broached it with him, hejumped down my throat, so it
(26:47):
was obvious, he was verydefensive.
He knew he was encroaching buthe thought, oh yeah, it would be
perfect, but it wasn't soAnyway, past that we spent four
days there or something and wetoured basically the whole area.
We did Deloraine again.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We did a drive to.
We did a few days' time trip toMole Creek oh we also did the
big trip, the actual little townlocation of Mole Creek.
We also did.
We had a look at Wild Merseyfor some mountain biking, which
we thought we were gonna doafter we'd finished Cradle
Mountain and we did, yeah, a bigtrip.
The second last morning or onemorning we woke up and we went
(27:24):
to.
Oh, I knew I had a batteryproblem.
There was a slight problem withthe car, the car batteries.
I'd had a one of the terminals.
The car's got two starterbatteries and one of the
terminals on one of thebatteries had gone all coppery
like um, it was actually likecopper sulfate had built up on
(27:44):
the whole connectors.
On the whole.
The whole connector was greenand and like loaded with
crystals all over it what'shappened here?
obviously what I found was thatthe battery terminal, um, where
the battery terminal goes intothe battery, it actually cracked
a little bit around the edge sothat the the acid and the
fluids inside the battery wasleaking out, going up the
(28:05):
terminal onto the contacts andcorroding all the copper and
stuff.
And I'd known that for a fewdays.
So I knew the batteries weregetting a bit.
It was going to get a bitsuspicious.
But we went out to go for a daytour and we went out to go on
this day tour because I knew Ineeded to do the batteries.
But we go to start the car andit goes and it just didn't do
(28:26):
anything.
So we were going to change thebatteries.
That wasn't the problem.
It's just that we had to jumpstart our car and we used our
little itech world um three,js80 or whatever it is, and it's
actually able to start this car.
We may have learned um when,when it needs to, which is
(28:47):
perfect.
I bought it for that uh and itand it did its job well.
So that was a a good thing tolearn.
Obviously we've got lots ofbatteries and we can have a bit
of a discussion about thebattery management and all that
sort of stuff.
Um, but the two star batterieswhen one goes, the other one
will go.
They're connected in paralleland that's just battery
technology.
If you lose one, you lose themboth.
(29:07):
So they both had to go.
So I tripped to bernie.
Uh no, we were going to go tobernie, but it was too far.
Oh yeah, we went.
We went on a bit of a road tour.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
We need to go for a long drive to charge up the
batteries okay, that's what.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That was the plan.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Actually, it was a long drive, it was a long drive
to charge the batteries and youwanted to go to a Bunnings.
So I looked on Google and Ifound there was a Bunnings at
Devonport and there was aBunnings at Burnie and there's
no need to go to Devonport.
We've been there and we've gotto go back there at the end.
So, okay, we haven't been toBurnie this trip.
So I plotted him out a260-kilometre round trip for the
(29:47):
day to charge the batteries,and halfway through that trip
we'd be at the Bunnings and onthe way we thought we'd do our
usual work, which is updatingplaces and verifying what exists
.
We did so many of these that wegot so exhausted and so tired
and it was nearly four o'clockwhen the shop was going to start
that we made a change.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It was actually super cheap because we had to go and
buy the batteries.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Oh super cheap, was it?
It was actually super cheapbecause we had to go and buy the
batteries.
Oh super cheap, was it?
I'm sorry, not funnys.
It was super cheap to buy thebatteries.
Yes, super cheap.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But you know, yeah, we did this trip and we're
trying to get out there and westarted working again, and then
blom, blom, blom and we've gone.
Oh, let's go left instead ofright.
Oh, look down here, there's agreat thing.
Oh, so all of a sudden, I'mlooking at my watch and going,
gee love, it's 3 o'clock orsomething and we've still got to
(30:32):
get.
Not only have we got to get toSlipachook, we've got to get
there, we've got to be able tobuy the batteries, we've got to
install it, we've got to do allthis freaking around, and I
looked at the website and itsaid that the one at Burnie was
going to shut at 4.30 and theone in Devonport was going to be
five or six or something, so wedecided to quickly change our
plans.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
So we changed our plan and got to Devonport.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
And we got there at about 4.20 or something and
bought the batteries andeverything.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So we were in the car park there and it's one of
these mega super centres thathas everything.
It had Anaconda it goes.
Do you want new shoes?
It had BCF Anaconda.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
It had everything it had super cheap, it had car
yards, it had all sorts of shops, some shops we'd never even
seen before Brands and thingslike that.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
So you actually replaced the batteries, the two
charging cranking batteriesunder the bonnet of the 200
Series Land Cruiser that we haveout of a trolley in the car
park.
And I'm in the car park and I'mprobably looking filthy, dirty,
hiking boots and grubby and I'mmaking lunch out of the back of
the car, making a wrap andspreading the avocado and
putting the lettuce on everyonewho lives in devonport.
(31:37):
You know everyday shoppers.
They're looking at us a bitweird.
What are you doing?
desperate anyway we did what wehad to do solve the problem and
then we hightailed it all theway back to our camp down the
highway from Devonport.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, back to Mole Creek.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah, back through Mole Creek.
Yeah, so we were exhausted.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, we were pretty exhausted that day.
That ended up being a biggerday than it should have been,
but oh well, that's what happenswhen you do these kind of
things.
So, whilst we'd been in thatarea, you know that Mole Creek,
so we did Dellerone a few times.
When did we go and do thatmountain biking at Wild Mersey?
When did we actually do that?
Was that part of that?
Or did we end up doing that aspart of that because we decided
(32:22):
to go and do that mountainbiking day, so we went up to
Sheffield, wasn't?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
it Yep, wasn't that?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
where we went.
Yeah, so we went up toSheffield and had a look at some
mountain biking at a placecalled Wild Mersey.
It's a network of MTB trails,yeah and it links with Browton
and Sheffield and a few townstogether it was a lot easier
than what we've done at theother places, but it was still
challenging, yeah except thatthey didn't have.
They didn't have shuttles, soyou had to ride yourself up the
(32:49):
hill.
You know that always makes it alittle bit harder when you're
on a pedal bike.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Oh, that's right, I've briefly forgotten the pain.
That actually was quite a harduphill, yeah, and I had a decent
stack that day that actuallyaffected my knee and still was
giving me a bit of grief, so itwasn't that easy actually it
wasn't that easy, but it was abit of fun, and we so the
highlight for me of thatmountain biking ride was to get
the views of Mount Roland Nowwhat I was talking about earlier
, this whole central highlandswith some fabulous hikes.
(33:16):
This Mount Roland is a veryvisual feature of that whole
area.
It is absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It'll be on the postcards and it'll be on the
tourism brochures.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Our weather had not been that great and I really,
really wanted to do the hikingthere, but you know what?
We actually didn't do it, so Iwas glad we got halfway up a
mountain that looked across toit, at least on our bikes.
It's an area that we'll comeback to and do some more hiking.
Do you know the one thing wedidn't tell our listeners in
this podcast that we did do atMountfield National Park?
This is important.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
We extended our.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
National Parks Pass.
So here's a hot tip when youcome to Tasmania, you can buy
your Parks Pass on the ferry andthey have a thing called a
holiday pass and it gives youtwo months.
So we originally thought wewere going to be six weeks in
Tasmania, so we thought we'd buythe holiday pass because that
would give us enough.
As it turned out, if you'vebeen listening to our previous
(34:14):
podcast, you'll realise that wehave extended our trip in
Tasmania and it meant that weweren't actually going to have
that National Parks Pass valid.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
When we wanted to do it for Cradle Mountain, which
was Easter yeah and CradleValley is obviously such a
hotspot tourist point.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It is not the kind of place you want to be without
your parks pass, in fact, it'simpossible.
You can't, you can't be therewithout your parks pass so I
didn't want it to expire becausethen we'd have to buy something
again full price.
But I went into the nationalparks office at mountfield and
said while it was still valid wehad a few days left.
Can, can we extend it?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
So listen to this For $5.
Well, it was $86 or $87 orsomething to buy the four-week
one, and $96 or $5 or somethingto buy the annual one, and
$120-something to buy a two-yearone, and so we only had to pay
the difference between thefour-week one and the annual one
and, yeah, it ended up costingabout $5 or $6 to go from a.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So we now have an annual pass.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, so we've got to go back from our date of
purchase.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
So we are going to be able to go back to Tasmania,
hopefully, if the stars alignwith the rest of life as it does
, to get us back in Tasmaniaagain for the start of the 24
summer season the 24, 25 summerseason.
So stay tuned for that because,yeah, we missed some things in
Tassie, as you do, it's amassive place.
There's so much to do.
(35:40):
Our time was not enough.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And our movement, our decision to move on, was to
make sure that we couldundertake the rest of the trip
and go up the east coast and bein the weather at the right time
and not too cold, yeah.
And to take the rest of thetrip and go up the east coast
and be in the weather at theright time and not too cold,
yeah, and not have to.
You know, we didn't want tohave to scoot through victoria
or new south wales to get out ofit being too cold.
So that's why we sort of hadfixed that leaving at easter,
yeah okay, so let's talk aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So at this point we decided okay, the reality is,
we've got easter either intasmania or in Victoria.
And we had made that decisionwhen we did the booking that
Tasmania would be quieter inEaster than Victoria, just based
on population.
But we had left Cradle Mountaintill the last, which was
(36:23):
probably the most touristy partof Tasmania for Easter, so we
thought maybe this isn't such agood thing.
How about we book it out andactually stay in Cradle Valley
at the Discovery Parks CaravanPark there?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, we had no idea we could even get a booking.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, I know Over.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Easter we were going yeah, it was like Monday or
something and Easter's Thursdayand we ring them up and say, can
we get a booking for fournights of Easter?
And they went.
Yeah sure, four nights ofEaster.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
and they went yeah, sure yeah, and it's because it's
so highly priced and probablypeople don't book it up.
But honestly it was worth everypenny.
Let's not jump to that just yet, because we had booked it right
.
But then our next part is wewent from Mole Creek.
We ended up down at LakeParangana and we loved it so
(37:10):
much there that we actuallyforfeited the beginning of our
Easter booking over at CradleValley, because Lake.
Parangana was so good.
So around the Lake Paranganaarea the road ends as you head
further south into the.
What's the big national parkdown there?
(37:30):
Walls of Jerusalem, Walls ofJerusalem, Walls of Jerusalem.
But we did want to drive allthe way down in case we could
see the views.
The drive there you can'treally see the mountains as well
as I thought we might, so it'sa long drive.
Don't do it for the views Onlygo if you are going to do the
hikes.
Lake Parangatta.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Lake Parangatta.
We got the supps out we LakeParangatta.
Lake Parangatta we got thesupps out, we stayed there for a
few days the weather wasperfect, there was no breeze, it
was sunny each day, there wasno rain.
You know, it was ideal and thecamping location and the way
that the campsites were sort ofset up well separated fires
(38:11):
allowed All the good stuff thatcampers should be.
It was almost what you wouldcall a perfect place to camp.
It was ideal, so it hadeverything for us.
And, yeah, as Michelle said,instead of going on the Friday
to Cradle Valley.
We said, ah stuff it we'll stayat Lake Parangana.
We'll just forfeit the $60 or$70 or $80 or $90 or whatever it
(38:33):
costs us per night at CradleValley, just because this place
is so good.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Well, really, four nights is too long in Cradle.
Valley and I didn't know thatfully until I started to do a
bit more research and then Irealized, wow, we're going to be
able to do one big hike and doeverything we really need to do
in that one, and then you want aday either side, so I really
only needed the three.
So I justified it that way andsince we already had the perfect
(38:59):
camp, okay, it didn't end upbeing a free camp if you factor
that in and then we got to do anice four-wheel drive circuit
well, not circuit through routeinstead of doubling back and
getting on the windy um bitumenroads um, we went to borodale
road.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, it's up in the hills.
So basically, from lakeparangana we went a bit further
south and there's a road thatsort of hacks its way up into
the hills and it was a bit steepand hilly.
It was fantastic because wewere driving up there and it was
cloudy.
It was a foggy, misty morning,beautiful we couldn't actually
see very far in front of the caras we're driving up this hill
(39:40):
and all of a sudden you justcome to sort of the top and the
fog's gone and the fog's belowyou and you're driving up there
and you can see all the fog inthe valley all around Lake
Parangatta.
It was really spectacular.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I actually just published on social media the
photos of that drive and did awhole story about that drive so
that's already available on oursocial media, on both Instagram
and Facebook.
You can see the photos thatwe're talking about with the
mist and a description of thefour-wheel drive route that we
took, and really to get fromLake Parangatta to Cradle Valley
was only 75 kilometres.
(40:11):
The slow way that we went,four-wheel drive.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
We also did Caffina Dam and a few other.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
We did work on the way as we did, so we took a
whole day doing it.
We also cut out going back onthe main road, which was all the
twisty twisty twisty that we'dalready done on the battery
driving day, and so this roadwhere we did over the top of the
hill it basically was able totake us out to the bridge that
went across the river without ushaving to do all this
complicated twisty driving.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, near Kithana and Moina.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
So then, really in our summary of our time in
Tasmania, we've brought you upto for us, cradle Valley, which
was a real highlight.
I can't express how much.
It is the most magnificent,most beautiful place visually to
see and even if you're not ahiker, you really come.
(41:03):
Let's break it down.
You can get on a shuttle fromthe car park where there's a
visitor centre, or driveyourself to the ranger station
and jump on a shuttle.
You need a National Parks passof some sort to be able to get
on the shuttle and you pay $15,you get a three-day pass.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Three consecutive day pass, depending which pass
you've got.
Oh okay, all right.
Well, this is how it works forus.
There's a bit of technicality.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Anyway, this is how it works for us.
There's a bit of technicality.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Anyway, this shuttle is a hop-on, hop-off.
There's basically it runs allday.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
There's four stations and the two major ones where
the hiking trailheads are isDove Lake and Ronnie Creek, and
on our first day there wethought we'd check out and just
do a day trip on the bus.
Let's go on a tour on the bus.
So we weren't in our hikinggear, we weren't planning to
walk.
It was actually really hot whereit was hot hot hotter than our
(41:53):
clothing yeah, it was 30something yeah, yeah, but the
sky was blue, there was no wind,so we went to dove lake um off
the shuttle and it just enjoyedbeing a tourist as non-hikers
with all, with all the othertourists, with all the others.
But everyone was politeeverything was pleasant.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
It was busy, though.
We got our tourist photos.
It was Easter, as we say,middle of Easter.
It was busy.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
But we planned our day's hike by going into the
visitor centre, talking to theranger there, sorting it all out
, got ourselves a plan of whatwe wanted to do, got our nice
photo view and of course theweather changed and we woke up
on our hiking day a little bitovercast, but we'd already seen
the weather.
(42:34):
Do this and look Tasmania, you,you take everything that comes
at you and don't make a plan ofwhat it's like first thing in
the morning, because you, youcan get four seasons in one day
well, not as bad as that, butbut the day before had similar
weather patterns, just that weweren't there in the morning.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
So I kind of had half a clue that hopefully most of
this cloud would blow away.
And by the time we got aroundon our walk and started walking,
I mean, there was no rain, itwas nothing like that, it was
just patchy cloud which you knowwas probably affecting the
photographer here more than theactual location.
But by the time we'd done halfa day's walking, it was
perfectly clear.
(43:10):
And another wonderful, perfectday, yep, which everyone who
lives there and works there wastelling us was absolutely
unbelievable.
They say they only have is it20 or 30 days a year where it's
not raining at Cradle Mountain,if you didn't know that, and we
had three in a row.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Three in a row.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
yeah, that were perfect, perfect weather for
hiking, perfect weather forsightseeing and taking photos
and doing stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
So our big hike that we did the following day, which?
Speaker 2 (43:40):
wasn't that big.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
We took the shuttle to Ronnie Creek and it doesn't
have a toilet.
Like, oh, I need to go to thetoilet.
So we got back on the shuttleto Ronnie Creek and it doesn't
have a toilet.
They go, I need to go to thetoilet.
So we got back on the shuttle,went to Dove Lake shuttle point,
went to the toilet there, backon the shuttle, back to Ronnie
Creek.
So we had a bit of a late startto the day, but that's all
right.
So it was only about 9.30, 10o'clock and we did a 10K hike.
(44:02):
So we headed out from RonnieCreek on the Overland Track
which then picks onto the horsetrack, and then we went out to
Crater Peak and at this pointyou are looking over a beautiful
crater.
Then you can look out over toMarion's Lookout, which a lot of
people hike from there toMarion's.
(44:23):
That's the actual OverlanderTrack, yeah, so the horse track
takes you around a different way, but we were able to look back
over Cradle Lake and Marion'slookout and Dove Lake, so it was
spectacular views From thatpeak, from Cradle Peak.
You look behind you and you seeCradle Mountain.
Now we're at this peak and itwas all grey.
There's clouds hanging over thetop of cradle mountain and then
(44:51):
suddenly I don't know whathappens a bird squawks and the
clouds dissipated and it waspicture perfect.
So out comes all the cameragear and the gopro and then from
there hiking towards um kitchenhut.
It's boardwalk and I have takenmy most favorite pictures of
our whole tasmania trip and I'vepublished these as well and
you'll see them the boardwalksnaking its way to kitchen hut,
(45:14):
with most magnificent view ofcradle mountain in the distance
and the intersection of all thehikers that have been on the
alternative path, um, the moremainstream one from marion's
lookout.
It intersects with us at kitchenhut and everyone was at kitchen
hut.
Everyone uses that as like amorning tea stop, lunch stop,
whatever.
(45:34):
It was very, very busy there.
And then from there you've gotto make your decision as to
whether you're going to do thesummit up to cradle mountain or
not.
Um, otherwise you do what'scalled the face track.
If you do the face track, whichis what we decided to do, it's
quite a long excursion.
You're going all the way backtowards the is it west, east,
(45:58):
east, sorry?
And you come to Hanson's Peakand you're at the top looking
down at Dove Lake and you getanother whole big extension of
the hike and the face itself isthe face of Cradle Mountain.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
So when you look at Cradle Mountain on a view it
looks like it's quite wide, abig sort of it's wider at the
base, wider at the base, thesmaller at the top.
So it's like a mountain butit's quite a wide thing.
And the face track takes youacross, basically where a
transition in the slope, it'sslopes and then it goes straight
(46:32):
up.
So you basically walk under thebit where there's still terrain
and looking up at the cliffface that goes up to the top of
the mountain.
It was really spectacular.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
It was a very narrow track.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
It wasn't the most easy walk in that, but it was.
There weren't many people on it.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
There was a very narrow track.
It wasn't the most easy walk inthat, but it was.
There weren't many people on itthere was a few, but not too
many, whereas scrambling up tothe top of Cradle Mountain
whilst we're both physicallycapable and I really thought
that we would do it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, that Wild Mersey mountain biking issue
that I'd mentioned earlier, thatI'd hurt my knee, had already
happened.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, and David had a knee brace.
I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I wasn't particularly comfortable uh 100 to add
another two hour extremescramble, rock climb thing into
our journey for the day.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
So and we probably did make the right decision,
because we came across anothercouple that had done it and then
started the face track and theywere crying.
They were bailing out theycouldn't complete the face track
, having done the summit, andshe said it was too much I've
I've bitten off too much than Ican do, and that's a shame,
because then she had to godownhill and bail out of the
(47:38):
track.
There is um a section where youcan bail out off the face track
and it's called will wilkestrack and when you do that you
come straight down to Dove Lakeand you level quite quickly.
But for us we were able tocontinue on and we got to the
Ranger Hut Emergency Shelter andthe Lake Rodway and Lake
(47:59):
Hanson's Track and Hanson's Peakwas spectacular because we were
able to actually look all theway back out to those um to not
mate rowland, whatever it wasback at the western walls of
jerusalem and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
So you get, we got.
We got views all the way towalls of jerusalem and and and
quite quite a long way, and areally panoramic spot.
In fact, I've just opened upthe hansen's peak place in the
traveler app and there's a fewphotos in there, so have a look
at the photos.
We've loaded all the photos, orwe've loaded some of the photos
, into the places system so youcan see some of the things that
(48:32):
we're talking about and some ofthe spectacular views that we
were afforded when we were there.
It was really a nice place.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
And so this hike, doing this circuit, we were able
to end at dove lake and, ofcourse, get on the shuttle
within a few minutes.
The shuttle comes along, butthey run on a continuous circuit
based on demand.
Um, it's really really well runplace.
That whole place understandshow to deal with a volume of
people.
So, if you can consider, we arehappy and we have been there
(49:02):
over easter um, that's sayingsomething because we'll complain
about too many crowds and rah,rah, rah and look, we really
enjoyed ourselves and we spent alot of nightly fee at the
Discovery Parks.
But again, that place wasreally well done, good
facilities.
I got good laundry done, so wewere able to leave Tasmania with
(49:22):
everything washed and dried andclean At there.
We were able to use power andwater hooked in directly into
the camper trailer so we didn'thave power issues and water
issues.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Um, we were happy, happy campers and you know and
you think about these poorpeople that we were just talking
about.
You know having to bail out awalk and stuff.
You don't want to have to havethat kind of thing in your head
when you come to a lovely place.
You know he wasn't able tofinish the thing or he wasn't
able to do this so so making ita little bit, making it a little
bit easier.
It wasn't easy, it was still asolid days hiking, uh well, I
(49:53):
can't remember the kilometers, Idon't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
It was only about 10 or so, but it was.
Look.
That's strenuous for mostpeople, I'm sure, and there's a
lot of ascent in thatparticularly.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
There's a lot of up and down and lots of lots of,
lots of um, hammering the kneesup and down as you go up and
down the hills and stuff likethat, which wasn't great when
you've got a slight knee problem.
But oh, you know, cradlemountain, cradle valley, that
kind of area we'll be back.
I suspect that we'll probablytry and book in the overland
track for that return journeythat we might try and do oh,
coming into season 24, 25.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I've got the facts on all this because, to make sure
that we're prepared for that,these were some things I did not
know.
So when we first planned tocome to Tasmania if you've been
listening to the earlier podcastwe thought Well, it was only a
last-minute thing, yeah.
Yeah, we thought we wouldn't beable to get a booking because
our whole plan of travellingaround Australia is all out of
(50:43):
sync with the right time of yearand the right place and all
that.
So it's been a bit of ahodgepodge put it together plan.
So we didn't have advancedbooking for coming for Tasmania.
We booked it in December and wearrived in January, and I've
mentioned this before in anearlier podcast.
That is possible if yourvehicle manages under 2.1 high
(51:04):
and under 10 metres long.
So with our camper trailer wefit in that metric.
So if if you can fit into that,you you can get bookings, um,
and you can adjust your bookingsonce you've got one um.
But what I couldn't do was bookthe overland track at cradle
valley.
So how that works is there's asummer peak hiking season which
starts on the 1st of October.
(51:24):
Yep, 1st of October through to31st of May is your summer
hiking season.
Now there's a booking period tobook your hiking for that whole
period every day of that.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
If you're doing the full overland track.
This is talking about not justany little day trips around.
Yeah, the five, six dayovernight, the overland track,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
The booking period opens in early july and on the
day, within hours that they openthe booking period, every
single day of the booking periodis booked out for hiking.
The reason for this is they capthe number of hikers for
independent hiking.
They'll only allow 34 hikersper day to start.
So you book your hike as yourstarting day.
(52:07):
You don't have to nominate howmany days and where you're going
to stop.
They don't care about that.
So you can.
The shortest distance of theoverland track is 65 kilometers,
but most people will extendthat distance by doing a few
side trips out and back.
There's one of them.
Um is is another 15 kilometers.
So you know some people will beout there for nine days, not
(52:29):
just the shortest thing, fivedays.
That doesn't matter.
In your booking it's it's yourstart date.
That matters and because they'recapping that, you really have
to make sure that you know whatyou're doing and you're booking
in advance.
So if we are going to do it forthis season, we have to be
online and making that bookingon the 1st of July or the
opening.
They haven't announced theexact day of the opening.
(52:51):
It's early July For the winterhiking season.
That booking period opened onthe 1st of May, which has just
happened, and you still havecaps.
But because it's prone to snow,rain, sleets, blizzard, the
whole lot, there's less people.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
You really have to be very experienced to cope with
that.
You can get a booking for thewinter hiking period.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
We have friends that hiked it in winter, but there's
no way I'm doing that Anyway.
And when we left Cradle Valley,we woke up in the morning
packed up and drove straight toDerwent.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
We drove to Burnie because we drove the long way.
We had a whole day we didn'thave to be on the boat till 7.30
at night or 8 o'clock at night,9 o'clock at night, or
something 9.30 it was, so wespent the day touring around.
So we finally got to Burnie,after not doing it the first
time.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Oh yeah, Burnie and Penguin and all of those places,
yeah, and Top of Creek and allthose things along the coast and
we had a decent day.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
We checked out a few campsites and a few locations
around the area.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
We had more time than what we needed to do with.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Very, very.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
It was a bit leisurely yeah, and, and we got
to.
We ended up going back to theshops, at the same shops again.
We did.
You wanted to buy more hikingboots or shoes or something.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Oh yeah, my hiking sandals, my hiking uh steva
sandals and crap themselves whohad to buy some new sandals.
And then, yeah, then back overto davenport and join the queue
to jump on the boat and you know, the boat trip well getting.
I don't even know where I'mtrying to go right now.
That was kind of the end of.
(54:35):
TAS.
You know, and we had such agreat time in Tasmania and, as
you've been hearing us talkingabout now, you know we're
already planning to possibly getthere so that we can save our
$100 National Parks Pass.
So we're already planning topossibly get there so that we
can save our $100 National ParksPass, so we don't have to buy
another one you know what agreat excuse is to say I've
still got a National Parks Passand I have to go and spend a few
(54:56):
grand on the ferry to go back.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, but look, the reason we've put so much time
into the last three podcaststhat we've prepared on Tasmania
is that we've really been verypassionate about the experience
there, as we hope we've inspiredyou Highly recommend planning a
trip to Tassie.
But the number one takeawayfrom all of this is you cannot
(55:23):
book enough time there.
There is so much to do that isso good.
So please, please, please.
Nine weeks that we started withis barely enough.
We have circumnavigatedTasmania before in three weeks
and gone all the way around thewhole thing and knew that we had
to come back and do this longertrip.
Now we've done this longer trip.
It's still not enough and we'regoing to go back and do more.
I might be preaching to theconverted.
(55:45):
Any of you that have alreadyvisited Tasmania know this.
But if you have never been toTasmania, take it from those
that are telling you now Go aslong as you can.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Go three months, go four months and, of course, all
the data for your great journeyand adventure has all been
updated within the ExplorosTraveller app.
That's what we do each day andthat's what we've spent our
entire daytimes doing while wewere in Tasmania.
So there's a great wealth ofnew photos and the tracks and
track log updates.
There's a whole myriad ofcontent updates that Michelle's
(56:20):
been putting through onto thewhole system.
So if you're planning to orthinking of going to Tasmania,
nothing better than the ExplorosTraveler app.
You can see all these greatphotos and all these great
destinations that we went to.
You can have a look at ourtrack log, which is available in
the track log system so you cansee exactly where we went if
that floats your boat and andknow all the locations and the
(56:42):
names.
Fantastic place, highlyrecommended Tassie.
If you haven't been there, yougot to go.
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