I love that Tasmania provides so much to accomplish within a single day.
Leaving the bay of Hobart by climbing over the protective coastal range gave and expansive view of this port city.
Today the southern tip of Tasmania and the Hastings Cave site, who's above terrain parkland is home to a platypus population, was my target. One of the great surprises of the Tasmanian Park system is the great inexpensive food and the Hastings Cave Park was no exception. Check of this great lunch of Turkey and mango/cranberry chutney toasted pannini with fresh salad, for the equivalent of about $3.50 US. (Thank goodness the $10 US National Park Service hotdog hasn't reached Australia.)
Traveling at the fringe of tourist season has great benefits; among them our tour through the cave system only consisted of six tourists and a guide. Two of the group were elementary aged boys, so the guide had good fun amazing their imaginations with the wilds of cave living, such as the spiders here are so ancient that they build horizontal webs for catching falling prey rather than vertical traps for flying insects.
After our spelunking adventure I walked the platypus trail, but missed out on seeing an actual creature. These animal wonders tend to feed at dust and dawn, providing the best opportunity for a sighting. Of course, I happened to be in the nature preserve during the early afternoon.
The Hyundai Gehts, despite its small size and seeming three-cylinder engine, cruised along the corrugated dirt roads to the trailhead for the South Coast Track. By this time, there were just a couple of hours of daylight left and I was going to need every moment.
As it turns out, I was one of the first trekkers to tackle the South Coast Trail for this season. It started out well marked and easily followed. Then the fun began. Leaving the car park the trail leads though reasonably muddy tracks. This opens up into a vast bog, with boardwalks across what would be an exhaustingly sloppy hike otherwise. After re-entering the woods the trail is nice and easily wide enough for two.
The first major vista is breathtaking. The dense forest opens onto a stone sea cliff. From here the southern most tip of Australia/Tasmania is visible and the trail soon becomes invisibly wide as it is literally the beach. Walking along the rocks and sand there was an ominous feeling as a clear horizon line was not visible due to the huge sets of waves rolling in.
One more extremely muddy climb (as in over the boots and up the shins), complete with waist high fallen trees to scamper over, and I descended onto a beautiful huge beach as its lone occupant.
The map suggested that there was an official campsite but I couldn’t find it. So I trudged up the sand dune to avoid any expectantly large tide, given the full moon, and pitched my tent for the evening. Completely unconditioned to the native animal sounds and combined with the constant tremors of sand pounding surf made for a reasonable collection of catnaps.
No comments:
Post a Comment