Advertisement
Published: January 15th 2012
Edit Blog Post
A Tarraleah Highland Cow
was it wise to be losing its winter coat? Saturday 7
th January - all too soon our brief stay had come to an end and it was with some disappointment that we made our final, though casual, preparations for our departure this morning. With invitations from us for them to visit on their next trip to the UK (they last visited in 1992) we made our final farewells and left at about 10:30am heading for Deloraine, a delightful inland town we remembered from our last trip. On the way we called in at Ulverston to do some grocery shopping and eventually reached Deloraine at about 1:00pm. It was just as delightful as we recalled and we decided that, as we didn’t stay there last time, we would stay there for the night. We visited the Information Centre and asked about accommodation. We were delighted when they arranged for us to stay at a nearby motel, The Mountain View, and also to stay at a rural “retreat” for the following night. It took only a few minutes to sort out so that gave us plenty of time to have some lunch and explore Deloraine before checking in to the motel. We remembered that almost every inland Tassie town has a “theme”
The Postie on his round
One of the 'streetscape sculptures' in Deloraine – Sheffield was murals, Railton was topiary – and Deloraine is no different. There is a series of small metal sculptures, about 20 in all each depicting rural Tasmanian scenes, old and modern, mounted on bollards and sited up and down the main street. In addition there is a park with a Steam Train theme and a delightful riverside area, all of which makes Deloraine a lovely place to be and we were happy to be back. The motel enabled a “self catered” evening snack and breakfast so our stay there was excellent although some noisy early leavers meant we were awake a bit earlier than we might have liked.
On Sunday we left the motel under heavy skies – in fact it had rained quite fiercely during the night. We were headed for the rural retreat of Tarraleah but first we had to negotiate The Highland Lakes area. From Deloraine we began to climb and immediately the weather deteriorated until it was both wet and foggy. Some splendid views which had been promised did not materialise as we travelled for the best part of an hour through woodland and passed lakes which we couldn’t really see! In addition
we had to contend with intermittent gravel roads which, because of the rain, were not very pleasant. As we dropped down through the forests on the other side of The Highlands, the mist began to clear so we got a bit of a feel for the nature of the countryside we had passed through and admired some delightfully placed lakeside holiday homes. Eventually the rain stopped and the sun broke through and an opportunity came to park next to one of the small lakes for a cuppa and cake.
Before we checked in to Tarraleah we wanted to visit an exhibition which has quickly become a “must do” for visitors to Tasmania. So, when we reached the intriguingly named village of Bronte Park, we turned right instead of left and travelled about 25 kilometers to Derwent Bridge. Here we found our way to ‘The Wall in the Wilderness’, an amazing series of sculptures made up of about 100 meters of wood carvings about 3 meters high. It is still a ‘work in progress’ which the creator, Greg Duncan, hopes to complete by 2015. There were many other smaller, individual carvings too which were mostly made by Greg’s son but
the main exhibit was a wall commemorating those who helped shape the past and present heritage of the Central Highlands of Tasmania including indigenous people, pioneering timber harvesters, pastoralists, miners and hydro workers. We had seen the official book of photos during our visit with Sarah and Darryl’s friends, Jane and Tony in Orange, NSW, and we quickly realised that it was a very special work of art. We weren’t disappointed as the realism of the carvings was simply incredible and we were so pleased we had arranged our trip so as to include this very special sculpture. No photography was allowed in the building so I bought a few postcards and later on was able to get some photos from images in a book. Afterwards we found a pleasant café, The Hungry Wombat, where we both had pie and chips – they were very good and Graham was delighted to be eating a pie!
We then drove back towards Bronte Park and another 25 kilometers on to Tarraleah. This village was constructed in the 1930s to house the many workers employed on the nearby Hydro-Electric Power Station but, on completion of the project, it was cleverly converted into
a Holiday Village. It is located in exquisite scenery and although it isn’t cheap it was a bit of a special “treat” for us to spend just one night there. We had a large cottage to ourselves overlooking the village green – it was big enough to accommodate about 10 people comfortably so it was rather a shame that it was just us there. After settling in and with the weather showing signs of improving we strolled up to the Tarraleah Lookout where there was a great view over the gorge and of the power station pipeline made up of six separate huge pipes which looked a bit bizarre as they stretched their way up and over the hillside. Then, as it was still dry, we walked along ‘The Quoll Track’. This took us around a lake and through a field of Highland cows – long hair, big horns and all – they looked quite fierce but we had been assured that they were very friendly (and they were!). Then we managed to find what seemed to be a rarely used track through the forest but alas, we saw no quolls, only a few wallabies. Quolls are another of these
strange and elusive Australian marsupials that are difficult to find in the wild. We had walked for ages and became concerned that we might be lost but unknown to us we were walking parallel to a road which was only about 50 meters away. Eventually we made our way to the road and walked back to the village the easy way. The weather was still good so we drove off and spent some time looking for Pump Pond, a location where platypus might be seen. By the time we found what seemed to be the likely spot, which was up a dirt track off the main highway, there was only about half an hour of daylight left. We had to leave the car and walk down to the riverside which happened to be just below the pump-house on the River Nive and it looked to be an ideal spot for platypus. Try as we might and we stayed until it was almost dark, we didn’t see any but we did see plenty of other wildlife. Slightly disappointed we went back to the cottage where we relaxed for the remainder of the evening and slept well in our Queen sized bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0851s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb