"Loved to Death"

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DAY 112

Caroline slept quite well last night, her lip bled once or twice in the night. I was out of bed at 7.00 am as my back was giving me aggro, though we did have quite a good walk yesterday, and I got up to polish the blog for yesterday and made sure after the days events it all sounded ok.

We hadn’t had anymore break in’s, though during the night we had had visitors as the cooker looked like a dance floor with all the footprints, but no Possums parcels for us to tread in. I did wake in the night to hear them walking over the roof of the trailer, and they were around the back, I had leaned our table up against the back just to deter them, which seemed to work.

Caroline appeared at around 8.45 and her lip was looking at bit more presentable than it did yesterday, and she was cheerful so that’s a bonus.

We sat in the breakfast room for a couple of hours and we rustle up some breakfast, we are going over to the Rangers Station to say thank you for their assistance.

We went over to the camp reception and used their PC to add a message to the blog about Caroline’s little face diving experience, I also dropped her mum and dad an email so if they read it on the blog they would know what was going on and what had happened.

Washing needed to be done, so it was good that these things sort of slowed us down today to let Caroline rest. We are moving along tomorrow so we planned to be in Launceston tomorrow night which will give us chance to upload the blog for the past few days.

We got out at about 2.00pm and popped in to the rangers station to say thanks and we walked down the board walk 500 meters to see where it had happened, Caroline had left a good deposit of claret over their nice woodwork, but it was a nasty edge where Caroline’s lip hit!!

Driving on to Ronny Creek we walked around for an hour or so hoping to see some wildlife, we are desperate to see a Platypus. We walked behind the river hoping to see some FLW’s (Fat Lazy Wombats) and there is an old house (Shack) that is privately owned it is on a ten year tenure and the owners fight tooth and nail to keep these private Shacks in a national park. Two blokes were collecting the seeds from the Pencil Pine trees; these are packaged and sold to tourists as genuine things from Tasmania, they also use the seeds to help regenerate areas that have been damaged due to sewerage pipes and the boardwalk being installed.

We chatted briefly about the overland trail, this is a hiking trail that takes you across the mountain, taking about 5 or 6 days. Anybody used to be able to walk the mountain and camp, however they found that the area was being damaged and effectively being loved to death due to the numbers of people that liked to hike it and camp out. So, they had to put restrictions in place, they only allow liquid fuel burning stoves, i.e. they don’t give off embers and risk causing forest fires, you are only allowed to walk North to South and you have to book in to walk the trail, therefore they are able to control the numbers of people on the mountain at any one time. You still have to register when you start the walk and sign off when you finish, if you are reported missing then they check the register to see if you have signed off. If not then they will launch a search and rescue mission.

I said that if we had an early evening meal we would be free for the rest of the night to go wildlife spotting, so we got back to the camp kitchen and got the rest of our hot Chilli we had the other night and prepared tea.

We had got in to a conversation with a lady about going out tonight and she said she so wanted to go wildlife spotting but was not sure her friends wanted to go. We said that if she was at the camp kitchen at 6.15 we would take her, Caroline said she didn’t look like an axe murderer so felt that it would be ok.

Rosemarie “The Swiss Lady” turned up with her friends and was happy that she was going out to spot some wildlife, and we were happy, that she was happy, about it. Its just a magical time out in the forest there is so much wildlife to see, if you get out and go looking.

We set off at 6.30 and parked up in the Car park so we could do the “King Billy walk” its only about 3K’s around and was just about right for a fairly gentle stroll for the early evening, and as we hadn’t done that much today.

The walk was absolutely great, it was tougher than we thought and made us puff a bit, but when you got to the top, their was a lookout with an information board describing how the walk got its name.

It was just a gentle wander back down arriving in at the top of the car park from where we started.

The next walk we did was the enchanted walk, it’s only supposed to be 20 minutes around but when you are stopping, taking photo’s and talking to people we can make it last for at least an hour and a half. We managed to see a Wombat, it was debating whether to dive in a burrow out of our way, but we squatted down and spoke to it, he stayed outside, looking and listening to us, we got a couple of photo’s then walked on.

Standing over the stream we saw a lady that we had seen a couple of nights earlier, she was standing quietly, she acknowledged us and whispered that she was watching a Platypus, we stood there for 20 minutes almost motionless, trying to see this elusive creature but we got a few glimpses. She looked at Caroline’s face and asked what happened, I explained, she then said someone in the restaurant was talking about someone that had fallen

We walked on and saw Hanz, Maryann and Rosemarie “The Swiss gang” coming the other way, they said their was an Echidna just along the way, I just love the Echidna’s such pretty little creatures.

Hanz and Maryann are actually from Hamburg in Germany and now live in Melbourne, Maryann was a refugee from East Prussia and explained that when she was 11 they had to flee to escape the Russian occupation.

Rosemarie came over when she was 16 and has only visited Switzerland a few times since, she has no family in Australia since her father died, but she does not feel the need to move back to Switzerland, Australia is her home and lives in Cairns.

We completed the walk and arrived back at the car park, where we had seen the two Wombats a couple of nights before, we looked at the place that they had been and they were not there, Caroline spotted them and called me over, it was dark by now but we could see these two big creatures just grazing, totally unperturbed about our presence, Caroline spotted another grazing, down by a building and we then noticed her baby Wombat was emerging from under the building, she saw us and went back in, I said to Caroline to press you self against the building and she will be out in a little while, and sure enough this little Wombat the size of a piglet wandered out after her mum, she was absolutely beautiful.

We got back to the truck and headed in to the National Park, to Ronny Creek to be exact to see what other wildlife we could see, we did the full circuit and had to stop on the way back as a large possum was standing on the single track road, watching his young juvenile cross the road, when they went on the grass we shone our torch and it was a family group, mum, dad and offspring it was amazing.

All the way back it was stop lights up, open windows, torch on start, we saw again Wombats, Possums, Wallabies, Pademelons and by the gas station behind the diesel pump a Eastern spotted Quoll, trying to be secretive.

We got back just at 9.30 and had a quick walk around some of the camp to hopefully spot an Tasmanian Devil, but no such luck.

We flopped in to bed exhausted.


Animal Score to Date in the wild.

Wombat 19 + 1 baby
Tassie Devil 1
Eastern Quoll 2
Eastern Grey Kangaroo’s Lost Count
Wallabies Lost count.
Pademelons Lost Count
Echidna’s 2
Platypus 1
Possums Lost Count.
Fairy Penguins 3
Koala 1
Wedged Tailed Eagels 3
Eastern Brown Snake 1
Legless Lizard 1

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Photos

All Mod Cons
The equipment in the camp Kitchen

After the Fall
Caroline stil here after here fall

Open Fire
We were glad of the open fire, its so cold in the mountains and it is the middle of summer

Front Porck
Privatley owned on a 10 year lease.

Rear View
The crown want the private properties back

Plush Transport
For the well healed

Cushioned Ride
Nice Mercedes Actros

For the discerning Traveller
This lovely long wheel based Land cruiser

Lippy
Its started to heal

Old Lady
she is 9 years old and her name is Rebecca, this is her territory and she just wanders around loving the attention she gets

King Billy Lookout
A view over King Billy lookout

Pond
A view of the pond

Bolting for safety
She was hurrying for safe shelter

Standing still
But we crouched down and spoke to her calmly and she stayed their until we walked off

Seeds of Tasmania
Sold to tourists in their droves and used for regenerating damaged parkland.

Eating Again
This is all they do eat! Bit like Caroline really!

King Billy Pine
At the peak of a short 40 minute circuit walk.

Bewildered
I think he was watching us as much as we were watching him.

Baby Wombat
This is not the best of photos but, the best for the time of night.