Caving, paper making & a trip to the garbage dump

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The hostel at Lune River is small, full of hikers, bicycle riders and is a stop off point for more active travellers looking to embark on the southwest walking tracks. The trip there via the Huon Valley is breath taking, big sweeping corners, up and down the mountains, it was amazing. On the mechanical front, the two bikes are running fine, still push starting the Morini most times (but that's normal).

The warden at the hostel, Andrew, lives in a bus out back. He was very interested in our bikes. We had to sleep in the dorms because the family room was taken. No big deal, unless you do not like sharing a dorm with lots of German hikers. Lorenza cooked up a great meal - BBQ chicken + lemon sauce - yum. Had fun in the kitchen and dining room with all the different travellers - Scotts, Germans, English, and a few Aussies. This place has a real "frontier" feel about it, with some rugged walks close by and the place just has an "expectant" feel about it - like everyone is prepared for some kind of adventure.

We got a bit dizzy on some cheap wine, courtesy of a German fellow called "Luke", who is a maniac zilch player. It was a fun night, talking, good music on the radio and people playing dice games, very social. Most of our fellow hostelers look a little worse for wear - muddy clothing, wind swept hair, and sore feet. A fun place!

Mystery Creek Cave

We set off early in the morning on the Morini to explore Mystery Creek Cave. Andrew at the hostel had kindly supplied us with some old overalls, gumboots and torches for the the adventure. The trip there was a challenge, along a narrow logging road, we nearly got run off the road by a logging truck. The truck driver obviously had no concern for anything but getting his load to the logging mill. We parked the bike near the track to the cave. The walk to the cave entrance was very muddy and slippery, but absolutely beautiful through the forest. We had to cross a few creeks and scramble across a few fallen trees on route. Lorenza soon realised that her left gumboot had a big crack in it.

Lorenza made the following notes in our travel journal ...

"Rob knows I don't like confined spaces a lot and is very considerate about looking after me. We found the cave entrance and got the torches out. The basic idea was to follow the creek into the cave and then scramble up, around and over the rocks and boulders inside. We got to the second room in the cave and turned the torches off and what a sight - the glow worms made the roof of the cave look like it's own little galaxy of stars. With the sound of the water rushing over the rocks and the glowing on the walls and roof it was so spectacular.

The torches that we were lent started to run out as we made our way into the third room of the cave. Rob decided it would probably be a good idea if we headed out of the cave, rather than going any further with dodgy torches. Luckily, Rob thinks ahead and had a small pocket torch he had brought along. It was not the strongest of lights but we managed to find our way. Rob did his best to keep me calm as he picked his way back over, around, and under the boulders and rocks on the way out. That was my first ever caving trip and I must admit it was beautiful but will probably be my last. Rob is very agile and uses a lot of common sense in situations like that, I was glad he was with me".

It is funny to read that now, because I know at the time I was just a bit apprehensive about the situation we found ourselves in.

A trip to the garbage dump

Back at the hostel I did some maintenance on the bikes and fixed a fuel blockage problem on the Morini, while Lorenza went off picking blackberries for dessert later. After dinner I took a very interesting trip to, of all places, the Southport garbage dump! We were sitting on the hostel verandah when a local guy arrived out of the dark, looking like he had spent a week sleeping in a mud puddle. He asked if anybody could give him a hand to collect a freezer from the local dump. For some silly reason myself and another guy, Lloyd raised our hands and agreed to give him a hand. We made some introductions and headed off with Mick in his old Datsun Bluebird, bound for the rubbish dump.

At the dump, we three managed to load a huge freezer, the kind you find in a grocery store, onto the roof of the Bluebird. Mick had made some roof racks to load it onto. Once it was up there, we strapped it down as best we could and Mick got behind the wheel and belted along the road from the dump to his "home". Lloyd and I were sitting in the back with our heads as low as possible with visions of this freezer collapsing the roof of the car. The roof racks were groaning and creaking, I had visions of the obituary "two tourists crushed by freezer".

Once we got to Mick's "home" we unloaded the freezer and he offered us a beer, He lit a kero lamp inside his "home", which we could now see was an unfinished cottage, with 3 walls, no roof and a lot of plastic tarps keeping out the wind and rain. There was junk every where. Mick gave us both a warmish beer and also some hand made greeting cards he had made. He then told us his life story, while Lloyd and I exchanged glances with each other. I could read Lloyd's mind - I was thinking much the same - Mick had a big heart but had obviously experimented with too much LSD at some point in his life. He told us how he had been living in India for some years and did a lot of volunteer work at an orphanage where the kids spent their time making greeting cards. When Mick returned to Hobart from India, he spent weeks walking around trying to sell the greeting cards door to door and sent what money he raised back to the orphanage. It was obvious he did not keep any money for himself, and while he was a bit "odd" he obvioulsy had a big heart.

It did strike me as odd that Mick wanted the freezer, considering he had no electricity at his place and the freezer was obviously dumped for a good reason. Back at the hostel, we introduced Mick to Lorenza, and together with Lloyd we shared some beers we had. Poor old Mick could have done with a good bath and a trip to the dentist. Lorenza asked why he wanted the freezer and Lick went on to explain that he intended to use it to make recycled paper in. His plan was to manufacture more greeting cards to sell and raise funds to send back to India. I was kicking Lorenza under the table as she began to explain to Mick that she had done a paper making course and the freezer would probably be no good for what he wanted because you could not drain the water form it very easily. Eventually Lorenza clicked and realised if she progressed further with info about the freezer not being suitable it would probably mean another trip to the dump.

After Mick went on his way, we got talking to a German woman who had just spent 14 years in the merchant navy. She had some interesting stories and was built like a brick shit house, it was obvious that the male sailors would never have thought of making any stupid advances to her after months at sea!

It took a while to get off to sleep because one newly arrived German hiker talked crap all night at the top of her voice, even though nobody was listening. From the little German I can understand it would seem that this unhappy traveller was lamenting the fact that she could not buy any decent black bread at the local shops and what a crap country makes only soft breads. The merchant navy lady got up from bed, went to the lounge room where this woman was raving on and said some very abrupt words to her in their native tongue and the rest of the hostelers finally got some sleep.

I had a really weird dream that the hostel had been invaded by a huge group of possums, luckily when I woke up suddenly it was not the case and I got back to sleep and slept like a log after that.

We shared breakfast, early in the morning with Lloyd and then packed our belongings as the rest of the hostel slowly came alive. Oddly enough the "bread woman" had not made many friends and was left to have breakfast alone. Lorenza delivered a chocolate bar to one of the German guys she had played zilch with and lost. We were soon saying farewell and on our way to Mount Field National Park, having decided to give Bruny Island a miss.

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