Tasmania's rugged west

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This little gem from Mark Twain:”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.So throw off the bowlines,sail away from the safe harbour,catch the trade winds in your sails.Explore.Dream.Discover”.Tasmania is an island that had to be sailed to so as to be discovered and it was a Dutch navigator,Abel Tasman,who found the place in 1642.Then followed a few centuries of exploitation by Europeans killing seals and generally irritating the indigenous tribes.The British set up their second colony near present day Hobart in 1803 and this led to increased clashes with the Aboriginal people who didn’t take kindly to losing land and their women.They fought back but tragically were killed in numbers by less than fair means including deadly poisoning of their food.A devious strategy to round them all up and relocate survivors was catastrophic with many succumbing to “white man’s diseases” and despair.So Tasmania got off to a brutal start as a colony which was to get worse due to the island later being used as a penal colony in the early 1820’s.That all happened a long time ago and our mission,on a chilly and misty Monday morning,was to navigate from Hobart to the West Coast town of Strahan.Unlike those early pioneers,the comfort of a hired car,a navigating device and good sealed roads would make our journey something to savour.Out of Hobart the A10 snuggled up alongside the Derwent River for a fair distance and the city soon gave way to farming countryside which was not unlike a wintry scene in England…..gently rolling hills,green fields,some livestock braving the elements and a number of small farm dwellings with smoke lazily lifting off their wet roofs into the cold air.Stopping for “brekky” has become something of a ritual on the road and we soon found ourselves in a warm and delightful little eatery in New Norfolk.Back on the road the mist hadn’t abated and the gradual climb over rolling green hills continued.The towns got smaller and there was an almost surreal feel to them…a couple of houses,a church built a long time ago and very little evidence of people moving around.Hamilton,in particular,seemed to be lost in a time warp all of it’s own despite a few brightly signed “arts and crafts” shops which looked to be in snooze mode waiting for summer and the promised flood of tourists.Looking out into the fields one also sees the omnipresent eucalyptus trees,some of which had grown to enormous size.Apart from size,many had bizarre shapes.Throw in a number which had died and are now dry skeletons and it all adds up to something of an eerie landscape.Now there is an anecdotal story that their was an element of in breeding somewhere in the upper Derwent area which was encapsulated in a town by name of “Black Bobs”.This is the stuff of urban legend but somehow the little towns and the misty setting did get the mind racing just a little….And then it happened.We burst out of the misty gloom into brilliant,shimmering sunlight against the back drop of a deep blue sky.This coincided with the start of the climb into the Highlands and the scenery which unfolded was spectacular.Huge indigenous trees stood tall up steep mountainsides and a road which twisted and turned it’s way up to the ridge and then plunged down into deep,river carved valleys.Truly breathtaking and a stop at Tarraleah provided an opportunity to simply stand in the crisp,clean morning air and absorb the incredible beauty of the highland forests,steep mountains and swirling rivers down in the shadowed gorges.What had also become noticeable were the number of lakes and lagoons with some of them contributing to ingenious water diversions so as to create hydro electric power.But a message for the “Muddling Minnows”(my fishing mates)…..if there is a fly fishing heaven then this is it!Dust off those angel wings for we will need to flit and flap our way back to this part of Tasmania.There looks to be enough fishable water to keep us seriously occupied for a month at least.Further on we took the opportunity to stop and visit a center which is developing a “Wall to the Wilderness”.This has to be seen to be fully apreciated….a sculptor by name of Greg Duncan is busy with a massive work carved out of huon pine which depicts the early lives of the piners and miners.Hard to believe that such lifelike images can be sculpted out of wood.After crossing the Derwent River bridge we then entered the Franklin Gordon Wild Rivers National Park….just when we thought it couldn’t get any better than what we had seen up to that point.Somehow the mountains now appeared even more spectacular and the trees larger as they clambered skywards for life giving sunlight.Fortunately the road,a marvel to engineering,had steep gradients and very sharp bends so slow speed was required and this meant you simply could not ignore the magnificent scenery in all directions.Much of this wilderness area has been declared a World Heritage site but not without some controversy.Despite nomination as a World Heritage area,the hydro power company with political support planned to dam the rivers in the early 1980’s.Tasmanians revolted at the idea and in a 1981 referendum the “No” vote held sway.A new government came to power but their resolve on dam building hadn’t changed.Eventually,as construction started,protesters gathered and formed a barricade of boats across the river.A number were arrested and this turmoil was elevated to the international stage.Inevitably a federal election in 1983 saved the day when the Labor Party built part of their campaign around a “No dams” policy.They won and this pristine wilderness was saved.With the senses turbocharged by the awesome beauty of this wilderness area there was a “reality check” when entering the region around Queenstown.The reason….good old mining,in this case copper.Mountainsides have been stripped bare of their magnificent tree heritage to enable the miners getting to the rock face.The result is a series of stark,bare mountainsides now badly eroded and devoid of the earth that sustained the trees and vegetation.The town itself…well,the less said the better.A mining town which sadly almost mirrors the barren hills surrounding it.Strahan is the most south westerly town in Tasmania and is nestled on the shores of Mcquarrie Harbour at the delta of the Gordon River.It is on a southerly latitude placing it firmly in the path of the “Roaring Forties” and is widely touted as a town which sees more rain than sunshine(300 odd days of rain annually).The weather gods were smiling…we arrived on the most spectacular sunny afternoon with no sign of those rain bearing clouds.Our luck held with the next morning dawning bright and sunny and thus presenting ideal conditions to board “The Eagle” to explore this fascinating area and some of it’s history and beauty.The harbour entrance was named “Hell’s Gates” by the convicts who arrived there in the early 1820’s.A more than appropriate name given the horrors they endured on Sarah Island,a penal colony established in 1822 for “secondary offenders”(meaning those unfortunate souls who had committed a second minor offence merely to survive).A guide gave a chilling account of life on this island as we walked and viewed different aspects.Any misdemeanor was dealt with by savage floggings with the “cat of nine tails”.Numbers of prisoners tried to escape but most drowned or died in the impenetrable rain forests.A bleak and miserable life but with all the timber around and the skills of a Scottish ship builder,the inmates built 131 ships making it the largest ship building site in the British colonies at the time.Life was so harsh that a number of inmates chose “murder,sucide” in their desperate bid for freedom….what this meant was being sentenced to death as a means of escape.Bizarre as it may seem the public hangings were a sort of carnival occasion.It was finally shut down in 1832 but became the model for the penal colonies then set up at Port Arthur.Back on board “The Eagle”,a trip up the Gordon River meant we were heading into the rain forest which receives 2.5m-3m of rain per annum.The river is very deep and has a distinctly brackish colour and consequently there are virtually no water birds along the banks.Unspoilt and uninhabited,it is a superb example of nature at it’s very best.Mid afternoon we returned to Strahan and with no sign of clouds or rain,we witnessed a beautiful wintery sunset.Would our weather luck hold?Well….day three dawned bright,sunny and cloudless which was a serious bonus as we then stood a good chance of seeing Cradle Mountain in all it’s glory.This mountain is Tasmania’s icon although weather more often than not covers it with cloud.It is a very impressive mountain rising majestically above those around it and viewing it across Dove Lake was a marvel for the senses and a fitting farewell to the wild and rugged west.

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