Join us for Episode 16 of the ExplorOz Podcast, where we delve into part 3 of our 4 part series documenting our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast.
We start this episode where we left off in Ep 15 at Lagoons Beach just north of Bicheno and continue south along the coast including Freycinet National Park, Maria Island, and then the Tasman Peninsula including many wineries, epic hikes including Cape Raoul, Cape Hauy, and a day at Port Arthur. Listen in to our adventure as we reached the "end of the road" at Cockle Bay - the gateway to the South West National Park where we hiked to South Cape Bay the most southerly point of Tasmania (and therefore Australia). Pick up some tips on finding hidden gems in the area such as the Mystery Cave and how we found it compared to the mainstream experience at Hastings Caves (Newdegate Cave). In this episode we also cover the next part of our journey cutting an exciting 4WD path through remote forestry tracks for an alternative way to reach the Tarkine Forest, our hike to Hartz Peak and driving onwards to eventually Lake Peddar where there are 2 excellent free camps in the National Park.
We've spent five weeks meticulously exploring and documenting every detail and updating these places to ensure the latest ExplorOz content accessible to all users of our ExplorOz Traveller app so sit back and listen to our trip summary and hopefully feel inspired to add a few places to your next trip plan.
Join us for Episode 16 of the ExplorOz Podcast, where we delve into part 3 of our 4 part series documenting our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast.
We start this episode where we left off in Ep 15 at Lagoons Beach just north of Bicheno and continue south along the coast including Freycinet National Park, Maria Island, and then the Tasman Peninsula including many wineries, epic hikes including Cape Raoul, Cape Hauy, and a day at Port Arthur. Listen in to our adventure as we reached the "end of the road" at Cockle Bay - the gateway to the South West National Park where we hiked to South Cape Bay the most southerly point of Tasmania (and therefore Australia). Pick up some tips on finding hidden gems in the area such as the Mystery Cave and how we found it compared to the mainstream experience at Hastings Caves (Newdegate Cave). In this episode we also cover the next part of our journey cutting an exciting 4WD path through remote forestry tracks for an alternative way to reach the Tarkine Forest, our hike to Hartz Peak and driving onwards to eventually Lake Peddar where there are 2 excellent free camps in the National Park.
We've spent five weeks meticulously exploring and documenting every detail and updating these places to ensure the latest ExplorOz content accessible to all users of our ExplorOz Traveller app so sit back and listen to our trip summary and hopefully feel inspired to add a few places to your next trip plan.
Hello All right folks. Well, welcome back, here we are again. Another episode in our podcast series for your audio entertainment, for your audio entertainment and less visual stimulation, because this is a podcast after all. Okay, so when last we were speaking to you, we were coming down the East Coast and we'd just done Bay of Fires and we'd touched on Frey Chesnay and then we touched on going on a little inner loop around Mathena Falls and St Columba Falls and places like that Evercreech, evercreech and some wonderful spots Doing our rainforest thing.
Speaker 1:That was fantastic, and we just got to Lagoon Beach in the rain and found a reasonable spot that we managed to stay at for a few days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we should let people know about Lagoon Beach.
Speaker 1:Let them know.
Speaker 2:It's another one of those 28 day free camp areas and it's got facilities, toilets. There was a ranger on site when we were there. He was super friendly and helpful and the reason it's called Lagoon Beach is there is a lagoon and there is a beach. It's a massive, big pumping swell there out on the beach and the weather was not great when we were there. In fact, the ranger was asking us what our plans were and a lot of people were moving on getting out of the area because the weather forecast was pretty scary.
Speaker 1:And we woke up one day and heard that um we woke up like the second or third day of being there and that we we had been rained on lightly, reasonably, it was rain. Uh, it didn't bucket down on us, but it did rain and it was wet and up the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, up the road had had 200 millimeters of rain and the river had flooded that we'd been driving through the not through, but the upper and the campsite the campsite that we'd photographed and had made a big song and dance about on the internet.
Speaker 1:Um, a couple of days before where the person had been camped, I was. We were a bit concerned that that was probably going to be underwater. We heard that so much water had come down all the local rivers and stuff that it was particularly dangerous. We were only some 30 kilometres, 30 or 40 kilometres south of this spot, so we were lucky to dodge that bullet.
Speaker 2:The message here for both us and then we'd like to pass on to other travellers is when you're in Tasmania, it really pays to watch the weather reports, because Tasmania can change in an instant and particularly your safety when you're at a camp and if you're seeking remote camps and all. Obviously you don't want to get caught with rising river levels and other such issues that come with changing weather. So there is a website called TasAlerts that I've now got on my phone. It's not an app, it's just a website. So TAS Alerts. So make sure that you keep that one handy and have a look at what's coming.
Speaker 2:It's fire and storm and, of course, your BOM.
Speaker 1:Your BOM app and make sure, because the weather forecast was it's all just common sense, but sometimes you just forget when you're travelling.
Speaker 2:Well, I certainly do.
Speaker 1:I think about more about the destinations and what we're doing, and well, you also don't know where you are in relative terms to some of the things, some of the terminology that you might hear on a broadcast about the weather. You, you don't necessarily know that you're only 10 minutes or 20 minutes away from some place that you've never heard of before?
Speaker 2:um so yeah, don't take it lightly, don't?
Speaker 1:take it lightly. Keep your eye on those sorts of things. It's really important, and we learned that lesson there, and we were lucky we only got a little bit of rain.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, if it had rained like that where we were, it would have been very very messy, and that was at Lagoon Beach, which was just down the road from St Mary's and from there, while we're at Lagoon Beach and if you don't know where it is, it's just under a place called Scamander and it's just east of St Mary's, and so we did a day tour around Upper Scamander and we did some four-wheel driving up there to find there's a few camps, a few camps listed up on the river, and in fact the one where the flooding had happened, that we thought the guy was in trouble was.
Speaker 1:Skamander Forest and so while we're doing that day trip. It was actually the day before the rain happened, so it was interesting that we were only in there the day before and it and it had basically come back totally different place the next day that was the day that we ended up making a bit of a diversion.
Speaker 2:We we did some really cool four-wheel drive tracks that day. So if you're looking for a bit of fun in your four-wheel drive as a day trip out of that area. So take the track to Upper Scamander and then you go into the State Forest and there's massive steep four-wheel drive tracks and we poked around a lot of them and we had the app with us, so we had a bit of confidence as to what track was leading to what.
Speaker 2:we made a bit of a boo-boo at a five point intersection and we went down something oh yes, I remember that we you thought you're going to have to reverse the whole way out and there was a day trip, so no, you wouldn't do it, towing no way, um. But we got ourselves out of that and then we didn't have to reverse out.
Speaker 1:We were able to drive out, but it didn't. It didn't. We're able to drive through, but yeah, I wasn't too keen if I had to come up backwards, that's for sure and then to get down to that scamander um forest um camp the way we'd been going through the state forest.
Speaker 2:We ended up on a big descent down trout road which you know um, if you're a good four-wheel driver it's not that hard, but it was enough that I got out the camera, got the angles, tried to get a bit of action. So a bit of fun. If you haven't done a lot of four-wheel driving and you're on the coast and want to go and have a bit of a play, go up there with a mate and have a bit of fun skyline tear.
Speaker 1:We was just a was slightly off trout road. That was a bit earlier.
Speaker 2:We did this no skyline tears off eastern creek road on the way out of the skernander.
Speaker 1:That's right and I only know that because I've got my notes well, I'm reading your notes and I thought they were out of order. If I must, be honest.
Speaker 2:No, no, so that was coming to you know anyway.
Speaker 1:So, um, skyline tear was just something we found again another, just a little four-wheel drive excursion. We saw a thing called Skyline Tier on the map and thought, oh well, it's on the map, there's a road up there, how bad can it be? It was pretty tight. It was pretty tough. It was a good bit of four-wheel driving. If you're not confident about doing that sort of thing on your own, maybe not If you've got winches and stuff in case you need it, because it was quite soft stones and some large boulders that you had to sort of crawl over and around. It was a bit of fun. We didn't need to use any recovery gear or anything, but it was a bit of fun to go and do.
Speaker 2:And at the top there is a trig survey point. Yeah, a trig thing so there is a photo of that on the place.
Speaker 1:If you have a look on Explorals Traveller you can find the place for Skyline Tier and have a look at the Scamander Forest Camp and if you have a look at our tracking map, which is still public, you'll be able to actually work out exactly where it is, because the line that we drove is still published on our tracking map.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:From our entire trip. So, on Exploralscom, go to the tracking page, go into the member public tracking listing and you should see us in the recent updates. We should be one of the recent updates because we're always moving It'll be ExplorOS, david and Michelle, I think and click on that and you'll be able to see everywhere we've been since we left Perth. So that's a fair bit of information and you can zoom in right into everywhere we've been.
Speaker 2:Now look this tracking, Dave. We must make sure that we explain that the tools that we're using are exactly the same tools that you can use.
Speaker 1:They're provided for in the Explorers Traveler app, the tracking service is a membership extension, but what you're seeing, that we're doing, you can do. In fact, you can embed the tracking on your own website if you have your own website or your own blog and have the map updating on your own website. It's all part of the services that are offered as part of our tracking solution. So have a look at our tracking and, as I say, you'll be able to zoom in to that skyline tier area just east of Scamander and you'll be able to see exactly where we went, and you'd be able to then use the Traveller app and add those as little favourites and put them in a folder called Tasmania Things to do in Tasmania, if that entices you and gives you something that you think you would like to do, that you think you would like to do Yep, and that area is just north of the Frachene area, which obviously is a very popular part of Tasmania that people come here to do.
Speaker 2:Frachene is one of the most visited parts of the Tasmanian island.
Speaker 1:If you want the Frachene information, however, listen to our previous one, because we did it slightly out of order.
Speaker 2:Well, yep, we spoke about that in the previous podcast, so you can have a listen to that. For our trip, we spent only two nights in the Frey-Chenet area and we camped at the River and Rocks, which is mentioned in the previous podcast, but Frey-Chenet is spectacular, so if you've got an extra couple of days, try and fit that in. There are some free camps around. Have a listen to the previous podcast, to this one, for more detail, because we have talked about it there probably about halfway, three quarters of the way through that podcast.
Speaker 2:If you need to skip yeah um, after all of this, after all of those little journeys and ventures um most people tend to continue heading south down the east coast, as we did, and so. So that's what we did and you go through, you know Swansea and all of that. We ended up starting to find all these gorgeous wineries oh yeah, devil's Corner.
Speaker 1:They just appeared out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:And there's signs literally left, right, centre, and you can't possibly visit all of them, so I'll tell you the ones that we've been to and that we enjoyed.
Speaker 1:So, God, I didn't write down the one that we went to.
Speaker 2:Mel's Kitchen is part of Springdale. Beautiful wine tasting. Springdale, springwood, springdale, that's the one. I might be wrong, but I thought it was Springdale.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we'll research that later and we'll put it in the comments Devil's Corner.
Speaker 2:Devil's Corner is the first one you come to when you pull out of Frasier Night. Now Devil's Corner is a must stop.
Speaker 1:It has a big lookout and it's got all sorts of restaurants and facilities and beaches, but it has spectacular views right out over the mountains. Definitely worth stopping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I should have entered Devil's Corner first. Devil's Corner.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Springdale.
Speaker 1:Wooddale.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Not sure I can't go and check the bottles because they've been consumed already.
Speaker 2:What's the one that we just drank last night, craigie Now.
Speaker 1:Craigie. Now that's only open on the weekends.
Speaker 2:So there's a whole myriad of little wineries in there, and we had a.
Speaker 1:We had a particularly delightful day of Michelle tasted wines and I didn't. Yeah, we had a lovely lunch there at Mel's Kitchen, uh. So if you're in that area and you and you find that place, yeah, craigie now also has a big um. Craigie now had a function center as well a big marquee thing, um. So you know there's. There was a number of lovely little wineries in that area as we were heading towards Trebana, so we were heading further south towards the Tasman Peninsula.
Speaker 2:So we've mentioned a few things that have been on the bucket list and why we've been going to a few of these places, and the reason that one would head towards Triobana is or for us anyway was to be able to get on the Maria Island cruise.
Speaker 1:Maria Island.
Speaker 2:Maria Island, Maria Island. So we were corrected.
Speaker 1:Very early on, when we arrived in Tasmania. Well, we were corrected one way, and then we've been corrected the other way, and then we've been told it's either way, but the locals all call it Maria.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, when you the other way, and then we've been told it's either way, but the locals all call it mariah, yep, yep. When you do the tour, they tell you that it's actually maria.
Speaker 1:It is actually maria, oh my god, who knows call it whatever you want, everyone calls it mariah, so it is mariah, and they even the tour operators call it mariah, so it's mariah island I'm sure if you look it up you will see all the reviews.
Speaker 2:You'll also freak out about the price of it that I can absolutely unequivocally tell you it is a highly recommended um cruise to do. There's two ways of visiting mariah island. You can take yourself over on the main um ferry ferry and then be on the island to do what you like. So there's no cars allowed on the island, um, so you can walk around there.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of good hikes absolutely you can take your bikes out there as well you can camp out there in a tent type of thing um, but it's not a car ferry.
Speaker 2:So it's a passenger ferry, so you can go out there for the day or you can um go out for a couple of nights, do whatever you like. So it is a national park, so there is a national parks office where you can buy a parks pass before boarding the ferry and lots of information there about the hikes and what to see and do. So Maria Island has history as being a penitentiary convict settlement.
Speaker 1:Then a concrete production facility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then there's some really great history and it's a good place to see because there's a lot of buildings there both ruins, but also a lot have been restored and quite worth visiting and the wildlife, the wildlife, literally.
Speaker 1:If you haven't seen, if you haven't seen a wombat and you want to see a wild wombat, you're guaranteed, I will guarantee, I will guarantee that you will see a wombat on mariah island.
Speaker 2:Check out our socials, go back a little bit and you will see a wombat on Moriah.
Speaker 1:Island.
Speaker 2:Check out our socials, go back a little bit and you will see the most magnificent mother wombat waddling around with her little baby. That I captured on my phone while we were just walking around there. But we were seeing probably 30 wombats before this point, but this mother and baby walked beside us with us, right towards us.
Speaker 1:It was just easy to get photos the wildlife there on the island has no real natural predators, so the wombats and stuff. There's even an overpopulation problem, which is why there's so many of them and they walk around during the day. They're actually been walking around in the day so much that their fur coats are sun bleached, yeah that's right, I kid you not, they are sun bleached wombats.
Speaker 1:They're almost white wombats, yeah, from the sun. So very, um, very unusual. But the predatorial mix and things over there is totally different. So, um, a great place. We that was basically the ferry trip and that's doing what was the little, what was the little town called? That's in there darlington darlington.
Speaker 1:Darlington is the place where the ferry goes and that's where all the history and all that stuff is, and all the information panels and the, the ruins and the wreckages and that sort of stuff. Our trip to mariah island was on the um mariah island express.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know what do they call it mariah island tours, cruise east coast cruises, and the reason we chose to do it as the cruise is that what appealed to me was being able to see the coastline and get into the sea caves, and that's what that tour offers. But it also gives you two hours on the island. So, from my assessment, that was going to be the way we wanted to do Maria Island, maria Island, and we would highly recommend it. It was a lot of fun, really professional, a really comfortable boat. No one got seasick. Oh, there was a little kitty that. He got a bit queasy there for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, little kids do that, you know, go up the front while it's bouncing around, and then they go a bit cross.
Speaker 2:But this boat has an upper deck and you can choose to sit on the upper deck or you can choose to sit inside the boat and it has windows to protect you if it's a rough day. Actually, I need to go back a little bit. It was meant to be what we'd been trying to get on this cruise and we keep being told there was no bookings. It was fully booked out, and then I got a phone call I'd asked to be put on a cancellation list and I got a phone call the night before. We just set up camp.
Speaker 2:It was five o'clock and they said, there's really rough weather booked tomorrow, so we've got some cancellations, would you like?
Speaker 2:to would you like to go on a rough day, you're not selling it full price. Well, on that note, they say if you choose and you turn up on the day and you've paid, and then you change your mind and you don't step on board the boat, you get a full refund. They're quite happy to do that. They don't want you to be disappointed. And literally we got on the boat and he reminded us the weather forecast. Not perfect, guys, I'm really sorry, and it was a bit gray. We had our spray coats. What do you call them? Spray jackets?
Speaker 1:um, anyway the whole, the whole boat trip around in the sea caves and they give you the clothing if you need it. So it's more spray jackets and more clothing and they looked after us with morning tea and food and lunch and dinner or not dinner but food and lunch the tour around the whole outside into the sea caves.
Speaker 2:As Michelle was saying, spectacular stuff because the weather changed, of course, as it does. We got on the boat and within 10 minutes, it was magic weather After lunch.
Speaker 1:10 minutes after lunch. It was magic. It was pretty sketchy for some of it Moving around from morning tea to afternoon tea in the swell and the chop down south wasn't great, but the rest of it was perfect. It was really a nice day. There were really good operators. Was it $280 a person or something Worth it? You $280 a person? Or something worth it, just do it. You can probably get a discount code and get it cheaper and do whatever.
Speaker 1:Add that to your trip. But add that to your trip, plan tribana and, uh, that that particular trip, um, you know it's an all-day thing, so there's a lot of accommodation in tribana except that we'd set up camp before the. We'd set up camp before the phone call at five o'clock and we're about 20 k's away that's all right at a little bush camp out, a place called samuel's realm, and samuel's a guy with his own private property and he just is happy to let you camp there so it's marked on explorals, traveler.
Speaker 2:um, he's a really good guy. We had a bit of a bit of a connection with him, had a bit of a chinwag. He's a bit of a chinwag, he's a bit of a talker. So I think everyone that's been there would know that he's a bit of a talker. He'll have a good time. But yeah, it's a magnificent place up there. I know a lot of people, when they're in the area, want to camp at Mayfield right on the beach, but I tell you what we checked it out it was crammed full. I've never. It's always crammed full, and so that's why we didn't camp there, even though there was one particular spot we could have. We went up the hill not very far away into Sam's realm and he's way up high on a mountain that overlooks the whole ocean and we had it all to ourselves. We stayed there for two nights completely alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, other than Sam in his house With the view of the ocean Other than Sam in his house on the other side of the paddock a bit further away. But yeah, no, it was a wonderful spot.
Speaker 2:He left us at home, yep.
Speaker 1:It was a wonderful spot and look so after we did the Moriah Island trip, which was fantastic, and we then went back to Sam's that night we came in and we did our usual work running around town. There was also an iga there, so you'll hear about all the shops you know, because they're few and far between decent shops. So be prepared for that if you're coming here, that there's not a shop in every town we have two fridges on board and they're almost both empty right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one in the car and one in the camper. Yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So if you've got a full-size fridge in your caravan or whatever, fill it when you can Fill it.
Speaker 1:When you can, because you may not be able to fill it down the road, you just don't know. And so we did our usual work in there and we decided that we were heading down the Tasman Peninsula from there to go to places you know.
Speaker 2:So there's a couple of really good hikes Port Arthur and things like that. We wanted to go to Port Arthur and Port Arthur on Tasman Peninsula yeah.
Speaker 1:Port Arthur was on Michelle's bucket list and look, we didn't a couple of the walks in there. We'd spoken to just watch your watch. It's shining into the camera lens.
Speaker 2:Oh, is that why that's?
Speaker 1:why I keep moving your hand.
Speaker 2:Didn't know.
Speaker 1:Sorry for those that are watching and not a flash of white light in your face, it's because Michelle's watch faces she reflecting the Sun into the camera lens. That's what you get for shooting live in the wildlife. Yeah, that's exactly right, in the sunshine in Tasmania and it's probably about I don't know, it's probably only about 13 degrees, but we're out here and it feels quite pleasant. So, look, we went down to the Tasman Peninsula and there's a couple of camping options in there and we'd been trying to stay at Fortescue Bay, which is where the Cape Howe walks are, and we wanted to do that because it was also close to Port Arthur, which was on Michelle's bucket list. And while we were ringing the ranger every other day, michelle kept ringing and ringing, and ringing and they never sort of answered and we didn't get callbacks because it was obviously we would then disappear out of service and we wouldn't have and you can only book it by phone and you can only book by phone.
Speaker 2:There's no online booking and you do need to book and you have to book. There is no lob camper trailer it is so busy, you can lob in a tent yeah, you can lob in a tent, but you can't lob in anything else.
Speaker 1:So we've been trying to make this booking and we still hadn't really got it sorted.
Speaker 1:And it was actually as we drove past this thing called eagle hawk nest neck, which is the beginning of the whole tasman peninsula, that we got a phone call back from the ranger, and michelle then was able to sort out a bit of a plan, and so we decided to do two nights at limes bay, and limes bay gave us great access to two pretty spectacular things, one we didn't even actually know existed until we got there no, the ranger told us over the phone yeah, the coal mine historic site is at Lime Bay and the coal mine historic site is a very similar in capacity to Port Arthur.
Speaker 1:It's basically another Port, a slightly smaller scale Port Arthur, but it had all the same sort of infrastructure and it was a penal coal mine and there's a lot of historic ruins and things to walk around in there. We spent a good half a day in there touring that while we were there, and so that was really worth it and a completely less commercial operation than what you'll get Totally free entry.
Speaker 2:Totally free entry.
Speaker 1:No visitor centre, just really, really good interpretive signage and it was on one of those 60 Great Tasmanian Walks the walk, trek through there. And you know it had all the signage. It had all the information that you needed. I think we ended up spending around about three hours. Four hours there and walked the whole lot and we had a good time.
Speaker 1:It was it's spectacular, it's on a beautiful stretch of water and we didn't even we didn't even really know it existed and it was all part of that whole, uh, port arthur penal system. Um, at the time, and it was the, it was the coal mine that supported a lot of the operations in Tasmania and they sent some of the worst repeat offenders from.
Speaker 2:Port Arthur to this particular settlement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the worst place went there because it was.
Speaker 2:And there's some great stories you'll read. We won't go into detail until you. We won't go into detail. They're on the signs. Go and have a look at that one.
Speaker 1:Go and have a look for yourself at Coal Mine Historic Site, just near.
Speaker 2:Lion Bay.
Speaker 1:And so, while we're also at Lion Bay, we were given the opportunity to do the Cape Rowell Track.
Speaker 2:R-A-O-U-L Cape.
Speaker 1:Rowell Trail Track. Wow, wow, how can you summarise that track?
Speaker 2:Jaw-dropping landforms by the sea, the pillars of granite rock just rising up out of the ocean? They weren't granite oh, are they dollarite.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Righto, there we go. So this is something you've got to learn when you come to Tasmania.
Speaker 1:Geology.
Speaker 2:What type of rock is that?
Speaker 1:It's usually all dollarite in Tasmania. If you need to know what it is, you know from the moment you make the first climb from the car park. It was about a 16-kilometre round trip and, look, we were pretty exhausted. It was actually a warm day that day.
Speaker 2:It was about 30 degrees that day.
Speaker 1:We don't actually know why we felt so exhausted, but both Michelle and I were absolutely smashed after we did that walk, and we'd been walking a fair bit. We both felt exactly the same, so it wasn't something funny, unless we'd eaten something or drunk something weird or whatever.
Speaker 2:It was a few kilometres longer than it was posted and we started out pretty fast on the hike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I let Michelle go first and she decides she has to go quick because she's a bit of a trail junkie, has to get out there fast. But you know, from the moment you make the first climb to the top of the hill, about two to two and a half k's into the walk you come up to the view of this fantastic plateau that takes you out to cape row and from then on the views are just jaw-dropping amazing, amazing unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Take your camera, do the walk, get exhausted, have a great day. There's two lookouts at the end and there's a few other lookouts perched along the way. There is a track log there. We haven't talked about the track logs for a little bit. All of the trekking that we've been doing, every walk that we've done that's of significant nature, has all been recorded. The track logs have all been published. They're all visible in the track log system on explorer also. Go to the destinations menu, select track logs, scroll down there and go and put in any of the names of these places Cape Rowell or, you know, cape Howe or Wineglass Bay or any of those or just zoom into that particular area in Tasmania and you should be able to pick up all of those tracks. The other thing might be to do a search on Tasmanian 60 great short walks.
Speaker 2:I'm sure if they're not all indexed correctly now, they will be as we finish them all up so the purpose of looking at the track logs for those hikes is so you can see all the stats, how many kilometres, how much time it takes the elevation, the elevation. So all those statistics for the hikes are recorded.
Speaker 1:And our hikes that I'm recording are all broken down by the kilometre, so it's a one kilometre per section. So as you're looking in the section explorer, you can see the really detailed one kilometres worth of elevation profile and one kilometres worth of, you know, the slope and terrain and the information and obviously our walking pace for each of those Ks.
Speaker 2:And broken down into moving time and total. Elapsed time and moving time total time and elapsed time. Because I take a lot of photos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do stop a bit for photos. So there's heaps of statistics that you can gain from the track log system. So the. Cape Row track. Wow, I still say wow. Two lookouts at the end the Cape lookout and Seal lookout. There is a population of seals that lives on the Cape.
Speaker 1:And they're so noisy and they're a fair way away from you and you can hear the big bull telling everyone what's going on down the bottom there, and you can see them at a great distance down the bottom. So take some binoculars, if you've got them, or a high powered lens on your camera and you'll be able to see them down the bottom.
Speaker 2:We were really lucky to actually see a yacht sailing around the Cape while we were there, so in our photos we've got a beautiful yacht up with these white sails. But then I later found out, as we spent more time on the Tasman Peninsula, that there's a tour company called Pinnacott Tours and you can actually book tours with them which will actually take you all the way around some of those spectacular capes and waterways.
Speaker 1:We haven't done any of that, but there's certainly options.
Speaker 2:I've met people that have been talking about doing them, though. So you know we've spoken about maria island cruise, um. So if you're not going to do that one, maybe put your money into one of these petticoat tours similar sort of boat, the yellow boat, I think they call it. Um, yeah, I've got a friend that did it for her 60th birthday. That lives in tasmania. They're right up there with bucket list things to do in Tasmania.
Speaker 1:So after a couple of days at Lone Bay and doing Cape Row and the coal mine historic site, we wanted to get ourselves closer to Port Arthur and obviously Michelle had been able to squeeze our way into the Fortescue Bay campsite and we had what is apparently the second best campsite in the place.
Speaker 2:Number 42.
Speaker 1:Number 42 camp it. It was huge. We could have fit two massive caravans in there and four cars. I'd reckon it was a huge site. Um, we just popped ourselves into one little area where we could try and get the most sun, where we could try and get some level of starlink reception. One of the things that we've obviously trying to do with work and everything else is we're trying to keep connected. Um, I think I was even publishing updates to the app down there or something, but, you know, trying to find a place where you can get through without the trees and also get some solar power to keep your batteries charged, unlike here where we are and we've got copious amounts of solar power we've got smart now in tasmania.
Speaker 2:We no longer pick sheltered camps, we now pick sunny camps.
Speaker 1:Yep, don't go near the shade, go near the sun Totally different than when you're high up on the mainland and up in the northern areas. So from Fortescue Bay, very close to Port Arthur, one of the first things that we wanted to do was the Cape Power Walk and we tried to do the Cape Power Walk a couple of times. The first time we went to do the Cape Howe Walk a couple of times. The first time we went to do the Cape Howe Walk, in the morning we were all packed up, ready to rock and roll and there was a problem with the website.
Speaker 2:I got a message from someone and the message I read to David and he said oh, that is so significant we have to abandon this hike.
Speaker 1:Thankfully, we're only 700 metres into it. We were we're only about 700 meters into it when the message came through and we had to abandon the hike and go back and and then struggle for starlink and it was a bit of a shame, because that was the perfect hiking day.
Speaker 2:The weather was really good and there was a storm coming.
Speaker 1:We knew there was a storm coming the next day and or the day after that that day there was bad weather coming and there was bad weather coming and we were very concerned that we, we were going to struggle.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we came back to the camp and it took me several hours I think it wasn't till like four o'clock in the afternoon, um that I poked my head out from behind the computer screen and said I've got it working again. Um that we, that we were able to head out on the walk, and so we decided to go then, and there we, we ended up leaving the campsite at about 4 30.
Speaker 2:but the ranger had. I'd asked the ranger what's the best time when we first came it was a four-hour posted and he said people go out there for sunset. Yeah, it was a four-hour posted thing.
Speaker 1:So we figured that, you know, if we leave at four and the sun's setting over here still was like 7, 50 or eight o'clock, you know, um, because of the daylight saving time that we're still trying to get used to, um, you know we had, we still had enough time. We figured we'd get out and back and it'd still be relatively light and we put a head torch in in case it got a bit dark, in case we had to do some walking on the path.
Speaker 1:oh yes, got to be diligent and we walked out to Cape Howe and another wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we got there so quick, it was only an hour and a half or something.
Speaker 1:Oh no, it was a bit longer than that. But, if you have a look at the track logs you can confirm how long it was going to take. And if I looked at the track log I could confirm how long it was going to take. But we don't have all day day to talk about that. So the cape how walk definitely one of tasmania's 60 great short walks, thoroughly recommend that hell of a lot easier than cape roll cape rail was harder, uh, but cape, how was? Easier specky, I don't know cape rail is more specky.
Speaker 1:I think cape rail is more specky, but at the end they're both spectacular and both absolutely must do's if you're in the area. The best part about doing it that way was you know, you do part of the three capes trek but you don't do cape pillar and and a couple and one of the others. You will get on the three capes uh journey, but the three capes journey is a fully booked.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're going to do the three capes trek I thought you said 750 for the for the three capes walk because you get a boat thing and the and all the accommodation bays of the huts and stuff are all provided. I thought you said 750 anyway we're not doing the three case walk.
Speaker 1:Um, we did cape out and we just snuck it in before the storm. Uh, we just stuck it in before the wind came. And that night, oh my goodness, did the wind come. Uh, was it there was. That night we had two nights. We had two horrible nights. Um, uh, we actually had to change campsites, uh, that night, to move to a different site, because we um, we could only get two nights at one and two nights at another, and we'd only originally booked for two nights, thinking that would be enough, and we ended up staying for four.
Speaker 1:But so the storm came in and the rain is coming and they closed all the walk tracks and they'd put everything up as total fire ban. Uh, they'd actually come and taped off all the walks and and they'd effectively shut the whole place down. And we we were moving sites. So we actually packed up the camper that morning when the storm was coming and we moved it into the site we were going to. When we left it packed up while we went off and did Port Arthur and the other cave and a few other bits and pieces that were a remarkable cave and a blowhole and Port Arthur, which we decided to do that day when the storms were apparently there and during the day it seemed quite nice. You know, Port Arthur was good. We didn't really struggle with the weather too much. We got rained on when we were at the blow holes and caves first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2:It was only sprinkle. But it was only sprinkle, it wasn't anything.
Speaker 1:It was it was a little bit windy. And then we did Port Arthur. It was a little bit windy but we got patches of sun and we had a lovely time in Port Arthur and Port boat trip and the and the whole historical thing. But they say you can spend one to two days there. I think in essence we did. We did all that we would want to do, all that we would want to do in half a day. So if you allocate yourself half a day and that could be that might be three hours, it might be five hours, anywhere in that range is going to give you a really good. If you, if you can, are happy to walk around and you don't need to read every interpretive sign because wow, there's a lot of interpretive signs.
Speaker 1:There is signage and signage and stories and signage and storage and signage all over the place and it's fantastic and you can read all that great stuff If you're sort of a Joe Average and you're just having a look at it all and wanting to, you know, investigate like we were half a day, perfect.
Speaker 2:What is it? 24, 25, a person or something a lot more than that. It's 40 something I was 48 a person. Yeah, I think we spent 1996 six dollars for the two of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, so a little bit more expensive than the historic coal mine historic site.
Speaker 2:But totally different because what you get at Port Arthur is all the restored buildings, whereas at the coal mine it's ruins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you also can get as you move around. You could also pick up the guided talks, and we managed to pick up a couple of those as we walked around. Oh, yeah, many free guided walks, and there's free guided walks and talks and some great stories and information that you can glean. Another great place, port Arthur, as a place to visit.
Speaker 2:Obviously there's also the memorial for the fact that I insisted we had to go there. I know you weren't keen. You kept saying, well, I've got to go.
Speaker 1:I really wanted to go you wanted to go, so that's why we went.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to hear that you liked it it was okay.
Speaker 1:What am I going to say? I hated it. No, I didn't hate it, it was. It was a worthy. It was a worthy half a day of things to see and do and you know, we had a good time walking around and checking out all the stuff that was in there. Um, you know, along with the remarkable cave, which I did quite like, and the blowhole that we did in the morning, they were quite good.
Speaker 2:So that was just a simple little thing. You just walk down one flight of steps from the car park and jaw-dropping gorgeous bit of natural landform it's one of the sea caves again. So when we'd been on the Maroo Island cruise and we'd gone into a sea cave, we started to now realise that Tasmania's coastline is littered with these sea caves. So even on that Tasman Peninsula, as you leave and go through the Eagle Hawk Neck, you get up to places called Tasman's Arch and what's the other landforms there.
Speaker 1:Devil's Kitchen, patterson's God. No. What's the other landforms there? Devil's Kitchen, patterson's God. No, is it? What's the?
Speaker 2:whole Patterson's Arch. Patterson's Arch is another one. Yeah, so they're all sea caves as well, and so there's good signage that explains all those things and, honestly, every single one of them is worth going to. So you need a bit of time. How much time, dave, I've got written here. Tasman Peninsula we spent six days and we spread that across two different campsites, as we've already said.
Speaker 1:There was actually more, because we did two nights at Lime Bay, four nights at Fortescue Bay and we did one night in the state forest just at Eagle Halt Net.
Speaker 2:Oh, as we left. Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1:So we kind of toured ourselves pretty hard and ran out of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seven nights then, and so we basically spent seven nights in there and we saw everything, did the big hikes, did Port Arthur, did all that stuff. So hopefully that helps you with understanding how much time that you might want to allocate to that area.
Speaker 1:And after that the next destination was going to be Hobart, and so we started on our journey. After that free camp that I was mentioning, in the state forest that we found it was pretty much right at Eagle Hawk Neck, we were making the decision to head further south and we weren't really sure how far we were going to get. So we headed out. We knew we needed to stock up on groceries, we knew we needed to empty the toilet, fill the water tanks and do all those sorts of maintenance tasks, and we were basically heading towards Hobart. And what was that town that we came into, where we did all?
Speaker 1:that Sowell S-O-W-E-L-L, so I don't know how to pronounce it Sowell yeah, and we managed to find a Coles and a Woolworths and a dump point and a water station and we were able to restock a $500 Coles plus $100 of Woolworths or something that managed to load our fridges and things up again. And that wasn't even at the grog shop and we had been at all the wineries. I thought we'd had enough.
Speaker 2:And today is our last day. So when David says we were heading towards Hobart, it was sort of in that direction. We hadn't made up our minds we were heading towards Hobart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, were we going to stay just on the south it's snug or were we going to? Were we going to go to Bruny? Were we going to do something? We didn't really have a plan and we, we were able to pick up all our bits and pieces at um Sol and we had one more task to do and that was to pick something up at Bunnings. So we, we plotted in the, we plotted in the app and said where's the nearest Bunnings? And we found that and we headed towards the Bunnings. And then we were kind of what time was that? It was not too late in the day, it was midday.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was school. No, this was.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was school.
Speaker 2:It was just finishing or something. Was it really that late? Yeah, 2.30, 3 o'clock.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, and so we decided fairly quickly that we'd just drive through Hobart to start with and we'd start heading towards the south coast, towards the South Cape, and we didn't really know how far until we started. We basically started driving, we drove straight through the middle of Hobart at the start of like the 3 or 4 o'clock peak hour. The roads were pretty impressive. They're like five lanes wide, going in one direction. I couldn't you know. It was quite impressive. There was cars everywhere, there was people everywhere. It was busy.
Speaker 2:We had the camper trailer on the block was really small. It was only about I don't know two kilometres of traffic.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, there was only two kilometres of town, and then, as we, continued south it just disappeared into nothingness again. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2:They must have just turned right and we turned left.
Speaker 1:It was gone, it was gone, and so that day we drove all the way to Cockle Creek, basically all the way to the end we did.
Speaker 2:But, to be fair, we stopped at all the free camps along the way, checking them all out, and they were already getting busy.
Speaker 1:And so that's why we didn't stop. Most of those were RV.
Speaker 2:The Franklin all the way down the river.
Speaker 1:Jeeveston, all three of them, they were mainly all RV overnight stops again which aren't really our bag.
Speaker 2:We've decided they're not.
Speaker 1:But they're okay. You know, if you've got to pull a day and you want to be near a town, that's the way to do it. Yep, we decided to keep going and we.
Speaker 2:We got to Cockle Creek at like 7 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 7 o'clock at night, we had about 45 minutes of sunshine to go. We decided to go the whole hog and drive all the way into Cockle Creek, all the way to Bolton's Campground, which is the one in the National Park. We'd driven past five or six campsites in that area on the way down. There is plenty of campsites down there, big Five or six Big open areas. They've all got a beach, they've all got different, they've all got toilets and they've all got different levels basic pits, but they've all got different levels of access to various things.
Speaker 2:So all of them allow dogs until you get over the Cockle Creek, because that's where the National. Park campground is, and there is one more final campground in the National Park.
Speaker 1:And that's Boltons, and so, arriving at seven o'clock, we don't have a dog. So we we decided we'd go into boltons and drove through and had a look at the whole thing and it was jockeys and again it looked a bit average. Is that, is that rule? Is it rude to call it when we drove?
Speaker 2:through. The thing was you could not see a view as you're driving through and you've got campers on the left side of the road and the right side of the road and we were realizing they can't see anything from their campsite.
Speaker 1:You can't see the water.
Speaker 2:Whereas all the camps you've just driven past in the conservation area, the free camps, every single one of them is opposite the water and a short walk over to the water.
Speaker 1:And just at the time that we were driving through, for some strange reason the wind was blowing and you know, there was dust swirls and sand swirls and oh, it lost its appeal fairly quickly. And, ken, because it was chockers, very haphazard sort of camps up and down, Nothing was all that flat.
Speaker 1:If you've been there and you've had a great experience. Perfect and there's nothing wrong with the place. Great, if you manage to snag the best spot and you've had a great time, then you've had a good time On the whole. I think some of those earlier camps we actually stayed at Finn's Beach Camp. If you look that up, you'll see our tracking lines going in and out of there for the next five or six days.
Speaker 2:It's the second one coming from the north, heading down, so there's a few others as well. There's a few others ahead and there's a few others behind. They're all marked on the app Photos and info, photos and info in all of them.
Speaker 1:We stayed at Finn's.
Speaker 2:You were able to see the water and we used it as our base camp base camp and we stayed there for five nights and we did all the hikes that we wanted to do. Yeah, went out to fisher's point one day and we also, of course, we did the south cape bay trip yeah, which is 16k 16k round trip.
Speaker 1:Yep, and we went out to one of the uh when we were at south cape bay. We went to one of the overnight camps for the uh south coast, for the south cape track, south coast track. Yeah, we went to one of the camps, camps for the South Coast Track.
Speaker 2:South Coast Track yeah.
Speaker 1:We went to one of the campsites and had a look at that and that was fantastic. It's just at the end of the beach. When you do the South Cape Bay Walk, that was a lovely walk boardwalk, most of it, fairly, reasonably easy. There was a bit of rocky bits at the beginning.
Speaker 2:You think it's going to be worse than it is when you start it gets better um and it was hard on the feet because there's a lot of roots and you sort of have a lot of roots and lots of rolling over, so you're best off doing that. Hike the south cape bay. Hike with hiking boots if you can, rather than sneakers.
Speaker 1:Don't take your thongs we see people doing things in thongs, but anyway, anyway, thankfully no thongs that day. No thongs that day.
Speaker 2:But it is a bit of a long hike for a lot of people, but it is really worth it if you get a good bit of weather, like the day that we went there. There was no wind and it was magic and I even went for a swim in the water.
Speaker 1:David and I. We just took all the boots off. We got wet in the Southern Ocean.
Speaker 2:We were also lucky that it was low tide and so all the little rocks off the beach create natural rock pools. So when you come at the top of the hike to the coast, I thought we were going to come out at beach level. In fact, the whole walk is not at all what I expected and I'd done a bit of research on it, but it was not at all what I expected. It blew my mind.
Speaker 1:So we highly recommend it. Add that there's a track log for that also in the system. You can look that up at um south south cape bay south cape bay and uh, and it's all around the cockle creek area.
Speaker 1:So, as I said, there was five or six camps there. We did those. While we were in that area. We um, as michelle said, we used our Finns camping site as our base location. From there we did a few great caves. We went, we went, we did a drive one day from that campsite and we did a thing called Mystery Creek Cave.
Speaker 2:Now this isn't signed. This is not signed, so you need to look at our app for it.
Speaker 1:You kind of need to find this one when else places. Mystery Creek Cave. It was a great walk. It was about two and a bit k's in. And then you go actually into a cave and you are allowed in there. There is signage that shows you where you can and can't go. It's a pitch black. Take your headlight, torch inside the cave. Inside the cave, stalactites, stalagmites, glow worms there's running water through the thing all the time.
Speaker 1:That goes into what's called mystery creek, because no one knows where the creek goes. It goes into a cave and never comes out again. Um, fantastic, easy. A fairly a fairly straightforward, easy walk. It was a bit wet, a bit muddy and there's a lot of underfoot to get out there, a lot of trees falling. It was beautiful. It was beautiful Rainforest. Again, it was a great walk.
Speaker 2:There's a little bit of relics of an old mine.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the old mine that's down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can poke around in there. There's some rail tracks of what they used to get their coal out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was a great little find If you're into that kind of quirky thing. And it's free, rather than the Hastings Caves, rather than the Hastings Caves, which is just up the road, which we went and did straight after that cave experience Totally different cave experiences. One, we had to light it and it wasn't as polished and as professionally set up as the Hastings Caves. But the Hastings Cave isn't actually Hastings Cave, is it? What cave was it called? It was called. I'm testing you now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know it.
Speaker 1:Drum, drum. No, it's not actually called Hastings Cave that you're actually going into.
Speaker 2:Nudigate Cave.
Speaker 1:Nudigate is the cave. You go to Nudigate Cave, you get a 45-minute tour. That was the $24 one that I was thinking was something like $24. $24 a person. We'd just done the free cave. We'd then just gone into this cave. I think the guide, the person that took us down that was quite good. She gave us good stories and told us all sorts of things about the history of the caves and how the cave became, and how Tasmania had moved from Japan, and how many millions of years ago.
Speaker 2:The information was good and it was presented well.
Speaker 1:The cave's well set up. As they say, it's one of the best infrastructure caves in the Southern Hemisphere. It has concrete walkways and concrete staircases. They've had operas and musical concerts and all sorts of things down in this particular cave. You can get married in it. Apparently you can book it out. For what? No longer they say since covid that has has been oh I thought they said it was like 250 an hour and you can have it for as long as you want something like that anyway.
Speaker 1:So, um, it's, it's a really nice. It's actually paved the. The ground that you walk on inside the cave has been paved Square, paving Square, paving all through it.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't compare with the likes of Janolan Caves or some of the caves we've been to in Western Australia.
Speaker 1:No, except that it has.
Speaker 2:Good landfills, except that it seems to have a more historical longevity.
Speaker 1:It seems to be older, and so it has some interesting formations that you won't necessarily see at some other places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fair comment.
Speaker 1:It is significantly old and it was worth it. So it was still worth it. So we did those two caves that day.
Speaker 2:And included in the entry fee.
Speaker 1:Oh, the thermal pool, yeah.
Speaker 2:The thermal pool is not what I thought. I thought it might be natural, but no. But when you read the signs you realise the water pool. Yeah, the thermal pool is not what I thought. I thought it might be natural, but no. But when you read the signs you realise the water actually is natural. It is thermal spring water. It used to bubble up through rocks at the base of a natural pool that they have had to use infrastructure to combat the bacteria.
Speaker 1:They basically made a swimming pool and they pumped the water in and they pumped the water out.
Speaker 2:Here's a traveller tip made a swimming pool. They basically made a swimming pool and they pumped the water in and they pumped the water out.
Speaker 1:Here's a traveller tip.
Speaker 2:They have a really good shower system with soap and hot water. So we had our afternoon after all our hiking hot shower. We're allowed to have a hot shower. We went and used their shower.
Speaker 1:So there's showers and toilets, flush toilets and showers. You can't say it was a free shower because you've had to pay your $24 to do your model.
Speaker 2:It was a really good shower.
Speaker 1:The pool itself 21 degrees. It's not overly hot, it was okay.
Speaker 2:The shower was better. The shower was hotter. That was a hot night.
Speaker 1:But the pool was quite good and there was a little 1K walk that you can go around and see where the water bubbles out and see where the two streams join One's hot and one's cold. Put your hand in and have a bit of a play down there.
Speaker 2:Just watch your timings, because that does close at 4pm. If you're in the pools, you actually are asked to leave at 4 o'clock and they lock it all. It's all locked overnight. There's no camping in that area at all, so they recommend that you do camp back down at Cockle Creek or back at Hobart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so we were down at Cockle Creek and so that worked out quite well. So you know, we did our six days there. We did some other bits and pieces. I can't remember some of the other things. We went to stand-up paddleboarding and some other stuff around there.
Speaker 2:Oh, we had one lovely day of 33 degrees or something, so we allowed ourselves an absolute beach day. And if you go down to where the bridge is around Cockle Creek, and it was low tide, it was a bit too low tide for us to suck, so we went looking for it. But the crabs come up, and they're those blue and red ones.
Speaker 1:They're little, teeny, weeny ones, and there's millions of them.
Speaker 2:And they know when you're coming and they all move as a swarm away from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the whole ground moves, so you can film these things and they basically, as you start walking towards them, they disappear into holes and run away.
Speaker 2:So the kids would love looking at that and that's a perfect little place for kids to splash around Really safe. Under that bridge. There was lots of families, boogie boards and little pop-ups and of course it was a long weekend.
Speaker 1:Another long weekend.
Speaker 2:We also had a quick look at the cemetery there that we almost discounted, but there's actually some very good information on the signboard and what you start to do when you go to these cemeteries is you read the family names and all the history of the area then takes on the names of those pioneering families.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you can see why the mountains are called or the rivers called this and why the rivers called this and why that's called that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I enjoy understanding that, making that link between the family history and the early pioneers and the places you're visiting. So, yeah, go to the um cemetery. It's only like a couple of hundred meters walk, not even, yeah, tiny little walk and then we and so we'd kind of done the south cape area.
Speaker 1:You know, we were kind of done and and we'd had an extra day with that warm day that we decided to have a beach day. We got the stand up paddleboard out and had a bit of a play and you know it was. It was just a nice day to take it easy. We don't do them very often.
Speaker 1:We're always bloody working. So then, from there, the plan was to come to Lake Pedder, and that's where we are now bringing you these podcasts. We spent two days. The first two days we spent at Ted's Beach, which is on the north western side, near Strathgordon, and Strathgordon is really just a village, a resort village for the wilderness, whatever it was called. It was basically built the whole village, and it is an accommodation village, but the whole village was built as a working town for the creation of the dam projects. It's a nice little place. So, ted's Beach, we camped on the beach, we had the camper and the car set up. We were probably only three metres away from the water.
Speaker 2:You know lovely spot, the water's White sandy pebbly, it's a white pebble.
Speaker 1:It's not sand, it's a pebbly beach and the tannin waters and stuff. And the water does seem to be reasonably warm. We even had a swim this morning. The water is warmer than you may expect, considering what the air temperature is down here, and I wonder if that's the tannins bringing the heat. I don't know, but it's reasonably. It's reasonably warm. We went stand up paddleboarding there. We also went and had a look at all the gordon dam. So the gordon dam and the gordon power station and and that's all. If you're into that kind of um, engineering stuff, uh, I, I don't mind that kind of engineering stuff. So I kind of got off on how it all works and impressed about how the the waterfall generation system works and that the actual power station's 183 meters under the lake and all that kind of stuff. If you're into that sort of thing, there's some really good signage and some good information boards and things to go and do all of that and you, of course, you can walk out on the damn wall, which involves a hair-raising descent down a metal stairway.
Speaker 1:It's hair-raising people won't do it's hair-raising if you don't like looking through the ground and seeing down below you as you walk down the stairs. Michelle's one of those, but she did it might have had to hold her about everything.
Speaker 2:Might have had to hold her hand a little bit and coax her down, but she made it it was awesome to see the Golden River at the bottom snaking through from this amazing wall it's huge.
Speaker 1:It's huge but it's not huge. It's massively tall, but it's not very big width. Wise in schemes of dams.
Speaker 2:But it's narrow at the top and wider at the base, and the information sign will explain what all that's about, with its double curvature.
Speaker 1:Oh the thickness of the wall. Not the size it goes down like a thing, but the thickness of the wall.
Speaker 2:Where you walk is only three metres wide and at the base it is. It's 18 metres wide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's double skinned and yeah, it's all fancy smancy.
Speaker 2:As you said, it's all engineering An engineering masterpiece.
Speaker 1:So if you're into engineering and you have a look at that and the power station, they are really good. It's all tarred roads to come all the way out to the Gordon Dam.
Speaker 2:So we are encountering quite a significant number of tourists out here. There's day trippers, but there's also people just in camper vans that are staying one night. Um. So ted's beach, um, a couple of people would come in the afternoon, not very busy, no more than three or four on the beach, and some days it was three or four. Up at the back where it's flat, you can camp up, um on solid ground up behind the toilet block up there in the bush, if you don't want to go down onto the beach area and there's, there's an other camping areas 60km away where we've come now to the Edgar Dam.
Speaker 1:Edgar Dam is. It's on the eastern edge of Lake Petta and you know we're basically at the end of the roads in these areas. As far as you can go, this particular around Edgar Dam and the Huon camp that we're at here, the start of the Huon River is up here. This, this particular area, is extreme hiking central. If you are into extreme hiking, hard hiking, long, multi-day yes, hard hiking you come here.
Speaker 1:So everyone that's here, a lot of the people that are here, are pretty hard climbers. You can see there's some pretty extreme stuff that goes on here. One of the smaller walks is, you know, from 400 metres up to about 1,100 or 1,200 metres in six kilometres and that takes a day, five, seven hours to get up there or something, and five to seven hours to come back.
Speaker 2:There's also photo boards at the information. There's photos explaining the difficulty and what to expect and they're obviously being Tasmania and we're in the southwest national park talking about how the weather can change in an instant. Even in summer. They can have snow and sleet here and really strong winds up on the higher peaks. There was a photo at the Port Davie information track hut and it showed a person and the information explaining expect this and the guy was walking through waist-deep mud, yep. And that's not for us?
Speaker 1:No, that's not for us, but that would be. They're all basically multi-day. Almost everything from here is a multi-day, but with that said, I would still recommend someone come, purely just for the driving experience.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the sightseeing of the surrounding landscape. These mountain ranges it looks like you're in Scotland. They're really ragged, the profile is beautiful and you've got dots of white on top of the grey rock and it changes. We came through on the day. It was overcast and a bit of low cloud blocking some of the peaks, and the photos I took that day were spectacular. Today, absolutely perfect clear blue skies.
Speaker 1:There's not even a puff of wind and the water.
Speaker 2:There's not a cloud.
Speaker 1:The water looks like a mirror. We're going to probably have to poke our heads over a bit later on, when the sun's in the right spot because if there's still no wind on the water, the we're going to get these awesome reflections in the water we are indeed all right, so we might wind it up so that's going to be, that's going to be, that's going to be this afternoon's thing.
Speaker 1:And look, we've got all to here. And yeah, we didn't even talk about the wheel nearly falling off the land cruiser at medina on our way here. You know we had, as you do driving along, I must admit, for the last couple of days I've thought to myself gee, there's something wrong with the car. And as we were driving between the Cockle Creek Finns camp and we were coming up here, we did camp a couple of nights on the way to get to here.
Speaker 2:We didn't make it in one go, yeah, and we should just mention that we didn't go back the main way. The auto route will take you.
Speaker 1:All the routers wanted to take you along the main roads and we decided we'd try and pack our way through as close to the wilderness as possible and we managed to make the auto route go there by adding a few places in between Southward Road to Huon River, and we did Bushy Park. What is it?
Speaker 2:west of the way we didn't get up to and then gordon river road.
Speaker 1:so yeah, and so we did. We we managed to get the auto router by careful placement of a few waypoints along the way that we wanted to come to come, the way that we did come the auto router did it once.
Speaker 2:I put enough places in and it was it was spectacular.
Speaker 1:It was basically one of the bigger uh dash lines on the map. If you're looking at the side, the width of those dash lines, it was a more major road. I think it's classified as a tertiary road. Um, and wow, how, how, what a wonderful drive it was.
Speaker 2:But as we're crossing all the way along the sides of the road and huge big trees winding dirt roads. I just had the gopro out the whole time, so look out on the instagram and facebook for a bit of that coming, and hopefully a little bit will be on YouTube.
Speaker 1:I mean in that, in that driving section, though, we also did the Hearts Range yeah, I realized which we didn't actually talk about. Um, we we mentioned it a few times, but we didn't actually talk much about it. So, as we've been coming from um South Cape to Lake Petta, we we stopped at Hearts Range and did the Hearts Range trek Hearts Peak, hearts Peak.
Speaker 2:Yep, which is a significant hike as well.
Speaker 1:A significant hike, Another one of the 60 great short walk hikes. The number of hours was what? Four, three, three and a bit three to four hours.
Speaker 2:Really challenging for some people. We saw a lot of people attempt it that did not make it. There was a lot that did not even make it to the pass, and then from the pass there's a final kilometer to get you up to the actual peak itself, and that's where conditions start changing and it's all um very, very rocky it was great for, but it wasn't impossible yeah, people who are carrying poles. I should have just dropped them and leave the poles behind for that one.
Speaker 1:You don't need, they're a hindrance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't need them on that one because it's a rock scramble.
Speaker 1:It's a rock scramble. The worst parts of it it's a boardwalk and then it's a rock scramble. And a rock scramble it's not just a scrambly rock, it's actually pulling yourself up the rocks, sometimes with your hands, and you know it wasn't the most simple. Some people had difficulty with that. It does get cold up there. We, it was particularly blowy that day, um, and it was quite cool, uh. But again, another awesome trek. You must. Another awesome hike, you must do that. We'd also been hit at the same time with another computer problem, uh, while we were doing that, yeah, just as we set out to do that whole day, that's right. Um, and we'd had a bush camp, uh, just on the way into hearts range, which you will also find on the traveler app if you have a look. Uh, down hearts, hearts one hearts one.
Speaker 2:It's one of the one of the one of the spurs from the state forestry areas. So that's how you find good little free camps. By the way, don't tell everybody, you didn't hear that. You didn't hear that, you didn't hear that.
Speaker 1:But we camped just in there and we made it in fairly early for the hike. But yeah, we had this massive computer problem going on and so we did the hike anyway, because I'd already broken one hike to go and fix. I had some facilities in place. That wasn't going to make it so that the whole system was playing up, but it was significantly bad. We still managed to do the hike and then that night we needed to find somewhere to camp where we'd have clear visibility of the sky so that we, so that I could be sure that I could get a few hours of starling without was hilarious without without any.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is on our way here to Lake Petta. We didn't even so, we kind of missed it.
Speaker 2:So the mission to find this free camp had one criteria only, and that was to be able to get the Starlink to work, because we needed that for a solid, strong internet connection that wasn't going to drop out. So what the problem is with the Starlink is that if there's a lot of trees around, it just drops out. When the earth, earth moves, you lose contact with the satellite that you're locked into, and then it's got to reacquire the next one, and so you get dropouts, and david could not have that.
Speaker 1:So we needed clear, open sky yes, so the satellite, so we so we did our usual to the top of the hill, yes.
Speaker 2:So he tells me, just find me a hill. And I go. How do I find a hill? And I hadn't actually thought about how you can use topographic maps to actually find high points, and so that was even a little learning lesson for me from David. So he, he showed me how, where, if there's a, all your contour lines, obviously with the numbers getting higher and higher, but when you find a circle in the center, that's your high point. So I then went looking for red dash lines, meaning unsealed roads, going up to one of these round points.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's exactly what we found and so we found wow, we found a state forest road that went up. There was there was two ways up one past a power line which looked a bit steep for me to pull the camper, and another way around. So we went the other way around and and we and we just ducked around the front of this thing and and we found this plateau and I think it was the it's going to be the log loading plateau. So this particular area had two things going for it it had short trees because they'd only just been planted, like six months ago. This place had just been cut down, so this was a particular piece of forestry that had just been cut it, it had been finished with and they'd just replanted, and the plants were, oh, I don't know, maybe two metres tall, but there was a lot of them, and we managed to pull up the car on the camper onto probably where they loaded the logs onto the truck.
Speaker 2:And it was all blue metal, gravel, a piece of infrastructure that had been made and it had logs.
Speaker 1:It had logs extending it out to make the road wide enough for their big trucks to park on it, and so we thought, oh damn it, we'll just park right here.
Speaker 2:And wow, what a spectacular view we had the vista Over the All the way back to Hearts Peak and the Tarhoon Forest Reserve, and all of that range was just our view.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was fantastic. The only thing that we'd failed on was that the north-west, north-north-west wind that came up that night at a reasonable pace blew straight at us and it was quite windy, but that was a little thing. But we went all the way back to there because as we crossed the Huon River I could hear the car and the Huon River was just down the road from where this camp was and as we crossed the Huon River on the bridge, I could hear this noise in the front wheel and it sounded like it was going it sounded really strange and we didn't really know what it was.
Speaker 1:And I got out and had a look and checked everything and turned the wheels and looked behind, checked the brake wheel nuts were all done up, checked everything seemed to be done. But I just didn't check the car wheel nuts for some stupid reason and I don't know why. I don't know, I have no idea why I didn't do that. But we persisted to drive and I thought it had got better and we kept driving and we don't. We must've driven another, I don't know 80 Ks, something of hard like turny, worny, horrible roads, gravel, not horrible, lovely roads, lovely driving. And we were just coming into a little town called Medina, which is on the way out here On Tard Road, on a Tard Road and the steering wheel started wobbling enough that I noticed it like wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble. I said, michelle, I've got to pull over really quick the steering wheel's wobbling.
Speaker 2:Look at this look at this, but there was nowhere to go, it was just nothing on the roadside. It was gullies on the side.
Speaker 1:Just at the top of this next hill, there was a driveway. It was on the other side of the road and I just decided to pull into there as he pulled into there and pulled up to a stop, got out and had a look and, sure enough, one wheel nut was missing. The other four wheel nuts were like a centimetre undone.
Speaker 1:All of them were unwound on the passenger side front wheel which is where we'd heard the noise which is where we'd heard the noise, which is why I don't understand why I don't, why I didn't look at the damn thing a hundred percent, but I, I, yeah, anyway I hadn't. Um. So we pulled into this driveway and what had obviously happened is we had one wheel nut that was holding the whole lot together. And as we turned the the wheel to get into this driveway, and what had obviously happened is we had one wheel nut that was holding the whole lot together, and as we turned the wheel to get into this guy's driveway, that wheel nut snapped the wheel stud. So I said to Michelle oh, we've lost a nut.
Speaker 1:Michelle says no, there, it is over there at the corner where we turned into this guy's driveway, it had actually broken off just behind the car just the camper where we pulled in um to this driveway where we proceeded to do the remaining four wheel nuts up um and before driving into the wilderness before driving into the wilderness.
Speaker 1:So we're still in here with four wheel nuts. I do have a stud somewhere in their pack up, but I just I'm gonna wait till I get to somewhere where I can actually do it with a bit of confidence and and I actually would like to replace all five wheel studs now because they're going to be damaged of having driven some distance with the wheel loose and I don't want to run the risk of them going anytime soon so.
Speaker 1:I want to replace all five wheel studs when we next can get to a place where I can buy them. So, with all that being said, on the south end of Lake, the eastern side of Lake Pedder, with the sun actually starting to disappear down the trees, we're now not in the sun as much as we were a second ago and I can already feel it starting to get cool. We'll be getting the fire going, which is over there. Those that are watching this can see a little bit. Potentially over there, we'll get the fire going soon. We might go down and take those photos that we said we'd get with the windless reflection photos.
Speaker 1:So we hope this has been a little bit more informative, a bit more of the journey, and we look forward to catching up with you on our next podcast. From here we're heading up to Cradle Mountain Eventually, and a couple of weeks we'll be back on the boat. So you know we'll catch up with you more down the track, See you.