I’m getting bored now writing about how great the roads are in Tasmania. But they really are, and they just get better and better. But I’m not going to mention them again. Much.
There are various references here to Van Diemen’s Land, an alternative name for Tasmania, but nobody seems to know for sure why or when the place became Tasmania. But the nearest we can find is that Able Tasman (who by the way, had the excellent middle name of Janszoon!) named it Van Diemen’s land after his boss, Anthony Van Diemen, in a shrewd bit of career posturing. Then it seems that in the early 1800s, the Tasmania name crept in and gradually took over, the first print reference being in a map in 1808 ( by London mapmakers, Laurie and Whittle ) being formerly adopted as the state name on January 1st, 1856, having been agreed by Queen Victoria a few months earlier. Apparently the name change was welcomed as by then, transportation had stopped and Van Deimen’s land was associated with convicts, so the name change gave it a clean sheet as it were.
So what did we do today? We actually got up and going quite quickly but stopped not many kilometres up the road at Ellendale - which used to be called Montos Marsh - because we needed some bread. But the little general store which was also a Post office and a cafe did coffee and raisin toast and the bloke was very nice and chatty and we ended up having a second breakfast there for the next hour. And Santa was walking up the street in his shorts.
But again, that chatting to people business is how you find out about the places you’re riding through. Just before the store, both Gordon and I had noticed a huge structure in a field that looked like a french chateau, except that in that most Australian of Australian building materials, it was made of corrugated tin. Whilst I wouldn’t have put it past somebody to have had a crack at reproducing something normally found in the Loire Valley, this had to be something else. But what? Charlie in the store knew; it was an oast barn, (oast house) for drying hops. There were originally two but the other burnt down a couple of years ago. It was a bit bigger than the chateau shed and in its day, was the largest hop drying barn in the southern hemisphere. But not that many hops are produced round here now, so its now a drink and drug rehab centre, presumably for outsiders as there are only 500 inhabitants of Ellendale, and that includes the surrounding countryside, so even if they were all addicts who’d seen the light, they’d still be rattling around in it.
The road up to Strathgordon is a dead end, the way in is also the way out but it passes through Mount Field national Park and the Russell Falls, which Charlie in the Ellendale Post Office/cafe/general store had said was worth a look.
The falls were a short walk through the rainforest and past those fern things that look like mad green feather dusters, bits of which are apparently good to eat and have medicinal uses, and more massive and dead straight Swamp Gum trees.
This variety of gum (Eucalyptus regnant) is the tallest flowering plant in the world but it doesn’t even start the flower thing until it reaches 75 years of age.
Little signs along the walk give snippets of relevant information as you walk, which is quite cool because the facts are things that you probably wouldn’t pick up otherwise. Things like there are no Koalas in Tasmania, and that their nearest relative is the wombat. Or that Kookaburras are not native either but were brought over from mainland Australia to prevent their decline. However, having arrived in 1898, they became very partial to some native flies and scoffed most of them before anybody realised, which caused a problem for fish in the streams which also relied on them and suddenly had nothing to eat. Bummer.
The falls were every bit as good as Charlie said they were, proper falls of a decent height, complete with a tree growing in the middle.
We finally reached Strathgordon, high up on Lake Pedder, and in the Tasmanian Wilderness area, in late afternoon.
The road was built in the late 1960s in order to get building materials there to build the Gordon Dam, part of the Mid Gordon HEP project. And of course, the constructors needed a place to live, so they built Strathgordon, a full blown town with a school, shops, houses and all of the things you find in towns. And because of the rubbish weather, the school boasted Australia’s only underground heated playground. And when the sun shone, which it doesn’t always do in Tasmania, the sunlight reflected off the quartzite gravel so brightly that the company issued all residents with sunglasses.
It’s a ghost town now, an outdoor tourist haven for walkers, complete with chalets, but 40 years ago the dam flooded the man enhanced valley below and incorporated Lake Pedder to create a huge fresh water reservoir, 27 times the size of Sydney Harbour, some 14,700 million cubic metres of water, and we all know that Sydney harbour is the largest natural harbour in the world, the second largest being Poole Harbour in Dorset, UK.
The story of Lake Pedder is interesting as it changed the way people think about the environment. The original Lake Pedder was apparently a gem of a lake, really beautiful, but accessible only to hardy hill walkers as it was deep in the wilderness. But attitudes were different then, and the government of the time homed in on Lake Pedder and its immediate surroundings as being suitable to flood as it was remote and an ideal place for the HEP plant. However, some people were against it although it went ahead, but it narked them sufficiently so that when the next major project came about - the damming of the Franklin Gordon rivers - organised environmental protest was swift and eventually, halted what would have changed both the Franklin and Gordon Rivers and the surrounding wilderness, for ever.
The dam is impressive, possibly more so too because you can climb down to it and walk over it, quite legitimately, and there is nobody to tell you that you can't. Its a very skinny dam, 140m high, 192m long, the tallest dam in Tasmania and the fifth tallest in Australia. Its strength is in its shape and its double curve design, being curved side to side and top to bottom, the top overhanging the bottom by several metres. Its an arch dam, the weight of the water being transferred by dispersement to the rock walls and the dam abutments, like how water would curve around the pointy end of an egg. That makes it very strong but thinner and so cheaper to build.
It did look like something out of a WW2 film set or a Bond movie though, complete with metal steps for baddies to be thrown off and a path along the top for heroes to dive from ( and survive of course)
We met Brian and Laurel just before we went up there. They are travelling in a camper van and apparently keep seeing us wherever they go. They’ve been travelling for 20 years although now at the age of 85 and 80 respectively they no longer sleep in tents because they like ‘proper’ beds. They were great but quite sheepish when they tmentioned the camper, but in the next breath revealed that they drove the Strezlecki and Oodnadatta tracks a few months ago. They are two tracks in the outback, known for their remoteness and roughness, so they remained very cool in our opinions.
We’re camping right on the Lake shore at Ted’s Beach. He was the project manager for Lake Pedder and he wanted to create a beach, so he had a bit of land cleared. However, it was nowhere near any water at the time and nobody could understand it. But of course, he knew exactly where the water level would reach, and his bit of land is now right where he planned, on the lake shore, and there for all to use, and we’re camping on it tonight.
Hopefully, no tidal wave will occur while we’re asleep or it could be uncomfortable, but fortunately, Nadine’s tent is nearer the water than mine, so if the unthinkable happens, her squwarks should wake me and allow me to scramble out of my tent in time to keep dry.
I had a swim in the Lake, which is very clear (apart from the tanin which is in all the water round here) and quite warm. Nadine tried a bit of fishing but failed to catch anything which was apparently my fault as I apparently must have scared the fish away. But come on; this Lake covers over 514 square kilometers and I was only swimming in a very small bit of it, so it wasn’t my fault. She needs to take her rod back as it clearly doesn’t work.
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