Tasmania

I am now on the ship on my way to Antarctica so I am going to try to get this post on Tasmania done before we lose all internet access. Right now the wind is whistling, the spray is covering the window in front of me and the ship is rocking and rolling. We are nearing Macquarrie Island and hopefully (weather permitting) will land there tomorrow afternoon.  

The connection is poor and very expensive so I have only included a couple of Tasmania pictures--and by no means the best. The remainder of the Tasmania photos and my blog posts on Antarctica will need to wait until I get to New Zealand in mid-February.

So check back then for more photos and for reports on this, my second visit to Antarctica. 

I spent 8 days in Tasmania. In a rented car, I drove a counter-clockwise circuit around the island from Hobart, the capital city (200,000 people) and the original settlement and port of the island.  From there I down the nearby Tasman Peninsula (where the recent destructive bush fires  have hit the news around the world) to the site of Port Arthur, the large prison complex built of local mellow yellow sandstone . Prisons were the reason  for the first British settlements in Tasmania back in the first decades of the nineteenth century. 

Next I drove up the east coast with its stunning , deserted, sugar-white sand beaches and its old- fashioned laid back seaside towns ; hiked on the red granite slopes of the mountainous Freycinet National Park with spectacular views over the ocean ; drove through the bucolic north central region with its fertile river valleys where fine dairy herds roam the pastures and hay fields; skirted  around the (uninteresting)urban centres of the north coast;  inland  through the vineyards and into the central highlands and spent a couple of days walking in Cradle Mountain, Tasmania’s first and most famous national park. 

Then over to the wild and isolated west coast through virgin temperate rainforests of ancient trees,  scarred by nineteenth century logging and mining, and on to Strahan, the site of an environmental protest in 1982 against the damming of the last wild river in Tasmania’s western wilderness which galvanised the nascent international green movement  and brought protestors from around the world to stand in front of the bulldozers until the Australian supreme court forced the Tasmanian state government to abandon its rampant hydro-electric dam building programme and resulted in the majority of the western third of Tasmania being designated a World Heritage Site. Thus one is still able to float down the stunningly beautiful and peaceful Gordon River which would have been dammed otherwise.

As you will know, Tasmania is the island state of that much larger island, Australia. It is about the size of Ireland.  It lies a hundred and fifty miles or so off the south east coast of Australia but is geologically different from the rest of Australia because at the time of the break-up of the southern super continent of Gondwana it remained attached to Antarctica until a mere 15 million years ago, long after Australia had already drifted up north and east towards the equator.  

Tasmanian geology and even its flora and fauna has much in common with Antarctica (where fossils of ferns like those in Tasmania have been found) and even with Patagonia in South America (where many of the same trees are found and where the famous extruded dolerite “teeth” of Torres Del Paine in Chilean Patagonia looks like a more dramatic version of Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.

And Tasmania itself is divided into two parts. In the more isolated, elevated, wetter western part the rocks are Precambrian, over one billion years old, bearing ores which attracted miners in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The temperate rain forests there have ancient slow growing pine trees (Huon, King Billy, Pencil, Celery Top—not really “pines” since they are more closely related to the redwoods of California) which can reach 2000 years old, but which suffered from clear-cut logging right up to the last 20 years.  However, to the east of the East/West Divide the land is lower, much younger (200 million year old Jurassic period rock), more open and drier.

The whole island is hilly---I suppose you could call it mountainous but all the mountains are readily climbable and the highest one is only 1600 metres. However there are an awful lot of them! So highlands and ridges and ranges predominate over flat land in Tasmania. 

In fact when you are driving around all around the island as I did you are constantly going up and down and round and round. Fortunately the roads are well surfaced and well maintained, but they seem to have followed the road building philosophy of “why make a boring straight road when you could make it winding and add a few hairpin bends when you can” So even across a wide valley with no apparent impediments the road will wind its way back and forth, adding miles and making driving in Tasmania a lengthy and tiring undertaking.

Tasmania had aboriginal inhabitants as long as 30,000 years ago. They probably crossed over on a temporary land bridge from mainland Australia. So Tasmania was not a “new” country when the Europeans arrived to settle in Van Diemen’s Land as Tasmania  was called at first.  European settlement started in the first and second decades of the 1800s. And from the first it was regarded as a good place to dump convicts who were too unruly or vicious for the penal colonies in Sydney which had been founded 20 years earlier.Van Diemen’s Land, got the “worst of the worst”, those who had not only offended in Britain and been “transported” to far-off Australia for their crimes, but had reoffended after they arrived. 

Since one could be hanged for poaching or stealing bread there were plenty of hot heads whose re-offending consisted only of trying to escape. There were some political prisoners, often from well to do families—some Irish nationalists, some Chartists, even some French Canadians who objected to the union of Quebec and Ontario. They were often given their “ticket of leave” or a pardon and quickly made their way home or established themselves as respectable citizens in their new country. But there were some really bad ones too---Alexander Pearce was a famous cannibal who escaped not once but twice from the isolated Sarah Island penal colony on the wild uninhabited west coast into the surrounding bush where he ate his fellow escapees one by one.

Back in Britain the social philosopher Jeremy Bentham had propounded a (relatively) enlightened theory of how to reform prisoners which focused on teaching them to read and write, teaching them a trade and giving them religious guidance. These new ideas became very influential and were put into practice in the penal colonies of Tasmania. And so quite a number of the convicts went on to make good after being released from the prisons at the end of their sentence and rose to positions of prominence and wealth, but their “shameful” background was never spoken of. 

For many years the people of Tasmania tried to “erase the convict stain” and the prisons were allowed to decay or burn down in the many bush fires that plague Australia.  Transportation of offenders from Britain stopped in 1853 and the prisons closed one by one as their inmates died or were released. Almost immediately tourists became interested in the former prisons and despite the best efforts of Australians to forget their shameful history, the tourists (with their money) kept coming. Now it is regarded as something of a badge of honour to have a convict ancestor!

Tasmania never attracted the vast numbers of immigrants that the big cities of mainland Australia did. It remained –and remains—solidly Anglo-Saxon. Tasmania always was and remains sparsely populated and economically much less prosperous than the rest of Australia (were it not for the federal government’s equalisation payments it would have a standard of living 23% less than the rest of Australia).

The mines of the western Tasmania promised riches to prospectors and mine owners in the late nineteenth century. The town of Zeehan which now has a population of a few hundred , in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the third largest city in Tasmania, with 10000 people, its own stock exchange, a famous school of mines that attracted students from all over the country, and a thousand seat opera house which attracted the likes of  Nellie Melba and Houdini. 

But the ore was not of high value nor was it plentiful and since there were no roads, transport of the ore had to be by sea off the treacherous wild west coast. Soon the mines started to close and go bankrupt. Now the west is full of ghost towns and the only mine still operating is the copper mine in Queenstown, itself a shadow of its former self –you can almost see the tumbleweed blowing down the main street. But the pollution and scars of the opencast mines remain and have become a tourist attraction in themselves.

Logging, or “pining” as it was called was also good business but the devastation and erosion which the clear-cut logging caused cannot be ignored . Reforestation is done but it is with quick growing often non-native softwoods for early “harvesting”.Logging still occurs and the logging companies have a powerful lobby but with so many areas designated as nature preserves they cannot always get their way.  Agriculture and vineyards do contribute to the economy but the land is dry, bush fires are frequent and farming is hard work which does not appeal to the young. Tasmania missed out on the boom of the latter decades of the twentieth century  and  Tasmania remains a bit of a backwater.  

Still, this has had its benefits because a sparse population has meant that it is easier to create state and national parks to preserve the forests and rivers. About 30 or 40 percent of Tasmania is protected in some way. This makes tourism its main industry and every small town that grew based on now-unprofitable businesses of mining or logging or even agriculture is now frantically trying to reinvent itself as a tourist attraction. The government has done a fantastic job of making its nature reserves accessible, with walkways and walks to suit all levels of fitness and length.I have never seen such excellent and informative signage. (And there are  abundant well-marked public toilets all stocked with toilet paper!)

But for those from the northern hemisphere Tasmania has aspects which take some getting used  to. As a Canadian and a Brit I have a preconception of what a “forest” is like. In North America it will be a mixture of coniferous and deciduous trees. The autumn will bring a blaze of autumn colours and then bare branches laden with snow. In the UK it will be deep green canopies of deciduous trees and little undergrowth.

 In Tasmania the forest trees are relatively short—not soaring cathedral-like as northern hemisphere forests do. The leaves are generally grey- green, small and leathery. The slow growing trees in the wetter west are festooned with sphagnum moss and scaled with lichens. And then there are the giant tree ferns and to odd looking pandani which looks like a palm tree but which is really a heath plant.There is impenetrable undergrowth of moss covered fallen logs. It all looks rather “shaggy”. In the drier eastern forests the ghostly white branches and peeling trunks of the eucalyptus look somehow untidy and not at all majestic . And deciduous trees are very rare (there is only a native deciduous beech which also grows in Patagonia) and so the leaves are not renewed with the passing seasons. 

The animals too are unfamiliar—wallabies, echidna (a cross between a hedgehog, a porcupine and an anteater), possums and the wombat. Carnivorous mammals are rare---the Tasmanian devil and its relative the quoll are the only ones which are not extinct. And of course as is well known all Australian mammals are marsupials. It really brings home to you how frightened those first unwilling settlers transported to the land on the other side of the planet must have been---the seasons topsy turvy, the plants unfamiliar, strange animals, impenetrable tangled forests of strange trees which never lost their leaves, no roads, stormy seas and treacherous coastline.

Did I enjoy my tour of Tasmania? Definitely. Would I suggest you put it on your bucket list? Not really, but if  you happen to be out in this part of the world already, then definitely add Tasmania to your itinerary.

one of the many beautiful deserted beaches on the east coast of Tasmania

Me on the beach at Binalong Bay at the south end of the famous "Bay of Fires"

View from Cape Tourelle in Freycinet National Park

Me ready to start a hike around Dove Lake in Cradle Mountain National Park --the mountain is in the  background

View over the old mountains and forests in western Tasmania near Strahan

Reflections in the water of the Gordon River in Western Tasmania--the tannin dissolved in the water from the tree roots turns the river into a reflective mirror

Old growth rain forest beside the Gordon River in Western Tasmania.

MORE PICTURES FROM TASMANIA

one of the burnt-out homes in the Tasman penisula village of Dunalley, where the destructive bush fires hit the world wide press

trucks from all over Australia arrived to restore the power to the Tasman Peninsula , including erecting many hundred new poles to replace the wooden ones burnt in the bush fires

The penitentiary  at Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula, established in the 1810s to house the "worst of the worst" repeat offenders.With abundant free labour, Port Arthur flourished as a major industrial and shipbuilding centre for the new colony until it was closed to new prisoners in 1853 after  Britain stopped emptying its prisons by transporting its prisoners to Australia. After the last of the "lifers" was moved out in 1877 it was closed and allowed to moulder as the new colony tried to erase the "convict stain" of its origins.

A poor photo (it was pouring with rain) of the famous Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park. It may be called that because of its perfect curved shape like a wineglass, or because its waters are as clear as a crystal wine glass, or more darkly because in the nineteenth century the waters ran red with the blood of whales slaughtered and "processed" on its beach.

me under one of the rounded red granite boulders on the mountains of Freycinet National Park

Sleepy Bay in Freycinet National Part---note the orange lichen staining the granite at the water line.

Part of the Bay of Fires---over the 30 kilometres of the bay there are stunning white sand beaches and granite rock inlets like this one

There are many black swans on the east coast of Tasmania. They frequent the calm brackish lagoons which  are formed behind sandbars separating them from the beaches 

This is a "pademelon", one of the most common of the Tasmanian wallabies. This one was very tame and hung around the parking lot begging for food.

These signs are on all the roads. Since most of the wildlife--the wallabies,wombats,Tasmanian devils, possums---are nocturnal they are often hit . I have never seen so much road kill in my life, far far more than you ever see in Canada

Tasmanian sheep are extremely dirty--I do not think they are ever shorn, perhaps because they are bound for the table  and are not raised for their wool

This is a pandani "tree". Despite looking like a palm tree or a pineapple plant,  they are in fact a primitive heath plant .

The classic view of Cradle Mountain behind Dove Lake in Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania's first national park. The jagged extruded peak is the same type of geological formation  as Torres del Paine park in Chile.

And again. Note the white flowers in the foreground. Many of the dry heath  plants  which cover the park were in full bloom like this one.

and again. The lake is Dove Lake.

And again. Note the tea brown water which results from the tannin dissolved in the water--perfectly safe to drink though

rapids in one of the rivers of Cradle Mountain National Park

Huge tree ferns grow in the rainforest.  They are an ancient form of flora which predate the break up of the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. Fossils of these tree ferns have been found in Antarctica 

This is one of the many varieties of eucalyptus in the forests of Tasmania. Their scruffy ghostly look takes some getting used to for someone from the northern hemisphere.

The light house at Hell's Gate, where the large lagoon-like Macquarie Harbour at Strachan meets the sea. It is a  narrow and shallow opening and so the tide going in an out creates a lot of turbulence. It has only one channel through it which is deep enough for ships (small ones at that) and so there were many shipwrecks, hence the name.

Fish farming in the shallow, calm waters of Macquarie Harbour. Like the fish farms off shore in Chile these are salmon, which of course are foreign to the southern hemisphere but seem to be very easy and lucrative to farm. I wonder what the long term effects are though?

A crayfishing boat in the harbour at Strachan

Me on the deck of the Lady Jane Franklin as we cruised from Strachan through Macquarie Harbour and onto the perfect Gordon River

The Gordon River---note the perfect reflection.. The tannin dissolved in the water from the tree roots causes the water to darken and so acts like the backing on a mirror, giving a perfect reflection.

The Gordon River again

And again

Me driving the  Lady Jane Franklin up the Gordon River

The  distinctive bare quarzite peak called Frenchman's Cap which acted as a landmark for the prisoners seeking to escape from Sarah Island, the penal island in Macquarie Harbour in the early nineteenth century

Frenchman's Cap closer up

Some of the modest little bungalows in the down-on-its-luck mining town of Queenstown in western Tasmania

This is another of the typical style of bungalows found all over Tasmania

A more elegant bungalow, Ormiston House,  in Strachan built by one of the few men who owned and made money out of mining before the mines went bust. 

The moonscape of the hills surrounding Queenstown, stripped of their trees to fuel the smelters at the mines, what vegetation remaining poisoned by the suphuric acid which formed by the mixing of water used in the mining of  the sulphide-rich rock,  and then suffering erosion of what little soil was left. There is still a small amount of copper mining going on but most of the mines had closed by the 1960s after the silver and zinc became too scarce to be profitable to mine,and amazingly the native brush is beginning to creep back onto the mountain slopes, although I doubt that the soil will ever be deep enough to support the giant trees which once grew here.

This shows the colourful sulphide-rich rock which attracted the miners --greens, browns, yellows, reds, pinks, copper-colours

The open-cast mine and the tailings pond from the current copper mining which continues in a fairly small way

One of the creeks  in Queenstown polluted by the mine tailings 

These hideous pipes are laid across much of south central Tasmania carrying water from the dammed rivers to the power stations. All but one of the wild rushing rivers of Tasmania have been tamed and dammed by large-scale hydro electric plant building expansion in the 1960 and 1970s. These dams have changed to entire face and nature of southern Tasmania. Like the mines, all part of the "price of progress".It was only in the early 1980s that the international environment movement mobilised massive protests which resulted in the saving of the Franklin River and then UNESCO stepped in and awarded the whole area World Heritage status.

The story of the Huon pine is another sad story.  These extremely slow-growing  monsters (related to the redwoods of Califiornia) are entirely impervious to rot, fungus or insect destruction. They have a lovely pale honey colour and an even fine grain. They live for up to 2000 years but only grow a millimetre a year. They were cut down all over western Tasmania since their wood was ideal for shipbuilding. It has been illegal to cut down Huon pine for many years but licences are issued to harvest trees which have fallen or were left behind by the lumberjacks. Since the wood is so impervious to rot they can lie in the forest for hundreds of years and still be as good as new.

This is the Gaiety Theatre which seated a thousand , built in the western Tasmanian city of Zeehan in the 1890s when it was a bustling mining boom town, the third largest city in Tasmania with a population of 10,000,its own Stock Exchange, 27 pubs and hotels,  and a world renowned School of Mines.It now has a population of about about 150 people and lives by tourists who come to see its excellent pioneer and mining museum attached to the Gaiety.

Posters in the lobby of the Gaiety---Houdini and Nellie Melba were some of the international stars who came to perform in Zeehan.

There were no roads in western Tasmania and to access the mines and forests you had to arrive by sea. Railways were built to bring the ore from the mines to the coast and the mine owners and managers travelled around in this shiny  leather upholstered rail car built  by Daimler.