Cataract Gorge is a good example of somewhere which you will only fully appreciate if you leave the car at home and arrive on foot. This is because the entrance for walkers is positioned at the north end of the gorge where the bridge crosses it and the South Esk River and the Tamar River meet. There is a small car park next to the bridge for a handful of cars, but most people arriving at the gorge by car will drive in through the large purpose built road on the other side of the park which winds through West Launceston and takes you straight into the main gardens themselves, bypassing the gorge entirely. Coming into the park from the bridge, foot visitors like us pass through a small gate and then walk the whole length of Cataract Gorge along a narrow pathway which hugs the edge of the cliff, only a metal railing separating you from a long drop into the raging waters below. At the entrance to the gorge path, the original caretakers cottage stands up against the cliff face, raised up on stilts which make it look extremely fragile and give the impression that it's likely to fall into the gorge at any moment. The building has sat there for probably a hundred years or more, so it's obviously a lot more stable than it looks, but somehow I can imagine I'd have a really hard time as the caretaker weighing up the romanticism of living in a little hut overlooking Cataract Gorge and being able to look out of my window in the morning at such a beautiful sight, with the imminent threat of being hurled to my death on the rocks below at any moment should a couple of rocks fall into the river.

I suspect that many visitors arrive at the main entrance on the other side of the gorge, walk straight into the gardens, sit down for a drink at the cafe, feed the swans and then leave again wondering why they call it Cataract Gorge! Eloise and I had already been amazed by the sight of the gorge looming up in front of us as we left Launceston city centre and started to cross the bridge, but things only got better when we passed through the gate and began the long walk along the edge, the rock face towering over us only inches to our right and falling away into the abyss only inches to our left. One of the most incredible things about the experience for me, apart from the sight of the gorge itself of course, was that this narrow pathway existed at all, seemingly carved out of the cliff face half way down. Was this just an incredible co-incidence of nature, or had somebody done this for our benefit?

The gardens at Cataract Gorge are built on either side of the river, and a large lake known as the First Basin acts as a central point at the south end of the gorge. It was easy to see why our receptionist thought that this was Launceston's pride and joy - around the northern bank of the river, extensive parks and Victorian style gardens had been created around a carefully mown lawn and band rotunda, and pathways zig-zagged through sections of thick woodland, lush exotic ferns and brightly coloured flowers. Unfortunately we were unable to get up on the rotunda, which would've given us even better views of the gardens, as the circular steps leading up to it were chained off and a sign told us that it was being renovated. Isn't that always the way? There's even a pub in the grounds, where you can sit and have a quiet drink while looking out at the gardens, a world away from the noisy drinking holes downtown. Wherever we went, there seemed to be peacocks poking their heads out of the nearby bushes or coming up to see if we had anything to eat - at times, the air was filled with their lively screeches as they called to each other, causing us to jump several feet in the air if the bird doing the calling happened to be nearby. At lunchtime, the gorge restaurant opened up adjacent to the rotunda, and we saw people filing in to sit by the fire and settle down for a three course meal. We weren't feeling quite so extravagant, so we made do with a couple of plastic chairs outside the nearby Kiosk, where we sat with our soft drinks and sandwiches and found ourselves immediately surrounded by peacocks and our table covered with every small bird in Launceston looking for a free snack. I found it incredible that such an idyllic place could exist so close to a large city centre, and even more incredible that we'd had to walk along the length of a spectacular gorge to get there - if I lived and worked in Launceston, I would almost certainly wander down to Cataract Gorge for lunch almost every day just to sit on the lawn surrounded by peacocks and pretend that the modern world didn't exist. And just when I was thinking that the place couldn't be any more perfect, we stopped by a large picturesque pond where a black swan glided up to us and craned it's neck (or should that be "swanned" it's neck?) to see what we had to offer - so we spent a few minutes fussing over it and taking photos.

It's hard to describe how impressed I was with the whole Cataract Gorge experience, to be honest. As I'm sure I've said before, I've never been a big fan of formal gardens, preferring the more natural look, so it always puzzles me when I visit a place such as this and immediately feel at home. Most of what you see around Cataract Gorge, except for the gorge itself of course, has been sculpted by man, but Australia does seem to have quite a skill at making artificial gardens feel a lot more natural than they obviously are. At many of the Botanic Gardens scattered around the country, for example, you can spend many happy hours wandering through the woods and pushing your way through the reed beds by the river, totally forgetting that there is a cafe, restaurant and picnic lawn only a couple of hundred yards away. When they do plonk down a bridge or a wooden walkway, they do it because it's necessary to prevent visitors from sinking up to their necks in mud or falling into a ravine, and not simply because they can. I like this attitude. I recently visited a so-called Botanic Gardens in Cambridge, that otherwise marvellously old and beautiful University city in England with its magnificent architecture and gondoliers waiting to row couples up and down the river - and was totally underwhelmed. The gardens consisted of perfectly mown lawns, geometrically perfect round flowerbeds with little plastic signs naming each plant or flower, and a bench in the middle surrounded by four perfectly straight paths partitioning perfectly square sections of lawn. And, as if that wasn't enough to really piss me off, I had to pay to get in. If somebody designed a Botanical Garden like that in Australia, they'd probably be shot.

There are three ways to cross over to the south bank of the river - assuming you don't count going back to the entrance, getting in your car and driving several miles around to the other gate. After exploring the gardens, the winding pathways eventually meet at a decidedly dodgy looking suspension bridge which spans the gorge. Known locally as the swinging bridge, this has an unsettling habit of bouncing up and down and swinging from side to side as you walk over it. Hardly wide enough for two people to pass, the bridge almost seems to be designed for the entertainment of children who take great pleasure in crossing to the middle where the swing is at its most pronounced and, putting a hand on each side, starting it swinging so that anyone crossing behind them has a major panic attack. I'm sure the bridge is more than strong enough to hold the many thousands of visitors who must constantly cross it, but somehow it still feels as though you are taking your life into your hands traversing the gorge this way. Another option is to take the chairlift, which also tries its best to scare the crap out of you by claiming to have the longest single span in the world between two masts holding it up - the length of cable between one side of the gorge and the other, with nothing to support it in between, is an unbelievable three hundred and eight metres. The chairlift itself is clearly designed to look as scary as possible. Rather than being safely enclosed in a two or four person carriage with a door as is becoming the norm these days, passengers climb onto freehanging seats which are suspended from the wire and sway back and forth as they cross the gorge. It's like sitting on a bar stool as you are hoisted across the gorge, your feet literally dangling into the abyss and your backside being the only part of you making any contact with anything solid. For safety, there is a metal bar which gets lowered by hand in front of you and which you can hold onto, but as you sail slowly across the gorge, suspended in mid-air, it's hard not to wonder exactly what would stop a small person from slipping underneath and plummeting earthwards. In fact, the website actually goes so far as to explain that the safety bar can be operated by either the passenger or an attendant, so it's hard not to wonder how many mad people decide to lift it up mid-journey just for the thrill each year! Of course, it is probably this perceived element of danger which makes this such a fun way to cross the gorge. Naturally, taking your life into your hands in this way is not free - a return ticket will set you back twelve dollars - so a third option for crossing the river has recently been added in the shape of a pathway which somehow manages to cross at ground level, although this wasn't there when we visited and I can't quite get my head around how that would work without some sort of bridge across the water half way along. Besides, it presumably wouldn't take much of a rise in water levels to close the path completely. The choices for crossing the river are, therefore, to either take your chances with the vertigo inducing suspension bridge, hang from a wire with nothing holding you up for nearly half a kilometre, or cross the river at ground level and try not to drown. Such is the fun of a day at the park in Australia.

The south side of the river, confusingly located in West Launceston, is far more of a traditional park. The pathway leads down from the suspension bridge and the base station for the chairlift, to a large area of perfectly mown lawn at the edge of the First Basin. To one side is a cafe serving breakfast, lunch and tea, and here you can sit and have a light snack while looking out through the full length glass window at the lawn and the river beyond. This is obviously Launceston's family park, but what makes this otherwise quite everyday area of Cataract Gorge into something special is the view over the South Esk River, a view which is rather hard to avoid wherever you go. The lawn is built on the bank of the First Basin, an apparently man made lake at the southern end of the gorge - causing many locals to refer to it as Launceston's beach. Even though the city isn't far away, and a major road leads into the gorge reserve and ends in a large busy car park just a couple of hundred yards away, the lawn and lake area have been carefully planned so that they appear to be completely surrounded by lush forest. In fact, if you locate Cataract Gorge on satellite mapping software such as Google Earth, all you can see for miles around is woodland. On the other side of the lake, the land actually appears to be like something out of Jurassic Park and gives the impression that it hasn't been disturbed for millions of years. The water rushes through the First Basin as it is churned up by the rocks in Cataract Gorge and then begins to settle as it enters the main length of the South Esk River on the other side, and this makes the lake seem much more like a wide stretch of fast flowing river in the middle of a forest than a man made lake in a park. The whole of the First Basin area has clearly been designed to give Launceston a traditional family park where kids can run and play and families can sit around eating picnics, but also to create somewhere that feels as though you've left the city and driven out into the wilderness. Only yards from the First Basin, and sunk into the lawn itself, is a large swimming pool complete with tiered seating where friends and parents can sit and watch - of course, this is the sort of place which could only exist where the weather is as beautiful as it often is in Australia, but I really can't imagine anywhere I'd rather go swimming than in a pool surrounded by forest. We couldn't immediately see any changing rooms, unless you count the odd looking concrete structure across the lawn which looked more like a bus shelter, so I guess you have to turn up with your swimming costume on under your clothes, but that certainly wouldn't stop me using the pool regularly if I lived in town. Eloise and I, of course, hadn't known in advance that the pool was there - otherwise we would've probably dived right in. On the whole, I found the First Basin area to be a well thought out beauty spot, and being only a chairlift ride away from the Victorian gardens on the other side of the river made it even better. If I was looking for somewhere to settle in Tasmania, the Cataract Gorge reserve would be exactly the sort of place which would sell me on a city.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.