Today is Sunday 29 Jan 2006

    Well golly gosh we were up bright and early this morning,packed, car ready etc and all ready to start heading of down the Lyell Highway across Tasmania to the west coast town of Strahan where we are staying for the next 2 nights. This section of our trip is going to be the longest leg of all and take us through scenery that will change frequently from rich river farmlands, fruit growing, heavily wooden hills, rugged mountains, deep& dense rainforests. We are really looking forward to this and the ruggedness and remoteness of this part of the state.
     All fed ,nourished and car full of petrol we drove out of the casino and off we went.First little break for photo stop was at New Norfolk also here we turned of the main road to take a visit to take a look at Russell Falls in Mt Field National Park and found it was well worth the visit .We passed through several small towns like Maydena and Westerway on the way back to join the main highway again, then through Ouse to where we noticed we were getting close to entering the mountain stretch of the drive and the road becoming very windy as we climbed getting close to Tarraleah.
     Now Tarraleah is an odd little town( or used to be)as it was once home to hundreds of hydro electric workers building one of Australia’s first hydro-electric schemes in Tasmania’s central
highlands. Today, the whole town of 1920s and 1930s wooden homes has been restored as an elegant wilderness resort. Tarraleah means Forrester kangaroo in the language of the local
Aboriginal people, and the site is host to an enormous range of Tasmanian flora and fauna. It is quite possible to see platypus and quolls, wallabies, wombats, Tasmanian devils and echidnas wandering around the town all on the same evening
    The town’s central Lodge, built in the 1930s for the Hydro engineers and company directors, has been restored to the elegance of its early days when money and craftsmanship were no object. The Art Deco building now houses a contemporary and luxuriously comfortable nine bedroom small luxury hotel – a showcase of Tasmanian art and craft.The town’s cottage, hand built by Tasmanian craftsmen in the 1930s, have also been restored as self-contained holiday cottages.
   Tarraleah is geographically only 20 kilometres from the physical centre of Tasmania,
right on the edge of the World Heritage Area – Franklin Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. Look out for the huge water pipes which “tumble” down the side of a valley near the chalet.
   We stopped here to take a look at the 'ghost town' and look at the power station and around the town where we saw all houses , the few shops, the hotel all vacant and in need of some maintenance and we said such a waste seeing the number of homeless people. While saying this I believe the Tasmanian Government are going over a couple years renovate the town complete and turn it into a wilderness holiday area.
   With still a long distance to Strahan we drove on down the mountain,winding our way through dense mountain forest finally into open area again and into Derwent Bridge a tourist spot to stop at about half way on our journey. We stopped here for about half an hour to have a coffee and a bite to eat before driving a short distance to look at Lake St Claire and its Visitor Center and Wilderness Display Center.
  After leaving here we drove on and again entered the Mountains and the vast wilderness area of south west Tasmania that is world heritage listed, as we climbed higher into the ranges the first we noticed was the weather was changing very quickly from what we had just 30 minutes earlier. It became very overcast with low dense clouds, foggy in places, drizzly rain and much cooler. This is the normal way for this part of the Island, the route now to Queenstown became very undulating and winding through and around the mountains with several places one can stop and view this beautiful rugged wilderness. One of these being a wayside stop at the Franklin-Gordon River where you can walk along the bankand view this notable river system that flows into the the once controversial Gordon River Dam.
  Following about 90 minutes driving the mountain we were descending the mountains and out of the rain forest back into undulating open lands and into the once busy copper mining town of Queenstown. But alas and how sorry we felt as we came down and neared the town as the landscape has changed very dramatically from the lush green heavily wooded mountains into a an area that seemed like it resembled Hiroshima after the 'A Bomb'. The land was devoid of all vegetation, and had been for many years and appeared to be a yellow/brown that has been so badly leached by the copper mines and to us it was looking like a moonscape gone wrong..