Saturday afternoon 12 December

We drive roughly South-West towards Roseberry and after picking up some groceries from an IGA we head into Montezuma Falls and set up camp for the night. The place is deserted and is just a parking lot on gravel - though through a divider there are two picnic tables and some soft short grass. Beyond that the river runs in a deep bed.

It is Saturday night and we do not realize that this is a local haunt. So in rolls a small car with a noisy exhaust they are going for a drive down lover's Lane. They leave the car idling for maybe half an hour with the lights on as they picnic on the lawn - well that is what she told her mum when she got home.

So finally we got back to sleep and all was quiet for the rest of the night.

Sunday 13th December

This is a mining area in Tasmania - it seems this whole West coast has some mineral resources that miners want. So there has been a mine in this area, on and off for more than 100 years. In this location there was a silver mine and they built a tram way line from here to Zeehan some 30 or so kilometers in a straight line where they smelted the ore.

This is very steep hilly terrain and the tramway was quite an engineering feat - many cuttings and some impressive wooden bridges. Of course in the late 1800's no one gave a hoot about cutting down a tree or polluting a landscape for that matter, so apparently around 700 tons of fire wood was shipped down to Zeehan each week to fuel the smelter fires - so what we experience is a story of regeneration - the trees have grown back and the ferns in 100 different designs and sizes sport their delicate fronds. It is a bitter sweet experience as the walk is beautiful but the water in the streams is undrinkable because of the pollution from the mining operations - so the backstory is depressing and as we see the mining industry today doing exactly the same thing with coal seam gas etc - Mal finds it hard to imagine that the human species can survive the 65 million years needed to even match the humble if ferocious salt water crocodile.

So lets raise our glasses to Industry and the prospect of wealth today and to heck with the future - no wonder they get along so well with politicians - talk about short election cycles. Later we find that the smelter in Zeehan never turned a profit though undoubtedly some people got rich, thank you very much.

The Montezuma Falls are over 100 meters high and there is a narrow suspension bridge which crosses the gorge below the falls where the original rail bridge was. When you look down and see the remains of the bridge still tangled amongst the rocks it is clear that this was a fantastic engineering effort. Bridge over the River Kawi comes to mind.

It is after 2pm when we arrive back at Vicki. We chat for awhile with a couple from the Sunshine Coast who are headlining into Cradle Mountain.