Oh what a beautiful morning! We spent the night, quite by accident in a heritage park in the centre of a little town called Geeveston. We were going to drive up to the Tahune air walk and camp there as we had heard that it was a free camp. However, as we drove to the outskirts of Geeveston at around 5 pm, we saw a couple of vans pull off in to a grassy area the size of two football fields and start to set up. It was a glorious afternoon, still sunny and warm and so we employed the zen method of finding a camp spot ( pick a likely caravan and follow it), turned around, and parked in the same field. Turns out that they had been into the visitors centre to buy their tickets and had been told that it now cost $20 to stay at the airwalk and that they were welcome to pull up and camp in the heritage park behind the centre of town for a small donation to the servo in the name of the community development fund. Chuck in fresh drinking water, toilets and
a creek with platypus to spot on top and we were sold too!
So this next morning saw us relieved that we hadn't towed the van up into the forest as it was windy and hilly all the way. The airwalk was pricey ( in our super stingy life at the mo, $50 for the fams is up there) but I have to say that it was quite wonderful. 600m of tree top walking, past vast stringy barks and cinnamon scented sassafras, culminated in a cantilevered section over the Huon River. In the autumn sunshine with only a handful of other tourists, it was worth every penny. (Even Ned managed it which was good as he had developed a little chest cold and wasn't feeling the best.) There were several other walks on offer too, but we only managed one that took us to see the famous Huon pine tree. These long lived but slow growing trees were all but wiped out by early loggers. Prized for their dense grain and water resistance, they were perfect for boat building. As a result, the specimens we saw today were less than impressive in the size stakes, despite being 450 yrs old. The largest tree in the forest is actually a swamp gum clocking in at a towering 89 m with a 6.9m circumference at the base.