Franklin River

Today the weather alternated between rain and sunshine. It felt really warm when the sun was out, and decidedly chilly when it wasn’t. We started the day with another big breakfast and had planned to do a waterfall walk before heading to Strahan, but decided against it when it started raining. Instead we packed the car and left.

We stopped at a little playground in Rosebury, Nathan and Andrew looked at some trains in Zeehan that were part of a museum, and made it to Strahan for lunch. The kids both fell asleep in the car, so they missed the incredible sand dunes before we got to Strahan. The sand dunes are 30 metres high and extend 15 km north along the coast from Strahan. They change as humans, vegetation, and the Roaring Fourties winds influence their shape.

We had planned to stay in Strahan for the night, and do a cruise along the Gordon River. However, we had not realized that the cruises were 6 hours long. They all left in the early morning, so we had missed any chance of a cruise today, and we didn’t have time for one tomorrow. There is a cog-wheel railway in Strahan as well, but it was the same story as the cruise in that it only went once in the morning, and you didn’t get back until the afternoon. We had some lunch and decided that we would push on to Derwent Bridge so that our trip to Hobart tomorrow won’t be so long. We did visit Ocean Beach before leaving Strahan. It is the longest beach in Tasmania and had stones and large shells scattered on the sand.

Queenstown has the most incredible looking bare hills around the town though, of course, they represent at ecological disaster caused by the mining industry of yesteryear. I was interested to see tall, reed-like grasses to be growing over the hills. I can’t remember if the hills had anything growing on them last time I was here….some 25-ish years ago. We stopped on the way out of Queenstown to look into an open cut mine and then it was on to Derwent Bridge for the night.

The road between Queenstown and Derwent Bridge was magnificent. We were in National Parks the entire way. Unfortunately it was getting late in the day, and we didn’t have time to stop and explore some of the short walks from picnic areas along the way, though we did stop to look at the Franklin River when we crossed it.

Finally we made it to Derwent Bridge where we are staying at the only hotel in this small town

Ocean Beach

Cold and windy on Ocean Beach

Poo with a view! Between Strahan and Queenstown

This entry was posted on Friday, September 30th, 2011 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Tasmania, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.