Day 6 Strahan to Lake St Clair

Somewhat to our surprise, we couldn’t really find much to do in Strahan, even though there’s an absolute heap of activities. Either the activities were booked out, unsuitable for a 4 year old, or psycho expensive. So after a brief exploration of the main shopping village, we headed out – but found a delightful little lolly shop on the main road into the hills. Some advice: do not go into here: they even do lolly tasting. Each of us had our own favorite – fizzy apple licorice was mine.

No bike shops yet; I pumped the flat tire up at the service station, we’ll see how that goes. It was raining in Strahan – the first rain we’d seen since picking up the motorhome. The roads out of Strahan are just as twisty and steep as the rest of the west coast roads, and it was a little scary to drive them with the rather bald tires on the front of the motorhome (the front tires certainly did not have enough tread to be legal).

The first place after Strahan  is Queenstown. Just like the books say, Queenstown is a mining town and far from picturesque. The hills are all bare, and the place is ugly. Even the soccer and cricket pitches are some kind of gravel not grass (because it rains so much, grass doesn’t work. The fine gravel drains faster).

Queenstown is home base for an historical railway, and we stopped to have a look at the station. We’d love to have gone on the train from Queenstown to Strahan return but cost and time were prohibitive. The little old stream train did arrive while we were having lunch at the station.

The road onwards from Queenstown starts with an amazing hill climb with incredible views back down over the city. It was a real struggle for the motorhome – I wasn’t sure we’d make it to the top without overheating. Buy the time we cleared the saddle at the top of that hill, the rain and clouds had gone, and it was a lovely warm day. We stopped for two short walks along the road.

The first walk was a short (10 min each way) flat hike to a waterfall. This walk was perfect for Tali, she really enjoyed it, and the waterfall was thoroughly worth visiting.

The second walk was a much steeper walk down to a swing bridge over the Franklin river. The walk was long – maybe two km return – but it dropped at least 200 metres in that distance. It was our first and only sighting of the famous Franklin river.

For those unaware, Kath’s maiden name is Franklin, and the river is named after an early governor of Tasmania, who is believed to be a (somewhat distant) relative. In addition, you can raft the Franklin river, a ten day trip. We were looking at the river just above where it becomes navigable for rafts. Note that the river is quite brown – this is tannin leaching out of the trees into the water. It’s still clean and drinkable.

While waiting the kids and I to play in the river, Kath struck up a conversation with and English fellow who is riding around Tasmania. He’d come over from UK for a wedding, arriving a month early, and picked up a hire bike at Hobart airport. From there he’d ridden up the east coast, across the top of Tasmania, and then down the west coast to Hobart (roughly the same trip we had taken). When we returned to the car park, I checked his bike – the bike was light – but I could barely lift the pack off the ground. I sure wouldn’t like to ride it up a hill – and he had no shortage of massive heart-busting hills to climb. We’d see him several times again.

We finally made it to Lake St Clair just before the camping reception closed. We hadn’t really appreciated this before arriving, but Lake St Clair is not a normal camp ground; there is no shop, and no fresh or dirty water service for the motorhome. This meant that we had to use the toilets and showers for the camping ground, instead of ours – the motorhome is good for overnight, and we had two nights in Lake St Clair.

As Kath was standing behind the motorhome, guiding me as I reversed it into place, I saw, in the mirror, a young girl run up to her from behind and jump all over her - rather to Kath’s surprise. We had run into the Caudery’s again, and that was how we found out.

That evening, Melyssa and I went for a twilight walk with the Cauderys while Kath got Tali bedded down. The destination of the walk was called Platypus Point, where we were supposed to be able to see platypii. Where the point was, the walk as a series of walls that you’re supposed to wait behind very quietly, so as not to disturb the platypii, who live in down in the grass in the picture, and hunt in the water.

We waited nearly an hour, watching as the twilight deepened, but other than fish jumping out of the water, there was no sign of any platypii. Then some fools decided that the reason they couldn’t see them was because they were too far away, and went down to walk around the grass below. That was enough for us, and we walked on to a great little beach which had some spectacular views of Lake St Clair.