This morning I started my 5 day tour of Tasmania. We left Hobart at 7.15am and after introductions, the group of 14 of us, including tour leader Jacob and his girlfriend Marjorie, set out to the Mount Field National Park. Here we did a short walk through the bush to Russell Falls. We saw a few pademelons and a platypus in the river, which was very lucky!
We drove on via Tarraleah and the hydroelectric dam. Hydorelectric provides 90% of tasmanian energy, the remainder being from wind. Here we saw a huntsman spider and a yellow tailed black cockatoo.
After this we drove on to lake St Clair of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. Here we had lunch and did a very short walk down to the lake and the beach. It was shrouded in mist and cloud but was beautiful nonetheless. We were warned here to look out for deadly tiger snakes but were reassured that the weather was not good enough for them to be out basking on the paths! I didn't see any. We did see one crossing the road later though from the van.
We then did a couple of half hour loop walks in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. One was to the Franklin River and the other was Nelson Falls in the Surprise Valley. We tried a sassafras leaf. We travelled along the lyell highway through the mountains and stopped off at a viewpoint looking down at Queenstown, a mining town.
We stayed the night at Jump's private house in Tullah, which was a nice place to relax.
We all chipped in for a BBQ tonight which included wallaby steaks.
