Imagine a national park with hot showers and electricity at the campsite, one where you are the only campers, where you are surrounded by a melange of marsupials; pademelons, Bennett's wallabies, Forester kangaroos and wombats. For good measure, let's imagine there is a lonely stretch of beach strewn with shells and starfish, where oystercatchers, black swans, red-capped plovers and white-faced herons stalk tiny crabs.
Welcome to Narawntapu National Park, smack-dab in the middle of Tasmania's North Coast.
Of course it will be raining; nothing is perfect, even in your mind! A beautiful spring day is special, a harbinger of things to come but a nice day in autumn, especially in Tasmania, is truly precious for it may be the last of the season, as we fear Wednesday was. The cloudy skies and rain only added to the mystery of Narawntapu while we waited for the rain to slow to a drizzle before starting out into the bush.
The animals, is seems, had the same idea. There was always something hopping across the path, a couple of pademelons here, a wallaby there. The birds, too, were active but nothing we hadn't already seen. The meadow was dotted with brown lumps that turned out to be wombats eating the roots of the grass. They looked like little bears and let us approach within a few feet before waddling off. Kangaroos looked up from their grazing to stare at us as we stared back at them. When we got too close they bounded off like kids on pogo sticks.
Even heading to the loo at night was an adventure. Pademelons have a nasty tendency to wait until you are almost on top of them before bouncing away and scaring the heck out of us. Who knows what other critters were hiding out there?
