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Breakfast over, bags packed, at 8.30am we board our bus and leave the Wrest Hotel and pass early inner city sandstone buildings close to the Hobart's waterfront, among them Australia's oldest hotel (1807) and the Tasman Bridge curving over the Derwent.
The city behind us we head west passing fields of white opium poppy and hops and our windows offer glimpses of rural Tasmanian life.
At the 16,265 hectare (40,191 acres) Mount Field National Park we visited the most photographed waterfall in Tasmania - the Russell Falls. We parked by the visitor centre photographing timid wallabys breakfasting close-by, and followed the track through a mixed forest comprising towering swamp gums, dogwood, musk and myrtle.
 The
falls cascade down in three tiers framed by lush
vegetation, and was said to have attracted visitors for well over a
hundred years. I photographed signs recording the story of
the area - they said: "Can you make out the horizontal
layers in the rock behind the Russell Falls? The layers were composed of
silt, sand and clay particles whixh haardened into rock 250 million years
ago - around the time when dinosors were wandering the continent. What do
the falls look like today - a raging torrent, a delicate trickle or
something in between? Whatever the flow, the water cascading over the
Russell Falls is constantly eroding the rock backdrop. The products
of this erosion - boulders, pebbles and sand, will in time form new rock -
it is all part of the never ending cycle.
One thousand
generations. Since the beginning of time this area was part of the
homelands of the Panganingee people. For more than 30 thousand years the
land provided ll of their spiritual and physical needs. The invasion of
Europeans resullted in the destruction of these people and their
enviroment. There are no living descendants of the Panganingee however the
Tasmanian Aboriginal people of today remain custodians of the land on
their behalf.
In 1885 Tasmania's first reserve
was created around Russell Falls and rail excursions from Hobart to the
Falls became popular. The reserve was extended with the formation of the
Mount Field National Park in 1976 which along with Freycinet, is the
States oldest National Park".
Our next stop was Lake St Clair, carved
out by ice during several glaciations over the last two million
years, it is the deepest lake in Australia and the headwaters of the
Derwent River and part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
The Aboriginal people called the lake Leeawuleena meaning "sleeping
water" and the vegetation patterns show signs of thousands of years
of their burning practices. Situated at the southern end of
the Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park, about 2 1/2 hours
west of Hobart.
The Lyell Highway to Queenstown now becomes a winding
and narrow 1 1/2 hour drive, the road bordered by rain forest and
said to occasionally be closed by snow in winter. We wind our way down hills, bare of vegetation - the result of years of mining fumes - a vision likened to a lunar landscape. Our hotel for the next two nights is the Chancellor Inn.
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