Hobart to Queenstown

Wednesday 12th October
The day started with a bit of sun, making the view from the back of our hotel look wonderful.




We left quite late - not until 8.30, which is incredible luxury for us. We drove west out of Hobart along the Derwent Valley, through the suburbs first, then through fruit growing and dairy areas, and what used to be hop fields. The hop industry collapsed when Britain, which took most of the hops, joined the Common Market. Our first stop was Russell Falls, in Mount Field National Park. There was a 10 or 15 minute walk to the falls, through rain forest with the most enormous tree ferns.




It was hard to photograph the falls, there were so many people there, and there was such a lot of water.




As our tour guide said, it rains, on average, twice a week in Tasmania; once for 3 days and once for 4 days...
And it had indeed started to rain.

Once back in the bus, we began to climb up into the mountains, and wound our way up past a number of lakes and hydro-electric schemes to Derwent Bridge for lunch. We continued on to a plateau with high mountains around, and made a stop at Lake St. Clair. It was raining again. There was snow on the mountains surrounding us, and it was very cold.



While everybody else had gone back inside to get warm, I sneaked out for a quiet view of the landscape and saw this little wallaby. He had very thick fur - actually, it was so cold he probably needed a fleece as well as a fur coat!



I think he's a wallaby, but he might be a little thing called a pademelon.

We started to drive through the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, and as you might suppose from the name, is very scenic. There are lots of lakes, like Lake Burbury, surrounded by high mountains, and there are very few people anywhere.




The drive down into Queenstown was quite amazing, winding down the steep mountain side round hairpin bends with nothing but a row of wooden posts to halt you if you misjudged a bend. I wouldn't have cared to drive a car down there, let alone a huge coach. As I was on the wrong side of the coach, there are no photos.

Queenstown itself is a mining town, and there isn't a lot of copper mining now, so it is small and quiet. There is a heritage railway - it used to serve the mines - which we are going on tomorrow; this is the old railway turntable.



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