Today has been a very long and interesting day, spent travelling to Strahan (pronounced Straw-n) and back to Queenstown. The road between Strahan and Queenstown was rather different. When Queenstown was exporting copper, the only way in and out of Strahan was by rail from Queenstown or by sea. People apparently used to say that, the Southern Ocean being so rough, however you travelled to Strahan, you went by rail - either ON the rails or OVER the rails! The government got so tired of being asked to build a road, they eventually agreed if a route could be found that entailed no bridges or cuttings (the railway had a record number of bridges) which had been expensive to build. The road on which we drove was the resulting route, which has instead a record number of bends. It is 35 kms (about 21 miles) and took almost 50 minutes to drive. Sadly, as it was through pristine rainforest, there was no view at all, only of trees.
Strahan is quite a picturesque little place, a fishing port as well as a tourist spot, with Macquarie Harbour being two and a half times the size of Sydney Harbour.
It did not last long as a copper exporting port because the entrance is very narrow, (16 metres or 52.5 feet wide and 22 metres deep) and is not tidal but barometric. So depending on the barometric pressure, the water could be flowing at 8 knots or more the wrong way through the narrow entrance and steamships in the late 19th and early 20th century did not have the speed to run against such a fast tide. So ships could be delayed for weeks.
We went for a cruise on a large tourist catamaran called The Eagle. Fortunately, it was sunny and pleasant, though cold and windy if you went outside. The catamaran was very fast, so being outside was a very cold experience. First we went right down the harbour and through the narrow entrance, which is called Hells Gates. You can see how shallow it is outside.
It is deeper inside because it was surveyed and a wall built (called the training wall) which trained the current and it scoured out a deeper channel. Once outside, we looked at the crayfish and abalone environment - this is where the fishing boats fish. Then we went back inside the harbour and looked at the fish farms. The harbour, with the wide Gordon River and a very narrow entrance, has a high proportion of fresh water and is very good for fish farms.
Then we sailed into the world heritage area, which is very beautiful. We visited Sarah Island, the site of a punitive penal colony. Here, we were given a tour of the ruins by the members of a theatre group. The island, which is now very beautiful, was only used as a punitive colony for about 40 years.
The prisoners on the island had to be self-sufficient, so there are such ruins as a baker's oven and a lime pit. And as the prisoners built boats for the government, there are the remains of slipways for the ships, and forges to make the nails.
We sailed right up the Gordon River through the first gorge and as far as commercial boats are allowed.
We got off for a walk through the temperate rain forest, and viewed the remains of a huon pine which is 2000 years old. As it is massive and has now fallen down, my photographs look odd. But I did manage a photo of some which were 800 years old. The rain forest here is very wet, as the west coast of Tasmania has 300 days of rain a year, so we were very lucky to have sun. Every surface is covered in moss, and all of the moss is saturated enough to wring out.
Once back in Strahan, we made our way to the station where we were to ride back to Queenstown on the West Coast Wilderness Railway. The railway between Strahan and Queenstown was closed in the 1960s, but was restored and re-opened as tourist attraction in the 1990s, and it really was an experience. The replica carriages were first pulled up the first part of the climb by a 1950s diesel engine. Then, at a station called Dubbil Barril (yes, really!) the engine was changed for a 115 year old steam engine. The engine had to be turned round using the old manual turntable - you can see the driver and fireman struggling.
The next part was very steep, so we changed to a rack and pinion system for that - it was only the steam train which was set up to use that. We passed through the gorge of the King River.
This part of the journey was amazing, we seemed always to be above steep slopes that fell sheer from the side of the train and seemed to go on for ever. We found it hard to imagine how the workers with pick and shovel and axe had hacked their way through such impenetrable rain forest to build it. Just past Dubbil Barril there used to be a dairy farm, which of course went out of business when the line was closed. The rain forest has reclaimed it completely, the only sign of it are the two rhododendrons which were once in front of the house - and we could only spot them because they were in flower.
It was well after 6 when we steamed into Queenstown station, and we were tired but delighted that we had been so lucky with the weather - it has been sunny all day.
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