It’s only around 180km from Lake St Clair to Hobart, but we still managed to fill in the time and not arrive back until 4pm.
The Truman Show comes to Tasmania
First order of the day was to find a cup of coffee, so we looked at the map and noticed a town called Tarraleah at just the appropriate distance. That name sounded familiar to me. Having lived in Lyons – the Canberra suburb whose streets are named for Tasmania – we find many place names sounding familiar, but Len had to remind me that it was in fact the name of the street that Evan and Hannah’s primary school was on. How quickly, we – well, some of us – forget.
Anyhow, Tarraleah was a hydro-electric town that was established in the mid 1930s, and closed in the 1990s, with many buildings demolished, and some sold and moved to other locations. In 2006, the town was bought and redeveloped as a resort town, “a hotel on a village-scale”. The hotel is in the original Art Deco lodge, and the 15 restored original homes are also offered as accommodation. The only permanent residents are the staff. That fact, together with the pristine looking nature of the town, are what I guess brought about the reference to The Truman Show by a TripAdvisor reviewer. The important thing for me, however, was that the coffee was pretty good, one of the nicest I’d had in days in fact. And Len enjoyed his Chai Latte.
Tasmania’s treasured place
Described as “one of Tasmania’s most treasured places”, Russell Falls are (are a single Falls plural?) in fact lovely. The walk to the Falls is easy, along a path that is pram and wheelchair suitable. The falls are wide falls, rather than tall falls like Montezuma Falls, and have a couple of drops. Because they are “treasured”, it was busy, and we shared the experience with thirty or so others, including a school group comprising local students and visiting students from the Netherlands.
We decided to do the extra walk up to Horseshoe Falls. It’s only another 15 minutes, but does involve many steps and quite a steep walk. We thought that might result in our being alone, but no, guess who was there? Yep, the school students. This time they were climbing all over the falls, which actually added a lovely bit of colour to the view, not to mention a little frisson of anxiety as they jumped from rock to rock on their return. Fortunately, all those young sure-footed things made it back to safety with only the odd little slide. In fact, it was interesting to watch the various approaches to the task and different levels of confidence.
A lovely walk which we both enjoyed, though Len was heard to mutter at one stage, “not more mosses”!
We lunched at the rather unprepossessing looking National Park Hotel, on the road into Mt Field National Park. Inside, it also looked a little unprepossessing but turned out to be a friendly place run by a young English couple. Indeed, it was from there, with their free wifi, that we posted our Lake St Clair post. Oh, and the food was tasty too – a vegetable curry for me, and a chicken schnitzel for Len.
Back in Mary Street
After that it was a pretty quick 40-50km drive back to Hobart, where we spent a relaxed, enjoyable night under Ian and Helen’s warm hospitality, catching up on what everyone had been doing in our absence.
There was, early in the evening however, an attempt by the two females of the party to go to a yoga class, but a sign on the door telling us the teachers were unavoidably delayed due to aircraft delays put paid to that. Instead, Helen gave me an informed cultural tour of the Hobart Mall, which has some delightfully whimsical, yet often pointed, artworks, including little “stories” engraved into the sides of granite seat pedestals by the artist Patrick Hall. You really have to know they are there to see them but once you do, reading every one of them becomes addictive (or, at least they did to me!)
Another day, another set of photos …
Pademelon (or Rufous Wallaby), Mt Field National Park
Falling Water, Russell Falls
Nearly Left Behind, Horseshoe Falls