Mar 07

White water forest

Although a nice camping, it gets quite busy and I might have mentioned once or twice that we prefer bush campings.
Before we hit the road though, Marjo takes a few pictures of some peculiar stump.

And funny enough finds her left thong (or flip flop for the English readers or jandal if you’re from New Zealand)!
With wood on her mind she snaps left and right before I snap her up for the ride towards Cradle Mountain.

As you know, we get easily distracted and instead of turning right towards Cradle Mountain, we turn left and follow the road towards Devils Gullet. Who can resist such an attraction.
After the steep and grueling corrugated dirt road we always wonder about the sanity of our hap hazard decisions. But then we’re rewarded with nice views along the road.

The walk towards the gullet is an attraction in itself.

And the gullet itself is breath taking.

It’s always difficult to transpose the feeling of depth and height into a picture.

Then we follow a better dirt road and come to lake Mackenzie, a large dam that is well below its regular level.

There is quite a bit of resistance from the greenies in Tasmania that feel that flooding bush to create dams for the generation of power is wrong. Tasmania is generating the lion share of renewable energy and the combination of mountains and plenty of rivers and lakes is a perfect combination for hydro energy. And I still prefer that well above any old coal power station or nuclear facility.

I get a little bored and try to convince Marjo that the Martians have left her a message.

She’s not convinced and we decide to continue even more dirt road and see if we can visit the Walls of Jerusalem (yes we are still in Australia). When we come to the track though it suggests to allow 3-4 hours one way, take a detailed map and a compass. We have neither and turn around.

Sick of the teeth rattling roads, we stop and take an unmarked side path that leads us to part of the Whitewater river. Because the dam is quite low the river is turned to trickling stream, but still nice enough to camp along.