Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Set off on the 250 kms drive to Queenstown today for our first stopover. Roads virtually empty with scenery lush and varied. Clouds grew darker as we went further west. We passed a hydroelectric generation plant with enough capacity to serve the whole of Tasmania. Steady rain started about an hour later so we stopped at Lake St Clair Lodge for lunch and watched all the walkers who had obviously set out earlier to walk in this national park in sunshine and returned looking like wet wombats. The Visitor Centre had an exhibition of stuffed local animals so probably got to see more marsupials than if we had gone walking. Continued on our drive stopping at Nelson's Falls which was a spectacular waterfall enhanced by all the earlier rain. Having travelled through lush wooded landscape for the past 100 kms, the area around Queenstown comes as a shock, being almost devoid of mature trees. This is because the area was mined heavily during the last century and the forests were cleared to make the ground more accessible. In time the indigenous Huon pine, a hard wearing red wood tree, much prized by furniture makers and boat builders was obliterated from the landscape by felling or poisoned by the mining. As we drove into this 'wild west' looking town and pulled up to the motel, a hail shower began and the outside temperature registered 3C. Luckily the very comfortable motel is used to this temperature and our rooms were heated and the beds had electric blankets!
- comments