Most of you will be aware that Tasmania is desperate to have its own footy team – desperate enough to suck up to the AFL to the tune of a brand new and unaffordable stadium.  Their JackJumpers have had some basketball success (I know, who cares?), despite being named after an aggressive ant and thus their fans are called the Ant Army.  But if they really want to be the national champs, they simply have to establish the Roadkill Championships.  Perennial victory is assured.  In all our travels, nowhere have we seen this level of roadside carnage.  It’s so prevalent that it’s been commemorated in a powerful sculpture called Bitumen Bones out near the Gordon Dam.

Long before we saw that sculpture, we’d seen lots of other roadside hits and misses on beautiful Bruny Island.  My personal favourite was the Bruny Baker where we bought top quality sourdough from a couple of old fridges on the side of the highway – put your money in the honesty box (my conservative revenue estimate is almost $500 per day!).  Almost as excellent was Get Shucked, the oyster bar just 100m from our happy campsite at Great Bay – second only to Coffin Bay, and a close second at that.  Also on the main drag was the Bruny Hotel – we’ve been told for years by Mardi about this simple red brick place on the side of the road where she had a wonderful seafood lunch with Chris & Sue.  Well, they’ve painted it all grey, and have forgotten how to cook decent seafood – a disappointment.  Finally, the previously mentioned Bruny Cheese & Beer, where the beer (farm ale for me) is lovely but the cheese tasting process is rubbish.

The key to Bruny is the natural habitat and the almost complete lack of “development” – we felt sure it would be full of great places to eat, have coffee and lounge around, but while the pickings are good, they are slim.  None the poorer for that, but surprising.  We drove to Adventure Bay for another of the “60 Short Walks” on a sensational day at Fluted Cape.  Fortunately, we chose to walk the loop anti-clockwise which meant starting with a solid 300m ascent through the bush without any respite, but which then opened up to unparalleled views over Storm Bay and the rocky outcrops on the island and a steep but manageable descent.  Just beautiful.  We’d been alerted to echidnas and snakes but saw neither – probably scared off by my panting.

Other days saw us further south at a moody Cloudy Bay (we only went for the name but came away delighted) and right up north at Dennes Point, plus a walk around the old Quarantine Station which was used as much for plants as for people.  We eventually left Bruny on the ferry, thinking it was one of the loveliest places we’d been.  Any disappointments were man made and the island itself completely made up for them.

Thanks to the Hobart Show, we’d missed Mount Field National Park earlier, but we were about to remedy that.  We back-trackingly headed for the Left of Field CP which, as its name implies, tries to be a bit different.  It was a delightful country setting with bushland all around plus lots of cultivated garden as well and a massively stocked bar for drinks each night – we hung off until Monday night, only to discover that was bar-closed night (what could possibly go wrong?).  However, we had probably our best-so-far pub meal in the National Park Hotel, a full 300m walk away!  Hard to say why it was so good as there was juke-box noise and loud-boys shooting pool and over-sharing from the bar staff, but somehow it just felt “right”.

Down the hill from our campsite was the Tyenna River, with a small weir.  I’d been hoping to see another platypus so walked down the hill at dusk on the off-chance, camera in hand, only to just about step on an echidna (at least equally welcome) who curled itself into a ball to pretend that it wasn’t there – very cute.  I waited by the river for 10 minutes and was rewarded with a platypus swimming downstream and eventually shooting the rapids at the weir – hard to get a picture but fascinating.

Those 60 Short Walks kept coming so we did the 3 Falls Circuit, taking in Lady Barron, Horseshoe and Russell Falls plus the glory of the Tall Trees walk through huge Eucalyptus regnans, aka Mountain Ash or Swamp Gum.  Turned out that these were the same giants we’d seen in Gippsland but were none the less imposing for that.   

We were sort-of close to Lake Pedder and the Gordon Dam so decided to take on yet another long and winding road and were so glad we had.  The damming of Pedder was a touchstone for environmentalism in Oz – it failed for Pedder but succeeded for Gordon-below-Franklin.  Those “ratbag protestors” are now celebrated here, much the same as the BLF in Sydney’s Rocks.  The Gordon Dam itself is an awesome structure with a pretty small span between a couple of cliffs creating a massive dam.  Hydro Tasmania’s information panels claim that Pedder and Gordon form Australia’s largest body of stored water, completely at odds with Lake Argyle’s similar claim!  As with just about everything pertaining to “The Hydro”, there is no other view than their own. 

It’s been reported that Tasmania is planning to build a wind farm of over 500 turbines in Bass Strait.  The only part of this story that rings true is that it’s really windy there!  The Hydro is still, even after all its many restructures since Lake Pedder, a force to be reckoned with.  It states completely clearly, within 2 clicks on their website, that Tassie is either proudly 100% self-supporting with hydro-powered electricity OR “about” 80%.  That’s why they need the windmills – methinks they dissemble.  

As for power, I liked the leg-driven Railtrack Riders just below our campsite. You used to be able to pedal your way along the abandoned rail line for maybe 15km and it even had its own minute station – it looked like terrific fun but wasn’t operating. Sadly, it felt a bit like further roadkill.

None of that mattered much to us.  We had a play-date with Helen and Mike McGorman for a week on the East Coast and we were looking forward to it hugely.  Port Arthur, Maria Island, Wineglass Bay, the Melshell Oyster Bar, Bay of Fires and a few wineries were waiting for us all – what could possibly go wrong?