April 13 Back in Penguin (Day 199)
We went back into the town of Penguin today for resupply and free wifi for an hour.
We returned to the Midway Point camping site for another free night to wait out the windy conditions.
We went back into the town of Penguin today for resupply and free wifi for an hour.
We returned to the Midway Point camping site for another free night to wait out the windy conditions.
We started the day going into Smithton to shop, get water and dump and we noticed the Tarkine Oyster shop across the Duck River inlet! Of course we had to have some lunch!
After our wonderful raw lunch we headed up to the 3rd ‘cape’ on the north coast, to the small town of Stanley that is at the base of “The Nut”, a flat topped volcanic butte similar to the Table Cape we visited on April 9. It was a raw, cool windy day so we headed to the historic site of Highfield to do some indoor exploring.
Highfield was the headquarters of the Van Diemans Land Company and was constructed in 1826 mostly by convict (slave) labor! It is a wonderful example of early colonial architecture and a testament to the horrible practice of transportation to “the ends of the earth” for minor crimes and subsequent slave labor practices.
The Parks Service does not sugarcoat the history here. The Van Diemans Land Company began their holdings here in 1826 and by 1834 the last remaining 134 Aboriginal people were banished to Flinders Island and nearly all were dead by 1850. The main architects of this program were the leaders of the Van Diemans Land Company.
The estate is rather large and I spent lots of time reading all the history. When we finally left we found a camping site back at Midway where we had spent April 9th. We had a relaxing evening and saw the sliver of moon over the calm waters of Bass Strait.
We woke to a sunnier day and had breakfast then headed out to explore the 2 trails that lead out from the campground. The Sinkhole Trail is a loop into the forest supposedly past sinkholes, but we never could identify any, maybe because they are filled with vegetation!
Besides the Eucalyptus trees, another dominant tree in the rainforest is the Myrtle tree (Nothofagus cunninghamii), not to be confused with the Oregon myrtle (Umbellularia californica). Those common names for species are very confusing!
We returned from our hikes and packed up to continue the tour on the Tarkine Loop Road to the next turnoff at Chisholm Lake, a sinkhole that is filled with water!
Our last stop was the Trowutta Arch, another sinkhole filled with water and covered with green algae or duckweed deep in a beautiful rainforest grove.
We finished our loop tour and returned to the town of Smithton near the north coast to spend the night at the free campsite at Tall Timbers, a resort that accommodates campers with a grassy parking area.
We woke to mixed weather, sunny and beautiful then cloudy and misty! A morning highlight was the moving of the cows. The local dairyman moved his cows to new pasture, right next to the campsite!
We packed up to head out to the Tarkine Forest, the temperate rainforest on the west coast of Tasmania. The first part of the Tarkine Loop follows the west coast south past the “Edge of the World Viewing Platform” looking out at the Roaring 40’s of the Great Southern Ocean! It was roaring today, with sideways rain, so no pictures were taken! Video will be posted to the YouTube channel soon. We turned inland and entered the rainforest, quite a difference from the scrub-grass and rocky landscape along the wild west coast.
We reached our campsite for the night, Julius River, and joined the one other camper to spend the dark night under the canopy of rainforest trees.
We headed out early this morning, our destination; a free campsite on the west coast near Marrawah. The route is mostly along the north coast and we will pass three capes jutting out into Bass Strait. We decided to visit the lighthouse at Table Cape, the first cape on the route, and visible as a large flat butte just past the large working port town of Wynyard. As we approached the top of the butte through farmland and turned onto the gravel road the last few km we were enchanted with a beautiful stand of summer flowers leading to the lighthouse!
We moved on down the highway and passed the second cape, Rocky Cape, the gravel road to that lighthouse would probably undo the cleaning we just did yesterday! We did stop at a viewpoint however.
We passed the third cape, North Point (no lighthouse) then moved inland to cut across the pointy northwest tip of Tasmania to reach our destination, Green Point Beach. The one hour, 65 km trip from North Point to our campsite was enough distance for the weather to change from the partly cloudy warm north coast to the windy, grey skies and intermittent rain of the west coast!