July 2006

Prologue

It’s four o’clock and I’m thinking I should ring the tourist park at Strahan to say I’m running late. There’s no mobile coverage but it’s been allowed for. A public phone stands at the side of the road just outside the town of Tullah.

‘Be here by six,’ the woman answers, ‘we leave then.’ I’ve looked at the map and there’s not too far to go.

‘No worries. I’ll make it easily.’

I drive another hour and it’s nearly dark. People, on the whole, are not practical when giving advice on travelling. No-one told me Tasmania was dark at five o’clock in winter. I needed to know that. I’m not sure how much longer my concentration will hold out. It’s been a huge day. I left the Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry that brought me and my little hatch-back across Bass Strait from Melbourne to Devonport, around 7 am. Everyone else on the ship disappeared within minutes, while I drove in circles looking for somewhere for breakfast. I know it’s Sunday and I know it was early but surely some enterprising soul with a cafe this close to the ferry terminal could open for people like me on their first jaunt to 'Tassie'.

Just before giving up I saw a cafe that had been there all along and I realised how tired I was. I’d had a cabin to myself but kept waking up, not wanting to miss anything of my first trip, on a ship, into an ocean. Eggs and bacon in front of an open fire energised me and I set out on my adventure. My travel-agent daughter suggested I pass through Sheffield, a country town with the history of the area painted in murals on the walls of the buildings. She also strongly recommended a walk around Dove Lake, which lies at the feet of the great dolomite crags of Cradle Mountain. I don’t think she meant me to do it all on the first day.

I’ve done road trips before so I’m not a complete novice when it comes to distances but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I left Cradle hours ago. Maybe I took a wrong turn. There’s nothing here but mountains and forests; mile after mile of corners to navigate in the dark. Now and then an SUV roars past and I watch its tail-lights disappear into the gloom. They obviously know where they’re going; I haven’t got a clue. I could be here forever, alone, driving into a black eternity. Enough of the melodrama; must pull myself together; must concentrate. What if I don’t make it in time? What if they close up and leave me stranded?

It’s twenty to six and I see a couple of lights off in the distance. Civilization, maybe. A house; a sign; more signs. I’ve reached the outskirts of Strahan. I drive around a corner past a cabin park, not mine, and up the dimly lit main street. In fact, it’s so dim I can’t make out anything clearly. Peering through the windscreen, I reach the top of the hill, realise I’ve gone too far and turn back. I drive from one end of town to the other – twice. My tourist park does not exist. The pub – they’ll know.

‘Nope,’ says the barman, ‘never heard of it.’ Mustn’t cry; I have to find a bed for the night before I cry.

‘That’s it,’ says the girl at the general store, pointing to the park opposite, the one I’ve driven past three times.

‘But the sign says a different name.’

‘I know,’ she says, ‘but that’s it.’

I drive down the side street, turn right into a lane and right again, looking for 'Reception'. The park is in darkness, there seem to be no occupants and there is no 'Reception'. Something happens to my brain when I’m stressed, it switches and everything becomes muddled, just for the moment. Maybe that’s what’s happened. Maybe I’m looking straight at 'Reception' and can’t see it.

‘You want something?’ says a man, striding past the front of my stationary car. I sag with relief.

‘I’m looking for 'Reception'.’

‘Over there!’

‘Where?’ He throws his arm up.

‘Near the light pole,’ he barks and marches away. I head back to the lane. There is no 'Reception' at the light pole but a dim light issues from the porch of a white house further along. 'Office' says the small sign over the door.

‘Oh, my God, I couldn’t find you!’ The woman behind the counter stares at me. ‘I’ve been driving for hours. I thought you might have left.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘Dove Lake. I thought I’d never get here. It took over three hours.’

‘It takes one and a half. I’ve just come from there.’ Mustn’t cry; not yet.

‘You’ve got a different name on your sign. I drove past thinking it was the wrong place.’ I could have been talking to the wall.

‘You’re in 9,’ she says, slapping the keys on the counter. ‘It’s the next drive on the right. There’s a heater going so it should be warm.’ Well, that’s something. I’m squinting through the windscreen at the darkened cabins, searching for Number 9 when my mobile rings.

‘How’d you go?’ It’s my travel agent daughter.

‘I couldn’t find the town and I couldn’t find the park and I can’t find my cabin and they’re so rude and it’s all mountains and it’s so dark. There’s something wrong with the lighting.’

‘Mum,’ she says, ‘you are in the wild west, you know.’

‘Right, yes, right. Here I am! Number 9! I’ve found it! I’ll ring you back when I get in.’

I am in the wild west. Some mental adjustment is needed. I now understand the worried look on her face when I announced I was doing the west coast first.

‘Rubbish,’ say the locals in the general store when I question the timing of the trip from Dove Lake. ‘It’s a good two and a quarter, if you know your way.’ Relieved I’m not totally mad, I grab my chips and some milk and cereal for the morning and wander back across the road, down the side street and along the lane.

I've always wanted to explore Tasmania. I wanted to learn more about the place where many of the convicts transported here by the British Government, worked out their sentences. I also wanted to see the forests that were considered so precious they were on the World Heritage List. I’m not a good travelling companion. I’m bored by shopping, restaurants, wineries and art galleries but I can sit in a town square for two hours watching the locals going about their business. I can spend the same amount of time in a forest gazing at a stream making its way down a hill or straining my neck to see the top of a 600-year-old tree. I like travelling alone because it gives me full say in where I go, how long I spend in each place and what I do when I’m there.

Tassie is easy to get to from where I live in Melbourne, and easy to drive around, and yet, other than a drive from Hobart to Burnie with someone who considered stopping to look at anything an unnecessary irritation, I’d never made the trip. My family must have been sick of hearing about it because, on my 60th birthday, they presented me with a ticket for the crossing and five nights’ accommodation. I added a week to that and here I am, on a sleek, white catamaran, waiting to fulfil my dream of sailing up the Gordon River through the wilderness of Tassie’s south-west forests and, while there, visiting Sarah Island, the most notorious of Australia’s early penal settlements.

The engines rev, the gangplank is drawn back and we slide out into Macquarie Harbour. I paid extra to ensure myself a window seat but, being the middle of winter, the ship is almost empty and I move up to a raised section in the centre where I can see all around me. Macquarie Harbour is just over 110 square miles of protected water. The only way in and out is through a narrow gap, only 50 feet wide. The harbour is one of the few large bodies of tidal water in the world. With the raging winds of the 'Roaring Forties', and the tide meeting the waves crashing in from the Southern Ocean, the passage into Macquarie Harbour was a terrifying ordeal for those in sailing ships. Worse, there’s a sandbank dead across the entrance and so, at spring tide, the depth of water shrinks to just 11 feet. The passage was named, reasonably enough, ‘Hell’s Gates’. Ships would often wait days for a chance to get in and then many were still lost. Let’s hope our skipper knows what he’s doing.

A salmon and trout farm sits in the middle of the harbour. The skipper’s voice echoes through the speakers. ‘It’s feeding time. If you look back, you may see a few leaping up for their breakfast.’ The engines lull and we bob on the water for a few minutes. No trout or salmon makes the effort. I guess they’ve learnt they don’t need to – probably just lying back with their mouths open. We pass through ‘Hell’s Gates’ easily, do a U-turn in the Southern Ocean and safely return to the quieter waters of the harbour. Morning tea is served and I sit at the bow of the ship, my scarf wrapped tightly against the cutting wind, to wait for my first glimpse of the Gordon River.

In 1978, the Tasmanian Hydro Electricity Commission announced its intention to build a dam close to where the Gordon and the environmentally sensitive Franklin River meet. Both areas are World Heritage Listed. A protest followed, gradually growing until it involved people from all walks of life and all parts of Australia. In 1983, when Bob Hawke took over from Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister, he kept his campaign promise to put an end to the plans, although it took a High Court Case against the Tasmanian Government to make it a sure thing. I’ve seen photos of the Gordon, winding from its source in the Central Highlands, its waters dark and so serene they create a mirror, reflecting the rainforest through which it travels.

‘Now,’ says the skipper, as we approach a bend, ‘get your cameras ready. It’s clear today. With a bit of luck, we’ll have great reflections.’ I do as he says and there it is – a perfect mirror. Dark green, forest-covered mountains, with veils of white cloud drifting across the pale blue of the sky. What is the use of a photo? How can a camera record this beauty? I do, though, to jog my memory when I’m back in my concrete city. The cruise companies have been given permission to create a small landing with an elevated walkway in a loop through the forest. We file off the ship and I enter an ancient realm. Trees soar toward the sky, so tall I can hardly see their tops.

‘Huon Pines have been known to live up to three thousand years,’ says our guide, ‘and there is a known stand who’s root base has been in existence for 10,000 years. As you go along you will pass a 2000-year-old pine. That is, it was growing before Christ was born.’ I try to get my head around that and give it away. ‘It has fallen but its roots are still alive and so saplings are growing from it. I’ll leave you to wander. We’ll meet back here in half an hour.’

The tree is massive; 2000 years old, unable to stand but still a support to others coming on. Not unlike humans, I guess. Just because our legs can’t carry us in our old age doesn’t mean we can’t still offer support to those coming on though, on the whole, they don’t realise it’s available till it’s too late. I commune with the tree as others glance at it and fade away. The forest is quiet, with only the whisper of ferns and the occasional fluttering of sparse leaves that have been able to survive in the dim light. A half an hour has gone already and I rush back to the ship. We’re served lunch as we glide back down the river to the harbour.

*

Until 1856, Tasmania was known as Van Diemen's Land, named by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the first European to land on the island, in honour of Anthony Van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Sarah Island, established in 1822, was set up to detain those convicts that had the cheek to keep escaping from settlements on the mainland. Little remains of the original buildings. Most were made of timber and have rotted away. The brick and stone structures were depleted by souvenir collectors and the forest has reclaimed most of the island.

It’s a bleak place. The wind whips off the dark water, the sky is a steely grey and it’s cold – freezing. I lean against the wet, moss-covered wall of the ruins of the solitary confinement cells, stone coffins, completely dark with barely enough room to lie down.

‘Before the cells were built,’ says our guide, one Richard Davey, in a Dryzabone and Akubra, ‘prisoners were left on Grummet Island.’ He points to a large rock to the north-west. ‘No bedding was provided and so they spent the night in the open in their soaked clothes, often still in chains.’ I shiver and pull my coat tightly around me. ‘Escape from Sarah Island was virtually impossible, due to the treacherous seas that separate the island from the mainland, the wilderness, and the distance from other settlements.’

‘Plenty tried,’ an elderly man next to me says, quietly. His shock of white hair contrasts, vividly, with a red woollen scarf, tucked tightly into the neck of his well-used duffel coat. He tells me about Matthew Brady, a flamboyant Irishman, transported for forgery. In 1824, he and 14 of his mates stole a boat and sailed it to the Derwent Estuary, before taking to the bush. For nearly two years he led one of the colony’s most notorious bushranger gangs.

‘He was a folk hero for the settlers,’ the man says, ‘due to his good manners. Women loved him. And he was a character. When Governor Arthur offered a reward of 25 guineas for his capture, he offered 20 gallons of rum to anyone who could deliver the Governor to him. He was captured, eventually, by the bounty hunter, John Batman, and hanged in 1826 before a crowd of weeping women.’

‘What a great story.’

‘There’s plenty of those.’

‘I can understand them risking the forest and the ocean to try and escape. Nothing could have seemed worse than what they had.’

‘Or committing murder.’

‘Really?’

‘A few planned murders so they could get a trip to Hobart and have the distraction of a trial. And then, being hanged was an escape from their nightmare.’

The group starts moving away. Meanwhile, Richard Davey has walked down the bank and is now doing his spiel while standing in the water – in waders, luckily, which is more than the convicts had. His rich, resonant voice floats up to us but I’m having trouble concentrating. Something keeps dragging me away – ghosts, maybe. Pieces of information flicker past me.

‘Huon Pines are perfect for ship-building ... a unique oil that makes the wood resistant to fungi.’

‘Prisoners spent hours up to their waists in the water ... worked all day on a breakfast of flour and water ... no fruit and vegetables ... disease.’ Drips run down my face and I realise it’s drizzling. Umbrellas have popped up around me.

‘Lash ... solitary confinement ... slavery.’

This was more than punishment – revenge, maybe – or what happens when the normal checks and balances are no longer in place. Macquarie Harbour was so far from the rest of the colony that, in the early days, there was little supervision. Most overseers were ex-convicts and made the most of their first ever experience of power. One monster, Alexander Anderson, designed his lash with double twisted and knotted cords. The permissible maximum at any one time was 100 lashes and he used every one, at every opportunity. To complain was criminal; even an expression of anger added to the punishment.

‘Would you like to share our umbrella,’ says a plump woman, already sharing it with her plump husband. There’s absolutely no way there’s room for me but it’s thoughtful of her.

‘Thanks,’ I say, ‘I’m fine.’ Meanwhile, Richard has returned to dry land and is now standing in what was the bakery, a rivulet running from the rim of his hat.

‘The Suffolk oven produced 400 loaves a day. Ergot was added to the bread to cause it to go mouldy. That was to prevent the inmates from stockpiling their food for escape attempts.’ Not particularly rational, I would have thought, considering the severe shortage of food at the time and the fact that everything had to be shipped in. ‘By 1828, Sarah Island was the largest ship-building industry in the colony. It had developed into an industrial village with blacksmiths, tanners, boot makers, medical orderlies, cooks, gardeners and clerks.’

‘Did they have a school,’ asks a boy of around eight, who has been taking in every word.

‘They did,’ answers Richard. ‘Even here you couldn’t get out of going to school.’ Quiet laughter ripples around the boy and he blushes. ‘Having women and children about had a refining effect on the settlement; that, and the cultivation of healthier food along with religious instruction. A lot of the convicts ended up as skilled tradesmen.’

I wander off to the remains of the courthouse, standing on a small hill, looking out toward the harbour. It seems a strange place for a courthouse, battered by the vicious icy wind that would have ripped through convicts and authority alike. But then the whole setup was strange – an industrial village, literally at the ends of the earth. The women must have wondered where they’d gone wrong to end up here. In fact, everyone sent here must have regarded themselves as prisoners, as they slid further away from civilisation, into such a threateningly alien world. By 1833, it had become too expensive to keep the settlement going and the remaining inmates were transferred to the new prison at Port Arthur.

The drizzling stops and umbrellas are returned to their bags. The group starts moving toward the ship, standing out from the grey and deep green of its surroundings like a beautiful swan. I join them and, in what seems only minutes, we are tying up at the wharf at Strahan.

‘What’s with the smog?’ I ask the woman behind me in the supermarket queue. I’d had trouble seeing where I was going as I headed down the hill past the Mt. Lyell Copper Mine, nestled in a deep valley on the edge of the old mining town of Queenstown.

‘That’s not smog, love,’ she says, dragging on a cigarette. ‘It’s fog.’

‘Fog,’ I say, sceptically. ‘So it’s nothing to do with the mine?’

‘Nah.’ She breaks into a rasping smokers’ cough. ‘Nothin’ wrong with the mine. It’s just fog.’

I’m not convinced. Around 10.15am, though, it lifts. By 10.30 it’s gone. The wide main street is dominated by several enormous hotels, built during the establishment of the mine in the late 1800s. Verandas, bordered by balustrades of iron lacework and timber, jut from iron roofs, to shelter the pavement and shops below. I look up toward the glowering hills that fill the space at the other end. This could be a movie set – the 'Wild West', except Australian. Exchange a few cars for horses and it would be ready. Looking at some of the locals, they wouldn’t need to go far for extras.

I’ve often been told I have to see the dead hills on the way out of town, all vegetation having been killed off years before by the felling of trees to burn in the mine smelters and the sulphur fumes from the smelters themselves. I look up at the narrow road hanging from the side of the cliffs, curving and climbing its way into the distance, and cringe. I’ve been giving myself challenges for a while in an attempt to cure my fear of heights. It hasn’t worked yet, though, and there’s no other way out of town, so I grit my teeth, quote some clichéd affirmation about confidence in my abilities and press the accelerator.

I hug the cliff, my hands glued to the steering wheel, pouring with sweat. I can’t look around me. If I do I’ll drive off the edge – I know I will; there’s nothing to stop me. A caravan glides toward me from the opposite direction. I can’t believe this road is wide enough for the two of us and I wait for the thump that will knock me into the valley below. It passes without incident, though I’m not sure how close it came because I think I had my eyes shut. Five kilometres later, my muscles screaming with tension, I enter the forest on the other side of town. I’ll have to buy a postcard in Hobart to see what I missed out on.

I navigate mile after mile of mountainous corners. My daughter’s voice echoes in my head. You are in the wild west, Mum. If only I’d heard that earlier, I would have come from the other direction and left this challenging section of the trip till last when I’d had more practice on the roads. I had checked everything, though. I researched. I sat in the bath for hours staring at maps and tourist guides. This terrain is not on the maps. At least I’m on the cliff side and, thinking about it, I couldn’t have come from the other direction. My fear of heights would have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. I would have disappeared over the edge to become permanently 'World Heritage' listed.

The scent of the forest wafts through the open window and I start calming down. There’s no rush, after all. I don’t have to be in Hobart till tomorrow. I can take this slowly and enjoy what I’m doing. The huge trees fill every part of my landscape and my situation dawns on me. I am in one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is what I came for. I relax back into a sea of green.

*

A bird, a large, cheeky creature with mottled black and white stripes down its back, red feet and a viciously long beak, is trying to steal a crust from my sandwich bag. He scares me a bit, with his aggressive manner. I swear he would take my finger if it had food attached. I’ve arrived at the bottom end of Lake St. Clair in Cradle Valley National Park. The icy breeze creeps up my leg and I pull my sock up further. I could grab the air, pick up a piece of it, it’s so crisp and white. ‘Actually, it hasn’t been too bad lately,’ the park ranger says to me when I complain, just a little, about the cold. Is she being smug or do they just get used it?

A path curves away out of sight and so I pack my thermos and Esky back in the car, wrap my scarf around my neck and follow it. The picture, as I round the corner, is straight out of the English children’s books I grew up with. Moss is everywhere, covering the ground, fallen branches, tree trunks, everything that has stayed still. Little grows in the dim light on the forest floor. A wallaby scratches in the dead leaves, oblivious to me. Trees zoom toward the light.

The sound of water draws me to a bridge over, not a creek, a sweet gentle thing but a river, energetic and vibrant, pouring down an incline, crashing over rocks and stones, earth and branches, everything in its path, carving its way through its territory. It’s hard for me to immediately take in the beauty of this scene; my mind argues that it can’t be real. A young couple strolls past, hand in hand, and I nod.

‘Have you by any chance seen any pandani?’ the young woman asks. I don’t know what pandani is.

‘Don’t think so, sorry.’

‘We were hoping to see some,’ says her partner. They hang over the railing, arms around each other, gazing into the water.

I drag myself away and follow the path again, arriving at a small beach in a bay area, looking out across the expanse of Lake St. Clair. Sitting on a rock I watch the tiny waves lap the sand. A wren picks at something near my feet and I stay perfectly still, not wanting to disturb it. A light plane whirrs far above my head and fades into nothing. Voices pass on the pathway and drift away. A movement at the side of me catches my attention and I watch an echidna ease itself from under a log and wobble its way along the sand and back into the undergrowth. Though I can hear a gentle twittering of birds, there’s a stillness and a feeling of safety, as if the trees are guarding me. The trees are safe too, so far, protected by World Heritage Listing. Their leaves rustle far above me. A small grey and pink bird, a robin, I think, lands next to me, flicks its tail then takes off again. Everything here knows its place: the animals, the birds, the trees and moss, water and rocks – and me.

*

‘Can I help you with something?’ says a man, coming out of the gloom toward me.

‘I’m looking for a caravan park. Is this Tarraleah? There’s supposed to be a caravan park.’

‘There was. It’s gone.’

The sign to Tarraleah, halfway between Strahan and Hobart, had directed me onto an unsealed road that gradually turned into a track that seemed to be heading nowhere. As I was deciding to turn back, the forest disappeared behind me and I am now surrounded by paddocks, a huge hydro-electricity pipeline and strange-looking, half-completed buildings. It’s almost dark and I have nowhere to stay for the night. Book somewhere between Strahan and Hobart, my daughter had said. I’ll be right, I answered, it’s winter. It’ll be easy to get in somewhere. She looked worried.

‘You can try at the office.’

‘Where’s that?’ I ask, trying to make out anything looking like an office.

‘Go back down this road and you’ll come to it.’

I backtrack to where light is eking through a heavy glass door. Two tradesmen are unravelling coils of electricity cables. Sheets of plaster sit against the walls and nails and screws litter the floor. Panic must be showing in my face because they stop and stare at me.

‘I need some help.’

‘Over there,’ one of them says, pointing to a woman sitting at a desk.

‘Excuse me,’ I call, too loudly. She looks up in surprise. ‘The Royal Automobile Club of Victoria guide said there’s a caravan park here.’

‘No, not any more. We’re building a resort. Won’t be ready for months, though.’

‘I’ve got nowhere to stay. Is there anywhere else around?’ She stands up and comes across to me.

‘No, not around here.’ Again, I’m trapped in the mountains, in the dark, exhausted. ‘You could go back to Bronte Park. I could ring them for you if you like.’ Bronte Park is the resort outside of Lake St. Clair that I chose to bypass because of the caravan park at Tarraleah.

‘How far is it?’

‘About half an hour.’ I consider the trek back on the valley side of the road in the dark, and know I’m too tired to handle it.

‘There’s a caravan park at Hamilton. I’ll head for that.’ She looks anxious.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Good luck.’

Nothing is open after six o’clock in the wild west of Tasmania. Maybe Tasmanians hibernate in winter, go into caves, perhaps, and emerge three months later. Hamilton is in darkness; both caravan parks are closed. All of the tourist information suggested I do the detour to the ‘historic village’ of Hamilton. Hamilton was going to bail me out. I’m not sure how long my petrol will last. I haven’t seen a service station since Queenstown. I have two options: to keep going or try for a 'Bed and Breakfast', if I can find one. The ‘historic village’ of Hamilton is sure to have some, at around $140 a night. Or I could sleep in the car. 'B&B', continue or sleep in the car?

The lights of New Norfolk glow and the petrol tank is on empty. A sign flashes on the white wall of an old hotel in Montague Street. Vacancy $30. $30? For the whole night? I’ll do it. The bistro is large, warmed by a huge log fire. I stand at the counter, wondering why I’m not being spoken to. It’s a common experience of mine, a feeling that I’m not really there with the other humans in the room, cut off somehow, as if I can’t be seen. I look desperately around me.

‘You want something?’ says a man, getting up from the middle of a family group and coming across to me.

‘I need a room.’ He looks flustered. Why does he look flustered? Didn’t the sign say Vacancy?

‘Right,’ he says, ‘it’s $30.’

‘I’ve come from Strahan and I couldn’t find anywhere to stay and I’ve driven for hours in the dark and I thought I might have run out of petrol ...’ I’m gabbling.

‘Come over to the bar,’ he says, walking away.

I sit with my vodka and orange in front of the fire and wait for a plate of what’s left of the bistro food. The Bush Inn has an amazing history. Opened by Ann Bridger in 1825, it holds the title of Australia’s oldest continuously licensed hotel. Among its claims to fame is the visit of Dame Nellie Melba in 1924 when she sang, Scenes That Are Brightest. The song was from the opera, Maritana, written by William Vincent Wallace in 1838, while inspired by the rural scene from the hotel veranda. History was made at the hotel on June 29th, 1932, when Maritana was produced and broadcast over the national radio network for the first time, through station 7ZL Hobart. Two records from the broadcast are mounted over the fireplace.

Australia’s first trunk call was made between Hobart and the Bush Inn. Its proprietor, Octavius Blockley, received the call from the Hobart Post Office on 1st December, 1888. The first call to London was also made from here on February 1, 1939. The phone sits in a glass case in the foyer beside, strangely, a christening font. The font has been here since 1835, when Methodist preachers from the Melville Street Chapel in Hobart, used the inn as a chapel, preaching to their congregation in the old ‘tap room’. Very convenient if you fancy a quiet drink after Sunday service. On 17th February 1989, the hotel was officially classified by the National Trust.

The oldness of the surroundings nurtures and comforts me. I finish my meal and wandering back through the dimly lit, ragged, common room, I meet a resident of the hotel, a man in his 40s, who tells me the problems he has in keeping contact with his son. I’m happy to listen, letting the everyday conversation bring me back to earth. The shower is cold but the bed is comfortable and the breakfast in front of the fire, delicious. This is where I’ll stay next time around. I stop off to fill up on petrol and head back along the highway to Mt. Field National Park and Russell Falls.

*

‘Gosh, you must love working here,’ I say to the man, as he passes my coffee across the counter. He looks at me vaguely for a moment and I feel a need to elaborate. The cafeteria is plonked in the middle of the Mt. Field National Park rainforest. I wave my hand towards the windows. ‘It’s stunning, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, yes,’ he says, and turns away. Maybe you’d get used to it if you worked in it all day, though I don’t think I would ever become blasé towards this. Rejuvenated by my coffee, I follow the signs directing me along a pathway to Russell Falls. The pale white light of the sky leaks through a world of every shade of green. The waterfall appears from the forest, high above me. It’s partly covered by ferns and trees and so I follow the sign pointing me to the top for a better look. The pathway is wet, muddy and slippery. As it rises it becomes narrower and narrower. On one side of me is a sheer drop and on the other, a sheer, muddy cliff.

This can’t be the tourist walk to Russell Falls, surely. There’s no-one else here. Have I taken a wrong turn? I ease myself around to the cliff and stand, face and hands attached looking, no doubt, a bit like a gecko on a summer’s night, and contemplate my situation. My mind knows I’m not in danger but my body has a totally different opinion. One of the difficulties of the fear of heights phobia, is that you freeze. You can’t move to get yourself out of the situation. If there was a railing to hold onto I would be fine but no-one has thought it necessary to provide one.

Still, I can’t stand here all day and it will be extremely embarrassing if someone comes up behind me. There’s no way I can continue upwards, not knowing where the path is leading. I’ll have to go back. With my hands attached to the cliff, displaying myself as the world’s most neurotic woman, I descend, step by step, back to the safety of the forest floor, checking the sign on the way. It is the tourist path to the top of Russell Falls and there isn’t mention of the pathway becoming suitable only for mountain goats.

Back in New Norfolk, I park beside the river and wander along its bank. The town was the third oldest planned settlement, after Hobart and Launceston. Starting in 1807, inhabitants of the Norfolk Island Penal Colony were encouraged to come to Van Diemen’s Land to help populate the areas around the Derwent River. Thirty per cent of them came to New Norfolk.

Being transported was not necessarily the worst thing that could happen, especially for someone with entrepreneurial gifts. Denis McCarty was an Irish political prisoner, transported to New South Wales in 1803. McCarty quickly converted from convict to police constable and in 1808, was appointed to New Norfolk. He married Mary Wainwright, who was born on Norfolk Island, the daughter of First Fleeter, Hester Wainwright. By 1811, he was entertaining Governor Macquarie at his home.

In 1812, he was granted 50 acres of land for farming, and not long after that, he won the construction contract to build the road from Hobart Town to New Norfolk. Exploring was also a passion and he sailed ships from Macquarie Harbour to Kangaroo Island, and as far north as Port Jackson. A large boulder with a plaque stands on the bank of the river, as a monument to him.

The settlement grew and in 1846 the first hop plants were brought from Maria Island. This began a thriving industry and accounts for the odd-looking oast houses along the way here, used for drying and processing hops before they were sent to the local breweries. It’s a pretty town surrounded by undulating hills, valleys and streams, with the Derwent River running through the centre – a perfect place to relax before braving the metropolis of Hobart.