Hobart has no traffic jam? Wrong!

We got told that we were facing an unusual situation when we were sitting in the shuttle bus from the Hostel in Hobart to the airport. It took about an hour for the otherwise rather short ride. It was caused by an accident on the Tasman Bridge. We were lucky that we had been careful enough to expect the unexpected and had taken an early shuttle.

Back from the South Coast Track – 9 days of endurance and wonder

Updated February 29th, 2012..

Cox Bight and the Southern Ocean in the distance - South Coast Track, the second day.

 

“Sweatin’ n’ smilin’”. 

This would describe well my almost constant condition during the first 9 days of our latest trip to Tasmania. We went into the bush. Not just any bush. We picked the South-west National Park and particularly the South Coast Track for our 100% wilderness experience. Jasmin and I took all that we could have possibly needed (and left behind everything that we possibly wouldn’t need) on a bushwalk that may be one of Tasmania’s finest and hardest. We were a very good team. We enjoyed it a lot. Nothing could there be better for a naturalist and biologist than to strife through pristine nature doing a ‘sport’ that is as close as it gets to the ‘leave no footprint’ exercise that we’d like to live. For a more detailed description of the walk with track notes and recommendations chack out my second blog Bush Howler!

Square-shaped Wombat poo.

And Australia’s southernmost state showed what it had to offer. Two species of Quoll (the Spotted-tailed or Tiger Quoll and the Spotted or Eastern Quoll), Tasmanian Pedemelon, Wallabies, Sea Eagles, Western Tigersnakes, to name only few amongst many more spectacular (and often endemic) animal species that 

Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierii) at our camp site, Point Eric, Cox Bight.

crossed our track in one way or another. It was a constant challenge to care for yourself and the other on the track that we called “the obstacle course”. Every second that you got distracted from your next step had to be paid. You could easily be swallowed by a mud hole (Jasmin got so in one instance), slippery rocks and roots; possible snake encounter, fallen trees and steep slopes were our daily business.

Us on the Ironbound Range. Arthur Range in the background.

Big fallen trees on the track in the descent of the Ironbound Range, South Coast Track.

Crossing New River Lagoon, South Coast Track.

At Granite Beach, South-west Tasmania.

In the rainforest on the South-cape Range.

Crossing South-cape Rivulet on the South Coast Track.

"The End of the Road" - the southernmost road in Australia. That is in Cockle Creek, the final destination of the South Coast Track.

 We liked this outdoor experience so much!!!!! So after we had recovered one day in Hobart from this rather long walk and had done our laundry, we did another walk, the three-days circuit on the beautiful Freycinet Peninsula. Freycinet is much dryer than the south-west. Accordingly, we found a very different flora. The water was amazing and the marsupials so tame (this walk is much shorter and therefore more people that are less serious about bushwalking come here and feed the wildlife) that we had a hard time protecting our food supplies at night.

Wine-glass Bay at the Freycinet Peninsula, eastern Tasmania.