Adventure Before Dementia

We are back in Scamander now after almost a week in Tasmania's Wild West and a short visit to Hobart - still one of the most relaxed cities we've ever visited. But the west of Tasmania is world class and we saw it in perfect weather. First we stopped at Crayfish Creek, staying overnight in a rather creaky treehouse with Jane and Vic. We all went on to Footrot Flats and Dismal Swamp - those early explorers really knew how to make a place sound attractive! We drove over a road called the Western Explorer, nearly a hundred miles of gravel with almost no other traffic, through a mixture of temperate rainforest and button grass plains, to an old mining village called Corinna on the Pieman River, deep in the Tarkine Wilderness. There we took a boat trip to the mouth of the river, and paddled up one of its tributaries in an open canoe.

We also did a couple of walks in the rainforest and fed the wallabies and possums in the evenings. Here's William making a new friend at feeding time.

But perhaps our most memorable encounter was in the canoe on the Pieman River when we met a tiger snake swimming along, and, yes, they are poisonous.

After Corinna we crossed the river on the famous Fatman barge and drove through the old mining town of Zeehan to Queenstown. From there we travelled the West Coast Wilderness Railway to Strahan, panning for "gold" on the way.

In Strahan we came across a camper van from Queensland with a slogan that really appealed to us. It said "Adventure before Dementia". That'll do us!

While we're talking strange encounters, we drove back from Hobart on the Midland Highway, which goes through places with names like Brighton, Campbell Town, and Jericho (on the Jordan River of course!) As we were driving through Bagdad (local spelling) we met a convoy of Australian Army trucks heading south. Hmm...