They say in Melbourne if you don’t like the weather give it half an hour and it will change, it’s not quite that fast on Tasmania but the effect is the same. After the rain, mist, cloud and cold of yesterday we woke up this morning to clear blue sky’s and if not the hot temperatures of Darwin certainly markedly warmer than it has been for the last few days. We decided that rather than walk round the lake today we would actually drive back towards Queenstown and do the walks we had planned for yesterday as it will give us good views of the surrounding areas and I am really glad we did as it was fantastic. When you are not driving in pouring rain we are actually only about one and a quarter hours from Queenstown so we drove there and made the stops on the way back. Our first stop was Iron Blow which is a lookout over the Cooper Mine, apparently according to the information board Copper is the most recyclable material there is. There is a walkway that means you can look down into the mine which looked massive, you can also look out over the valley to the towns of Linda and Gormanston which are all but deserted now. The other side of the road is Horsetail falls walk which is only a little way from the car park and there is a walkway all along the hillside opposite the falls which means you have a good view of them despite them being the opposite side of the road. One of the benefits of the rain we have had over the last couple of days is that the waterfalls are at least running quite well. We went from here to Lake Burbury which is a massive lake and seems to go for miles, it is actually a man-made reservoir created by the Crotty Dam which dams the King River valley. We stopped in a couple of places to look at the lake one of which was a camping site which was in a lovely setting with picnic tables and showers / loos all for $6 per night which seems very cheep to me! Our final waterfall of the day was Nelson Falls, which are probably the most spectacular of this trip, they are not as tall as Montezuma falls but they are quite a bit wider and although you are not right at the base you are pretty close. All of that plus the fact that it is a really nice walk through rainforest to get to them and that the river has the same brown staining that the Gordon river has but because of the sun and the vegetation it made it look really colourful. We spent quite a bit of time at these falls as they were so nice then walked back to the car to continue. Our next stop was Donaghys Hill which is part of the Wild Rivers National Park, this is a walk to a lookout that is actually a tower at the top of a hill! It provides amazing 360 views across the whole set of mountain ranges and to be honest you can’t see a single town despite the fact we know at least four of them are out there. We met another couple who said they had seen a snake on the track but as we had walked up after them they had either scared it off or we had walked right past it as we didn’t see it! Our final stop of the day was a walk along the Franklin River, this is an easy walk through the ‘wilderness’ although this isn’t true wilderness as you can see signs of man there – mostly from the footpath they had put in! But again it was a really nice walk through rainforest on the way out and along the rapidly flowing river on the way back. The sites we stopped at today were fantastic, this has probably been helped by the fact that we were pretty much the only people at most of the sites so you could really enjoy the scenery I am not sure if it ever gets really busy but the amount of people there are here at the moment is really nice. We drove back to the accommodation and stopped for something to eat on the way then it was time to check the routes for tomorrow – it is quite a long driving day – update the website, have a relax and keep our fingers crossed that the sky stays clear and we can see some stars tonight.
