It had always been our intention to visit ARTHUR RIVER on the extreme North West coast, before travelling across to SMITHTON and STANLEY on the north western corner of Tasmania, then travel along the coast to BURNIE, before dropping down to CRADLE MOUNTAIN, and then returning to DEVONPORT, thus completing our tour of Tassie.
In the course of this trip we had hoped to call in and see Tasha and Shane, friends of Kerri and Bruce, who live on a remote farm at a place called TOGARI, on the road between ARTHUR RIVER and SMITHTON. Unfortunately, due to losing a couple of days snow bound at LAKE ST CLAIR, we had to cancel this part of our trip, and instead head directly from STRAHAN across to BURNIE on the northern coast midway between DEVONPORT and STANLEY, calling in at CRADLE MOUNTAIN on the way.
Sunday morning we headed north, intending to go as far as CRADLE MOUNTAIN, at the northern end of the huge Cradle Mountain/ Lake St Clair National Park. The park is world renowned for its famous cross country track from CRADLE MOUNTAIN to LAKE ST CLAIR. A bit like the Milford Track.
About 30 km north of STRAHAN is the small mining town of ZEEHAN. We had been told to make sure we checked out the mining museum there. Unfortunately the mines have all long closed down, and today ZEEHAN looks a bit like Ohura on a good day. However the museum was well worth the visit, and we spent an interesting 1½ hours there.
They had a huge collection of hundreds of mineral bearing rocks of all shapes and sizes, including opals, crystals, gems, amethyst, gold, silver, copper, zinc, and hundreds of other types of minerals we had never even heard of like crocroite, and andalusite. Some of them dated at over 500 million years old. Mind boggling stuff. Cameron was especially fascinated with the peculiar spiky, colourful formations of the crocroite, and took heaps of photos. Maybe he will become a lapidarist. They also had displays of mining paraphernalia, and a simulated mine shaft which you could walk through.
From ZEEHAN we headed north again to ROSEBERY, another mining town, and another glorified Ohura. Unlike ZEEHAN, ROSEBERY does have an active working mine which overlooks the town. We had lunch in the one cafeteria, and enjoyed the entertainment put on by the locals. Australian mainlanders have a saying that Tasmanian’s have two heads, and after watching the performances of some of the locals at ROSEBERY, including the running waitress, we understood why. Must be a lot of interbreeding I think, look what happened to Cameron.
Glad to escape, we headed north again and then east to CRADLE MOUNTAIN. The weather was beautiful and we were anxious to make the most of it, as CRADLE MOUNTAIN is notorious for its bad weather. We arrived there at about 2:00pm, and were lucky enough to find an unoccupied tent site. After setting up camp we were ready to explore the park. More in the next episode.
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