Dam it !

On the Last day in Tasmania we got up early to start the long drive to Lake Gordon and Lake Pedder. With stops for pies and water (and filling up the tire with air), we managed to make it in 3 hours. For Andrea and I, it's the best of both worlds here, i get awe inspired by the nature around and Andrea feels the same about the Dam and what a monument of engineering it is. It's a world heritage area which has some amazing views for miles of mountains and untouched temperate rain forest (apart from the dam). Both of the lakes are enormous. Driving about here was good too as we tended to see another car every hour and the roads were nice and bendy. I can imagine it'd be great drive on a motorcycle. Getting to the Dam, and a well earned toilet break, we realised just how tall it is. The problem for Andrea was getting down to the dam as it meant that she needed to navigate the metal stairs with holes in. Andrea hates these at the best of times, but when you've got a big drop below you it made it doubly so, at least she didn't have her heels on. ;) The dam itself was impressive, but...err...it was just a dam. The views were amazing here too. Hitting the road again, after catching our breath from the stair climb, we started to head back on our journey to the airport. We stopped at a place called Strathgordon which i think serves as tourist accommodation for the lakes and a place for some of the workers at the dam to stay. Population 75 ! The fact that they have a wikipedia entry shows how boring it must be, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strathgordon, although not boring enough to include a picture ;)

The driving today was that Andrea would do the more built up areas that needed navigation, and when it hit the country roads i'd take over. It makes it sound like we'd be swapping all the time, but it was only the once each way. We had an hour to kill on the way back so we stopped off at Russell Falls, it was a 20 minute hike into the rain forest to these amazing waterfalls. On the way there was some wallabies munching on the vegetation. It's still strange to see these really weird creatures in the wild in Australia. The visitor center was asking for people to keep an eye out for platypuses(? or platypi) as they wanted to track their numbers and times. We spent ages looking for the things, but to avail, they just weren't gonna perform for us today. ;( The waterfalls were really good though, even Andrea was bowled over at how beautiful it was...too cold for Andrea to mimic the Timotei advert though.

After this stop, it was pretty much straight back to the airport with a detour 'cause Andrea took the wrong lane somewhere. My fault of course as i was navigating so should of told Andrea "Colin McRea" Popplewell where to go! ;)

My personal view of Tasmania, is that the place is amazing and pretty much untouched by tourists. Its leaving me wanting to come back again. :)