Saturday 14 September – Bushie called for us at around 9.45 and we tailed along again for another day of mystery, excitement and information overload. The only thing Bushie told us was that we were headed for the far north-east of the island. And the first thing he did was to stop at the pond just down the road where yesterday he said there were platypuses. At first I was dubious about the wisdom of this, given our failure yesterday to see anything at this very place. I should have known better, and trusted Bushie’s knowledge and judgement, because
there were three platypuses in the pond, and we saw them all. I even caught one having a scratch
and got some video snippets, too.
so I was very happy that we’d spent the time there. Bushie was confident that we’d see them because he knew that they came out here at around 10am, hence his collecting us at 9.45. He was slightly disdainful of the people that walk by the pond, saying that they might walk by every day, but they’d never actually seen a platypus; all you needed to know was the time(s) that they came out to feed. He was also somewhat more disdainful of the experts who opined that platypuses were crepuscular, and rightly so; here was our evidence that they come out during the day, too.
Between this pond and the next (which also had at least one platypus in it), there was a bank, and one could see the tracks that showed where platypuses move from one pond to the other.
Yesterday, as he’d driven us round, Bushie had casually pointed out various ponds and told us the number of platypuses in them. Today, he proved that he knew whereof he spoke. It seemed that there were more ponds with platypus inhabitants than without; they may be elusive, but in this corner of Tasmania they’re not rare.
A nice little nugget from Bushie: platypus young are called puggles, a term also applied to baby echidnas. There you are; a trivium you can deploy when you’re down the boozer, or trying to solve a crossword puggle clue.
Our next port of call was the town of Legerwood (emphasis on the middle syllable, according to Wikipedia). Its USP is a series of memorial carvings, which have a great story; but first, let me show you the carvings, as they are very impressive.
On 15 October 1918, twenty-five Turkish pine trees were planted in memory of the village’s fallen soldiers following the end of the Great War. In 1999 the trees were deemed unsafe from blight and the local council recommended they be cut down. Determined to retain the memorial, in 2004 the Legerwood Hall and Reserves Committee commissioned chainsaw sculptor Eddie Freeman to carve a series of sculptures on the dying trunks based on the lives of the people they represented in remembrance. The photos above are just some of the 25.
We pressed on, through some lovely scenery,
(note the incipient distant rain in the last photo) and past some hop fields.
Hop fields were everywhere in this area at one time, but have declined markedly, which Bushie blamed on the Great American Hop Glut of the 1940s; the end of prohibition in the USA led to a vast expansion in their hop production, leading to a major surplus, with knock-on effects globally.
We stopped for coffee in the town of Derby, which is a major, even global, mountain biking centre, because of the excellent trails in the surrounding hills.
They have even staged world championship competitions here several times in recent years and there is a Derby Derby – which only sounds good as a phrase because they pronounce the name of the town as der-by not dar-by. Derby was, in earlier days, also a centre for tin mining; our coffee bar had a picture showing what the town looked like then – pretty ghastly, as is the case for anywhere near a mining operation. Derby suffered particularly when overuse of water cannon to shift the soil led to a collapse in a river dam and the inundation of much of the town. So the mountain biking craze has brought life back into what had become a very quiet place.
More delightful scenery was on offer at The Little Blue Lake, which is a lake that is
not very big and, erm, not very blue, either. Bushie told us that the colour was due to reflection of a blue sky, but I’m not so sure. I’ve seen that colour before in glacial lakes (e.g. Lake Louise) but this was possibly mineral in derivation. Anyway, pretty. And inundated with frogs:
We then headed for the Mount William National Park, which sounds a whole lot more impressive than the reality; Mount William is just 150m high. Musselroe Bay is part of this national park and we saw some bird life there.
Just by the beach at Musselroe Bay was an old aboriginal midden.
These show where aboriginal folk had simply discarded things, such as shells. The layers are like a journal, showing that they’d left the area and then come back as the seasons dictated.
There was not much more to see in the Mount William National Park. A pair of kangaroos (mother and grown-up joey)
and, as the weather was really closing in by this stage, a camper grimly determined to have fun no matter what.
We high-tailed it out of the park, with Bushie making rude remarks about the National Parks authority investing its money in white elephants such as the Dove Lake Visitors Centre at Cradle Mountain (which, admittedly, is a major over-achievement) rather than maintaining areas like Mount William, which has fallen into neglect, allowing kunzea shrubs to take over what was once grassland and rich grazing for Forrester Kangaroos.
The dramatically-changing weather gave us some great landscapes as we headed for a village called Gladstone,
which is where I saw my first-ever emu,
with a very haughty-looking demeanour. It’s not strictly a wild bird, having been raised from a chick at a farm, but it’s lived an unpampered life, so I claim the tick box that says “emu” for this trip.
Bushie seemed to be rushing us back to Jetsonville, when he suddenly turned off the road on to a rough track
and we realised that we might be in for another Bushie Evening Special. Indeed we were. The track led to a pond
(which, of course, had a platypus in it) by a cabin
where Bushie’s wife, Janine, awaited us. We were offered another of Bushie’s excellent snack platters, but had to turn it down, as we knew we had a dinner date with Madeline and Guy back at the farm, and we needed to preserve our appetite for that. But beer was also on offer, and that went down well. Although the rain (and occasional hail) had stopped by this point it was, however, damn’ cold, so Bushie prepared an outdoor fire in a marvellous contraption
made up of various cogs, wheels and the inside of a washing machine. It was a great chance to meet Janine and talk about their life and business as the sun went down. Eventually she left us and we repaired inside the cabin, which was delightfully warm
and which had lighting and a window through which we could watch developments on the sward outside. About four pademelons came out and fossicked about until something scared them off. Eventually, another shape came shuffling out of the undergrowth;
a brush-tailed possum, perhaps with joey(s) in her pouch, which was lovely to see.
Janine and Bushie had agreed to take over stewardship of the cabin from the local council, as it was being used for all sorts of youthful skullduggery, involving drink and guns, and they wanted to avoid the tragedy that was otherwise pretty much inevitable. Their plan is to gradually build back the confidence of the local wildlife to provide even more of a viewing spectacle for their guests – we were only the second set of people to be taken here, so felt very privileged.
We had to leave in order to get back to the farm, and we had a delightful evening talking to Madeline and Guy about their lives and livelihoods. Two Jetson brothers came over from Leicestershire in the early 19th Century and started farms, which is how the area came to be called Jetsonville; Madeline and Guy are the only Jetsons now farming, raising a mixture of beef cattle and crops. To our mutual delight we discovered that Madeline’s middle name is Jane – while Jane’s middle name is Madeleine – which is wonderfully symmetrical.
We have to move on tomorrow, as we near completion of the circuit of the northern part of Tasmania. Our time in the north east has been excellent, filled with new wildlife and glorious scenery. I wonder what excitement our final destination on Tasmania will bring?