Sunday 8 September 2024 – We had to leave the delightful Henry Jones Art Hotel and hightail it across the island to the other coast. Our destination was a town called Strahan, which, for some reason known only to the locals, is pronounced “Strawn”. Audley, the travel chaps who  arranged our itinerary, had booked us a rental car, and so, having breakfasted and checked out, we walked the short distance to the Avis office to collect our car, a Toyota C-HR. Australia, of course, is civilised to the extent that they drive on the same side of the road as we do in the UK, so I was expecting to be able to deal with driving a car here with absolutely no problem.

Wrongly, as it turned out.

Not in a major way, you understand. But when I came to indicate left at the first junction and, in doing so, turned on the windscreen wipers, I realised that the cars here are Japanese spec – indicator and wiper stalks are the wrong way round. (Back in the UK, in the late ‘80s, I had a Toyota Celica Supra, which was a lovely motor, but which also suffered from this affliction, causing me to drive round roundabouts with the wipers going if ever I needed to rent a car. However, 30-plus years of driving UK spec cars in the UK has straightened out my left-right dysfunction, and it’s occasionally irritating to find myself once again falling into the trap). Never mind; in all other respects, the car is perfectly fine and provides a good way of getting from Hobart to Strahan.

Every time we mentioned to someone that we were driving to Strahan, someone routinely said something along the lines of “ooh, a windy route” – windy in the sense of twisty, not blowy. They were all correct, but to start with, we travelled along a multi-lane highway as we exited Hobart heading west.

 

As one might expect, after a while the multi-lane highway narrowed into a conventional road and the scenery became more bucolic.

We even passed some hop crops.

After an hour and a half or so, we got the opportunity to break our journey for a side excursion, to have a coffee and take a short walk to Russell Falls. The visitor centre there has a neat way of telling punters that there’s no WiFi:

not that we needed it, but it gave me a grin.

Several walks are available from the centre but since we had, overall, a five-hour journey to complete we just opted to take the short walk out to see the falls and then come straight back – about 45 minutes’ worth. The walk out is along a properly-surfaced path

past some very tall eucalypts

into rainforest

which features some really big trees.

It doesn’t take long to get to the falls,

which were a great deal more impressive than I had expected from photos I had seen beforehand, like this one.

Even an Icelander would concede that these

are proper falls.

The weather over the previous days has been pretty stormy – many people we’d chatted to have remarked on this – and so the river which feeds the falls is clearly full.

(Side note: the river which feeds these falls is the Russell Falls Creek. I’d aways thought of a creek as being something of rather minor pith and moment compared with a proper river. This one, however, seems pretty momentous at the mo.)

As well as the falls pictured above, it’s possible to walk a little further to another waterfall, called the Horseshoe Falls.  To get to this, you have to climb up some steps.

Lots of steps – 200, in fact. But it’s worth the climb.

(Photographic note – this is a handheld, half-second exposure, to capture that highly clichéd “milky water” effect which is supposed to convey dynamism and motion in the photo. Up to now, you would have needed a tripod to achieve an image that’s sharp – except for the intentionally blurred bits of course – but camera technology has progressed to the point where my Nice New Nikon can do it without all that tedious mucking about with extra gear. Nice!)

It’s not particularly cheap to visit the falls – a day pass for a car cost Aus $46, or around £25 – but the place is well-organised and well-maintained, so I don’t begrudge them the money.

Back on the road, in conditions that varied from showers to bucketing rain with the odd clear period thrown in, we could see that the tops of the mountains still had snow on them.

Not too surprising, I suppose – the temperature where we were was about 6°C. We took advantage of the occasional clear periods to take photos of the landscapes we drove through.

We’re not sure whether the yellow flowering tree is a wattle or a mimosa, but there were plenty of them livening up the colours of our route.

It was clear that Tasmania is not a particularly dry place from this hydroelectric infrastructure that we passed, the Tuncatinah Power Station

the occasionally marshy terrain

and the fact that it rained a lot as we went along.

We passed the geometric centre of Tasmania, which was worth a short stop. It was raining quite heavily at this point, so I sent Jane out to take a photo of the structure that marks the spot,

and the map which shows how they worked out the location.

The rain persisted for most of the rest of our journey to Strahan. Originally, we had planned to visit Lake St. Clair, which had been recommended as a side excursion, but frankly the prospect didn’t appeal. There was however one thing that Jane particularly wanted to see which she called “The Wall in the Wilderness”, and described as an evolving sculpture, so I resigned myself to trying to take photos of a large stone installation whilst getting rainwater down the back of my neck.

As we approached it, there were some sculptures mounted on posts on the track.

and a splendid eagle outside.

You can see what the weather was like, and there was something else that didn’t improve my mood, either.

So: I was to be charged Aus$22 to see something and not be allowed to photograph it??? The words rag, bull and red come to mind. However, Jane was adamant, and, importantly, this Wall thing appeared to be indoors, which was a plus, given the weather.  So I gloomily stumped up the funds and we went inside.

It turned out that I was wrong on multiple counts: firstly that it was a stone artwork, secondly that I would photograph it and thirdly that I wouldn’t enjoy it.

It started well – there was coffee available. The slightly odd but very charming chap who took my money also served us coffee and explained that one should walk around this thing in a particular direction. So in we went and….

It was breathtaking.

It is a wood carving.  It is a vast wood carving. It is huge and hugely impressive – a stupendous piece of work, created by one man over decades.  It is not, and never will be, finished, but the unfinished parts of it make what has been completed all the more impressive.

It would have been impossible for me to do justice to it in photography, so, in the end, I didn’t mind being told to put my camera away.

It’s made from 51 panels of wood, each one metre wide and three metres tall. 25 panels form one side, 25 back on to them as the other side and there’s one at the end. The carving on these panels is brilliant envisaged, wonderfully executed and beautifully lit. The panels tell “stories”: Footprints, Hydro, Forestry, Tiger, Endangered Species and “Her Story” (the last a bittersweet imagination of a romance which ended badly).

I normally take pride in using my own photography to tell the story of a day or a part of a day in these blog postings, but not today. It is possible to buy a photographic representation of the panels of The Wall – typically, this is a cynical attempt to get money out of punters (Glory Portico in Santiago, I’m looking at you). But here, because one simply can’t capture it in photos without a huge and complex project, it’s simply a way of taking home a memento of this extraordinary – thing.

One can find on the web a photo of the sculptor in front of his project, which might give some idea of the scale of it.

From the Wall’s website, here is a photo which attempts to show the detail in the carving work

 

As you can see from this, the textures that the sculptor, Greg Duncan, achieves are remarkable – folded paper, cloth, rope. As I said – breathtaking. He has now retired and although his son is a talented sculptor in metal (we assume those were his works outside) he does not work in wood, so The Wall will never be finished.

Deep breath….

We carried on our journey, coming down from the central plateau

to a town called Queenstown,

whose environs showed a clear history of mining

but which these days is just this town, you know?

And so we eventually reached Strahan some seven hours and 300km after we set out.

It’s not a large place and so we quickly found our accommodation for the night, a charming place called Franklin Manor.

Its interior is well in keeping with its colonial-era appearance,

and our welcome by Leeanne was warm, friendly and well-organised. As was the bar, with husband Chris displaying expert cocktail knowledge and interesting refreshment suggestions.

So ended a long, wet and interesting day.  We have just one night at Franklin Manor; tomorrow we’re off on a short cruise before departing for an area of the island where we hope eventually to see some of its unique wildlife. Exactly where and what, you can find out by keeping in touch with these pages.