On Walkabout In: Australia’s Island State of Tasmania

One of our favorite trips for my wife and I when we were living Down Under in Australia was the 10 days we spent on a camping trip around the island of Tasmania.  We flew from Melbourne to the city of Launceston on the northern coast of the island:

My wife and I packed our camping gear in our bags and brought it with us on the airplane.  At the Launceston airport we picked up our rental car and began the first day of our journey to circumnavigate the island.  We planned during our trip to see most of the major attractions on the island such as Wine Glass Bay, Port Arthur, Hobart, Mt. Wellington, the Southwest National Park, Strahan, and Cradle Mountain:

Our flight arrived in the afternoon and after picking up our rental vehicle we headed towards the east coast.  We drove across some scenic mountains where we then proceeded to follow some signs we saw along the road to a camp site.  We parked at the camp site and began to set up our tent for the night:

The next morning we woke up early and we decided to take a walk to see a waterfall that flows into the Cygnet River:

Before we set off on our hike I noticed this little lizard running around on the ground:

This lizard would be nothing compared to what was soon to come.  As we walked down the trail we passed by a large rock outcropping that the top was nearly head level to me.  On top of the rock I noticed a Tasmanian Tiger Snake staring right at me!  I jumped back in shock at the only poisonous snake in Tasmania that just happens to be one of the most poisonous in the entire world.  When I jumped back,  landed right on top of my wife who was following behind me.  We both fell to the ground and looked up at the rock and the snake looking at us.  I think the snake was as scared of us as we were of it because it quickly slithered off the rock and into the bush.  Australia is filled with extremely venomous snakes, but fortunately they are for the most part not very aggressive.  If that snake was rattlesnake he could have easily struck and bit me.

We were definitely a little shaken and on the look out for more snakes, but we continued on to the look out to see the small waterfall:

The waterfall flowed into a scenic little gorge that was carved out by the Cygnet River:

Since we were still a bit concerned about snakes we decided to head back to our camp site instead of walking down to the river.  We packed up our camp site and then began to continue our drive around Tasmania.  We came out of the heavily forested area we had camped out at to enter into a large farming and grazing area:

There was a number of small farms in this pleasant little valley that was backdropped by some scenic mountains:

By far the most scenic of the mountains that could be seen from this valley were the peaks of Ben Lomond National Park:

We didn’t plan on visiting this park, but on any return trip we will definitely have to consider checking out this park.  Anyway we continued to head to the east coast and I took one last look at the distant peaks of Ben Lomond:

Next Posting: Bicheno’s Natureworld