Days Two and Three – Hobart and Tarraleah

(I am writing this on the morning of Day Four: it seems there is no chance of any net connection for a while which gives me plenty of time to enjoy the trip and blog later.)

Well, the weather in Hobart was wild and woolly! Nevertheless, we decided to brave it and eschew the hotel breakfast (as nice as I’m sure it was) in favour of a short drive to Salamanca. We quickly found a rather lovely-looking café for a suitably ginormous breakfast, over which we plotted out our cunning plans to seek out and buy beautiful gourmet foods to bring to Tarraleah.

I recommend highly travelling with people as organised as K and A; and as dedicated to the gourmet cause. K had done her research in advance and planned out a route that would take us past good Tasmanian wursthauses, organic markets, cheese rooms and liquor purveyors, taking in some general shopping along the way. The Captain and I purchased a lovely gift for a dear baby who may well be born while we are away, and I found a book of vintage knitting patterns, to my great delight.

More to the purpose, we managed to find and purchase (deep breath), smallgoods, premium steaks, organic fruit and vegies, olive oils, butters, milks and yoghurts (all highest quality), tea, coffee, hot chocolate, chocolate chocolate, sweeties for the car trip, fresh excellent bread, a selection of marvellous Tasmanian cheeses, eggs, jams, olives, herbs … um, possibly more but I have forgotten.

Charming Friends, may I highly recommend to you one Hobart food shop in particular? It is called Raw: the Natural Food Store. It contains a cheese room (and aficionados of a good fromage will understand the necessity of purchasing cheeses directly from the block where possible, and prior tasting to ensure that one is purchasing only cheeses that can be consumed at their very best: if you don’t believe me, ask our friend the Canberra Cook!) Raw also provided our fresh Tasmanian organic fruit and veg and many other groceries. It was a small but very nicely-stocked shop, with most friendly and helpful staff.

With our car burdened down with enough food to feed us for weeks (destined for a few meals, at any rate), we started off through sheets of rain and gusty winds to Tarraleah.

My own dear father once worked at the Tarraleah on the hydro power scheme (ditto the Snowy), and I was very happy to be seeing the place as I have a bit of a ‘thing’ for the work that so many wonderful people, both Australians and recent immigrants, did back in the fifties and sixties to bring us hydro power. Fully aware that back then the environment was not really the highest priority compared to providing power to homes and industry, I nevertheless love the ingenuity and the marvellous machinery and the ruggedness … to me it all seems tremendously romantic (although of course the reality was usually quite different). All the same it is worth it to wonder from where one is getting one’s power, and to be informed about relevant issues both political and environmental, and always to remember the brave people, often shell-shocked from the war, who worked and worked and worked and built new lives in this incredible country that welcomed them at a very dark time in their lives.

The trip to Tarraleah was longish but we broke it with a little walk to Russell Falls in the Mountfield National Park. This was an easy walk that we managed in our Hobart-worthy street clothes (albeit with quite sensible shoes and raincoats on) and was well worth it, because the waterfall that I recall from childhood as being a lovely and slightly demure sheet of water had transformed, with all the rain, into a roaring monster ripping over the rocks and boiling down the hillside. It was beautiful and awesome, and after a winter in Canberra with practically no water to speak of, was quite a novelty.

We arrived at Tarraleah in the dark, bypassing the gorgeous Art Deco-style Lodge, now luxury accommodation (although I believe in the past it accommodated workers of the rugged variety) and toasted reaching our own renovated Engineer’s Cottage, a sweet lemon-painted cottage in a row of equally adorable pastel-painted houses. The houses are self-contained and reasonably luxurious – with, fortunately, plenty of heating. The Captain set to work immediately building us an open fire, while the rest of us cooked a ridiculously substantial dinner which we washed down with a nice red. A glass of Tokay and some nicely matured cheeses in front of the fire after dinner, and we were ready for the next day, which was to be one of our more energetic.

The morning dawned cold and windy once again, and this day I abandoned style in favour of practicality, since bushwalking was on the agenda. Here I produced the two garments I very rarely wear and in fact tend to save only for rugged outdoor pursuits: the pantalons de Nimes (as Chap Magazine calls them, others refer to them as jeans) and the polar fleece.

After a few previous rants about polar fleece, some people have wondered aloud that I even own any. The fact is that it is a fabulous fabric: warm, weatherproof and easily washed. This makes it ideal for outdoor activity, especially during inclement weather. My only objection to it at all is that people have the tendency to wear it constantly. Polar fleece is superb for bushwalking, it does NOT belong in restaurants or cocktail bars!

While I am writing about clothing I feel I should put a word in here for the humble beret and its merits as a travel garment. Ladies and gentlemen both can wear the beret. They are warm, they look very nice and they are resistant to wind. They come in a lovely variety of colours and can be easily washed. I wore mine proudly as we went to the Lake St Clair National Park, with the intention of some bushwalking and waterfall-watching, and was grateful for it indeed. It could be worn under my rain cape and helped to keep me nicely warm. If you should ever do the same, do take my advice and ensure that you are also wearing sunscreen, as the beret does not keep the sun off your nose!

I love bushwalking with the Captain, A and K. We do not charge ahead at ludicrous speed but love to stop and enjoy the experience. We waited silently behind some hides for a while to see if we might spot a platypus (no joy, we suspect it was a little late in the day for the creatures to come out), and each took pleasure in those things that attracted our interest: the Captain loves trees, A is fascinated by interesting mosses and lichens, K is very good at spotting tiny flowers and insects and I adore birds and have a knack of spotting them, too.

After a very refreshing experience we had to pile back into our car and undertake the several-hour journey to our next destination: Strahan via Queenstown. This involved driving along very picturesque but very, very windey roads … hmmm, perhaps enough said. The Captain did a top job in driving and the rest of us managed to keep ourselves together. We stopped in Queenstown, a mining town surrounded by tragically denuded hills (thanks to some unfortunately mining practices in the past which poisoned the hills and killed two rivers: a tragedy that is now being remedied as much as possible by the current mining lease owners and the National Parks.) We were hungry after our bushwalking efforts, so popped into a little takeaway for some of the nicest hot chips (fries to our US cousins) I have had for a long time. These helped to settle our stomachs for the trip into Strahan, a pretty harbourside town that is largely dedicated to tourism and fishing.

We were all quite tired and hungry after this long day, so takeaway seafood and pizza in our hotel room, accompanied by a nice dry sherry and a Tamar Riesling, hit the spot. We retired early for the next day’s activity: a very special treat for the Captain, with his great love of heritage trains!