Tuesday February 14th, 2017 - What Does a UNESCO Wilderness World Heritage Area Look Like?

My father was a bushwalker. In Australia, that means the same thing as being a hiker/backpacker. He told tales of having taken the train from Hobart during university years toward Fitzgerald, shelling the peas on the train as they went. For their 1943 trip, Dad and his friend ended up with six pounds of shelled peas which would last them three weeks! The most desired area in his mind was the Port Davey Track, a challenging, barely established route to the most remote area of south-west Tasmania. It was a rugged and perilous journey in the 1930's and 40's, so on the couple of occasions he completed the full track, he was very pleased with himself. (We had trip notes from a journey he completed in 1943 while home from the war at Christmas.) 

Here's a picture of Dad at Damper Inn, the only hut on the Port Davey Track. In Aussie lingo, 'damper' is a type of bread cooked over a fire, but the joke about Damper Inn was that it was always 'damper in than out'! He said in his notes - 'Poor old Damper - every year a bit more falls off.' It is now a pile of rubble.

Well, as two women in our 60's, Nadine and I knew that the time had passed for us to make the same rigorous walking trek - so we took the 'glamping' approach and signed up to fly into the area with a company that has a permanent camp down there. Although we had canvas roofs - there was nothing shabby about these tents! Unlike Damper Inn - they were very dry and cozy.

The cabin had a wooden floor and two very comfortable beds with sheets. It was very sturdy we discovered on one of the nights when a very strong wind was blowing along with some rain.

The 'bathroom' included a hot shower and was accessed through a wooden walkway - several hundred yards from our cabin.

And this was the solar powered kitchen where our guides prepared very excellent meals with gas stove and oven. There were pademelons that hung out here, but I didn't manage to get good photos of them.

So we had three amazing days and two nights in one of the most remote corners of the world - just an hour flight from Hobart. I will tell you about the first day here and then combine the next two days together. The blogs will be a little longer. Many of you will probably just want to scan the photos - some of the more hardy folks might actually desire to read - but may want to take a break somewhere!

In the top right of this photo, you can see some of the last glimpses of our industrial world - the motorboats and the round rings of salmon fish farms.

The vegetation down here does not recover after being burned, so the 'velvety' looking areas have burned, while the trees around the coast did not. The burning probably occurred during pre-European times.

The coastline is rocky and was very hazardous for the tall sailing ships from the past, as the winds from the south drove them directly into the rocky shoreline. There are many wrecks along this coast -particularly west of this flight.

There are also occasional beaches which drew surfers willing to trek with their boards for many hours. One of our guides, Mick, was a pioneer surfer in this area and tells of carrying his board 2 1/2 hours to access the waves. His son still surfs on remote beaches like this.

First stop was Melaleuca, where the Port Davey Track ended. Here you can see another track back to the east called the South Coast Track, another challenging bush walk.

The airport landing strip was built by Deny King, a tin miner, who scrubbed a living from dredging the sand for cassiterite - an ore that produces tin. I don't think anyone got rich off this, but some lives were supported here by this activity. 

Melaleuca is also famed as the breeding ground for the orange bellied parrot - a very critically endangered population of birds that migrates here from mainland Australia. They are not strong flyers and are known to perish during their crossing of the Bass Strait, in its strong winds. Habitat degradation on the mainland also leads to the decline of this pretty, rare bird.

One of the other people on our tour had known Deny King as a young girl, as her father had been a crayfish fisherman who visited this area. She sometimes traveled with her Dad and played with the King children. As a result of this connection, we visited the King Quonset hut. Here you can see a pademelon grazing in the backyard.

Photographing this home through the front door felt a bit cheeky, but it gives you an idea how people live in remote areas like this.

I liked the solitude of the boat shed. The fellow in the picture is another person from our group.

Deny King was a well respected and creative man, in addition to being a strong tin-miner. He had a small shed that was his art studio. In addition to landscapes from this area, I really liked these abstracts that had been created from gaskets from various engines!

So, off we headed, down the Melaleuca Inlet to our camp on Bathurst Harbor.

The area of our camp was dominated by views of Mt. Rugby, yet capturing it effectively with my camera was one of my greatest challenges during the trip.

The Western Arthurs Mountain Range was also in view frequently. It was a mountain range that Dad had walked. His notes say that he crossed the Arthur Saddle and said 'to walk from a land of tangled growth and silly little hills on to a broad winding path leading always on into the rays of the setting sun was enough to inspire Horatio.'  I think he liked these broad open plains!

We visited another pioneer homestead called Clayton's Corner. This was interesting with the story of a piano that was shipped here. It came ashore straddled across two dinghy's (you can see its arrival from the picture on the top right below) and was saved from a bush-fire by being buried under a lot of soil! No doubt it was a highly prized instrument in this neighborhood.

I was also intrigued by another prized possession in this remote part of the world. It seems that Clyde Clayton had liked the TV when he saw it in Hobart, so brought one home. I understand that the directing of the antenna on a hill behind the home (now called TV Hill) was quite a challenge, but once established it became quite a popular meeting place for all and sundry when football games were on!

The late afternoon sky around Mt. Rugby presented another opportunity to 'capture' it - but still doesn't quite get there!