There are two roads from Scottsdale to Launceston. “Don't take the first one” we had been advised. According to the Hillcrest campground manager in St Helens that road was narrow, winding and full of logging trucks. Another informant reckoned that was an exaggeration, but the alternative road via Lilydale is highlighted on our tourist map as the North East Trail, which is presumably a recommendation to us tourists. Mind you, the difficult Elephant Pass Road is highlighted as part of the East Coast Escape. What does the highlighting actually mean?
We took the Lilydale road and it was very comfortable driving through pleasant scenery.
The satnav was programmed to take us to Cataract Gorge, quite close to the city centre. Happily the city driving was not too bad, and there is a good sized car park at the First Basin where the walks begin. We drew up in what looked like a special area for long vehicles and exited the camper van. A lady passing by warned us that we had occupied a bus parking space and could be fined $180. “Thank you.” We moved to a less expensive spot.
The basin is a nice lake between two stretches of the South Esk River. There is a large, grassed area between the car park and the lake with an unheated swimming pool. Swimming in the pool, the lake and the river is free but likely to be cold. There are currents in the river and the lake but some hardy souls braved them.
The car park is uphill from the basin. The climb isn't daunting for most folk, but if you want to ease the effort there is the Inclinator. This is a mini cable car, resting on twin rails set into the ground. The compartment transports visitors from the top entrance (level with the car park) to the cafe and lawn area below and is free of charge.
For those that enjoy that sort of thing there is a chairlift across the river. It is the longest single-span chairlift in the world, with the longest span being 308 m. Neither of us likes to be dangled high in the air, so we didn't take a ride.
There are some made trails, and we ambled along the easy ones across the Alexandra suspension bridge at the upstream end of the lake and downstream from the lake towards Kings Bridge, where a main road crosses the river just before it enters the much larger Tamar River.
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There are cafes on both sides of the river. The one on the northern side, named the Cliff Grounds, has avian scavengers after your crumbs. But they're not sparrows, they are peafowl. When one is eyeing the scone on your plate with its feet still on the ground you really appreciate how big those birds are.
Driving on, we went across Kings Bridge and the non-driver could see the gorge from the other end.
The big Launceston attraction for Bill is the Tamar Island Wetland, North of the city. We identified a convenient camping spot further down the Tamar valley at Paper Beach. It's available to visitors from 5pm to 9am. If we drove straight there we would be too early so we paused along the way – at the Tamar Island Wetland.
The tide was very low and the birds in the most accessible areas were a long way away.
There was an information centre. We read about the wildlife we might see and talked to a guy with a sheet of paper to which he had attached, in neat columns, numerous small, dead fish. He is studying the invasive Mosquito Fish (Gambusia), which has been introduced into many environments around the world. The intention presumably was to keep down the number of mosquitoes, and if Mosquito Fish ate nothing else that might have been OK. But in fact they eat all sorts of things, like the eggs and young of native fish, with the result that they out-compete the native fish and can drive them to extinction. His studies will hopefully lead to containing the numbers of Mosquito Fish until someone comes up with a strategy for eliminating them entirely.
We walked into the reserve as far as the hide. Maybe the birds could not see us, but they were still a long way off. A few Tasmanian Native Hens were close enough to photograph, but they were in deep shade and preferred to look the other way and present their rears to the camera.
The Wetlands are right beside the main road. To get to Paper Beach we had to head back towards Launceston and do a U-turn. Happily there is a well-constructed opportunity to do this only 500 metres away.
As we neared Paper Beach we spotted a macropod beside the road. The biggest and best known macropods are the kangaroos. Next in size are the wallabies; then the pademelons. Then there is the 4th size division. Bettongs and potoroos are smaller than pademelons. We saw one of these, but it hopped into someone's driveway and sped off before a camera could be brought to bear. It was light brown with a pointed snout, but there are brown varieties of both species so we don't know what it was.
We arrived at the campground a tiny bit early, at five to five. It was almost full! But there was space for us, and it was a pleasant spot, adjacent to a pebbly beach and with public toilets and a BBQ. In the gloom of the evening Eve saw another macropod in the shadows. She thinks is was a wallaby.
We duly left Paper Beach before 9am. We calculated that the tide at the wetlands would be higher in the morning and the birds closer. Well, the tide was indeed a bit higher but the birds nearest the road had not read the script. The first photograph of the day was a White-faced Heron on the roof of the information centre.
Beyond the hide is about 2km of easy walking, with many pools and channels well populated with birds. Towards the end of the walk there is a picnic area and a toilet block. Very civilised.
We noticed what looked like tunnels in the reeds. They weren't made by ducks. Wombats maybe? “No”, said the lady in the information centre. There are no wombats in the wetland. We have since read that pademelons sometimes live in marshes, but we didn't see any mammals. The swans, perhaps?
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