Hogarth Falls

This morning we were delayed leaving Strahan as there was a power cut (happily after we'd enjoyed a cooked breakfast but before we'd filled up with petrol). Apparently it happens quite frequently and takes hours before someone arrives to identify the problem and restore the electricity supply, Strahan being in quite an isolated spot, and it being end of the tourist season. So we took ourselves for a walk.

It's one of "Tasmania's 60 great short walks" and leads through forest alongside the Botanical Creek to Hogarth Falls. This, incidentally, was Strahan's sole source of running water up until 1969 (while elsewhere Man was walking on the moon)! Super forest walk, during which I spotted a new bird foraging on the leafy ground as is its wont: the well camouflaged Bassian Thrush (Zoothera lunulata). It's bigger than a song thrush - bigger even than a mistle thrush - and is only found in Tazzie and a small region of Oz mainland. Lots of fungi and mosses to enjoy, too, and the waterfall itself was worth the climb. (Do you like the cyclopsian singing tree?!)

The power was still off on our return, but with reassurances that there were one or two other petrol stations along our route, we risked setting off along the Middlesex Creek Wilderness Way, past Cradle Mountain (stopping for another short walk uphill for fabulous views over the valley and of the, partly subterranean, Lake Lea). We're now overnighting in a wilderness retreat, whose nearest town is Moina. (See Extra of wild marsupials: a wallaby and a pademelon).