Last of Tassie

So soon--with so much still to see--we had to head back to Hobart. After visiting the massive Saturday morning crafts-and-food Salamanca Market...

 

...it was time to say a fond farewell to my parents, who were off to the airport, America-bound.

SR and I still had two more days on the island, so from our list of half-a-dozen places we hadn't yet seen but wanted to, we chose to drive straight west from Hobart, to Mt. Field National Park, for a lovely hike among its waterfalls and enormous eucalypt groves.

Then we decided to drive clear to the end of that road heading west. Well, to the end of a couple of roads. First we turned off the Gordon Dam road and took a gravel road nearly 40 kilometers south, into Southwestern National Park...

...to the road's terminus at aptly named Scott's Peak...

...and the totally amazing 360-degree view from there.

After camping down there, with wild quolls darting around my feet after dark...

...we went to the terminus of the main paved road, all the way to the Gordon River dam. Not sure if you can spot it in this picture, but there are people rappelling off the top of the dam, down to the river side, which is so far down you can't even see it in this picture--apparently the longest commercial rappel in the world. Yikes.

We also stopped for a view of Pedder Lake, which is actually many times larger (due to another dam--there are about four in this area) than the original Pedder Lake that is now buried far beneath the artificial version. Hard to reconcile the loveliness of the scene with the bitter environmental debate over the dam(s) that created it.

Very glad to have gotten a small glimpse of the very wild, unpopulated southwest of the island, we pointed the car back to Hobart for the last time, with a quick stop back in Mt Field National Park for a walk around alpine Dobson Lake.

Now it is our turn to depart Tasmania, with a still-to-see list that means I will just have to return here someday. Certainly won't be a chore, as I'll be sighing over the beauty of this place for a long time to come.