Kingston, Franklin, Huonville, Geeveston, Tahune
Trip Start
Mar 19, 2012
1
39
63
Trip End
Apr 28, 2012
Tahune Forestry, Tasmania, Australia
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Set off today for a drive south of Hobart.
Through Kingston – a lovely neat looking town a bit bigger that a lot we have been through.
Then onto Huonville where we started passing a lot of apple orchards and roadside stalls selling apples and pears. Some of the apple orchards seemed to be covered by netting. And a lot of them seemed to be grown on trellises (like grapes). We just had to stop and take some photos of the apple trees and also on the way back to our cabin we stopped and bought a bag of each - pears (10) and apples (12) for $2 a bag.
We also stopped at Huonville to visit the Visitor Information Centre – but from April a lot of places only open from 10am to 4pm – so we were too early. Once again Huonville seemed to be a thriving little town and pleasant to drive through.
From here on we followed the Huon River – just the most beautiful drive – the river is beautiful … big and wide and obviously deep – with lots of boats to look at one the way! At first there was no wind so not a ripple on the water – we stopped for a photo shoot of some boats and their reflections!
We then stopped at a little town of Franklin and had a guided tour of The Wooden Boat Centre of Tasmania - a boat building workshop. They actually take students (charging the students to teach them the trade!). It was fascinating and very interesting – it's a dying trade! It was great seeing all the lovely woods used – to feel the different weights of them and colours and to learn what they are used for.
Just down the road from here we stopped a lovely little park right next to the river to boil the billy! Two black swans wanted to be our friends and came right up to me – they must have been used to being feed by the locals! I really love the swans … but not that close … I thought they were going to snatch our crackers and cheese! … I didn’t want to share!!!! I then asked them very nicely to go away!!!! Shoo! Shoo!! Oh they also dribbled!!! Drops of water just dripped out of their beaks at a regular drip, drip, drip!
Then off to Geeveston where we visited a Forestry Centre and bought our tickets ($25 each!) for the Tahune Air Walk which was another 29klms of windy narrow road away. We were given a map with some walks and lookouts to visit on the way. We decided to visit 2 of them – one was a walk around Keoghs Creek which was very rainforest like with a pretty babbling creek which we crossed a few times. There was a sign out to watch for platypus – as they can be seen in this creek … but we didn’t see any! The second we decided to walk into was the Big Tree Lookout – and it was huge! Impossible to take a photo of to even understand the size! It was a Swamp Gum and 99.6 metres high! It is the tallest hardwood tree in the world!
Then we continued on to the Tahune Airwalk … and up the steps we went … and more steps … and MORE steps. But it was all worth it. We happened to arrive at the right time … time to have a guide on our walk. She was very informative about the forest and the vegetation (the types of trees and what they are and were used for!). The whole guided tour plus our return took just over 90 minutes.
A few facts about the Tahune Forest Airwalk ….
Tahune is aboriginal and means "peaceful place by running water"
The airwalk structure is 619 metres long
Average height is 20 metres, height of cantilever 35 metres at the tower, 37.5 metres at the end about the forest floor, 48 metres above the river.
It was built to withstand winds of 180 km/h
Maximum weight the cantilever can take is 10 tonnes, which is equivalent to 120 very crowded people or 12 baby elephants.
Over 120 tonnes of steelwork and approximately 9000 nuts and bolts were used in its construction.
There are several other walks offered here (and a cable hang gliding adventure – of which I am very VERY sorry we did not have time to do!!! … John had to hold me back- he is such a party pooper!!!!) but we decided just to do the airwalk today – but it would be worthwhile staying for a full day and completing the other walks too. It is a beautiful area!
Comments
Maybe your should go back to do the cable hang gliding!