Many visitors to Tassie don’t bother with this part of the island, instead sticking to a shorter and easier loop focussing on the East coast, but everything we’d read indicated that it would be madness to miss the West even if we were potentially exposing ourselves to some wild and unpredictable weather. Furthermore, our research suggested heading West before East as that gets the more difficult driving out of the way while you are still fresh, doesn’t have you leaving Tassie with a miserable impression due to sh*t weather, and potentially gives time to wait for a weather window. So that’s what we did and headed off from Hobart in a Westerly direction – destination Strahan.

We were very quickly out of Hobart and onto the single carriageway A10 which would take us almost all of the 300Km journey in around 5 hours. Almost immediately we saw what the hire car guy meant about Tasmania being the roadkill capital of Australia – dead animals every couple of hundred metres and road signs suggesting much lower speed limits between dusk and dawn. The drive was spectacular, initially rolling hills and then twisty mountain ascents, amazing landscapes reminding us a bit of Scotland, Snowdonia and South Island New Zealand. This was WOW and very definitely worth heading West for. Apparently over 2/3rds of Australians have never visited Tasmania, so it likely that even more have never experienced this beautiful side to their home country, but then what percentage of Brits have been to the Lake District or Snowdonia?

Lake St Clair

Australia’s deepest lake, a must-see on the road West and a breathtakingly beautiful lunch stop. We felt a little under-equipped despite wearing our proper walking shoes as everyone else seemed to have full expedition gear complete with walking poles and very large rucksacks, but it turned out that Lake St Clair was the end of the Overland Track – Australia’s premier alpine walk where each year 8,000 walkers from 50+ countries tackle the 80Km trek over 6-7 days. Not for us, we just walked down to the jetty and marvelled at the lake and Mount Olympus in the background. Simply stunning. And then lunch in the lodge, which had some sort of Irish connection (Ireland and Tasmania were disproportionately large on a world map displayed on the wall) and Clonakilty produce on the breakfast menu, including their Irish White Pudding – Debbie’s favourite which she buys whenever we are visiting someone to who Ocado will deliver. As we’d missed brekkie by several hours so it was burgers instead, with the most amazing home cooked chips which reminded Debbie of her mum’s (in a good way).

Strahan

Pronounced Straw-n as in prawn – a small settlement on Macquarie Harbour with a rich maritime and convict history and offering access to vast wilderness and World Heritage areas – was our West Coast destination. We had no idea what it’d be like but on arrival, late on a sunny afternoon, we were pleasantly surprised – a quaint place with lots of boats and stunning scenery.

Our accommodation for 2 nights also looked rather lovely, until we got to our room! Franklin Manor is an old country house, originally built for the harbourmaster in 1896, and Debbie thought it looked worthy of a splurge rather than making do with a motel. Their website content creator is very liberal with the truth (or a downright liar) when stating ‘The main house offers a range of elegant rooms, individually decorated, creating the perfect haven for those who appreciate comfort and relaxation’.  The place was a sh*t hole, complete with mouldy curtains, and Princess Deborah was not best pleased. Ultimately she spoke to the owners in Brisbane and got a full refund (they really didn’t want the mouldy curtain picture to make it to Tripadvisor obviously) – as we’d paid less than the standard room rate through booking.com and the Aussie Dollar had strengthened, we got back more than we paid and so they’d actually paid us to stay there. Irrelevant, it was still awful. The only good thing was the Molton Brown toiletries, and as the shower gel was Debbie’s go-to Heavenly Gingerly she unashamedly re-fillled her now-empty travel size bottle. You can take the girl out of Liverpool…

We were only in Strahan for one night before our trip into the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and had booked a boat trip with Gordon River Cruises – a 6 hour cruise through Macquarie Harbour, out to Hell’s Gate (the narrow entrance from the notorious Southern Ocean), down to the spectacular Gordon River and back via Sarah Island. We’d chosen the mid-priced seats, being too tight to pay £175 each to sit on the top deck and instead opting for window seats on the main deck at a more ‘reasonable’ £100 each – as we’ve said before, excursions/experiences are ridiculously expensive in Australia! As opposed to the Greyhound bus where we increased the average age by 40 years, on this catamaran we probably lowered it by 20 years – this seems to be what old Australians do and we hope to still be exploring at their age. The obviously ‘new couple’ in their 60s really needed to get a room though!. The weather forecast wasn’t good – typical West Coast Tasmania – but we got a decent 1st half of the trip. Hell’s Gate was a very narrow passage between the vicious Southern Ocean and the relative safety of Macquarie Harbour, but Captain Rick (he reminded Debbie of Captain Lee from Below Decks) handled it expertly. It certainly was wild out in the ocean! Cruising at 25+ knots, with the wind howling, we got to the Gordon River entrance and suddenly calm descended – the reflections visible in the water were truly amazing. We stopped for a walk in the forest and some education on the local Huon Pines, an extremely slow growing (just 1mm of girth per year) species of conifer native to the southwest corner of Tasmania, with some living specimens over 2000 years old and highly prized for its fine grain and natural oils that resist rotting – perfect boat-building wood.

As we came back down the river the weather started to close in, but no matter, it was lunchtime and an excellent buffet. By the time we re-entered Macquarie Harbour it was blowing a hooley, with winds above 30 knots and a slightly less comfortable journey across to Sarah Island, one of Australia’s most notorious convict penal settlements, operating from 1822 to 1833.

The tour was fascinating, the guide rather irritating – she knew her script verbatim but didn’t quite land the jokes (and didn’t seem to care). She was also playing in ‘The Ship That Never Was’, Australia’s longest-running play, performed nightly in Strahan. A shame we had to leave but…

A great trip which would’ve been better in really good weather, but we were lucky to get what we did. After a brief stop at Strahan’s ‘supermarket’ for supplies we set off for the 2 hour drive to Cradle Mountain in the pissing rain.

Cradle Mountain National Park

Another must-do if venturing West but a stupidly expensive place to stay, so we looked at alternatives. The first was on the route from Strahan and with a gorgeous lake view – perfect surely but the reviews suggested it was just a bunkhouse for local road/mine workers. The other was 30 minutes beyond Cradle Mountain so would’ve meant doubling back. And then Debbie spotted that one of the Cradle Mountain lodges had a significantly reduced price on Agoda – still extortionate but hey ho – and swooped in to book. Discovery Parks Cradle Mountain was right next to the National Park visitor centre and we had a 2 bedroom cabin with both air conditioning and heating/fire. We needed the latter! And there was an electric blanket – we used that too!! What happened to summer? The forecast for our stay was a maximum of 8 degrees, dropping to zero and minus 7 with wind chill!! Thank God we’d brought fleeces and down jackets!!!

We honestly didn’t expect to see anything the following day and were prepared to abandon and move on. But it didn’t look too horrendous so we donned our layers and caught the shuttle bus out to Dove Lake – and we did indeed get to see Cradle Mountain, albeit in rather cloudy, windy and bloody freezing conditions. She was magnificent and named due to the supposed image of a baby nesting in a cradle between the 2 peaks. We thought about doing the 2-3 hour circuit walk but then had a word with ourselves and just did the part between Glacier Rock and the Boathouse – that was quite enough in the freezing cold and now pissing rain, but it was beautiful nevertheless.

On a better weather day we’d have happily spent the whole day there, hopping on/off the bus to explore different tracks. But hey ho, we grabbed a much-needed hot pie at the cafe and reflected that we were fortunate to have at least seen Cradle Mountain. And then continued our journey to Launceston and The East of Tasmania…