Wild.

At some time in their lives all the males in our house have been train fetishists....the wooden Brio/Thomas the Tank Engine train set has been strewn from one end of the house to the other for the last seven long years....and they ALL still play with it. It will come as no surprise then that my husband panicked when recent stories hit the news that the West Coast Wilderness Railway was being threatened with closure. It prompted him to buy tickets. So, on the weekend we loaded the family into the car and drove the best part of four and a half hours west to get to Strahan to go for a train ride:

The long drive from Hobart, through the picture perfect almost Jurassic Park scenery of the national park is incredibly beautiful....until you reach the outskirts of Queenstown where the landscape suddenly becomes an arid wasteland having been absolutely decimated over the years by the mining and smelting of copper. It was an environmental catastrophe:

Luckily, the devastation was localised mostly to where the acid rain fell so by the time you reach the town of Strahan, forty odd kilometres down the road, it all looks to be green,verdant and wildernessey again. Which is lucky as Strahan is a tourist town which trades almost exclusively in the business of wilderness adventures:

Every morning this tranquil harbour is abuzz with activity as not only the Wilderness Railway but also helicopters, seaplanes and a flotilla of boats depart to show visitors such sites as Macquarie Harbour, Hells Gates and the pristine Gordon River:

In the middle of Macquarie Harbour is the teeny, tiny Sarah Island which was where the most heinous convicts were incarcerated in abysmal conditions back during colonial days. There's not much there now except for the stories - think 'For the Term of His Natural Life' and the real life tale of Alexander Pearce who somehow managed to escape, not once but twice. On his first attempt he was at large for 113 days during which time he may have eaten three of the men who were with him. In Hobart, having been apprehended after his second attempt, it was reported in the local paper that Pearce didn't look like he was 'laden with the weight of human blood, and believed to have banqueted on human flesh'....even though body parts were found in his pockets.....while he still had food left.

Here's a Huon Pine tree which only grows in certain parts of Tasmania, including the area around Strahan:

You see an awful lot of it at the Salamanca Market....turned into hair clips, salad bowls and pepper grinders so you'd probably be surprised to hear that it is a protected species and cannot be felled......these days only wood salvaged from the forest floor and river beds can be used.

The township of Strahan, like most major tourist destinations, is part real and part construct. On the surface it's hard to tell which is which....the pub may be original yet perhaps the Banjo's isn't.

We stayed in the mock red brick Federation style cottage....behind the facade it was just like any other motel room around the country.

On the fringe of the wilderness we payed through the nose for pub meals which were served by transient waiting staff from India, Texas and the UK.....and lied to at the breakfast buffet by a Tasmanian.....'Sorry, we're all out of mushrooms for today'....only for mushrooms to materialise ten minutes later in the bain marie.

No matter, the West Coast of Tasmania is incredible for it's natural beauty. It really has to be seen to be believed.

Rx