'Are you sure you took the right track?!' I ask Jamie as we walk an incline through button grass, mauve bottlebrush, and various other endemic grasses and shrubs.

It was only meant to be the 20 minute return to Ralph Falls, the highest single drop falls in Tassie at 90 metres, cascading down a steep rock face.

And we had only just woken up, driving half an hour from Evercreech to Ringarooma, an area known for logging - or tree farming, euphemistically, and upward and upward and upward to the Ralph Falls carpark. To be honest I found the regenerated forests and pine plantations a little depressing, imagining the wilds that were here before logging, and the only wildlife we saw were dead wallabys, wombats and even a Tassie devil, which I have never seen alive in the wild. Ferns and purple foxgloves and native orchids prettifying pockets of more diverse forest and more as we headed toward the Mt Victoria forest reserve.

The first descent to the Falls look out was stunning, a Tolkeinesque landscape of twisted branches and moss coated trees and rocks. It was cool here, hinting at the chill that must infuse the area in the winter months.

The falls were indeed spectacular and worth the drive. To the right the vista extended into a large valley and the sea.

From there we took the loop option, not realizing it would take almost an hour to get back to the carpark. Still, it was beautiful, particularly the various mosses and lichens in all shades of green.

Someone had sat for a while and created a small cairn.

At one point we were above the falls - Jamie couldn't walk closer as it made his vertigo sing.

Onwards we traipsed, buoyed by silence and birdsong, until finally the landscape changed a little, a boardwalk of sorts leading us through marsh and button grass fields.

The Tasmanian landscape is so spectacularly diverse. Although economies drive the management of reserves and national parks I hope we lean more and more to preservation over decimation as my heart and the Earth's heart cannot bear it.

With Love,

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