On Easter Sunday, we drove up to Mt Field National Park, about an hour north of Hobart. We had a day or so to kill before heading east again, waiting for the crowds to disappear. Luckily we had a place to stay in the mountains near Hobart - some of you might recognise the bus from our stay in January.
My friend had to fly back to Victoria because her Dad was ill, so we had the place to ourselves. It was nice to have a fire bath, filled with gravity fed tankwater, brown with eucalyptus tannins. Four yellow bellied parrots eyed me curiously from the wattle above, and one landed on the side of the bath and stared at me for a while.
We had a chance to do some washing and had a beautiful night's sleep before heading up to Mt Field. From the main carpark there's a few tracks leading up to waterfalls and through a tall trees forest, full of sugargums.
I wasn't overly keen on all the people there but it was Easter Sunday - good for families. The waterfalls were very pretty but for me, I'd rather be there on my own. But who wouldn't?
It was super dry up there so not a lot of mushrooms, sadly, but still, we found some! And we learnt a lot trying to identify whether these orange ones might be chanterelles, which they weren't!
There were also some other cuties as well.
Some of the fallen trees were huge. Annoyingly I hurt my foot as I made my way through the fallen and rotting logs and had to limp back. Perhaps it was a sign to slow down.
From there you can take the winding road up to Mt Field itself. There's a lot of bushwalks up there for day trippers - how lucky Hobart people are to have this on their doorstep!
We then drove further north, round in a big circuit back home. The landscape was lovely, albeit dry. There were some interesting barns which we presume were for processing hops.
The poplar trees were very autumnal and against a brooding dark sky, were even more striking.
At the very end of summer it's still very dry. The mountains were beautiful in the distance and the contrast of colours gorgeous, but I still couldn't live up this way - let alone being no ocean,there's just a whole lot of not much.
Still, it was a good day for a Sunday drive.
It was lovely to get home to the bus and watch the pademelons in this peaceful slice of Tassie heaven. We are very blessed to know someone who lives here - a home away from home and then some.