Island of Falls

Since returning from my holiday in Europe almost two months ago we’ve taken advantage of the slowly improving weather. Spring is a bit nicer for our walking so that’s what we’ve aimed to do at the weekends. Just as I thought I was running out of my ‘Island of’ themes we chanced upon another one. Unintentionally three of these weekend walks have been to waterfalls – and that’s enough repetition for an 'Island of' bestowment I reckon.

As part of our Mount Wellington walks – we’re trying to walk as many of the trails as possibly in Wellington Park - we finally visited Wellington Falls. This was a good long circuit walk, about 16-18km with a good variety of paths, from boulder hopping to smooth tracks. The highlight of course was lunch, at the viewing point to the waterfall.

There were lots of yellow blossoms in the trees and a real spring feel to the forest.

Here's the waterfall, and with Ella in front of it, too.



Here's what one species of Eucalypt trees look like - incredible bark!



The next weekend we drove out to the small town of Snug – a short distance southwest of Hobart. There’s a signpost leading down a narrow lane that announces ‘Snug Falls’. We followed it and after a short way down a dirt road parked the car and walked a couple of kilometres to see the falls.

Here's the Snug Falls - with me at the bottom


The finest of the Falls experiences, in my opinion, was our trip to the Kermandie Falls. It’s not so much the quality, or the way in which the water drops, or even the setting (although that’s extremely good) but the journey to get to them.

We started out by driving down to Cygnet, to see a craft and herb fair. This turned out to be almost a non-event, but seeing as we’d driven 45 mins southwest of Hobart we’d planned a walk out there after the fair. Mount Field, which we last visited on our holiday in June/July 2006, is fairly nearby, so we’d decided to walk there. As we got close, though, Ella spotted Kermandie Falls on the map. It’s in the shadow of Mount Field so it shortened the drive a bit.

The walk started out in a recently logged (i.e. decimated) area of forest, but soon we were walking in thick mossy forest on a twisty-turny and very muddy path. It reminded us of the forest surrounding Frenchman’s Cap that we walked through last Christmas. It made for very slow progress. To cap it all the river was stunning and virtually filled with fallen trees and the falls were great. The path didn’t look like it was trodden often, so it felt even more special - as if few other people have seen them.

This shows how small trees grow out of large fallen trees!


Some of the ferny undergrowth.


The falls themselves


and Ella sitting on a tree near the base of the falls, and looking at the rest of the tree!